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  • Head Start allies wait, worry about possible funding cuts

    Head Start allies wait, worry about possible funding cuts


    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8R0jbd3Xb4

    Video: Parents and a Head Start teacher express concern about potential budget cuts to the program.

    Head Start supporters were relieved when President Donald Trump did not include funding cuts to the early education program in his proposed 2026 budget, released May 2. But that does not mean Head Start will emerge from budget negotiations unscathed. 

    Saving head start

    This is Part I of a two-part package examining the challenges facing Head Start. Watch for Part II tomorrow.

    The program, run locally by schools and nonprofit organizations, serves more than 750,000 children nationwide from low-income families, from birth to 5 years old. It also offers dental screenings and free school meals for children, and child care and job support for parents.

    Head Start has been targeted by Trump since his first term, when he tried to cut its funding by 25%. Earlier this year, the administration indicated it wanted to eliminate all funding — $12.3 billion — for the 60-year-old program. Supporters fear cuts could still come.

    “There is still significant concern around Head Start funding,” said Melanee Cottrill, executive director of Head Start California. “While the president’s skinny budget does not eliminate the Head Start program, it also does not propose an actual funding level. We have a long way to go in the budget process, and Head Start funding could still be reduced.”

    Cuts would impact child care, jobs

    California Head Start programs expect to receive $1.5 billion in federal funding for the 2025 fiscal year. That funds services for 73,476 children at 2,219 sites, according to an EdSource analysis of Head Start data.

    “Ultimately, if Head Start were to be defunded, we would have 80,000 kiddos without care and 26,000 employees without jobs,” Cottrill said. “Of course, those 80,000 parents who just lost their child care would potentially also lose their jobs, their ability to go to school, to do all the things that they’re doing to try and become more productive members of the society.”

    Mia Barajas plays outside at the Sharon Neese Early Learning Center in Sacramento on April 23, 2025.
    Credit: Randall Benton / EdSource

    According to the U.S. Department of Labor, full-day child care costs between $6,552 and $15,600 a year, which is prohibitive for many families.

    The current lack of access to child care costs California about $17 billion in lost productivity and economic output each year, according to state legislators in a letter to California members of Congress last month urging them to protect Head Start.

    “Cuts to Head Start would exacerbate that loss,” the letter stated.

    Lifting families out of poverty

    Job opportunities for parents could also be lost if counseling and job training provided by Head Start go away. 

    Many teachers in the Head Start program operated by the Sacramento Employment and Training Agency (SETA), for example, started their careers in the program’s apprenticeship program, while earning required early childhood education credits and a college degree.

    Timeisha Seymore credits Head Start for helping her attain an associate degree and a full-time job as a registered behavioral technician at a local elementary school. Seymore took classes, provided by SETA, in the same building that houses the Sharon Neese Early Learning Center that her two children attend.

    If the Head Start program closes, Seymore said she would lose her child care and might have to pay for child care, cut her work hours or quit her job to care for her children. 

    Funding is problematic

    Uncertainty over continued funding of the program — including a temporary freeze of federal funding in February — resulted in some California staffers receiving notices warning them they could lose their jobs, Cottrill said. 

    The program employs 26,000 people in California and 250,823 people nationally.

    Unreliable funding is particularly concerning for Head Start programs, which receive five-year grants that must be renewed annually. Programs work on a reimbursement model that requires them to submit receipts and invoices. Programs can only draw down three days of funding at a time, Cottrill said. 

    Ra’Mir Cooks plays with plastic bowls at the Sharon Neese Early Learning Center in Sacramento.
    Credit: Randall Benton / EdSource

    “So that’s where these programs —  if those draws are delayed — are having challenges,” Cottrill said. “And these draws have been delayed for some folks because there is a new requirement that they add additional justification to the draw-down request, but there hasn’t been any guidance.”

    At least four Head Start programs have closed because of funding uncertainty, including programs in Washington, Wisconsin, New York and Florida, said Tommy Sheridan, deputy director of the National Head Start Association.

    Shuttering regional offices

    Head Start programs were affected again in April when the Trump administration closed five regional offices of the U.S. Health and Human Services Department, which administers the program, and laid off its staff. Program leaders had no one to answer questions about their grants or how to fill out new required forms. 

    California programs are still seeing the detrimental effects of regional office closures, especially when processing specialized supplemental grants, Cottrill said.

    Two California Head Start programs with grants up for renewal on May 1 didn’t receive their grant letters until April 30, Cottrill said. One program director was on her way to fire her staff when the letter arrived.

    The uncertainty is making Head Start employees nervous.

    “I think we have a very dedicated staff, who put their heart and soul into working in this program,” said Karen Griffith, deputy director at SETA. “So, I don’t think people want to leave, but I hear the anxiety in their voices and in their questions.”

    Head Start has its critics

    Support for Head Start has been strong over the years, but recently, it has been criticized by some who say the program isn’t effective and that some programs do not appropriately supervise children. The conservative Heritage Foundation has called for its elimination as part of its Project 2025. 

    Going Deeper

    May 2017 – President Trump proposes cutting Head Start funding by 25% for fiscal year 2018, but Congress increases it by $610 million instead. 

    January 2025 – The Trump administration freezes Head Start funding temporarily.

    February – A federal website temporarily malfunctions, locking some centers out of funding.

    April- The Trump administration indicates it wants to eliminate all federal funding for Head Start.

    April – Mass layoffs in the U.S. Health and Human Services Department, which administers Head Start, results in the closure of five regional offices.

    May 2 – President Trump’s proposed budget does not include cuts to Head Start.

    – Associated Press 

    The Head Start Impact Study, published in 2019, and often cited by critics, found that the academic gains of Head Start diminished by third grade. The findings have been disputed by other researchers, however.

    The initial research didn’t consider the impact of Head Start on children being cared for in a suboptimal environment, said Ariel Khalil, a professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, nor did it take into account research that shows that positive effects can emerge beyond third grade.

    The value of Head Start depends largely on the needs of the student and their family, Khalil said.

    “If you come into the Head Start program, and you have a very rich home environment and your parent has already taught you many of the things you’re going to learn in Head Start, maybe Head Start doesn’t have the biggest added value,” she said. “ But, as you can imagine, there’s lots of variation in the home environments of children who participate in Head Start.”

    Research shows that the positive Intergenerational impacts of the program include higher educational attainment, lower participation in crime and higher employment, she said.

    “If you don’t account for these long-term impacts, you’re really undervaluing the value of this program.” Khalil said.

    Supporters fight back

    Allies lined up in support of the program last month, after a leaked early draft of the president’s proposed budget showed the elimination of Head Start. 

    National Head Start leaders rallied alumni, parents and program staff, asking them to email members of Congress to urge them to protect the program. About 300,000 heeded the call, Sheridan said.

