California’s second-largest school district is almost ready to answer a question that has prompted legal challenges across the nation: How much money translates to an adequately-funded student education?
San Diego Unified is nearing completion of what it’s calling an Adequacy Calculation Tool – an electronic mechanism that will allow it and others to accurately evaluate the relationship between existing resources and what’s actually needed to prepare students for success in college and career.
“In talking with the Legislature on this issue, the conversations have centered around the question, ‘Well, what do you mean by adequate?’” said Martha Alvarez, director of government relations at SDUSD.
“That got us at San Diego to think more proactively about how we could move the conversation across the state about what our schools need – what would a model school look like that would provide students with the educational setting and opportunity that they need to be successful,” she said.
The district’s efforts to accurately pin-point the true cost of educating students comes as it and others across the state prepare to enter their third year under California’s restructured school finance system – the Local Control Funding Formula. The LCFF was designed to simplify the K-12 funding stream and give districts more say in how they use the money. In exchange they must, using broad community input, develop comprehensive spending plans – called Local Control Accountability Plans – that detail how those expenditures will improve student outcomes.
As part of that process, the district embarked upon an advocacy plan that included the development of the Adequacy Calculation Tool in order to determine “a high-level estimate” of the funds that would be needed to fully implement the goals of the LCAP. The move was also designed to support the larger discussion around funding adequacy in California’s public schools, Alvarez said.
[For more of this story, written by Kimberly Beltran, go to https://cabinetreport.com/budg...ely-funded-education]
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