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  • What happens now that West Contra Costa school board failed to pass budget?

    What happens now that West Contra Costa school board failed to pass budget?


    West Contra Costa Unified’s Stege Elementary School in Richmond.

    Photo: Andrew Reed/EdSource

    Most school districts across California have already approved budgets for the upcoming school year along with a required planning document that gives a road map on how funds should be spent. It’s a routine process that by state law must happen by June 30, the end of the fiscal year.

    But what happens when a board fails to approve both by the deadline?

    After the West Contra Costa school board last month voted down the planning document, better known as the Local Control Accountability Plan (LCAP), Contra Costa County Office of Education officials are stepping in to support the district as it works to secure approval. The board didn’t get to vote on the budget at the June 26 meeting because the LCAP must be approved first. 

    The accountability plan, which also includes district goals to improve student outcomes and how to achieve them, and the budget are linked; one cannot exist without the other. There’s $64.8 million of funding in the LCAP that can’t be used until the plan is approved by the board.

    “You have to adopt the plan first before you can adopt the budget,” said Michael Fine, chief executive officer of the state’s Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team (FCMAT).

    “The budget becomes subsidiary to the plan in that it just becomes a supporting role to the plan, it’s one of the mechanisms that facilitates getting the plan done and implemented.”

    Although the West Contra Costa Unified School District doesn’t currently have an adopted accountability plan or budget, the district is using its $484 million 2024-25 proposed budget in the interim to pay salaries and general operating costs, said Marcus Walton, director of communication at the county office of education. Previously, district officials thought they would revert to using the 2023-24 budget, but that has since changed.

    At the June 26 meeting, district officials and some board members had the same concern — that rejecting the 203-page LCAP and not voting on a budget would mean losing local control. At the time, district staff didn’t have all the answers about what would happen next because they had never dealt with this situation. One district consultant even asked the board to consider voting on the LCAP again because without one, it would put the district in an unprecedented situation.

    West Contra Costa is not losing local control.

    The county office of education isn’t taking control of the LCAP or budget, confirmed Lynn Mackey, the county superintendent of schools. Since the vote, Mackey said she’s spoken with district Superintendent Chris Hurst, and the county and district’s LCAP teams have met. But there are no plans to re-create the LCAP or budget for the district, she said. 

    This isn’t a scenario where a district would need to be taken over, Mackey said. That happens when a district goes insolvent and runs out of cash. 

    “The LCAP can be a very complex document, it’s a beast,” Mackey said. “They’re (district staff) doing a great job, and they have done a great job. We will be meeting with them and supporting them as it goes back to the district for a vote.”

    The next board meeting is set for July 17, but it’s unlikely the accountability plan will be brought back for a vote then, Mackey said. Key West Contra Costa staffers who work on the plan have been on vacation and are just starting to return. There won’t be enough time to post the LCAP before the meeting, which is a requirement, Mackey said. Neither the budget nor LCAP are currently on the agenda to be discussed or voted on at that meeting.

    What happens if the board rejects the LCAP again? 

    “Unfortunately, the California education code does not address what happens when an LCAP is not adopted by a school district,” Hurst said in his message to community members. “This is an unprecedented event in the state of California.”

    Mackey said she would need to confer with state officials for next steps.

    In a message to the community, district Superintendent Hurst said the county has advised the district to pass the accountability plan by Aug. 15, the county’s deadline to review LCAPs. After school boards pass them, the county must make sure the plans comply with the requirements, then give final approval.

    The county then has until Aug. 30 to respond to districts if they have questions or need clarifications on the documents, Mackey said.

    If the board approves the accountability plan and the budget by the Aug. 15 deadline, Mackey said, it signals to the county that major revisions aren’t necessary. However, the county still needs to impose that budget because it wasn’t passed before the June 30 deadline required in the state education code. 

    The county could bill the district for helping it get the LCAP and budget approved, Mackey said, but the county has no intention of doing that.

    What happens if the board does not pass a budget? 

    Mackey said the county would review the proposed budget, and as long as it meets all requirements, that budget would be imposed by her office. 

