Local Control Funding Formula Regional Input Session
Los Angeles, California
August 8, 2013
The Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) provides unique opportunity for school districts and
parents to work together to design an effective education plan that commits resources to and
addresses the educational needs of English Learners, economically disadvantaged students and
foster youth.
It also dismantles an oversight and accountability system which – while not fully effective –
provided a structure for ensuring needed and legally mandated supplemental education
services to English learners, and to economically disadvantaged students and foster youth by
districts.
The LCFF legislation includes general fiscal and accountability requirements and provides
maximum flexibility to districts. However districts need guidance and parents and students
need the protection of explicit standards and criteria to ensure that the purpose of LCFF is
accomplished and the rights of parents and students are upheld. During hearings before the
assembly and senate education committees, the administration assured the legislature and the
public that such direction would be provided through the regulatory process.
With this in mind and understanding the governor’s intent to provide additional resources,
support and services to the student subgroups experiencing the greatest academic challenges,
the following recommendations are offered.
A. Transparency and Community Involvement.
1. Articulate specific steps that districts must take to include parents in the development and
updates of the Local Control Accountability Plan (LCAP) and in the development of the budgets
aligned to the LCAP while ensuring access to parents of English Learners and economically
disadvantaged students through language and other access accommodations.
2. Define the duties of the district English learner advisory committees (DELACs) as they relate
to English Learner programs and services and the development, implementation and oversight
of the LACP. Provide direction about how districts can document and fulfill their obligation to
ensure that the final LCAP reflects DELAC involvement. We believe not including the school site
English Learner Advisory Committees (ELACs) was an oversight and to develop local leadership
andEnglish Learner parent engagement, include these ELACs in the regulations. Clearly state
that funds from the LCFF should be spent on supporting the work of the DELAC and other
parent advisory committees.
3. Strengthen the uniform complaint process because the current process fails to provide the
type of complaint resolution that fulfills federal mandates for oversight of programs for English
Learners.
4. Provide minimum standards for the oversight activities delegated to the county offices of
education and for oversight by the California department of education of those programs
actually administered by the county offices.
5. Establish a communication plan for the parents and public that is simple and clear, as to the
process used in determining when technical assistance and intervention by the Collaborative
will occur.
6. Clearly establish the roles and responsibilities of the Collaborative, County Offices of
Education and the Superintendent of Public Instruction specific to technical assistance and
intervention.
B. LCFF Budget and Funding Use
1. School districts will receive funding under the LCFF for the 2013-14 school year, without the
benefit of the directives and guidelines provided by the regulations to be adopted by the state
board of education next year. The State Board and CDE must make clear with an immediate
communication to district and county superintendents and charter school administrators that
they must expend the funds in a manner consistent with the LCFF and use supplemental and
concentration grant funding to benefit the students for whom those funds have been provided;
and that districts may not overcommit new dollars in this school year in a manner that would
leave them unable to fulfill the LCFF principles and comply with LCFF regulations in upcoming
years.
2. School districts will receive the funding in one lump sum, however the districts must be able
to demonstrate compliance with the LCFF; this requires transparency and a clear demarcation
of the actual amount of appropriation from each of the three program accounts (base,
supplemental and concentration grants) and accounting for how each fund amount is spent.
3. Clearly describe and provide direction on what supplemental and concentration grant
funding may be used for and provide accountability criteria that ensures that districts spend
funds in a manner that augments education services to English Learners, economically
disadvantaged students and foster youth proportional to the additional funds received.
4. There is a need to simply and clearly explain the process to determine proportionality of
expenditures with the supplemental and concentration grants and how districts will be held to
the current EIA maintenance of effort.
C. Local Control Accountability Plans
1. Provide guidelines for addressing the federally required services for English Learners: to
develop English proficiency, access to a comprehensive curriculum and programs that are based
upon sound educational theory and research.
2. Provide minimum standards for programs for English Learners to ensure that supplemental
and concentration grant funds are used to address educational deficits that result from the
inability to speak English and ensures that students have the opportunity to learn English and
have full access to the core curriculum and that these funds not be supplanted by base funding.
3. The LCAP needs to identity the sufficiency of teachers possessing required authorizations to
teach English Learners.
4. The template for the LCAP should include how the district plans address the language and
academic needs of ELs differentiating for their diverse profiles: newcomers to long term English
Learners.
5. Establish a process that allows for accountability and evaluation specifically regarding
programs for English Learners, economically disadvantaged students and foster youth.
6. Define school climate and provide direction to districts about how to use school climate to
evaluate plan success by addressing racial and ethnic disparities in discipline, alternative school
enrollment and school safety.