    On April 28, parents and Head Start providers teamed up with the American Civil Liberties Union to file a lawsuit against the Department of Health and Human Services. The suit asked the court to stop the defunding of Head Start and to set aside department actions that could contribute to the program’s demise, including the layoff of Health and Human Services staff and the closure of regional offices.

    Last week, after the release of the final proposed budget, Sheridan said he is optimistic that Congress will prioritize Head Start, given its historical bipartisan support and its impact on children and their families. 

    Patricia Marshal-Lopez reads to 4-year-olds Judah Sohal, right, and Lavania Hardin at the Sharon Neese Early Learning Center.
    Credit: Randall Benton / EdSource

    Regardless, Head Start leaders continue to lobby legislators and to encourage supporters to send emails urging their support. The National Head Start Association hopes to collect 100,000 signatures on a letter to Trump urging him to protect and invest in Head Start. The letter had more than 50,000 signatures last week, according to Sheridan.

    California Assemblymember Patrick Ahrens, D-Sunnyvale, was among a bipartisan group of state legislators that sent a letter to California members of Congress last month, asking them to protect the program. Three-quarters of the state’s legislators signed the letter.

    “I think we are very much on guard,” said Ahrens, who had his first taste of fresh fruit and visited a doctor for the first time as a Head Start kid in San Jose.

    Last week, Ahrens suggested lawmakers work together to make state and federal budgets more efficient, instead of targeting programs aiding the poor.

    “We’re not going to be able to balance the national debt on the backs of poor children, on the backs of working families,” he said.

    The Associated Press contributed to this report.





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  • A policy analyst forecasts how the May state budget revision will impact school funding

    A policy analyst forecasts how the May state budget revision will impact school funding


    Transcript

    Every year, by May 15, the governor has to revise his proposed budget, and this is when the budget season really kicks off.

    So, just as individuals are concerned about personal finances, retirements, the impacts of inflation, and uncertainty about government services, the state is facing those same sorts of uncertainties. And in this case, uncertainty really rolls downhill. There’s national uncertainty, which is causing state revenue uncertainty and budget uncertainty, which then impacts the state’s education budget decisions, that will then impact what school districts are facing as they head into adopting their budgets by the end of June.

    So, we know that the revenue outlook for the current year that ends June 30 looks pretty good, so will that protect us?

    I’d sort of hoped that they would, but the short answer is no, and that’s because of some nuances in how Prop 98 works. A lot of those extra revenues that have come in are actually going to count against last year, the 2023–24 fiscal year. And in that year, the Legislature actually suspended the constitutional guarantee for a year. So even though there are extra revenues, none of those revenues will go to schools.

    As we look to the future, to the 2025–26 school year, the forecasts are looking much more pessimistic. The Legislative Analyst’s Office just came out with a projection of revenues for next year being down around $8 billion. That would trickle down to schools getting about $3.5 billion less compared to what their current programs receive.

    I would expect schools to get the program that’s in place for the current year, plus a cost-of-living adjustment (COLA), which is currently expected to be about 2.3%. That probably seems pretty low to most folks, especially given some of the costs districts might face—salary increases that have already happened due to inflation, the rising costs teachers are facing, plus pensions and other obligations. So, the costs districts are facing may be going up more than the 2.3% COLA they’re getting.





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  • Without funding, 10-year-old plan to improve literacy for all is just a list of good ideas

    Without funding, 10-year-old plan to improve literacy for all is just a list of good ideas


    Credit: Ashley Hopkinson/EdSource

    In 2014, the California State Board of Education adopted the evidence-based and standards-driven English Language Arts/English Language Development Framework (ELA/ELD Framework) — nonbinding guidance that encourages the implementation of a research-informed, comprehensive literacy approach for all students.

    The framework was the first in the nation to integrate two sets of standards: English language arts (grade-level literacy for all students) and English language development (progress in learning English for students from different language backgrounds), with a focus on the needs of English learners.

    Amid ongoing discussions about how to best teach literacy to English learners, it is critically important to both demonstrate the significance of the ELA/ELD Framework and to renew calls to fully fund and implement this crucial guidance.

    We cannot overlook the fact that the framework has never received the necessary funding for district, school and classroom implementation. Lawmakers appropriated $85 million to provide professional learning and support family engagement in mathematics, science and computer science — recognizing the need for support to accompany mathematics and science framework implementation. Without similar funding for English instructional materials, professional development, coaching and support services, the framework will remain nothing more than a collection of good ideas.

    A few districts in the state have taken it upon themselves to focus on professional development and instruction on the tenets of the framework. Norma Carvajal Camacho, assistant superintendent of educational services for the Azusa Unified School District, said it has been transformative for their students: “By integrating primary language instruction and ensuring effective designated and integrated ELD, we have created a more inclusive and dynamic learning environment, resulting in significant improvements in language proficiency and overall achievement for our English learners.”

    Unfortunately, without funding to back its implementation, most districts have not been able to adopt the framework’s powerful strategies for improving literacy for all students. This lack of funding means many districts are not providing the necessary professional development for teachers, not investing in high-quality instructional materials, and not offering sufficient coaching and support services. As a result, the framework’s potential to improve literacy outcomes remains unrealized in most areas.

    The framework should be the cornerstone of any statewide strategy aimed at improving literacy and reading. It centers literacy and seeks to develop fluency, decoding, comprehension and vocabulary. It also takes into account that knowledge about the world, including the aforementioned skills, comes from reading and writing about meaningful and engaging content. 

    Imagine a classroom where the students don’t just learn reading and writing in isolation, but connect these skills with other content areas. An integrated approach promotes learning environments where students can read, write and discuss scientific experiments, historical events, or even create stories based on what they’ve learned in math. This is an approach in which students are also immersed in reading entire books. The framework uplifts this integrated approach to literacy and language instruction, delineating literacy expectations from transitional kindergarten to 12th grade. It emphasizes the five research-based cross-cutting themes that encompass all facets of the “science of reading”:

    • Foundational skills: Acknowledges the significance of phonics (the ability to recognize written letters from spoken language), phonemic awareness (the ability to identify individual sounds), and fluency as essential building blocks of literacy.
    • Meaning making: Encourages critical thinking and comprehension by emphasizing reading, writing, listening, language, motivation and vocabulary development.
    • Language development: Focuses on nurturing oral and written language skills to express information, ideas, perspectives and questions effectively.
    • Effective expression: Promotes various modes of communication, such as writing, discussions and presentations to showcase students’ understanding and knowledge.
    • Content knowledge: Highlights the interconnectedness of content, language and literacy, emphasizing the importance of knowledge about the natural and social world in enhancing text comprehension.