    It would be “foolish” for the board not to approve a budget, Fine said. “They need to approve the budget because that would give the county superintendent information, plus, then the district owns its budget. And that’s important.” 

    Passing the LCAP

    Between now and when the accountability plan will return for a vote, district officials are working to get it to a place where the board will approve it.

    The two district board members who voted down the LCAP — Leslie Reckler and Mister Phillips — said a major problem for them was the lack of transparency in the document. Board President Jamela Smith-Folds was the only “yes” vote. Otheree Christian abstained, and Demetrio Gonzalez Hoy was absent. 

    Many parents and other community members addressed the board during the June 26 meeting, asking the board to reject the LCAP and the budget, saying community input wasn’t reflected in the document. Public commenters said there was a lack of transparency in both proposals, that neither met student needs, and that they disenfranchised low-income students, English learners and students of color. Some speakers questioned whether the accountability plan complied with the law. 

    It’s rare for districts to turn in an accountability plan that fully complies with the law, Mackey said. However, when a board approves it, the county can work with districts to bring the documents into compliance. 

    Trustee Phillips said community concerns and not having a balanced budget were other reasons he voted down the LCAP. 

    “I want to be very clear: The community needs to be heard,” Phillips said. “That’s not me saying everything the community wants should be put in there, but they are supposed to be heard, and I don’t feel like that happened.”

    Some trustees have called the vote a failure of the board, but Phillips said that’s not accurate. 

    “It was an opportunity for me to put brakes on another unbalanced budget. That’s why I did what I did. But it was not a failure,” Phillips said. “It was a conscious decision, I did it on purpose.”

    District officials are projecting a $31.8 million budget deficit over the next three school years, with about $11.5 million in shortfalls projected for the upcoming school year. The plan was to use reserve funds over three school years to make up the deficit, which is a typical move, Fine said.

    West Contra Costa has been in “financial distress for quite a while,” Fine said. “They were deep in distress, and they are working their way out of that hole.”

    In an emailed statement, Reckler said the district should now “retool their presentation to the board and public and re-present it, tailoring it to specific questions” raised by board members and the District Local Control Accountability Plan Committee (DLCAP), which consists of parents and members of community organizations.

    The board can then give district staff comments and direct it to take any additional steps, Reckler said.

    Christian also said he abstained from voting on the accountability plan because the document lacked transparency and failed to include parent feedback. He said the document should plainly state how money is being spent to meet district goals and how programs are benefiting students, which hasn’t happened. 

    “Those who get paid the big bucks should be the ones to make sure this stuff is done right,” Christian said. “Let’s do it right, let’s make it right, let’s not have hidden agendas, and let’s spell it out.”

    If there are substantial changes to the LCAP, it could mean big changes to the budget. It’s too soon to know what kind of changes are being made, but Mackey said even if money needs to be shifted around, it doesn’t appear there will be major revisions.

    “It’s challenging,” Mackey said. “As much work as you do on transparency, I do feel like there’s always going to be somebody who doesn’t feel the LCAP is very transparent.”

    Even if the accountability plan meets all the state requirements, some boards want more or for staff to go “above and beyond, which is understandable,” Mackey said.

    “My hope is that they (board members) don’t hold it hostage for things that you can’t go back and fix,” Mackey said. “If they want something different in the future, set that up now so as the LCAP writers are going forward, they know exactly what is expected so this doesn’t happen again.”





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  • Now Will They Leave Joe Biden Alone?

    Now Will They Leave Joe Biden Alone?


    As I was scrolling through Twitter on Sunday, I read a bunch of anti-Biden tweets, so I added my two cents.

    I tweeted:

    Maybe it’s just me, but I would rather have Joe Biden (surrounded by highly competent people) asleep than Donald Trump at his best (surrounded by Fascists, haters, and law-breakers) on his best day. @jaketapper @AlexThomp

    I once wrote on this blog that I would never criticize Joe Biden because he was running against a man who was totally unfit for the job. Several Trumpers has since written to complain about that statement, saying that it demonstrated my bias, but time has confirmed my view.

