How has California's shift to the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) impacted equitable resource allocation? In part two of our focus on LCFF, host Jason Willis and special guests consider this and other vital questions, including:
Plus, we delve into the practical, hands-on experiences of a veteran chief school business official who has implemented LCFF in her small, rural school district. She shares valuable strategies that school district leaders and business officials can draw on when implementing LCFF.
Guests:
More resources
Budgeting for Educational Equity is presented by the California Association of School Business Official (CASBO) and WestEd. We are grateful to the Sobrato Family Foundation for additional support. Our series is written and produced by Paul Richman and Jason Willis. Original music and editing by Tommy Dunbar. John Diaz at WestEd develops our companion written briefs.
Follow us at @Budget4EdEquity.
How has California's shift to the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) impacted equitable resource allocation? In part two of our focus on LCFF, host Jason Willis and special guests consider this and other vital questions, including:
Plus, we delve into the practical, hands-on experiences of a veteran chief school business official who has implemented LCFF in her small, rural school district. She shares valuable strategies that school district leaders and business officials can draw on when implementing LCFF.
Guests:
More resources
Budgeting for Educational Equity is presented by the California Association of School Business Official (CASBO) and WestEd. We are grateful to the Sobrato Family Foundation for additional support. Our series is written and produced by Paul Richman and Jason Willis. Original music and editing by Tommy Dunbar. John Diaz at WestEd develops our companion written briefs.
Follow us at @Budget4EdEquity.
Budgeting for Educational Equity
Episode 7: Revisiting the LCFF (Part Two)
Opening quote:
Chris Edley, Interim Dean, UC Berkeley Graduate School of Education:
All of this new money creates the possibility for repairing the way in which, reforming the way in which, uh, we define local control and provide all of the forms of capacities that are needed to implement transformational change.
Opening music.
Jason Willis, host:
Welcome back to Budgeting for Educational Equity, presented by CASBO and WestEd. I’m Jason Willis, your host. In this second part of our focus on the LCFF, we’re going to look more closely at a key element, the Local Control and Accountability Plans that districts must approve, and we’ll explore the role school boards in particular play in the LCAP process. We’re also going to delve into the hands-on experiences of a veteran chief school business official who has implemented LCFF in her small, rural school district.
But first, to get rolling, I wanted to circle back to the complex topic of local control versus state accountability that our discussion about LCFF churned up in part one. There are many ways in which to consider this topic – and one of the most significant is through a social justice lens. You may remember Chris Edley and Maria Echaveste? We met them in our first episode. Maria is the President and CEO of The Opportunity Institute and Chris is a law professor and interim dean of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Education. When I originally spoke with Maria and Chris, they shared some powerful insights about equity in relation to state and local authority. They come at this subject from perhaps a wider vantage point than a lot of district leaders and business officials. Here’s what they shared.
[1:45]
Chris Edley:
One of the key takeaways from the civil rights movement and indeed all of the civil rights movements, plural, over the past century is that people who lack political power -- groups that like political power -- will always be at risk of having their interests devalued or ignored, full stop. But compare that insight with the strategy in California -- devolution -- of local control, of what I think of from a civil rights background as the, uh, romanticization of localism: that wisdom, that authenticity, flows up. Well, I mean, if you've thought about civil rights, the experience is quite often the opposite. It's that local politics will drive out the concerns, the interests of traditionally excluded groups. And so when the education framework is so committed to local control and local innovation, you are almost automatically handicapping the interests of political minorities in asserting and vindicating their own needs.
So I think that the commitment to localism has not been adequately conditioned upon the effective representation of the individuals and the interests of groups lacking in power. So that's always been my skepticism, not about the Local Control Funding Formula, not about the improvements in the formula, but my skepticism about the "control" aspects, if it means that Sacramento gets to absolve itself of responsibility and accountability for our equity concerns. And that has been too much pattern. So, from Sacramento, we often get rhetoric, we may even get some data, but we don't get the kind of, let's call it toothy leadership, by which I mean, leadership that moves beyond rhetoric to actually have some teeth in it and have some programmatic guts to it, even if it is not politically popular at a local level.
[4:41]
Jason:
You know, it's interesting because some folks I know who have been through a lot of these battles at the state policy level, I think they understand where you’re coming from, but they sort of concluded that the State didn't necessarily have the answers, either. And in fact, a lot of times the State’s solutions were even more lacking than what we saw locally. So, it kind of feels like, especially in a pandemic, there's a lot of pointing back and forth between locals to the state, or the state wanting to make more decisions; or the state thinks the locals should be doing more. It seems like there is necessarily not a really clear set of rules of engagement.
[5:20]
Maria Echaveste, President, The Opportunity Institute:
I couldn't agree with you more. In fact, It's really worthy to remind people that the challenge -- part of the reason for the difficulty in making the kind of progress we're talking about -- is the decentralized nature of our public education system. You know, constantly you hear experts talk about the work that's being done in Finland or in France. Well, they have one central education system. And we don't. So when you have that kind of decentralization, ask anybody who's worked in the bureaucracy, it becomes really easy to point the finger to someone else and not be responsible.
Chris:
I think one of the key developments in the world of public policy, in theories about public policy over the last 40 years, is this idea that there are many different ways to regulate. And the kind of command and control -- it’s our way or the highway, or we know the answer and you don't -- that's rarely the right way to try to regulate our way out of a problem. I mean, we certainly want the food and drug administration to be using that kind of command and control regulation. But in places where we don't have the right answer, there are forms of regulation that encourage innovation and experimentation as long as there are results. You know, even environmental regulation usually doesn't prescribe the engineering solution to a pollution problem. It usually just says to the regulatees, 'Here's the outcome we want in terms of clean air or clean water. Tell us how you'd like to achieve that. We may do some peer review to make sure it makes sense, but it's really, at the end of the day, it's up to you to figure out the best way to solve this problem.' That might be said to a lower level of government or it might be said to somebody in the private sector. The same can apply in education. Period, paragraph.
But what I want to note, is that if I'm a company trying to comply with the clean water rule, or I'm a school district trying to do what's right for kids with a certain kind of disability, I myself may not have the expertise to figure out the right way to do it. And if it's a hard problem, you're certainly not going to have that expertise in every one of 1,500 school districts, a thousand schools districts, in a state. So, you have to think about devolution. You have to think about local control and juxtapose it not only with some of the democratic risks, some of the equity risks, but also juxtapose it with the capacity constraints at the local level -- and by capacity, I mean, certainly dollars, but I also mean the capacity to innovate, which is a scarce human capital resource, right? The capacity to implement, which takes all kinds of financial, but also human resource needs; and the capacity to monitor, to evaluate, to improve. There are many elements of capacity. And if we devolve responsibility, if we delegate responsibility, then we have to make sure that the folks who are getting that responsibility have the capacity to use it well or get the assistance they need in order to use their authority effectively. And, that's simply not happening in California. In fact, I can't think of many states where it's happening well as a general matter.
[9:33]
Music interlude.
Jason:
One of the key components of the LCFF that was intended to help strike the right balance between local-state discretion and accountability was the LCAP – the Local Control and Accountability Plan. We can’t examine the LCFF without looking at the LCAP. The State Board of Education created a template for all districts to adopt -- a plan encompassing eight strategic priority areas and requiring specific stakeholder engagement to provide input on. The LCAP has been one of the most discussed and debated components of LCFF, probably more so for the number of iterations that it's gone through, including a newly revised template version just approved by the State Board. Much of the focus has been on whether the LCAP format itself is too unwieldly or whether it prioritizes compliance over innovation. When I spoke during the summer with Mike Kirst, former State Board of Education President and professor emeritus at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, I asked if he thought that what the State was trying to accomplish with the LCAP is still viable: Can the LCAP help school communities leverage and bring about the type of broader systems change and resource equity that we've been talking about in our series?
[10:45]
Mike Kirst:
So I think it's a matter of balance. I don't, uh we did do four versions at least at the LCAP, and I think that got better each time. It was a quote “continuous improvement project.” And I don't know how good or bad it is at this point. We never did get the last version of the LCAP really in place till COVID hit. And then, so, it's really [about] what are you trying to do? And what are the goals of the district?
Jason:
Mike went on to describe how, in his view, especially prior to the LCFF, districts were too often siloed into their different departments.
Mike:
The strategic plan is often detached from the budgeting, and that inhibits thinking about where ought the resources be used. There isn't a kind of inner unit, an inner organizational relationship, to guide even a strategic resource allocation. So it's much more the issues of alignment and coherence. To me, the districts are often not well-organized in that regard. And the worst offenders are the school boards. I mean, they've dropped the ball, I think, totally on LCAP, or mostly, I wouldn’t say totally, but mostly on LCAP -- and they really don't ask hard questions about the budget. They start with the old budget and tune it up and see if it balances. They worry about position control, adding too many people, and then basically incrementalize and make sure it balances. And they're not really saying, 'What's our plan? What are we trying to accomplish? How does this grand set of goals and strategic plan relate to our budget?' They're not integrating. The conversation and concepts aren't integrated.
Jason:
So, Mike -- those are some fairly sharp-edged observations, so, I have to ask: When the LCFF was being developed, it represented a major paradigm shift for school district boards and leaders from the old system that had been in place for some 40 years. Was there an assumption when LCFF was being adopted, that school district leaders would have the capacities to pivot to the integration that you’re talking about here?
Mike:
No, but we, that's where the LCAP came in. I mean, you know, that's all we could do at that point. Your question's a good one. So that's why we tried to move it forward. We made it hard for the curriculum and instruction [staff] not to talk to the budget office. It became much harder, and the early reports were (and this hasn't really been followed through a lot), was that they were talking more, and...you know, I never had, uh, I was never overly optimistic that the LCAP would transform anything, but it was our best guess at that time. And we've tried to get it closer and closer to where it ought to be. But, so we didn't, the answer is no, we didn't. You always don't have an optimal choice, okay? You can, um, the other way is for the State to tell them what to spend the money on, and we weren't keen about that. And then if you leave it to the locals, what's your alternative? Well, you can flush it down to the sites in a formula. I've spoken about my inhibitions about that. And so then you're going to leave it at the district level. Would you do it again is another way [of asking it], and I think I would, but I don't, you know, some, problems are just beyond what we can solve at that time.
[11:44]
Xilonin Cruz-Gonzalez:
So I'll just tell you, and I'm probably in a minority here, especially if your audience are, um, district people, but I've always thought that the LCAP was a good tool and a useful tool.
Jason:
That’s Xilonin Cruz-Gonzalez. We introduced her in the previous episode. Xilonin serves as a local school board member and she is also deputy director for Californians Together, a statewide group that advocates for English Learners.
Xilonin:
And I really think that a tool is just that, right? So, really how you approach the tool and think about it – that is going to determine the usefulness for what you do. And so in our district, we embraced the LCAP. We have helped build our district goals around the LCAP, so there's alignment, so we don't have separate district goals versus the LCAP goals. It's all integrated because that is the mechanism that [is] driving the direction and outcomes for our district. And so we have embraced it and, and feel like it's one and all. And so we don't think about it as a compliance document that we have to fill out to articulate something to somebody, right? We think about it as this is a tool that we're going to use to help us improve outcomes in our district.
Jason:
And that’s such a key point, I think, because so much of the, I guess I’ll call it disenchantment with the LCAP, is that it has caused districts to focus much more on compliance than on innovative budgeting.
Xilonin:
Whenever you get to reporting, there's always going to be this tension over how useful is it versus, is this just for compliance. And a lot of that can be driven by attitudes. I really think it's driven by attitudes, right? So, I do think that the improvements over the years -- and yes, there's been like four revisions of the LCAP -- but as you and I know Jason, like those first couple of years, every year it was a full process to develop a new LCAP, right? It was a full stakeholder engagement process. So this movement to a three-year LCAP has been, I think, good for districts to build multi-year sustainability in terms of their planning. But I think it's a valuable tool.
Jason:
Xilonin also went on to share a specific example of a valuable way the LCAP helped propel community engagement in the district where she serves as a board member, Azusa Unified in Los Angeles County.
Xilonin:
And our district is really, sort of, I will say bought into this stakeholder engagement process. And I have seen as a board member the iterations of how every year we go deeper in terms of how we engage community in the LCAP. The first year we had a parent advisory committee that we had some parents and some staff [on]; we had a combo committee, and it was sort of, it wasn't clear where the parents were coming from. The next year, we made sure every school site had somebody on the committee. The year after that we started including a student council so that they were driving recommendations. So every year we've sort of focused on how can we better engage community and help make sure that what we're building is really reflective of those who we serve -- the students, the families the community -- and it has gone so far that we now, we started doing a couple of years ago listening circles with some of our high school students, where the adults sit there and listen to the students talk about their realities, right? And that's been so impactful that we've pulled it down to our middle schools and our elementary schools. And those are the pieces that are driving decisions that go into what we ended up putting in LCAP. And it probably wouldn't have happened without this LCAP-LCFF process -- the requirement for stakeholder engagement.
But again, it gets back to attitudes. We embraced it, we believed in it. We think it makes us stronger. And so we continue to refine it year by year. Um, I'm not sure I can say that about districts across the state.
Jason:
Yeah, I appreciate that perspective – and there was one thing you said in there, Xilonin that struck me in particular, which was, it's just a tool -- but it's really how you think about the use of the tool, leveraging the tool, your attitude about how you're using the tool with others that really determines its utility in that way, to kind of drive the work forward of a school system.
I want to shift just to think about, Xilonin, your role on the board, and in particular, you know, we've talked to mostly superintendents and CBOs in the podcast. And so, several of them have really kind of pointed to the importance of, they term it kind of governance, but a lot of what's coming up for me in that, in the way they're talking about it, is the relationship between the board and the superintendent, relative to how the system can kind of seek out and pursue success for kids. And I'm just curious -- talk to us a little bit about that, like, what does that mean for you? How have you seen that relationship with the superintendent? How has it contributed to the kind of positive steps that Azusa’s taken for its kids?
[19:37]
Xilonin:
Uh, I'm glad you brought that up. The governance team is a critical factor in how you drive at the leadership level, right? I think it's so important for. the board and the superintendent to feel like they are a team that's sort of driving that top-level direction for the organization. Obviously, the superintendent is the one really actualizing and implementing everything, but I think that school board leadership is critical. And I would just want to put [this] in the context of LCFF, because I think that, if I were to say that before LCFF, I think I might've gotten blank stares from people. But I think because of the importance of local control and local decision-making, it has elevated the importance of that board role and the governance team in terms of resource allocation and decision making and guiding direction for the district. It's made that so much more important. And I'll just pull it back to my personal experience, right? When I first got elected, I was, I mean, obviously I was respectful, but I wanted to push our district, right? There was this real sentiment just amongst board members in general that to be an "activist" board member -- was a bad thing -- to come in with an agenda was a bad thing. And I think as LCFF has come in, I think people have realized you need to have leadership that really has vision and direction to push for change, and that really has to come from your school board. And so there's been this, this acceptance that we do need to have engaged board members who are going to be supporting the direction of the district, but also being very, very vocal and being engaged, and engaging your community to get more involved -- and I don't think that would have happened without LCFF. I think LCFF has now required us to think about school board members in that role because we have so much decision-making over budget -- over a budget that now is sort of much more open than it was before.
Jason:
Yeah, yeah -- and I want to press even more on your role and the board’s role in this LCFF era. Is there an area that’s been maybe a particular challenge for your district or community, especially around resource equity – and take us into that experience, if you will.
Xilonin:
I, fortunately I come from a community that very much believes in when we talk about having an equity focus, when we talk about addressing systemic racism, right? We have a community that really embraces that approach. I think what I struggled with, and I think what we struggled with is, is really around, like, how do you "undo" momentum? How do you really think about how can we be innovative, especially when it means, if you have finite resources, it would mean if you were to do something new, it would mean taking away from someplace else, right?
And so I think for those of us that had large unduplicated student counts, we had the luxury, especially in [the past] eight years where we didn't have to think about that because we were adding, right? We were always adding every year. It wasn't really about around that. And I think, unfortunately, as I think back, and I'm not, you know, I'm not sure I'm answering your question, but as I think back, one of the things that I do regret is that, I, that we, from the outset, didn't say, 'Okay, we're going to think about, we're going to think from like ground level, ground zero, and think about what do we need in place to really, to push our district?' And I think instead we thought about let's build on what we already have and sort of, and go from there. And I think too many districts have also done that. And I think that that leads to frustration I would say on the part of equity advocates because they see that there's not a change in resource allocation. They see that we're not changing how we spend our dollars and there's a frustration and they see the outcomes, like let's say suspensions, right? [In] some places it hasn't shifted at all. And there's frustration because it's like, hello, yeah, if you don't spend money differently, if you don't invest differently, if you don't invest in people differently, you're not going to see different outcomes. So I would say that's one of the things that I carry with me -- and maybe a little guilt -- that maybe we should have done more of that. And not to say that we can't do it moving forward, right? But I think that is a very difficult conversation to talk about, like, how do we shift where we spend our dollars?
Jason:
I appreciate that reflection, Xilonin, and I also think, the moment is, you know, there's a new moment for that too, right? The next three to five years there's going to be a glut of resources in California schools and districts. And I think that reflection that you're offering is probably, could be broadly applied across the system, kind of learning from what we went through with the LCFF.
[24:04]
Music interlude.
Jason:
We’ve been looking at the LCFF from a number of different angles. In this final part of our exploration, we wanted to shift even more from the policies related to LCFF and explore the actual practice. To do so, we visited with a chief school business official to gain a better sense of how the LCFF has played out in her district through the years. Of course, with more than 1,500 LEAs in the state, every LCFF implementation story is different, and there are things we can learn from each.
Heather Naylor started in Gridley Unified as the CBO 17 years ago. It’s a small district with five schools located in rural Butte County, about an hour north of Sacramento. So Heather, thanks so much for joining us. And, can you maybe share with us a thing or two more about Gridley and the communities you serve, just to give us a sense?
Heather Naylor, CBO, Gridley Unified:
We have about 2,100 students. We have a very diversified population. We serve, um, our unduplicated student count is about 75%.
We don't have a whole lot of high-end businesses in our area. We're probably the number one employer in our area. But we have a lot of farming,and a lot of community involvement and it's really a, real tight knit community. So, we all come together when there's a need and it's really a unique place to be.
Jason:
Thanks for sharing those details and…wow: 75% unduplicated count? So, LCFF, that really changed the game for you?
Heather:
Yes, it did. It brought us a lot of resources and putting those resources to work to help students achieve what they need to achieve is really the goal -- and we're constantly reviewing that and trying to figure out what's the best way to serve our population.
Jason:
So Heather, talk a bit about what shifts you’ve seen over the last decade. I mean, you've lived Gridley from revenue limits and categoricals through the start of LCFF. How has the shift to the LCFF really changed the way that Gridley works with those 2,100 students?
Heather:
I think the biggest part is we are able to provide a lot more resources to the needs. And we spend a lot of time looking at mental health, and [other] things that we could not afford in the past. We are now able to help our children, and we have some kids that really struggle, really are new to our country or don't have the home life that we all desire and hope to have, and they need additional supports put in place so that we achieve the outcomes that we need to make sure that they can be productive in our society.
So, we really shifted focus from just trying to keep everything going, to what else do these kids need? So we have counseling services at every school site. We spend a lot of money making sure our students can read and do math at the early grades. We spend a lot of time reviewing our outcomes and test scores to make sure that nobody's falling through the cracks. And so far, we're doing pretty good, our graduation rates are really high. So hopefully that continues. And we're constantly asking our community, what else do we need? How else do we need to support you? And making those transitions fairly quickly when a need comes up.
[27:54]
Jason:
What's so interesting in what you said there, Heather is, I feel like in some way the LCFF gave you some breathing room, right? There was a little bit of like, the screws were not as tight in terms of how the ship was operating? And, I really appreciate that about what, it seems like another benefit we haven't heard much about when thinking about the transition to the LCFF. I wonder if you could talk a bit about what has changed from the early years of LCFF adoption, creating the LCAP: How has Gridley evolved in its approach to thinking about its allocation of resources for those high need populations?
Heather:
So, one of the things that we're doing in Gridley, as we first started, [with the] LCAP process and trying to learn what was good, what worked, what doesn't, is we made a lot of things count as a district-wide initiative. So, when we look at our funding, we as a group come together and we say, ‘All these things are going to be considered, district-wide’ such as a TOSA [Teacher on Special Assignment], which go to several sites or possibly two sites and help our teachers that need a little more assistance and, you know, helping them with testing or whatever it is. And we look at those and say, that's a district-wide initiative. And then once we're done with that, we say, 'Okay, now here's the pot of money that's available after we've paid for the district-wide initiatives.' Like reading intervention is considered a district-wide initiative, so all of our K-3 teachers have aide support in their classrooms. And we make sure that our kids can read by the time they’re exiting first grade, and so also we have intervention teacher specialists that are at those sites to make sure that they read well enough to now read for understanding, not just learning to read.
So that's one of the ways that we look at it -- and then we, whatever's left over, after we fill all the district-wide, the pot that's available now becomes a per student allocation. So based on how many students you have at your school site, you get a dollar figure. Then you as a site administrator get to choose how that's going to be spent, what are your needs at that school site, because we can't fulfill everybody's needs nor would we know everybody's needs. So the administrator will then meet with the staff and figure out what the highest needs are and allocate that money towards those. And then there are sometimes they go over and that's okay, because we look at it and say, well, let's say the high school goes, 'Well, I really need money for CTE, but, oh, I got a grant for CTE. So I can let a different school site use this funding for a year or two to support a reading initiative or something like that.' So they're very collaborative in the group and they very much figure out how to spend those dollars to best support all kids.
[30:57]
Jason:
I think that that's so incredibly instrumental and just, instructive, Heather, in the way that you're describing how you were and are thinking about the allocation of resources in Gridley. And I want to push a little deeper. You mentioned your district has about 75% unduplicated students – and those are the low-income, English Learners, homeless and foster youth who qualify for additional supplemental and concentration funding through the LCFF. So when a district like yours has three-quarters of its students in a high needs category, as you mentioned, you’ve allocated resources for many strategies that essentially benefit all of the students. But could you maybe talk more about that? And the reason I ask is because that’s been an area of the LCFF where we can see a lot of different points of view.
Heather:
Yeah. So we don't look at students based on, you know, their income level or what they may have. We assume all kids need access to the same stuff. So in Gridley, we buy all the products and everything that go home with the students, regardless of your income. It doesn't matter if you're, you know, a "free and reduced" student or your parents make a lot of money. We send you the same packets, um, to every kid. So you may see like at other school districts where they list all what the teacher says you need for the year. We don't do that in Gridley. We provide it. We just go to Office Depot and we buy for every kid. And we send a packet home and that way they have the materials that they need at home. And it may at the lower grades, it may be buying scissors and buying coloring pens and paper, and everything. And the first day of school, they get their Chromebook and they get this packet of things to use at home, because we just make the assumption that if we've provided it, we know it's at your house. You don't have the excuse now to say, 'Oh, I don't have that at home.' So that way all of our kids are on a much [more] level field, so that when homework does come, they are able to do it at home.
Jason:
And in the work the district does, there’s some additional identification of additional strategies for particular student groups, right, say English learners?
Heather:
Of course. We of course look at our special needs population, we look at our EL population and make sure those kids get the services, as well as any additional supports that they need. For example, special ed, we, you know, go above and beyond what the IEP [Individual Education Plan] says because that's just your starting point. So, for example, this year we're hiring an additional, speech teacher because we are finding that a lot of our kids are coming to us now needing additional support in speech. But they may not have an IEP yet. And that's okay. Let's serve them now before they get an IEP because some kids just need a little bit more assistance.
Music.
Jason:
Gridley’s approach to serving students has received notice for its promising results. The district was studied by researchers and recognized in a 2019 Learning Policy Institute brief as a quote “positive outlier district” -- one where students of color and all students performed better than predicted on California’s mathematics and English language arts tests, even after accounting for differences in socioeconomic status. The research highlighted a number of contributing factors, including the district’s effectiveness in managing resources. And that brings us back, really, to a core vision of the LCFF: That allowing districts the flexibility to utilize their funds in ways their local communities identify and agree on – that can fuel innovation and improve outcomes for students.
So Heather, one of the things we’ve heard in many of our conversations around resource allocation is that, as a leader, sometimes you have to get comfortable being uncomfortable -- like, you have to be okay with difficult situations or conversations. And I'm wondering if you've had that experience. Is that something that you've wrestled with in Gridley?
Heather:
Well, you know, sometimes in the very beginning it was hard to understand. This pot of money is so big and how do we not equally divide it [so] everybody gets exactly the same amount? And that was, you know, being a math person, you want everything to line up perfectly, and understanding that putting more resources to the younger grades (because we spend probably more at our lower grades than we actually do at our higher grades in Gridley, because it's so important to us that those children know how to read and do math) that was kind of hard. Because it was like, well, shouldn't we be giving this school site more money and it's not equal? And that's not necessarily the case. It's more about figuring out that once these kids are able to read and do math at a lower grade level, they're not going to need the same level of resources at a higher level because they know what they're doing. And that will show in our test scores and all of the outcomes that we need these kids to be able to graduate and move on to college or do CTE pathways or whatever it is.
So, the shift in the beginning was a little difficult to understand. But now it makes sense. It's like, well look, our kids are outperforming other kids in our same populations and groups that are around us. So that's, you know, it does work and it's sometimes hard because you have somebody feeling like they're being left out of not getting their fair share, but then trying to explain, you won't need the fair, exact same dollar figure because you won't need these programs because these kids are going to come ready and able to do the subject area that you're teaching.
Jason:
And are there some other specific investments you can share more about?
Heather:
In Gridley we have a TK [Transitional Kindergarten] K-1 school. And at those grade levels, you know, it's very important that they get a great start to their education, as much as we possibly can [give them]. So even at that grade level, we have a full-time counselor, so that that counselor can help kids with any possible adjustment issues they’re having, family issues, whatever it is. We also have two reading specialists at that grade level to help kids. We do pullouts, we do push-ins -- both models -- and every teacher has an aide support in their classroom. We also make sure that we feed the kids. We make sure they get breakfast, they get lunch. We're doing all of the extras that we possibly can to make sure these kids, once they get to, let's say second grade, they're really reading to learn versus still trying to learn to read. And we're making sure that if they're not there, we then add our -- we have a school that's two through five -- and then they also have reading specialists and supports put in place as well as math to make sure that whatever those children need, wherever there are kids that need additional supports, they're able to get them.
[38:27]
Jason:
So Heather, at a very practical level, can you share some thing you’ve learned as a CBO about implementing the LCFF that maybe other district and school business leaders can benefit from?
Heather:
I have to say, when you develop your LCAP and you're figuring out how you're going to spend your money, at least for your supplemental and concentration, you really need to stick to that plan to some degree. I mean, obviously things change throughout the year, but you need -- the stakeholders all came together to decide this is what we need -- and you need to pull that plan out often and say, 'Did we get these things done in a timely fashion?' Where are the pitfalls? How are we going to handle all this money and what are we going to do?
And you really have to go back to, it's just the basics. We need to make sure this money is spent on the kids. That's what it's for. It's making sure the decisions that we're making affect kids, not staff, not somebody's salary, it's how do we get the money, get the biggest bang for the kids? And as long as you keep that focus and say, 'What are the kids’s needs? And are we making sure we're fulfilling all of them?' It really is simple to make sure that LCFF is being spent properly.
Jason:
Yeah, thanks so much, Heather for that. And so, you've been in this seat as a chief business officer for a while now. Are there any sort of “aha” moments that have stuck out for you, especially about the LCFF or the distribution of resources?
Heather:
It's kind of, you know, you go through the motions year after year and you have to sometimes step back and self-reflect and go, 'Oh, that makes sense now.' And I think one of the biggest issues is the additional staff that is really needed. We were bare bones back in the day when we were crash and burn, you know, ‘2007-08, and somehow we still made it through. I don't know that it was the best we could possibly do for our kids, but we had teachers that were very committed and worked hard. And the aha moment for that is just like, wow, with more resources and more money, look what we can do! And it does really pay off. And, you know, our teachers are a lot happier because they're not stuffing kids, overcrowding in our classrooms. And just understanding that it's quite an investment that really does pay off in the long run in, in looking back at, watching even my own kids come through the school system and seeing what we now offer versus what we offered even 10 years ago is amazing. We have kids that now come out as certified welders. That wasn't offered 10 years ago. These kids can literally leave high school and they're a certified welder and go get a job. That's amazing that we have such an opportunity for high school students.
Jason:
So in that way, you've really seen the evolution of Gridley over a 10-year period with the state's additional investment in Gridley’s students and staff and children, like you've really seen -- what I hear from what you're saying there is -- opportunities that have been created for students that just did not exist before that type of an investment?
Heather:
Yes. You know, we were getting kids out with a high school diploma, but they may not have [had] job skills. They may not have the ability to go to college. And now we're making sure that all happens. We do a lot of classes with Butte college, so our kids get a taste of what college is like, if that that's kind of the path they want to go on onto. We do the two-plus-two, so they may already have a couple of credits ready to go to be at college. We also have kids that we know that's not the path they want and that's okay. We try to give them a skillset so that they can use to go get a good paying job.
Music.
Jason:
We’ve talked about several of your school district’s investments that have produced positive results for students. I’m just wondering, Heather, do you have an example perhaps of an allocation or investment the district made that didn't work out as you intended it?
Heather:
We've actually purchased textbooks and we thought through the adoption process that they were the right textbook, and then it came out that our teachers were not happy with that textbook and they were, it was already purchased. And the good news is we'd only done a pilot, so it was only a couple of classrooms. And so we were able to shift gears and get a different textbook that they were a lot more happy with. But even then, it was like, well, we spent a year trying this pilot out and we had several teachers trying it to make sure we had a consensus -- and basically, that textbook’s not going to be used. So you can try to resell it, or you can have it, you know, sit in a corner and hope somebody someday wants it. But that does happen occasionally where resources get spent, and you're like, 'Wow, we spent a lot of money on this. And we thought it was going to be the right thing and then it wasn’t…'
Jason:
And what I’m hearing in this conversation is that you've, at Gridley, been able to kind of create that space in a way that we haven't necessarily heard in other systems. And I'm wondering, you know, as a leader in the system, how do you manage that? How do you manage those conversations of, you know, we spent a lot of money on this intervention, this strategy. We didn't necessarily get what we wanted? Take us through that. Like, what are the things that you really value in wanting to make sure that you can continue to keep that space open for people to attempt to get better?
Heather:
Well, you definitely have to focus on listening to your teachers because they're the ones doing the work day in and day out. I mean, we've had teachers come forward and want, um, alternate seating and to buy cushions and these chairs that wiggle and, you know, I'm just like, gosh, let's try it. Let's see, does it work? And then you have a teacher in another classroom going, 'I don't want that. I don't like that. That's not what I need.' And it's okay. We allow a lot of autonomy at our sites. They make a lot of these decisions with their teachers. Once the budget's handed out, they basically, as long as it's a legal expenditure, they spend the money how they want to spend it. And that's exactly what it should be. It's not for me to decide if it's a valid expenditure or not. They know if it's valid or not. By giving them the autonomy to make those choices and then figuring out what those kids need for whatever space it is, is okay.
Jason:
Heather, is there anything else that you'd like to share, especially with other district leaders and CBOs, that we didn't ask about that you think is helpful for this conversation?
Heather:
First, you have to stop and really listen to the stakeholders and know the problem or the issue and understand it, and then decide how you're going to fix it and what you're going to do to make sure what you put in place is moving in the right direction. And spend time communicating the outcomes and spend time finding out what else is needed. Because if you ask, they'll tell you. They know, or they think they know, what they really need, and then validate it, make sure that your money's being put in the places that really help kids.
I think the biggest question is how do we make kids successful? How do we make sure that nobody falls through the cracks? And I don't know that there's a perfect answer to that question. All I can do is make sure that we're putting the resources where there may be a need and make sure that we follow up to make sure that we support kids as best we can. And definitely hire the best staff you can, you know, go out and hire the best people that really want to work with kids and make them successful.
[46:48]
Music.
Jason:
Well, that’s where we’re going to leave things for now. A big thanks to the many special guests who shared their insights with us for this episode: Heather Naylor, Chris Edley, Maria Echaveste, Mike Kirst, and Xilonin Cruz-Gonzalez.
We hope this two-part focus on Revisiting the LCFF has shed light for you about California’s landmark education funding reform from both a policy and implementation perspective. It’s a big, complex evolving part of California’s education landscape -- and we continue to learn more about its impact through both practice and research.
Speaking of which, I want to call your attention to two reports just recently release about the LCFF – one by PACE and one by the Public Policy Institute of California. What I found really intriguing about these two studies is some new evidence that they bring forward about the impact of the policy at the local level and some suggestions for how California might evolve the policy further…We’ll drop those links into our Show Notes.
Budgeting for Educational Equity is presented by CASBO and WestEd. I’m Jason Willis, your host. Our series is written and produced by me and by Paul Richman. Tommy Dunbar provides our music, sound and editing. John Diaz from WestEd develops our companion written briefs. We’re grateful to the Sobrato Family Foundation for their generous support of the series.
Until next time, take care and, we’ll see you out there.