    No single element, on its own, makes for a sound approach to reading or literacy — they interdependently bolster one another. Integrating all of these elements, ensuring a coherent and aligned approach over time, and supporting instruction that is responsive to students’ needs will produce better results for English learners and all students.

    In California, where students speak more than 140 different languages at home, the framework recognizes the value of cultural diversity, multilingualism and biliteracy as assets to be nurtured and celebrated. The framework also includes a call for all educators to ensure English learners are provided with both integrated and designated English language development instruction.

    Without designated instruction for English learners that helps them understand how English works and provides extra practice in speaking and reading, most aspects of learning to read in English become especially challenging. It becomes a struggle to hear and isolate the sounds of English, a challenge to understand the syntax and structure of text, and it becomes increasingly difficult to comprehend and make meaning of vocabulary in a language they haven’t learned.

    Included in the framework is guidance for curriculum and instructional planning that is aligned with the standards for integrated English language development occurring throughout the school day in every subject area for every English learner. Our instruction should be responsive to the linguistic demands English learners are facing throughout the curriculum.

    There are other efforts underway that are aligned to the ELA/ELD Framework. The Literacy Roadmap, for instance, will help educators apply the framework to classroom instruction and navigate the resources and professional development opportunities available to implement effective literacy instruction. The Literacy Standard and Teaching Performance Expectations for Preliminary Multiple Subject and Single Subject Credentials for teacher candidates are also aligned to the ELA/ELD Framework. These efforts are essential for addressing equity and improving outcomes for all students. Both initiatives will require significant efforts to support teachers, parents and administrators to ensure high-quality literacy instruction.

    Our students and teachers need and deserve a significant investment to fully realize the potential of the ELA/ELD Framework. Doing so is necessary for improving literacy outcomes for California’s 1.1 million English learners and all of California’s students. We are ready to work with policymakers to prioritize funding and support its full implementation.

    •••

    Martha Hernandez is executive director of Californians Together, a statewide advocacy coalition seeking to better educate English learners by improving California’s schools and promoting equitable educational policy.

    The opinions in this commentary are those of the author. We welcome guest commentaries with diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.





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  • Looming end of historic student homelessness funding has arrived

    Looming end of historic student homelessness funding has arrived


    Family Resource Center in Greenfield, CA, where families go for assistance with basic needs. The school district is located in southern Monterey County.

    Credit: Betty Márquez Rosales / EdSource

    Less than two months into this school year, three families seeking shelter in Monterey County asked for motel vouchers from their children’s schools and were turned away. The vouchers, along with several other services for students experiencing homelessness, are no more.

    The families sought help from the schools because, in the past, that was where the county’s homeless liaison had provided them with vouchers for short stays at local motels, temporarily sheltering their homeless families with the ultimate goal of getting them into permanent housing.

    But the funds that paid for those vouchers had come from a federal program, the American Rescue Plan-Homeless Children and Youth, known as ARP-HCY. The historic allocation of $800 million for schools nationwide, of which California received $98.76 million, was one-time pandemic-era funding that must be committed by the end of this month and used by the end of January 2025. There is a possibility for schools to receive an extension on the timeline to spend the funds, though they won’t receive additional amounts.

    There is no plan either at the federal or state level to replace those funds at anywhere near the same level.

    “There is a fair amount of heartache because the needs are high, and higher than they were even before the pandemic, and homelessness is always a crisis,” said Barbara Duffield, executive director of youth homelessness nonprofit SchoolHouse Connection. “The prospect of the additional funds to meet those heightened needs going away is demoralizing. It’s true everywhere, but I think particularly true in California, where homelessness is unabated, to say the least.”

    In preparation for the fiscal cliff, homeless liaisons — school staff tasked with identifying and supporting students experiencing homelessness — are ending some services for students that they’d begun offering during the pandemic, laying off staff, and braiding together other streams of funding.

    Rising rates of child homelessness as the funding to address it decreases

    Homeless liaisons have long rung the alarm of rising child homelessness, and their concerns are not without merit. The rate of student homelessness in California rose by 9% during the 2022-23 school year from the year prior. Child poverty in the state also increased in 2023 for the third year in a row and, at 19.2%, is now higher than its pre-pandemic rate of 18.6%, according to a recent analysis published by the California Budget and Policy Center.

    There was a significant dip in student homelessness rates at the peak of the pandemic, which was followed by a sharp increase, once schools reopened. Experts attribute this dramatic shift to the identification efforts by liaisons. While some of the increase can be attributed to rising homelessness amid skyrocketing rent prices and inflation, it is also in part due to the staff hired with ARP-HCY funds whose jobs were to figure out which students were homeless and to connect them with resources.

    Liaisons have also resoundingly cited a critical issue: There is no dedicated, ongoing funding for their work, which they say impedes their ability to implement long-term programming, hire staff and build out preventive measures to help families avoid homelessness.

    “The money that we received is the money that we should be receiving on a regular basis to do the work that we need to do,” said Jennifer Kottke, the homeless liaison for the Los Angeles County Office of Education.

    There are other streams of funding for students experiencing homelessness, but most are one-time funds, too limited to be distributed across all schools, or they are not set aside specifically for this population of students.

    For example, California’s funding formula for education requires that funds be set aside for high-needs students, which includes homeless students. But those dollars need to be distributed across all high-needs students, not only those experiencing homelessness. As such, the percentage of funds has long been disproportionate to the number of homeless children enrolled in schools statewide. And crucially, this funding requires first identifying students who are homeless — the very effort school staff say needs to first be funded.

    There is also the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act’s Education for Homeless Children And Youth grant, but at $129 million nationwide, it is a fraction of the windfall the ARP-HCY provided.

    Earlier this year, there was a statewide push to include $13 million in the state budget as dedicated funding for students experiencing homelessness. The amount was a match for the federal McKinney-Vento dollars California received in the pre-pandemic years, but the state Legislature failed to pass it.

    What did liaisons do with ARP-HCY funding?

    Liaisons are pointing to ARP-HCY dollars as an example of the possibilities for supporting students experiencing homelessness when they are given the opportunity to hire staff and expand their services for children.

    “The thing is that the work is intense, but the funding doesn’t match, so then you end up undercounting because you don’t have the time to do the proper identification process,” said L.A. County’s Kottke.

    With the influx of funds, Kottke hired someone to run a countywide free tutoring program for a year and a half that served about 600 students experiencing homelessness, a data analyst to navigate the complicated nature of homelessness data, and a community outreach specialist to distribute informational modules to other liaisons and share social media posts on homeless education resources. In the last school year alone, her office served at least 63,000 students and families experiencing homelessness, though they are still finalizing their numbers and expect that number to be higher.

