A scathing audit on school funding that found the state did not meet promises made six years ago to help English language learners, foster children and students from poor families sets up a 2020 test of the clout of the California Teachers Association and the California Federation of Teachers – and of the willingness of Gov. Gavin Newsom to take on the unions who were early backers of his successful 2018 candidacy. 

State Auditor Elaine Howle’s review focused on how school districts in San Diego, Oakland and Clovis had implemented the Local Control Funding Formula, which was adopted by the Legislature in 2013 at the behest of then-Gov. Jerry Brown. The governor and then-Senate President Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, were among several leaders who said the LCFF would be a game changer by getting additional assets to struggling students.

But Howle found instead that billions in extra funds the formula directed to districts with high percentages of English learners, foster kids and poor families had been used for general needs – including raises for teachers. She concluded there was little or no evidence that the LCFF had boosted these students’ performance.

“In general, we determined that the state’s approach [to Local Control] has not ensured that funding is benefiting students as intended,” Howle wrote.

Howle’s finding confirmed all the major criticisms of the formula that have been raised by education reformers and by civil rights lawyers who have repeatedly sued Los Angeles Unified over its treatment of poor minority students. 

Bill to track school funding couldn’t even get a hearing

But these groups have never gotten far with Local Control changes. Last spring, Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, the San Diego Democrat who pushed for the audit, couldn’t even get Assembly Education Committee Chairman Patrick O’Donnell, D-Long Beach, to hold a hearing on her bill to require disclosure of how LCFF dollars are being used.

Howle’s audit gives Weber new evidence to push for tracking such spending, and she has said fixing Local Control is her top priority in 2020. But O’Donnell, a former teacher who is close to the CTA and CFT, is unlikely to drop his opposition to tracking the funding.

A key question is likely to be what the governor does. While Newsom won the early endorsements of the two teacher unions, he spent the 2018 campaign telling editorial boards and the Los Angeles and Silicon Valley billionaires who back education reform that he too wanted to fix Local Control to ensure it helped struggling students and had proper accountability protections.

But any attempt to get school districts to stop spending LCFF dollars on teacher compensation – and on rapidly growing teacher pension costs – will go directly against the CTA and the CFT. They already see available school funding as inadequate and are both pushing for billions of dollars in tax hikes in two measures expected to be on the ballot in November 2020. They also won changes that will make it more difficult for charter schools to be approved or renewed using the argument that charters were diverting funding from regular public schools at a time when those schools are desperately underfunded. They are unlikely to accept the notion that the audit must be acted on.

Meanwhile, Newsom has so far used his political capital to advance an education reform that teachers unions also may question. But the reform – using metrics to track the performance of students throughout their K-12 journey – isn’t nearly as contentious as the state forcing many school districts to reorient their Local Control spending and stop using it for raises and pension bills.

But in January, the Legislative Analyst’s Office warned that none of the 50 state school districts it surveyed — including California’s 11 largest districts — had adequate safeguards in place to deal with the influx of new funds. Now the first of what could be many lawsuits has been filed alleging LCFF dollars are being taken for uses not permitted by the 2013 law. The L.A. School Report website has details:

The lawsuit, filed by ACLU SoCal, Public Advocates, and Covington & Burling LLP on behalf of Community Coalition South Los Angeles and L.A. Unified parent Reyna Frias, says the district … has already misdirected $400 million in 2014-15 and 2015-16 combined, and if not corrected, will amount to $2 billion in funds misdirected away from high needs students over the next 10 years. …

 

At issue is the district’s accounting practices regarding its LCFF dollars. The lawsuit alleges that by counting prior spending for “special education” as spending on services for low-income students, English language learners and foster youth, it deprives many students of the funds because not every special education students falls into those categories.

 

“LAUSD’s inclusion of special education funding is improper under the LCFF statute and regulations, and therefore violated mandatory duties created by the statute and regulations,” the lawsuit states.

ACLU has history of successfully suing LAUSD

The ACLU’s involvement is notable because of the group’s long record of successfully challenging L.A. Unified’s actions in court. The cases include suing over extreme teacher turnover at heavily minority schools; “last-hired, first-fired” teacher retention policies; and the treatment of gay students by teachers and staff at one school.

The ACLU has a pending lawsuit against LAUSD and the state over disparities in teaching time between affluent schools and those in poorer communities.

Its latest lawsuit was foreshadowed by the release last month of a UC Berkeley study showing L.A. Unified was commingling LCFF funds with its operating budget and prioritizing new hiring instead of programs to specifically help English-language learners and foster children.

