Here are some highlights of education spending in the budget, including increases for additional preschool seats, efforts to address the teacher shortage and programs to prepare students for college.

1. Overall numbers

The $171 billion state budget includes total funding of $88.3 billion for all K-12 education programs.

This money supports about 6 million students who attend kindergarten through 12^th grade in more than 10,000 schools throughout the state. There are more than 1,000 local school districts, 58 county offices of education and more than 1,000 charter schools.

This year’s budget is a 4 percent overall increase in revenue from last year for K-12 funding.

Per pupil spending increased to $10,643, which is $3,600 more than in 2011-12.

2. College readiness

$200 million in one-time funding for College Readiness Block grants to school districts and charter schools serving high school students to provide additional services to help students transition to higher education. Funding will be based on the number of high school students who are English learners, low-income or foster youth.

3. Teacher shortage

An increase of $35 million to fund several programs aimed at recruiting additional teachers. This includes: $10 million for the Integrated Teacher Preparation Grant Program to provide grants to colleges and universities to develop or improve programs so that students can earn a teaching credential and a bachelor’s degree in four years; $20 million to establish the California Classified School Employees Credentialing Program to recruit non-certificated school employees to become certificated classroom teachers; and $5 million for a local educational agency to establish and operate the California Center on Teaching Careers to recruit teachers.

4. Charter school startup grants

An increase of $20 million for operational startup costs for new charter schools in 2016 and 2017, which will help offset the loss of federal funding.

5. Restorative justice grants

An increase of $18 million for truancy and dropout prevention grants.

6. Full-day state preschool

An increase of $7.8 million to provide access to full-day state preschool for an additional 2,959 children from low-income working families starting March 1, 2017. Over a period of four years, a total of 8,877 new full-day state preschool slots will be added costing $100 million.

7. A-G initiative

$4 million to expand University of California’s existing Scout program and provide free online classes and curriculum to meet the A-G subject requirements with the goal of making college preparatory courses more accessible for students.

8. Unfunded liabilities 

$2.4 billion for state contributions to the California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS). It is estimated this unfunded liability will be eliminated in about 30 years.

State retirement liabilities for health care benefits total $74 billion, and $72.6 billion for teacher pensions. The state portion of the unfunded liability for teacher pensions is $13.9 billion.

Source: California State Budget 2016-17

In all, 34 states are spending less on K-12 education than before the recession hit, including 13 that have cut per-student spending by more than 10 percent.

Apart from requiring school districts to roll back education services and look elsewhere for funding, the state spending cuts deepened the recession and slowed the pace of economic recovery by reducing the overall number of teachers and other employees, the study said. Further, it said, through last month local school districts had cut a total of 324,000 jobs since 2008, which in turn reduced family purchasing power and overall spending.

The inability of states to undertake critical school reform initiatives, like recruiting better teachers and trimming class sizes, was also cited as having long-term negative consequences for the nation’s economic competitiveness.

Though schools in California have experienced significant improvements in their finances in the past two years due to the passage of Proposition 30 in 2012, many other states continue to be plagued by cuts to their K-12 education funding. In 15 states, per-student funding is lower in the current fiscal year than it was just a year ago, the study said.

Previous Posts: Deasy & Zimmer Praise Prop. 30 Passage, Mixed Reactions to Board-Passed Hiring Proposal, UTLA, LAUSD Prep for Prop. 30 Budget Battle 

“I applaud Governor Brown and our legislators for their work on the compromise announced on the Local Control Funding Formula,” said Superintendent John Deasy in a written statement.

The compromise language is designed to give more money all school districts while still making sure districts like LAUSD with a large concentration of low-income and English language learning students get a big boost.

Last month, Deasy said that the original Brown plan would hand LAUSD an extra $188 million in the first school year alone. The compromise version is expected to give the district roughly the same amount of money.

Governor Brown’s initial proposal earmarked 80 percent of education funds to go directly to all school districts evenly — the “base funding.”

Meanwhile, 16 percent went to “supplemental funding,” flowing to districts with disadvantaged kids, and 4 percent to “concentration funding,” helping districts (like LAUSD) with especially high concentrations of low-income students, English language learners and foster kids.

The compromise proposal raises the base funding to 84 percent, lowers the supplemental funding to 10 percent, and then increases the concentration funding to 6 percent.

See EdSource Today‘s handy chart for a visual comparison of the original and compromise language:

Via EdSource Today

“This announcement marks the most significant overhaul of K-12 school finance since the 1978 passage of Proposition 13 shifted most school funding from property taxes to the state’s sales and income tax rolls,” said Deasy. “While we have miles to go to regain the ground we’ve lost since, with this deal, we have begun our journey toward funding equity and funding adequacy.”

To be sure, Deasy was just one of the many LA officials pushing for the funding formula, including UTLA President Warren Fletcher and LA Chamber of Commerce President Gary Toebben.

“This is one of those issues where you had everyone on board — labor, business, management,” said Zazueta. “This is a big win for LA as a whole.”

LA Unified will also get a funding boost from Proposition 39, the ballot measure passed by California voters in November to close a corporate tax loophole that benefitted out-of-state-corporations in order to build clean energy infrastructure.

The State legislature has decided that the bulk of the Prop 39 money will go to school districts, who can now apply for the money in order to, say, install solar panels on schools in order to save on energy costs.

Previous posts: Brown Soft-Sells School Formula in LA; Deasy Joins Governor’s Funding Formula Offensive; Gov’s “Weighted” Funding Formula Will Transform LAUSD; Deasy Praises Brown Budget Proposal

Gov. Brown addresses reporters and photographers

Governor Jerry Brown continued to promote his Local Control Funding Formula proposal at a Friday morning press conference at East LA’s Humphreys Elementary.