    Her county office received just over $3 million in the first round of ARP-HCY distributions and about $253,000 in the second round — but these amounts include the funds for 78 districts and charters that Kottke contracted with as the head of her local consortium, which she and other county offices statewide had to create in order to distribute funds to any districts and charters that received less than $500,000.

    The motel vouchers in Monterey County were paired with case management to guide families through the county’s housing assistance programs. The part-time staffer in charge of that was hired with ARP-HCY funds, which means that Donna Smith, the county’s homeless liaison, has had to eliminate the position.

    The American Rescue Plan “was designed as a safety net to be able to help students still participate in school, still have access to the curriculum,” said Smith, whose county has some of the highest concentrations of student homelessness. “It was really designed to keep them from failing in school, because we know that school is very important no matter what you do.”

    To highlight the importance of education, Smith also hired two people to run after-school programs for children at homeless shelters in the region. Every day, for two and a half years, children at the shelters were taught music and art, played sports, and went on field trips on the weekends. But with the money drying up, the programs were shut down on June 30.

    Smith’s county office received about $423,000 in the first round of allocations and just under $29,000 in the second round. As with Kottke, she was also the head of her local consortium and distributed portions of that funding to other districts and charters.

    In total, Smith had to lay off seven part-time employees, and Kottke is laying off two this month.

    Farther north, Meagan Meloy, Butte County’s liaison, began offering what she calls “the next tier of support for students.”

    In her two decades doing this work, Meloy has focused on ensuring that students experiencing homelessness were enrolled and could get a ride to school. “That always felt like a Band-Aid approach versus the more comprehensive case management,” she said.

    But with over $295,000 total in ARP-HCY funds, she was also able to support families with getting into housing, maintaining their housing, addressing their social-emotional needs, offering academic support, and distributing basic aid needs like food and clothing.

    “It just puts more restrictions on prioritizing which students and families we’re going to serve first,” said Meloy, referring to the end of ARP-HCY funds.

    One of the uses of the federal funds was the increase in identification efforts. A significant dip in student homelessness followed school closures at the height of the pandemic, which experts agree occurred because the identification of students experiencing homelessness relies on school staff being able to see and interact with children. That became much more difficult, at times impossible, via video.

    If liaisons do not notice signs of potential homelessness, it is then up to the student and their families to self-identify. But, according to interviews with liaisons statewide, few children and families self-identify as homeless; they might feel ashamed, be fearful of their children being taken away from them, or might not consider themselves as being homeless.

    Such challenges make identification of homelessness among students a key part of every homeless liaison’s job. Some schools, such as Santa Rita Union Elementary in Monterey County, used their ARP-HCY money to hire staff who focused primarily on calling and visiting families they believed might be homeless. It’s a job that liaisons say requires significant investment in time, money and effort, as trust needs to be built with families.

    “I think we’ll see even a bigger bump (in homelessness rates) for ’23-24, because that’s when ARP was fully out, but if it goes down next year, it’s not going to be because ‘Oh, we’re solving homelessness,’” said Duffield. “It’s because there are fewer people knocking on doors and following up and asking questions.”





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  • Why are students often ineligible for homelessness funding? | Quick Guide

    Why are students often ineligible for homelessness funding? | Quick Guide


    Hygiene supplies and clothing for families in need at the Family Resource Center in Monterey Peninsula Unified.

    Credit: Betty Márquez Rosales / EdSource

    With schools adjusting to the end of historic Covid-era federal funding for students experiencing homelessness, much of their focus has shifted to trying to sustain the programming they implemented and keep the staff they hired with those pandemic relief funds.

    California has allocated significant levels of state funding toward addressing homelessness, and there are other streams to help cover students’ needs, but students experiencing homelessness are not always eligible.

    “I think particularly in California, unsheltered, visible homelessness is in the news and is a political issue, but people aren’t talking about children. State policymakers in particular are not talking about this crisis, and certainly not anywhere near the level that they are about adult homelessness,” said Barbara Duffield, executive director of youth homelessness nonprofit SchoolHouse Connection.

    This quick guide, a follow-up to a recent EdSource story — “Looming end of historic student homelessness funding has arrived” — explains why students are not always eligible for all homelessness funding and the challenges this presents to the school staff tasked with supporting students experiencing or at risk of homelessness.

    Why are homeless students eligible for some streams of homelessness funding but not others?
    Some of the state funding that California has funneled toward preventing and addressing homelessness is targeted toward youth. The state’s Homekey program, for example, has resulted in millions of dollars toward the building or conversion of housing for youth who are homeless or on the verge.

    But most students experiencing homelessness are not always eligible for state or federal funding, and that often comes down to how homelessness is defined.

    There are two definitions: one outlined by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development and the other by the federal McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act.

    The McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, a federal law implemented decades ago to ensure students experiencing homelessness are identified and supported, defines homelessness, in part, as “children and youths who are sharing the housing of other persons due to loss of housing, economic hardship, or a similar reason.”

    Among homeless liaisons and other school staff, this is often referred to as being “doubled-up,” and that is how the majority of homeless youth in California and nationwide live.

    But the more common definition of homelessness used outside of school settings is the one set by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, and that definition does not include people living in doubled-up environments.

    “You’ve got all these kids living in precarious doubled-up situations that have no way to get any type of services because they technically don’t meet HUD-related pieces,” said Jennifer Kottke, the homeless liaison for the Los Angeles County Office of Education.

    Some children are indeed living unsheltered, but most are out of sight. Given that reality, homeless liaisons say they are best equipped to address the impact of homelessness among their students because schools are where families experiencing homelessness are more likely to already be.

    In other words, liaisons are meeting those families where they are, and this rings particularly true for liaisons working in rural parts of the state.

    “In rural areas, schools are where you’ll find families. We don’t have big drop-in centers and resource centers where families would be showing up for services. They’re out there in unpopulated areas, but they’re coming to school, so school is this kind of avenue to do outreach,” said Meagan Meloy, the homeless liaison for the Butte County Office of Education.

    What forms of funding are available for students experiencing homelessness?
    There are several streams of funding for students experiencing homelessness, though they are either short-term, one-time grants, limited in amounts, or not set aside specifically for this population of students.

    The McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act’s Education for Homeless Children And Youth grant is a steady stream of funding, for example, but at $129 million nationwide, it does not reach all schools that enroll students experiencing homelessness. California received $13.9 million for the 2021-22 school year, which was distributed across 6.4% of the state’s school districts via a competitive grant process.

    There is also the state-funded Homeless Housing Assistance and Prevention (HHAP) program which sets aside a percentage of funds for youth experiencing or at risk of homelessness. The set-aside for youth uses the McKinney-Vento definition of homelessness, which broadens eligibility of students who live doubled-up, though it restricts the ages to 12- to 24-year-olds.