    Regardless of his mental state, Biden would never have appointed a crackpot to run the National Institutes of Health. He would never have defunded USAID, NPR, PBS, FEMA, the Voice of America, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and the U.S. Department of Education. Nor would he have let loose Elon Musk’s DOGS to ransack federal agencies, fire thousands of expert career officers, mess with the Social Security Administration, and hoover up all our personal data, for whatever nefarious purposes he chooses. Unlike Trump, Biden would not have terrorized institutions of higher education and threatened academic freedom and freedom of speech. Unlike Trump, Biden respected the independence of the Justice Department and the FBI and did not put political lackeys in charge of them or treat them as his personal attack dogs.

    Frankly, I can’t keep track of the many federal programs and agencies that Trump has recklessly destroyed. If anyone knows of such a compilation, please share it. Trump and Musk have vandalized our government, and despite the thousands of injudicious, capricious firings, have not saved any money at all.

    Then I came across this post by Julie Roginsky, which appeared shortly after the nation learned that former President Biden has prostate cancer, which has metasticized to his bones. She is writing about the new book by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson that aims to prove that President Biden was experiencing severe mental and physical decline while he was in office and that his family and staff collaborated to conceal that decline from the public.

    She wrote:

    Maybe now they’ll leave Joe Biden alone — or, better yet, spend some time assessing his actual presidency, both in isolation and in comparison with what has followed.

    Stick it to legacy media, which has consistently beaten up on a decent man.

    Was Biden operating at half-capacity throughout his term? Was he operating at 10%? Here are some facts, regardless of the opinions rendered by amateur neurologists all over media these days.

    “Biden inherited an economy that was flat on its back because of the pandemic, and he’s bequeathing an economy that’s flying high,” said Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s, which just lowered the credit rating of the United States for the first time in history under Donald Trump. 

    Biden’s economic tenure was marred by the inflation that was a hangover of the Covid pandemic. But the numbers don’t lie about the rest of it. On his watch, the Dow Jones rose by over 40%, while the Nasdaq rose by almost 50%. The economy expanded by 11% during his four years in office (compared with under 9% during Donald Trump’s first term). Despite inflation, retail sales grew by more than 20%. Household net worth was 28% higher when Biden left office than when he took over from Trump. Unemployment was 2% lower at the end of Biden’s tenure than when he entered the White House. 

    Most importantly, no one was predicting the demise of our 250 year American experiment while Biden was in charge.

    Now, Biden is diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer, which has spread to his bones. You don’t need to be an oncologist to know that the prognosis is not great.

    So maybe now is a good time to reflect not just on Biden’s tenure but on what this obsession with his mental health means for the future of this country. Reporters who have spent the past several weeks on the fainting couch about “the cover up” of his mental condition in the Oval Office have consistently failed to acknowledge the successes of his tenure. They have failed to compare that tenure, both in economic and in governance terms, to what has followed. They have never stopped beating up a man who is no longer in the White House to take stock of the mental health of the current occupant of the White House.

    Trump’s mental decline (which is apparent to anyone who has lived in the New York media market for the past four decades) is not happening, you see — because he does not stutter, because he shouts with vigor, because he “truths” at all hours of the night, unlike a septuagenarian who might require more rest. 

    In short, all this is just “Trump being Trump.” It cannot be that he is stark raving mad. 

    And Trump’s economic record, the one that is driving inflation ever higher, the one that is destroying consumer sentiment, the one that has driven both the stock and bond markets crazy? Never mind all that. Have you listened to Biden’s conversation with Robert Hur? Now that’s a scandal. 

    Look, I really don’t care if Biden was confined to a gurney for four years. The facts speak for themselves. The country was more prosperous, the democracy was more stable, the nation was more respected, the people were less terrified, when he was in charge. 

    Yes, Biden’s staff may have covered up his medical condition while he was in the Oval Office. But the real scandal is the cover up happening now. The media so obsessed with kicking Biden now that’s gone that it is ignoring the very real danger that his successor poses to us all. 

    I am not a religious person but I hope that whatever higher power exists will look out for Joe Biden. He is a good man, who did well on behalf of the people who entrusted him with the presidency. That is a hell of a lot more than could be said about his successor.