Among the findings:

Despite pro-equity goals, we found that the bulk of LCFF investment dollars (the $145 million) was not distributed according to any transparent needs index. Furthermore, fiscal priority was placed on restoring adult staff positions often not directly tied to instruction, especially the dollars allocated to elementary schools. …

 

The District largely ignored their equity formula in distributing investment dollars to elementary schools. A policy decision was made internally to allocate a librarian position, instructional specialists, and assistant principals to most elementary schools, regardless of the TSP count. … This appears to reflect the District’s priority placed on re-staffing adult positions, rather than stemming from any distinct strategy for narrowing achievement gaps. …

 

[The] bulk of LCFF dollars has seeped into the district’s base budget with … little apparent regard to the students who generate the new dollars.

Black lawmakers already had warned about diversion

As CalWatchdog reported in March, the possibility of LCFF funds being diverted is a major issue for the California Legislative Black Caucus. In January, speaking on behalf of the caucus, Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, D-San Diego, testified at a state Board of Education meeting that “any authority for the use of supplemental or concentration grants to schoolwide and districtwide expenditures must clearly link the services to demonstrated effectiveness in increasing student achievement and closing achievement gaps, and demonstrate that the expenditures are proven effective for ‘concentrations’ of unduplicated children in schools in the district where concentrations exist.”

According to the UC Berkeley study and the allegations in the ACLU lawsuit, that’s not what is happening in California’s largest school district.

The 2013 measure guides additional dollars to districts with high concentrations of English-learner students, foster children and impoverished families, altering the funding formulas that have driven disbursement of state dollars for decades. Even before the reform became law, reform groups warned the funds will be steered into operating budgets and used to pay for raises for teachers orchestrated by their powerful unions.

A January Legislative Analyst’s Office report surveyed 50 California school districts, including the 11 largest, on how they were handling LCFF moneys. The LAO concluded that some districts were better than others, but that not one district had adequate safeguards.

In February, the Fresno County Office of Education formally asked the state Department of Education for guidance: Could broad raises be given with the additional funding?

Bureaucrat for tough standards, but his boss isn’t

The midlevel bureaucrat who responded in April — Jeff Breshears, administrator for the Department of Education’s Local Agency Systems Support Office — said that could only happen in unusual circumstances. The California Teachers Association strongly disagreed, as Edsource reported:

The Local Control Funding Formula was created to give maximum flexibility to school districts, and that includes creating competitive salaries to reduce teacher turnover, said Claudia Briggs, communications assistant manager for the CTA.

 

“We believe the law is clear: The money can be used to attract and retain quality teachers in the classroom, to lower class sizes and to restore programs that were cut,” said Briggs. And she said the CTA disagrees with the education department’s position that districts cannot use supplemental dollars for across-the-board raises if fewer than 55 percent of the students are English learners and low-income children.

 

“All control dollars are sent with no strings attached to suit the best needs of students. So if the percentage is below 55 percent, districts can absolutely still use those funds” for pay raises, she said.

After Brashears’ memo became public knowledge in recent weeks, Torlakson overruled his subordinate and said the funds could be used for broad teacher raises if districts could make the case that this would help English-learners and the other struggling students the LCFF was meant to assist.

Assemblywoman takes on party establishment — again

None of this sits well with a liberal second-term Assembly member who has already tangled with the Democratic Party establishment on teacher tenure and rules on how police body cameras can be used. In a statement published on the Union-Tribune’s website, San Diego’s Shirley Weber expressed frustration with Torlakson’s interpretation. Here are excerpts:

While teacher salaries are of great importance, supplemental and concentration grants are intended to achieve greater equity in our educational system by improving education outcomes for low-income students, English language learners and foster children. The Superintendent’s correspondence makes no connection to more equitable outcomes and use of those funds for salaries. Lowering the burden of proof for salary increases only further exacerbates circumstances that the poverty supplemental and concentration grants are intended to mitigate. …

The Legislature’s intent was clear when it enacted LCFF and the State Board reinforced this intent when it adopted regulations that these supplemental and concentration dollars were to “increase or improve” services and be “principally directed” to low income students, English learners and foster youth. Significant investments have already been made towards LCFF and an effective mechanism has yet to be implemented to actually track how these supplemental and concentration resources are being invested. There must be no ambiguity about who should benefit from these investments.

Weber is a former San Diego school board president and San Diego State professor.

]]> https://calwatchdog.com/2015/06/22/gov-brown-sides-teachers-union-school-funding/feed/ 2 81006 https://calwatchdog.com/2015/05/31/reformers-get-help-fight-school-funding-law/ Sun, 31 May 2015 12:49:44 +0000 http://calwatchdog.com/?p=80477 Education reformers and advocates for poor communities have a new tool in the fight over implementation of a 2013 law that was supposed to provide extra help to millions of struggling California students.