    Meloy applied and received that grant for rural Butte County, which will provide funds over three years. Her team’s plan is to pilot a program where multiple agencies team up to reach out to homeless families through the region’s schools and provide case management to guide them through housing services and prevent them from entering into unsheltered homelessness. Her team plans to support younger students through their parents.

    “We appreciate it … and it’s one of the strategies we’re using but, again, it’s not going to be a comprehensive fix to address what I see as a huge need in our state,” said Meloy, referring to student homelessness.

    Even if schools are able to tap into those funds, they are set aside exclusively for housing and not for services such as transportation, food assistance, clothing, school supplies and more. “Those services are equally important to housing, especially if youth are going to recover from their homelessness and be successful in school as a long-term prevention strategy,” Duffield said.

    Additionally, Butte County is likely to be an exception in this use of state funding, according to Duffield, “because additional licensing is required for housing providers to serve minors.”

    Schools are also required to set aside dollars from the state’s education funding formula to support high-needs students. That funding requires first identifying students who are homeless — the very effort school staff say needs to first be funded. That funding is also distributed across all high-needs students, not just those experiencing homelessness.

    “The thing is that the work is intense, but the funding doesn’t match, so then you end up undercounting because you don’t have the time to do the proper identification process,” said Kottke, who said the federal housing department should be working with schools, given the evidence that education is a preventive measure against homelessness.

    Other streams of funding can be used to support students experiencing homelessness, though they all run into similar challenges. And, none of them get anywhere near the level of funding that liaisons received for students experiencing homelessness during the pandemic through the American Rescue Plan-Homeless Children and Youth, or ARP-HCY.

    “These California funds still are no substitute or replacement for the scale of ARP-HCY, or what California is spending on its adult homeless population,” said Duffield. “This is where the real disparities lie.”

    What if liaisons keep piecing together various streams of funding?
    Liaisons say that the nature of their funding model can be tedious and time-consuming. Since there isn’t one source of funding that can by itself cover services this population of students, liaisons say they spend much of their time doing what they call “braiding” of grants and other funding streams.

    “Our department here … is almost all grant-funded. For me, it’s kind of a way of life,” said Meloy.

    An example of braiding is what Meloy did with the HHAP funding.

    “It’s hard because it takes a lot of administration work and braiding funding is beautiful if you can figure out how to put a square peg into a round hole,” said Kottke, “but sometimes braiding funding isn’t what it’s chalked up to be, and so sometimes it’s hard to do.”

    The braiding of funding also makes it more difficult to track and assess the use of funding across all schools and counties.

    What further complicates this funding model, plus the time required to identify students as homeless, is that liaisons are rarely, if ever, solely focused on this specific student population. Most often, the time they can spend on supporting students who are homeless is a small percentage of their work.

    A quick scroll through the list of liaisons statewide highlights their widespread titles: director of operations, superintendent, manager of student information systems, truancy mediation liaison, office manager, and more.

    What do liaisons say they would do with dedicated funding for students experiencing homelessness?
    For Meloy, who lives in a county particularly susceptible to wildfires, the lack of dedicated funding means her team cannot prepare for the now-expected rise in student homelessness that happens when families are displaced due to fires.

    “That need isn’t going away,” said Meloy. “It feels like we’re kind of getting through the Covid disaster, but we’re still facing these other disasters that impact housing.”

    In Monterey County, liaison Donna Smith would like to offer more transportation options to students experiencing homelessness. She also services foster youth in her county, and she’s able to contract with a company to drive foster youth to and from school.

    Students who are homeless can either receive a bus pass or their parents can be reimbursed for gas; families don’t always have vehicles, however, or children might be too young to ride the bus by themselves. “But there’s not a lot of options outside of that. That’s just one kind of thing that I wish we had: better transportation for these kids to and from school that is paid for.”

    Kottke in L.A. County also said she would like to focus more on preventive strategies. “A lot of the work we do is very reaction-based. I’ve always been preventative, so I think that’s one of the pieces that I spend a lot of time in this work fighting for,” she said. “We should be preventionary, not reactionary.”





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  • Trump’s budget would abolish funding for English learners, adult ed, teacher recruitment

    Trump’s budget would abolish funding for English learners, adult ed, teacher recruitment


    A sixth-grade math teacher helps two students during a lesson about math and music.

    Credit: Allison Shelley / EDUimages

    Top Takeaways
    • The president dismissed many programs as outdated or “woke.”
    • Advocates for English learners argue that the cuts will reverse progress.
    • The initial budget will face resistance from Democrats and maybe some Republicans.

    President Donald Trump would maintain funding levels for students with disabilities and for Title I aid for low-income students while wiping out long-standing programs serving migrant children, teachers in training, college-bound students, English learners and adult learners  in the education budget for fiscal 2026.

    Trump’s “skinny budget,” which he released on Friday, would cut $12 billion or about 15% of K-12 and some higher education programs administered by the U.S. Department of Education. It contains sparse, sometimes dismissive, language explaining why he is eliminating programs and offers no details about plans to consolidate $6.5 billion in 18 unspecified programs into a single $2 billion grant program.

    “K-12 outcomes will improve as education returns to the states, which would make remedial education for adults less necessary,” according to the one-paragraph explanation for the full $729 million cut to adult education. 

    The budget summary justified eliminating funding for programs like Upward Bound and GEAR UP, which focus on increasing the college and career readiness of low-income students, as “a relic of the past when financial incentives were needed to motivate Institutions of Higher Education to engage with low-income students and increase access.”

    “I don’t think the budget request reflects a deep understanding of what the programs are and what they do. The language is designed to capture headlines, not hearts and minds,” said Reg Leichty, founding partner of Washington, D.C.-based Foresight Law + Policy, which advises education groups, including the Association of California School Administrators, on congressional education policies. 

    “(Trump) has eliminated programs that it’s taken decades to build,” said U.S. Rep. Mark DeSaulnier, a California Democrat serving the East Bay. “There’s been no analysis of what the financial assessment would mean to the communities served. You can always find more efficiencies, but just cutting everything is just mindless.”

    Only charter schools would receive more money — $60 million to bring the total federal spending on charter schools to $500 million.

    The U.S. Department of Education spent about $150 billion in fiscal 2024 on programs in states and school districts, of which California received $18.6 billion, according to the Pew Research Center.

    Trump’s initial budget is the first step in what will likely be a lengthy and contentious process in Congress before the new fiscal year begins Oct. 1.

    “It’s not a budget reflective of the perspectives of many Republicans on Capitol Hill. We’ll see how they try to accommodate the administration,” said Leichty. “It’s a different Congress, it’s a different moment, but still, cuts of this scale and scope are hard to imagine how even the House (with a tiny Republican majority) would pass them.”