    I repeat:

    Maybe it’s just me, but I would rather have Joe Biden (surrounded by highly competent people) asleep than Donald Trump at his best (surrounded by Fascists, haters, and law-breakers) on his best day. @jaketapper @AlexThomp



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  • California’s future demands higher-ed coordination now

    California’s future demands higher-ed coordination now


    Credit: Larry Gordon / EdSource

    Despite being the nation’s economic powerhouse with the largest postsecondary system in America, California stands alone among all 50 states without a higher education coordinating entity. This gap has resulted in missed opportunities and unrealized potential — and it’s a systemic failure that leaves real people behind every day.

    Ask Fred P., who applied for unemployment when he lost his job during the pandemic. What California’s systems failed to tell him was that he qualified for the Golden State Education and Training Grant designed to help displaced workers like him. As his savings dwindled and bills mounted, available support remained hidden in bureaucratic silos. Fred only discovered the program months after his unemployment benefits expired — and only because his partner happened to work in state policy and budget.

    Meanwhile, millions of other Californians, without such connections, remain unaware of potential pathways to economic mobility and continue to fall through the cracks of our state’s disconnected education and workforce systems. During the pandemic, over 19 million Californians lost jobs and applied for unemployment, yet very few were informed they qualified for this scholarship program, which should have connected them to training opportunities for career advancement. California allocated $500 million to this program, but two years later, only $20 million had reached just 6,100 individuals. Why? Because the agency administering scholarships couldn’t identify unemployed workers, and the unemployment office couldn’t connect people to the available education funding. Two state systems, both serving Californians, but operating in silos, left resources untapped and communities unsupported.

    This fragmentation creates a maze that widens opportunity gaps, particularly for those without the social capital or resources to guide them through complex systems. At the start of the pandemic, over 5 million Californians intended to enroll in college in the next two years, but many — especially especially Latino, Black, Native American residents, first-generation college students, Californians with children, and those working low-wage jobs — face a gauntlet of barriers that numerous disjointed access programs fail to address. Meanwhile, more than a billion dollars in education and workforce development funding goes unused, while Californians seeking better opportunities have trouble finding quality training opportunities to reach their career goals, and employers struggle to find qualified workers for open positions.

    These disconnected systems don’t just create inconvenience — they perpetuate cycles of poverty. For Californians living on the margins, the cost associated with college —an established path to economic mobility — is a huge barrier and makes it seem out of reach. Meanwhile, over a hundred programs exist that could defray the financial burden and increase college access. But, without coordination, these public benefit programs designed to improve economic stability remain inaccessible to those who need them most. When systems don’t talk to each other, the promise of these programs remains unfulfilled, leaving workers, families and employers struggling in an economy that demands better solutions.

    The solution is clear: coordination. And it’s now within reach. Both Gov. Gavin’s administration and key legislative champion Assemblymember Mike Fong have aligned in their support of establishing the California Education Interagency Council. This council would bridge the divides between our TK-12 education, higher education, workforce development, and social services systems, creating a coherent ecosystem that powers economic growth and resilience for individuals and the state.

    This isn’t about adding bureaucracy — it’s about setting up the needed infrastructure to fulfill the promise of economic mobility and good jobs for Californians — the driving reason so many pursue higher education in the first place. With this council in place:

    • Unemployed workers would be connected to education and training programs that would strengthen their re-entry to the workforce.
    • Residents experiencing financial hardship who receive public benefits would enter into education pathways that lead to living-wage careers, creating intergenerational economic mobility.
    • Students would easily navigate clear paths from high school through college to meaningful employment.
    • Schools and colleges would receive actionable labor market insights to shape programming.
    • Employers would find skilled workers to fill critical positions, strengthening California’s economy.

    Collectively, these outcomes strengthen California by fostering a robust economy and thriving communities built on shared prosperity.

    Finally, the council would enhance accountability by tracking outcomes across systems, identifying what works and what doesn’t, and ensuring programs reach their intended recipients. A coordinated approach is especially critical now, during challenging budget times. California must ensure every dollar works. The proposed council would maximize returns on billions of existing investments by eliminating redundancies, filling workforce gaps, and ensuring that programs help the people they are designed to serve.