Joining him was an All-Star cast that included LA Chamber of Commerce CEO Gary Toebben, United Way CEO Elise Buik, School Board member Bennett Kayser, former State Senator and City Council candidate Gil Cedillo, UTLA President Warren Fletcher, and LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy, who (in what must be an extremely rare occurrence) introduced Fletcher to the podium as “my union president.”

The Governor presented his plan as a small but important change in how funds are allocated to districts like LA.  Deasy described its passage as a make-or-break $188 million game changer. His chief intergovernmental relations staffer noted that there were some LA-area legislators who hadn’t yet gotten behind the plan.

The Brown proposal would divert more money to school districts like LAUSD with a higher concentration of low-income students and English Language Learners.

Left to right: John Deasy, Warren Fletcher, Gil Cedillo

Brown’s sales pitch played down the new formula’s reach.

“We’re trying to compensate a little bit for the difference of living in this neighborhood, and living over there in Beverly HIlls, or out in Malibu,” he said.

“This is a small but very powerful way of giving to those who don’t have much.”

Deasy put a much sharper emphasis on the importance of the proposed formula, which he said would mean a $188 million difference for LAUSD in the next school year alone.

“Our entire budget is predicated on this passing,” Deasy told LA School Report after the presser. “We don’t have a second scenario. We’ve put our trust in the Governor.”

Perhaps most surprising, there are still some LA-based legislators who are not yet totally on board and might be influenced by the Governor’s appearance.

“They’re still some skepticism,” said Edgar Zazueta, Director of LAUSD’s Office of Governmental Relations. “You hear this a lot: ‘I’m supportive of the concept but…'”

Many legislators, he said, are concerned over “Issues like accountability, and how to make sure money is spent appropriately.”

Zazueta also said that policy staffers who’ve worked in the Capital for decades are especially suspicious of the plan, which would remove some 60-odd categorical funds (sometimes called “silos”) that can only be spent in specific ways.

“There’s a very influential policy staff who drive most of the big education conversations,” said Zazueta. “They’re the ones who are dissecting this more than everyone.”

The collapsing of the categorical funds into larger pots of money that local districts have more control over is “a hard pill to swallow for people that have spent their whole career developing the system.”

Brown, meanwhile, tried to stress that the redistributive portion of his plan was simply a small but in important part of the formula — 20 percent of all the education funding.

“People in Sacramento want to take that and spray it over everybody,” said Brown. “It will  be pennies compared to the dollars that it means here.”

He added, later: “I can’t believe that any Democrat would go against this.”

Previous posts: Deasy Joins Governor’s Funding Formula Offensive; Gov’s “Weighted” Funding Formula Will Transform LAUSD; Deasy Praises Brown Budget Proposal

Deasy (right) with Governor Brown yesterday (via LAT)

LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy was in Sacramento Wednesday for a press conference in support of Governor Jerry Brown’s proposal to shift more funding to school districts like LAUSD that have large numbers of poor and English Language Learner students.

Brown’s central message to lawmakers: resistance is futile. “If people are going to fight it, they’re going to get the battle of their lives, because I’m not going to give up until the last hour, and I’m going to fight with everything I have, and whatever we have to bring to bear in this battle, we’re bringing it,” he said.

Deasy said Brown’s proposal “brings to life the promise of equity long overdue in this state,” according to the Sacramento Bee.

Edgar Zazueta, Director of Governmental Relations for LAUSD, said he and Deasy were confident that Brown would get at least most of what he wants. “There’s still a lot of skepticism in the Assembly. But the tide is turning.”

Brown’s plan concerns the spending of money generated from Proposition 30, temporarily raised California’s Sales Tax to fund public education.

Funding for all school districts is expected to rise over the next two decades. Brown’s plan with send a disproportionate amount of the new money to school districts like LAUSD that have a lot of low-income students and English Language Learners.

His plan has met some resistance within Brown’s own party, most notably from Joan Buchanan, the Democratic chair of the Assembly’s education committee, who called the Governor’s plan overly divisive, pitting “rich suburbs against poor communities,” as quoted in the Associated Press.

There are also some within the State Senate that want to soften the plan a bit by spreading the new money out more evenly.

Brown has essentially promised not to compromise on the key aspects of the plan.

LAUSD’s Zazueta thinks that the Governor can get most of what he wants.

“The conversation is turning to how we’re going to do this as opposed to whether we’re going to do this,” said Zazueta. “It’s hard to see a scenario where the Governor signs a budget without some part of this in it. If you have the Governor and the Senate in some form, it’s only a matter of time.”

Anthony York of the LA Times characterized the differences between Brown and the Senate more about “personality differences” than actual policy disagreements.

Previous posts: Gov’s “Weighted” Funding Formula Will Transform LAUSD; Deasy Praises Brown Budget Proposal; UTLA, LAUSD Prep for Prop. 30 Budget Battle; Board Restores 10 Days, Rejects Charter Proposal

Gov. Jerry Brown

LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy praised the budget proposal California Gov. Jerry Brown released today, saying in a press release, “the changes announced today are quite positive for our students in the Los Angeles Unified School District.”

In his proposal, Governor Brown would fund school districts based on the number of its students and the level of challenges faced by its students, meaning districts like LAUSD with higher enrollments of low-income students and English language learners would be eligible for more state funding. According to Deasy, the Brown proposal would prevent new furloughs or budget cuts.

To see the summary of Gov. Brown’s 2013-2014 budget proposal, click here. To see Superintendent Deasy’s full press release, click here.

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