    The two largest federal K-12 programs — Title I grants of $18.4 billion and $15.5 billion for the Students with Disabilities Act — reach every school district nationwide and have bipartisan support, but Trump has proposed reshaping both programs as block grants administered by states with less oversight and more local control — actions requiring congressional approval.

    “With a budget that cuts the Department of Education by so much, we’re really pleased to see it does not cut funding for IDEA,” said Kuna Tavalin, senior policy and advocacy adviser for the Council for Exceptional Children, referring to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. “Of course, the devil is in the details.”

    The federal government funds programs that support students with disabilities from early childhood through 21 years old. Consolidation raises the specter that funding for some stages may be fungible, which “could potentially be really damaging,” Tavalin said.

    “This raises the hair on the back of my neck,” he said.

    Programs that Trump would abolish include:

    • TRIO organizations like Upward Bound and GEAR UP, $1.579 billion.
    • English language acquisition through Title III, $890 million.
    • Migrant education, $428 million
    • Teacher quality partnerships, $70 million
    • Federal work-study, $980 million
    • Preschool development grants, $315 million

    The budget proposal also calls for cutting $49 million from the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights. The office would shift the focus from enforcing Title IX and programs with goals of raising achievement for minority students to carrying out presidential executive orders and ending the office’s “ability to push DEI programs and promote radical transgender ideology.”

    The budget is silent on several significant programs, including Head Start, research funding through the Institute of Education Sciences, the Child Care and Development Block Grant, and the state assessment program.

    Reactions

    Title III

    This funding helps English learners and immigrant students learn to speak, read, and write English fluently, learn other subjects such as math and science, and meet graduation requirements. California received about $157 million in 2024-25 from Title III.

    Students who are not yet fluent in English when they begin school are entitled under federal law to get help to learn the language.

    According to the budget, “To end overreach from Washington and restore the rightful role of state oversight in education, the Budget proposes to eliminate the misnamed English Language Acquisition program, which actually deemphasizes English primacy by funding (non-profit organizations) and states to encourage bilingualism.”

    Advocates for English learners disputed the reasoning. 

     “The claim that Title III ‘deemphasizes English primacy’ ignores decades of research and legal precedent,” said Anya Hurwitz, executive director of SEAL (Sobrato Early Academic Language), a nonprofit organization. “Supporting bilingualism does not come at the expense of English proficiency — it enhances it.”

    “Without these funds, many schools will be forced to abandon evidence-based strategies that work and cut services,” said Martha Hernandez, executive director of Californians Together. She said that without targeted support, more students may take longer to learn English and become “long-term English learners” who struggle to thrive in middle and high school.

    Migrant education

    The Migrant Education Program supports children of agricultural, dairy, lumber, and fishing workers who have moved during the past three years. California received $120 million for this program in 2024-25.

    Debra Duardo, superintendent of schools in Los Angeles County, wrote in an email that the loss of these funds will drastically reduce academic support and widen academic achievement gaps. “This decision would have devastating impacts on Los Angeles County schools, where we serve one of the nation’s largest populations of English learners and children from migrant families,” she said.

    Preschool Development Grants

    These programs help states improve their preschool and child care programs, for example, by conducting needs assessments, teacher training and quality improvement. California received Preschool Development Grants in the past, but is not currently a grantee. However, eliminating the grant program could impact California in the future, said Donna Sneeringer, vice president and chief strategy officer for Child Care Resource Center, a nonprofit organization based in Los Angeles that was a partner in the state’s last preschool development grant.

    “There’s still work to be done,” Sneeringer said. “California has made significant changes in our early learning landscape. With transitional kindergarten being available to all 4-year-olds, there are a lot of changes that our child care and early learning providers are having to go through.”

    In the budget proposal, the Trump administration called Preschool Development Grants “unproductive” and said they had been “weaponized by the Biden-Harris Administration [sic] to extend the federal reach and push DEI policies on to toddlers. 

    Adult education

    Unlike K-12 schools, adult education is heavily reliant on federal funding. Sharon Bonney, CEO of the Coalition on Adult Basic Education, said she found the proposed cuts “shocking” and fears the cuts would mean adult schools would rely on volunteers rather than trained teachers. She believes that this is a part of the Trump immigration agenda — 6 out of 10 adult education students are immigrants. 

    Adult schools offer career education or training, but much of their programming is aimed at helping immigrants assimilate and prepare for the citizenship test or learning English as a second language. 

    Teacher quality grants

    Federal funding for the Teacher Quality Partnership grant helps recruit and train teachers for high-needs schools and for hard-to-fill teaching positions.

    University, school district and nonprofit teacher preparation programs use grants from the $70 million fund to recruit and train teacher candidates for high-needs schools and hard-to-fill teaching positions, and sometimes to offer them stipends and other financial help. 

    “These abrupt, short-sighted cuts will directly disrupt critical teacher residency programs that were actively preparing new educators for high-need positions in urban and rural districts across the state,” said Marvin Lopez, executive director of the California Center on Teaching Careers. 

    The grants have been “weaponized to indoctrinate new teachers” in divisive ideologies, according to information attached to a letter from Russell T. Vought, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, to Susan Collins, chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee. 

    “Cutting grants aimed at supporting and diversifying the teaching profession, at the same time that the nation’s student body is becoming increasingly more diverse and as many districts are struggling to recruit enough teachers, is senseless,” said Eric Duncan, director of P-12 policy at EdTrust West.





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  • California schools chief pledges to resist cuts in funding if Trump axes U.S. Dept. of Education

    California schools chief pledges to resist cuts in funding if Trump axes U.S. Dept. of Education


    Surrounded by education leaders from around the state, California Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond reacts to President-elect Donald Trump’s education agenda at a news conference in Sacramento on Nov. 8, 2024.

    Credit: California Department of Education

    California State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond vowed on Friday to fight President-elect Donald Trump’s pledge to abolish the U.S. Department of Education, which he said represented a “clear threat to what our students need to have a good education and a great life.”

    “We cannot be caught flatfooted,” Thurmond said, during a news conference.

    Thurmond made his pronouncement in Sacramento on Friday while flanked by legislators and education and labor leaders holding up signs saying “Education Is For Everyone” and “Protect All Students.”

    Throughout his presidential campaign, Trump has vowed to abolish the department, a long-standing and so far unfulfilled pledge made by Republican leaders dating back to former President Ronald Reagan.

    Thurmond said there are concerns that abolishing the department would put at risk some $8 billion that California receives in federal funds for programs serving students with disabilities and those attending low-income schools, both public and private.

    “We will not allow that to happen,” he said. “The law will not allow that to happen.”

    He observed, for example, that the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, known as IDEA, guarantees students in special education programs a “free and appropriate education,” and to receive a range of special education services in an individualized education program drawn up for every special education student.

