JULY 30, 2014New dispute opens over LCAP reporting mandate
(Calif.) A festering dispute over how much freedom local officials should have over education spending has reignited, pitting school managers against advocates for low-income families and some key members of the Legislature.
The current tempest involves plans local educational agencies are now required to produce showing how new state funds are being used to support disadvantaged students.
A template of the new plan pending before the California State Board of Education would require districts to provide actual spending figures on each pupil subgroup – a mandate that school officials say undermines Gov. Jerry Brown’s often cited principal of subsidiarity.
They also argue that actual spending reports typically trail the end of the fiscal year by months and thus cannot be included in the Local Accountability Control Plans, which must be approved and adopted before July 1 each year.
“The LCAP was never intended to be an expenditure document that a lay person could pick up to see the LEA’s entire budget in black and white,” a coalition of school management groups and local districts said in a July 28 letter to the state board.
They noted some of the proposed changes “suggest an erosion of the governor’s original vision and instead move the template towards becoming a document driven by compliance rather than student outcomes and closing the achievement gaps.”
Representatives from some of the state’s largest school management groups signed the letter including the Association of California School Administrators, the California School Boards Association and the California Association of School Business Officials.
It arrived, along with scores of others from education stakeholders, during the final days of a public New dispute opens over LCAP reporting mandate :: SI&A Cabinet Report :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet:
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