Berkeley Unified Superintendent Donald Evans speaks to parents last month at a forum on the new spending law. Some districts have already begun to engage parents in the budget process, knowing that the regulations and template for the Local Control and Accountability Plan would be passed this month. Credit: Mark Coplan, Berkeley Unified School District
Engaging parents is one of eight priorities that school districts must address under the law creating the new state finance system, the Local Control Funding Formula. Parental and community involvement will also soon become a guiding force behind the funding system’s central element: a three-year budget plan explicitly tying spending to student achievement goals that every district must create.
On Thursday, the State Board will pass the template for that document, the Local Control and Accountability Plan or LCAP. The Board also will adopt regulations instructing districts on how much latitude they will have – too much, according to some advocates for disadvantaged children – in spending the money that the funding formula earmarks for low-income students, English learners and foster youth.
The goal of the Local Control Funding Formula is to decentralize power and shift decision making from Sacramento to local districts. Together, the LCAP template and the spending regulations will make that happen – and establish what the system’s architect, State Board President Michael Kirst
In an advocacy arms race, groups representing school boards and district administrators on one side and advocates for low-income children and English learners on the other are lining up hundreds of speakers for a State Board of Education hearing Thursday on proposed Local Control Funding Formula regulations. The import of the ... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit the Edsource Today website
New math textbooks aligned to Common Core up for State Board vote - by Kathryn Baron
One plus one still equals two, but quite a bit else has changed in the new math textbooks and instructional materials under consideration for California classrooms. Common Core State Standards are the driver in these math texts and other teaching materials that the State Board of Education is scheduled to vote to ... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit the Edsource Today website for full lin