New school funding formula to get huge increase
Proposition 98 funding for K-12 schools and community colleges has recovered dramatically since the low of $47 billion in 2011-12 to what would be a high of $68.4 billion next year. The black bar represents revised estimates of Prop. 98 revenue for three years in Gov. Brown’s May budget proposal
A projected big infusion of state revenue next year will inject much more money into the new K-12 education finance system than school districts and state officials expected at this point.
For the budget year starting July 1, Gov. Jerry Brown is proposing an additional $6.1 billion for the Local Control Funding Formula, the funding system that shifts more authority over operating budgets to local school boards. It also steers more dollars to “high-needs” students – English learners, low-income children and foster youth. The new dollars will take districts much closer, after only three years, to what the Legislature set as full funding when it passed the funding law in 2013.
The Legislature defined full funding as the end of a transition period from the old revenue distribution system, where districts were funded unequally, based often on outdated formulas and a grab bag of earmarked funds, called categoricals, to one where, with few exceptions, funding would be uniform. All districts would receive the same base funding per student, with supplemental dollars flowing to districts according to the proportion of their high-needs students.
Brown’s proposed increase will bring the total for the Local Control Funding Formula to $53.1 billion. That’s about $6 billion ahead of schedule, according to the state Department of Finance. By one measure, that equals 90 percent of full funding, currently estimated to be $60 billion. By another measure, it’s 70 percent of the way there (see graphic below for an explanation of the difference).
Of K-12 funding from Proposition 98, the main source of revenue for K-12 schools and community colleges, 79 percent will be distributed to districts through the funding formula next year, with the rest allocated for community colleges, special education, child nutrition and a few other state programs.
The top graph, by the Legislative Analyst’s Office, shows that the Local Control Funding Formula will reach about 90 percent of full funding – $60 billion – under Gov. Brown’s proposed budget. In the bottom graph, the education consulting firm School Services of California says the formula would reach 70 percent of full funding next year. School Services started at $39 billion in 2012-13, the last year under the old revenue system, and calculated the gap between it and full funding. Next year’s proposed $53.1 billion for the funding formula closes the gap by 70 percent. That is still much greater than the theoretical red trend line, consisting of steady yearly increases – which the state’s boom and bust tax system never produces.
The extra money next year for the Local Control Funding Formula would provide $1,088 more per student for the average school district, in which English learners and low-income children make up 63 percent of the students, according to School Services of California, an education consulting company that calculated various scenarios. However, amounts for individual districts would vary tremendously, based on how much they were funded under the old system and their student demographics. Some districts with a small proportion of high-needs students would get as little as $500 to $600 per student, while districts that fared poorly under the old system and all of whose students are poor or English learners could get as much as 20 percent, or $1,590 per student, more.
Some longtime education observers are cautioning districts not to waste an unprecedented spending opportunity that is not likely to come again anytime soon.
“This is the moment when districts should be placing bets on where they want to be in 2020 to do the most good for their students,” said David Plank, executive director of Policy Analysis for California Education, or PACE, a research center based at Stanford University.
The vehicle for setting priorities is the Local Control and Accountability Plan, a document that districts are required to update annually after soliciting the views of parents and the community. In an LCAP, districts list New school funding formula to get huge increase | EdSource:
