Students at Lodestar Charter School in Oakland.
Courtesy: Lighthouse Community Public Schools
While we wait for the governor’s budget — and a much leaner projection for public education funding — many district and charter school officials have started making significant cuts in preparation for the upcoming school year.
Unfortunately, at a time when every dollar matters, charter schools serving some of California’s highest-need students are getting shortchanged.
Critical dollars following each and every student is a fundamental construct in our state’s Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF). Schools and districts that serve a higher number of high-need students — English learners, low-income students, and foster youth — get additional funding in the form of supplemental grants for each student, along with concentration grants for schools where more than 55% of the student body is from at least one of those student groups. These funds are meant to follow the students and be invested in their programmatic needs.
Unfortunately, the only exception is if these students attend a public charter school.
Current law caps the concentration grant funding for charter schools at the unduplicated pupil percentage of high-need students in the school district in which they are physically located. This restriction disproportionately affects students and families who attend charter schools in districts where the percentage of high-need students is lower than that of individual charter schools. For example, 82% of Oakland Unified’s students are eligible for the additional funding, but many charter schools in East Oakland serve student populations with unduplicated high-need student percentages ranging from 85% to 99%. Yet concentration funding for these charter schools is capped at 82% despite their serving a higher percentage of high-need students. This is also true for many charter schools in the LA area, in the wider Bay Area, as well as across the state.
A new bill seeks to correct this inequity by ensuring that dollars actually follow students to their schools.
Assembly Bill 1062 would enable charter schools serving greater percentages of high-need students than their district to apply for a waiver to receive concentration grant funding based on their actual student population, rather than being capped at the local district average.
Take for example Lodestar: A Lighthouse Community Public School in the Sobrante Park community in deep East Oakland. Like many communities impacted by the pandemic, the school’s demographics have shifted over the last five years. Today, Lodestar serves a student population where 98% of the students have high needs, including 47% English learners, 8% newcomers to our country, 17% qualifying for special education services, and 5% homeless. Should they be expected to meet their community’s needs at “82 on the dollar” while still being expected to meet the state’s stringent charter renewal criteria brought on by Assembly Bill 1505? (This 2019 law requires charters to outperform state averages on standardized tests and other measures to qualify for streamlined approval.)
Shouldn’t dollars that are directly tied to students and families follow them regardless of the school a family chooses for their child?
Many charter schools and charter management organizations that serve East Oakland exist to provide strong school choice options to students and families in historically under-resourced communities. It’s not surprising that one-third of Oakland students have selected charter schools. Over the last three years, Oakland’s charter high schools have had college readiness A-G completion rates for African American and Latino students that are significantly higher than at district high schools.
Despite Oakland’s rich history of political activism for historically marginalized and under-resourced families, this clause in the funding formula prohibiting charter schools from fully accessing these funds has not been studied nor evaluated.
The Assembly Education Committee has an opportunity to consider and address this funding inquiry. This committee, which includes progressive assembly members from the Bay Area and greater Los Angeles area, can advocate for public dollars following each student for their education and future impact.
It’s time to ensure that state funding follows students equitably, so they are not penalized for choosing to attend a public charter school.
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Rich Harrison is CEO of Lighthouse Community Public Schools, which operates two K-12 public charter schools serving more than 1,600 students in East Oakland.
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