The Local Control Funding Formula — championed by Gov. Jerry Brown as “truly revolutionary” at its signing ceremony — was supposed to give additional funding to districts to directly help each student they had who was an English learner, a foster child or from an impoverished household. But the Legislative Analyst’s Office warned in January that none of the 50 state school districts it surveyed, starting with Los Angeles Unified, had adequate safeguards in place. Many districts are using the extra dollars for general operations or to pay for raises for teachers.

Now the state Department of Education has issued guidelines in response to an inquiry from Fresno Unified about whether LCFF dollars can go to teacher raises. In an April 14 memo that received no attention until it was obtained by the EdSource website last week, Jeff Breshears, administrator for the Department of Education’s Local Agency Systems Support Office, wrote:

You have asked under what circumstances is it permissible to use “supplemental and concentration funds” to fund a percentage salary increase on a district salary schedule for all teachers in a district. As you describe this salary increase, it appears to be a straightforward across the board salary increase without any condition for additional or enhanced level of service. In such case, a district is essentially “paying more” for the same level of service. As a general proposition, such an increase will not “increase” or “improve” services for unduplicated pupils, and the use of supplemental and concentration funds in this manner would not be appropriate.

CTA says there are few restrictions on funds

This sets the stage for battles in school boards, the courts and the Legislature. The Department of Education’s position that LCFF dollars must be used in a targeted way appears to contradict the actions of dozens of school districts, according to the LAO and published reports from around the state. Those district actions have already drawn concern from the caucus of African American lawmakers in Sacramento. At a January hearing of the state Board of Education, Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, D-San Diego, testified on behalf of the caucus over fears the reform was not being implemented properly.

Weber has already clashed with the California Teachers Association and its allies over teacher tenure. An LCFF fight looks to be next. EdSource reports that the union thinks there are few restrictions on how the extra dollars can be spent:

The California Teachers Association interprets the law differently. The Local Control Funding Formula was created to give maximum flexibility to school districts, and that includes creating competitive salaries to reduce teacher turnover, said Claudia Briggs, communications assistant manager for the CTA.

 

“We believe the law is clear: The money can be used to attract and retain quality teachers in the classroom, to lower class sizes and to restore programs that were cut,” said Briggs.

That is not how the governor described the LCFF when lobbying for its passage in spring 2013. In the press release from his office after he signed the law, Brown declared it would “direct increased resources to the state’s neediest students” — not to general operating funds.

However, Brown has said little about the controversy over the law’s implementation. Nor has Tom Torlakson, state superintendent of public instruction.

By Chris Reed

On the Fox & Hounds website, veteran Sacramento watcher John Wildermuth has a sharp piece about how Gov. Jerry Brown’s push to give more money to school districts with students with higher numbers of remedial English speakers inevitably is going to lead to pushback from the wealthier districts which stand to lose funding as a result:

“To Brown, it’s not only simple fairness, but also a smart use of state money.

“With two million children living in poverty and three million who don’t speak English at home, ‘equal treatment for children in unequal situations is not justice,’ the governor said in his state of the state address last month. And if California fails to properly teach the children who are the state’s future, ‘we will sow growing social chaos and inequality that no law can rectify.’

“But that soaring rhetoric doesn’t necessarily reflect the political reality of the zero-sum game that’s state financing: If some schools get more money, than some others will have to get less. And what local legislator is going to volunteer to let the schools in his district take the hit?”

That’s absolutely right. Wealthy liberals in the Bay Area and affluent L.A. suburbs — at least the ones with kids in public schools — may talk a good game about “social justice,” but how will they feel when it means their school districts get less funding?

But here’s another angle: How will the California Teachers Association and the California Federation of Teachers react?

Governor offers subtler version of Gloria Romero’s critique

I think former state Sen. Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles, is right when she frames school reform in California as a civil rights issue — one in which the interests of veteran teachers too often trump the needs of the state’s increasingly Latino students. The CTA and CFT responded to Romero by depicting her as an extremist and killing her 2010 bid to be state superintendent of public instruction.

However, it would be politically risky to go after the popular Brown, who appears to agree with Romero’s critique but has framed it in a completely different way.

So here is my confident prediction: The CTA and the CFT will never publicly oppose the governor’s plan. But since it displeases the many veteran teachers who would rather teach low-maintenance affluent kids than higher-maintenance kids with relatively poor language skills, the unions will quietly work to sandbag Jerry Brown — and will get their way

At which point, we’ll have two moments of reckoning.

1) Will the 74-year-old governor with a clear path to re-election call out the CTA and CFT? Or will he look the other way and depict the opposition to his plan as reflecting inertia or a lack of appreciation of its merits?

2) Will the mainstream media finally realize the absurdity of teacher unions depicting themselves as agents of “social justice”?

We shall see. This should be fun.