    Thurmond said Trump’s plan to defund the Department of Education would also harm students whose civil rights are violated and investigated through the Office of Civil Rights, including victims of racism, antisemitism, Islamophobia, hate and bias toward LGBTQ students.

    “To tear down and abolish an organization that provides protections for our students is a threat to the well-being of our students and our families and of Americans,” Thurmond said.

    It was also not clear what would happen to student financial aid that the department administers, Thurmond said.

    The first line of defense in the fight against Trump’s education plan is the Congress, Thurmond said. He said his department is reaching out to legislators to affirm their commitment to public education — an issue that he says surpasses partisan labels.

    “Let me be clear,” Thurmond said. “This is not a partisan issue. This is an issue of continuing to assure that students have access to the resources that they are entitled to under the law. And we will continue to do that, and we will work with the members of Congress to ask them to stand and support our students.”

    But Thurmond said that the California Department of Education is also preparing for a worst-case scenario: large-scale cuts to federal funding. In that case, he said, he is working with the California Legislature on a backup plan.

    “If it comes to it, as a contingency, we are prepared to introduce legislation that would backfill funding for special education programs, Title I programs and programs that are similar in its scope,” Thurmond said. Title I money supplements state and local education funding for low-income students.

    Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi, D-Torrance, the chair of the Assembly Education Committee, said that the state is prepared to stand up for all the students who are targeted by Trump’s policy proposals and rhetoric. He pointed to the threat of deportations of undocumented immigrants that would hurt large numbers of children of immigrants, as well as threats to other student populations.

    “It is the job of every teacher, every school board member, every principal, every elected representative in the state of California who believes in public education, it is time for us to stand up to protect all of these kids,” he said. “When we are facing a bully who is targeting our most vulnerable students, we all need to stand up.”

    “We need to get ready now for what is going to start on Jan. 20,” Muratsuchi said, referring to Trump’s second inauguration.

    In 2017, California enshrined into state law some federal laws or court decisions to protect the education rights of immigrant students, said Xilonin Cruz-Gonzalez, deputy director of Californians Together, a statewide coalition that advocates for immigrants and multilingual learners.

    In the wake of Trump’s attacks on immigrants, Cruz-Gonzalez said it is important to remind school staff of those protections so that students and families will continue to feel safe and protected when they attend school.

    “It’s not enough to know that we have laws on the books,” Cruz-Gonzalez said. “We have to work together in coalition and ensure our superintendents, our school board members and our teachers know what to do to protect these rights.”

    The right to public education is the “cornerstone of democracy,” said Chinua Rhodes, school board member at Sacramento City Unified School District.

    “This is not just a political battle, it is a moral one,” Rhodes said. “Our schools should not abandon the most needy.”

    Louis Freedberg contributed to this report.





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  • First forecast for 2025-26 school funding: More money with a twist

    First forecast for 2025-26 school funding: More money with a twist


    After years of preparation inside and outside the state Capitol (shown), California has launched a website that gathers all sorts of education and career data in a single, searchable place.

    Credit: Kirby Lee / AP

    Higher revenues than Gov. Gavin Newsom and legislators predicted will likely produce a modest increase in funding in 2025-26 for TK-12 schools and community colleges, the Legislative Analyst’s Office projected on Wednesday. 

    The growth in revenues will also pay down a big portion of the state’s debt to education, with enough to sock away money into a rainy day fund for education that was depleted by the Legislature last year. But at the same time, a rarely invoked constitutional provision would deny schools and community colleges billions in funding that they would otherwise get, the LAO said. 

    The LAO’s annual state budget forecast is the first hint of how much funding schools and community colleges can expect when Newsom releases his budget in early January. How to spend the new funding amid pressure from competing interest groups — always a challenge — will be up to Newsom and the Legislature.

    The LAO is projecting only a $1.5 billion increase (1.3%) for 2025-26 above the $115.3 billion approved in June for 2024-25 for Proposition 98, the quarter-century-old voter-approved formula that determines the minimum amount that must go to schools and community colleges. It comprises 40% of the state’s annual general fund.

    But combined with an additional $3.7 billion freed up from expiring one-time costs and Proposition 98 adjustments, schools and community colleges can anticipate a 2.46% cost-of-living-adjustment for programs like the Local Control Funding Formula, the primary source of spending for TK-12. That will leave $2.8 billion in new, uncommitted spending. (The LAO suggests using a piece of that to wipe off $400 million in “deferrals,” late payments to schools that will be carried over from year to year unless paid off.)

    Even though California’s economy has been slowing and the unemployment rate is higher, the 2024-25 Proposition 98 level is projected to be $118.3 billion, $3 billion more than the Legislature set in June; however, none of the increase will go to the pockets of school districts and community colleges. All of it, by statute, will be deposited into the Proposition 98 reserve account unless the Legislature overrides the law.

    “I think that’s the element of our forecast that will surprise school groups the most,” said Ken Kapphahn, principal fiscal and policy analyst for the LAO. “I think many people do understand revenue is up in 2024-25. What isn’t as well understood is that the increase is going into the reserve and not available for them.”

    “Building reserves is a good use of one-time funding,” he said. “We just saw how valuable those reserves can be when we went through $9.5 billion from the reserve. That was a big reason why the state didn’t have to cut ongoing school programs last year. In some ways, making a deposit makes sense right now; it’s an opportunity to rebuild that reserve.”

    A big increase in tax receipts from capital gains income, which governs when and how much is deposited into the rainy-day fund, is the source of the money, the LAO said. Much of it is from stock options and reflects the wealth gap between well-compensated high-tech employees and other workers.  

    There’s also expected to be enough money by the end of 2024-25 to pay off nearly two-thirds of the $8 billion debt to schools and community colleges in 2022-23, caused by a revenue shortfall resulting from a short Covid-19 recession.

    The Proposition 98 debt to schools is called a “maintenance factor.” Repaying it becomes the top state priority once more revenue becomes available — to the extent of capturing 95 cents of every new dollar in the general fund.  The LAO projects that the maintenance factor will be lowered $4.8 billion this year, leaving $3.3 billion unpaid.

    Proposition 98 is a stunningly complex formula, and the higher 2024-25 funding level will add a new twist. Usually, the Proposition 98 level from one year becomes the base funding level for the next year. But the increase in 2024-25 is expected to be big enough to trigger a rarely used “spike” protection, limiting the increase in 2025-26; without that restriction, Proposition 98 would be $4.1 billion higher than LAO’s forecast. 

    The rationale behind its adoption is to create stability in the non-Proposition 98 side of the general fund. Education advocates view it differently, as a way to fund schools at the minimum constitutionally required level — and no more.

    “The maintenance factor payment increases Prop. 98 on an ongoing basis. On the other hand, the state is making the spike protection adjustment to slow the growth in Prop. 98,” said Kapphahn. “Both of those different formulas are part of the constitution, and they happen to be working in opposite ways.”

    The “spike” clause has been triggered several times before during years of unusual growth in Proposition 98. What would be different this time is that 2025-26 funding of $116.8 billion would be $1.5 billion less than LAO’s projection for 2024-25.

    TK-12 revenue is tied to student attendance, which has been declining in most districts. Attendance statewide fell by nearly 550,000 (9.3%) from 2019-20 to 2021-22 during the height of the Covid pandemic, and has recovered gradually. The LAO expects overall attendance to increase slightly by 12,000 students (0.2%) in 2024-25 and 26,000 (0.5%) in 2025-26 due to the expansion of transitional kindergarten for 4-year-olds. The LAO projects attendance will drop each of the three years after that by about 60,000 students primarily because of a smaller school-age population due to lower births.





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  • Trump Signs Executive Order Urging CPB to Stop Funding NPR and PBS

    Trump Signs Executive Order Urging CPB to Stop Funding NPR and PBS


    The Constitution says Congress has the power of the purse, not the president. The president executes the funding decisions of Congress.

    Yesterday Trump called on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to stop funding public radio and public television. Never mind that National Public Radio brings news to listeners in areas totally saturated by rightwing Sinclair stations. Never mind that PBS is the best source of documentaries about science, history, nature, medicine, other nations, and global affairs. PBS is educational television at its best.

    The Washington Post reported:

    President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday evening seeking to prohibit federal funding for NPR and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). The order, which could be subject to legal challenge, called the broadcasters’ news coverage “biased and partisan.”

    It instructs the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to cease providing direct funds to either broadcaster. It also orders CPB to cease indirect funding of the services through grants to local public radio and television stations.

    CPB is the main distributor of federal funds to public media. It receives about $535 million in federal funds per fiscal year, which it mostly spends on grants to hundreds of stations nationwide. The stations spend the grants on making their own programming or on buying programming from services such as NPR and PBS.

    CPB, created by an act of Congress in 1967, also sometimes provides direct grants to NPR and PBS to produce national programs.
    Thursday’s order instructs the CPB board to ensure that stations receiving its grants “do not use Federal funds for NPR and PBS.”



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  • Why isn’t Los Angeles Unified settling this lawsuit on arts funding?

    Why isn’t Los Angeles Unified settling this lawsuit on arts funding?


    Credit: Allison Shelley for American Education

    My time on the high school football field was spent with a snare drum strapped around my chest. As a student who was easily distracted in the academic classroom and struggled to apply myself, band class was a welcome reprieve during the day.

    Playing the drums was my niche, it was how I stood out. I carried my drumsticks around the way football players wore their varsity jackets.

    During my school years, I was fortunate that the district I attended recognized the importance of arts education. In elementary school, there were classrooms devoted to art and music staffed by full-time teachers. There was also an orchestra teacher. My middle school had two full-time band teachers, and an art class was included in the curriculum. High school offered a full range of band and choir classes in addition to the chance to participate in the jazz band and marching band in after-school programs.

    Even back then, it was clear that future students would not have these same opportunities. The program that allowed interested sixth-grade students to participate in a stage production disappeared while I was in school, a victim of budget cuts as the baby boom turned into a bust. During my time in high school, there were constant rumors of plans to reduce the number of band teachers.

    This reduction in the availability of arts education was part of a nationwide trend that accelerated as the second Bush administration and then Obama’s placed an increasing focus on test scores. Ignoring evidence that music and art help increase academic performance, teachers were forced to spend more time teaching to standardized tests. Arts funding was seen as extravagant in a system that values data over a full educational experience.

    When I visited my old elementary school in 2015, the band room did not even exist anymore. I grieved for the school’s students who no longer had the opportunity to find the joy of mastering an instrument.

    California voters understood the magnitude of this loss when 64.4% of voters opted to approve Proposition 28 in 2022. This measure provided an additional source of funding for arts and music education for K-12 public schools with rules to ensure that districts used this money to supplement, not supplant, existing funding.

    This included a requirement that schools with 500 or more students use 80% of the funding for employing teachers and 20% for training and materials.

    Complaints grew as parents in Los Angeles noticed that their children were not seeing improved access to art and music funding as the Proposition 28 money started to flow into the district. As the author of the proposition, Austin Beuttner was well acquainted with the rules it set in place and agreed that the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) was not following the spirit or the letter of the law.

    After months of trying to get the district to do the right thing, Beuttner joined parents, students,and teachers in filing a lawsuit against the district and current Superintendent Alberto M. Carvalho.

    The suit could have served as a wake-up call to LAUSD’s leadership that their actions were being watched, but they did not use it as an opportunity to ensure the Proposition 28 money was being spent properly. Carvalho saw the suit as a public relations problem, and instead of fixing the compliance issues, he tried to spin the narrative. As noted by the plaintiffs’ lawyer, Jeff Chemerinsky, he “has already decided to double down on explanations not grounded in fact.”

    To resolve this issue, the plaintiffs are demanding that LAUSD:

    • Publicly acknowledge that it misspent the Proposition 28 funds in the 2023–24 and 2024–25 school years.
    • Fully restore the misspent and misallocated funding to schools.
    • Be fully transparent about how the funding is used in future years.

    In a letter to the LAUSD’s general counsel, Chemerinsky reminds the district that, if it is found that the funds were not used properly, it will have to return the money to the state. Combined with possible penalties for “violating the civil rights of hundreds of thousands of Black and Latino students,” LAUSD could be facing a hit to its budget of over $100 million.

    This is not a slip-and-fall lawsuit designed to squeeze scarce education funding from our children’s classrooms. Rather, it is intended to improve the educational experience of our students.

    The suit would not have been brought if Carvahlo and the district had engaged with the community instead of ignoring their concerns. As Chermerinsky notes, “families, labor partners and concerned citizens spent months seeking answers. Regrettably, LAUSD refused to meaningfully respond.”

    The lawsuit has also attracted the attention of California Assemblymember Isaac Bryan, who has asked the state auditor to look into how the funds were spent.

    If the audit proceeds, Bryan says, “The district is going to have to produce the necessary documents to show that they are in compliance.” Based on statements from Carvalho saying the author of the proposition has a “misunderstanding of the law,” LAUSD should be concerned that its creative budgeting will not pass muster when held up to scrutiny.

    The LAUSD board must make it clear to Carvahlo that the concerns of their constituents can no longer be ignored by an increasingly detached bureaucracy. A good place to start would be by settling this lawsuit.

    •••

    Carl Petersen is a parent advocate for public education, particularly for students with special education needs, and serves as the education chair for the Northridge East Neighborhood Council. Read more opinion pieces by Petersen.

    The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the author. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.





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