    For too long, we’ve relied on spot-fixes and piecemeal solutions. We’ve watched promising initiatives fall short of their potential. The time has come, with alignment between the governor’s office and the Legislature, to build the coordination infrastructure that connects Californians with opportunity. Our state’s promises of prosperity and bright futures depend on it.

    •••

    Su Jin Jez is CEO of California Competes, a nonprofit working to solve California’s higher education and workforce issues through research, advocacy and collective action.

    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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  • Covid recovery funds are gone; what now for California students?

    Covid recovery funds are gone; what now for California students?


    Credit: Pexels / Mikhail Nilov

    California’s most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores revealed troubling trends in student achievement. Despite significant financial investments, student performance continues to struggle to reach full academic recovery. Worse, achievement gaps between the highest- and lowest-performing students widened even further.

    The timing of these results couldn’t be worse. With California districts spending the last of their $23 billion in federal relief funds last year, schools are now facing a critical juncture. With declining enrollment reducing their budgets and only modest new state investments coming this year, it will be tough for districts to dramatically scale up promising initiatives like high-dosage tutoring or extensive summer programming.

    So, what levers do state and local policymakers have at their disposal? By looking at the data and learning from other successful low-cost interventions, the state has an opportunity to reverse its slide and drive student gains.

    First, kids have to be in school to learn. In California, chronic absenteeism rates have come down significantly from their pandemic levels, but they’re still nearly twice as high as they were five years ago. Black students, English learners, students with disabilities, and other marginalized groups are missing too much school. 

    Fortunately, there are low-cost, high-impact strategies that schools can adopt to ensure students are present and engaged. For example, a research study looking at a large California district found that missing a part of the school day — for referrals for in-school discipline or participation in extracurricular activities — predicted short- and long-run outcomes for students. Many school districts are already tracking these measures; the next step is using them to inform and implement interventions such as parent notifications or individualized support.

    Second, once kids are back in school, the next step is ensuring that classroom time is used well. This is especially critical in California, given that it ranks in the bottom 10 states in terms of total instructional hours per school year. Last year’s law to ban or limit the use of cell phones during school hours should help reduce digital distractions, but the research on attention is clear that humans are not good at multitasking and can take a long time to refocus when our thinking is interrupted.

    For schools, that means that every little interruption counts. Students being pulled out of class for special interventions or testing, outdoor noise and intercom announcements are all important in their own way, but they also add up. One study found that a typical classroom might be interrupted 2,000 times per year and that these disruptions can result in the loss of 10 to 20 days of instructional time. School district leaders could conduct attention audits to maximize and better understand how schools are using time and all of their technological tools.

    Last but not least is the question of what students are (and are not) learning. California’s test results suggest that reading is a particular problem area. Since 2019, California’s reading scores on NAEP are down 4 points in fourth grade and 5 points in eighth grade. But those are averages. Last year, just 7% of California’s Black students met the “Proficient” benchmark and 72% fell below “Basic” in fourth grade reading.

    When students lack foundational reading skills, the impact compounds across subjects. All students need and deserve evidence-based literacy instruction, with sustained focus on the relationships between sound and print, exposure to rich text, thought-provoking content, and both general and domain-specific vocabulary that builds knowledge of the world.

    Improving reading scores is hard work, and other states are dealing with similar challenges. But California — unlike many other states — has not yet passed a comprehensive reading bill.

    This is where California could stand to learn from some of the higher-performing states on NAEP, sometimes called “the nation’s report card.” Specifically, it might surprise some readers to learn that Mississippi made the largest reading gains over the last 10 years. Last year, Mississippi ranked seventh overall but third for Black students and first for low-income students. California, in contrast, came in 37th, 33rd and 28th, respectively.

    How did Mississippi make this turnaround? It took a long-term, systematic approach to its literacy efforts. It invested in teacher development and coaching, identified and supported struggling readers as early as possible and equipped teachers with high-quality instructional materials.

    This combination of high-quality instructional materials with diagnostic data and student supports has the potential to improve outcomes for California’s most vulnerable students, and to create a more equitable education system for all. By leveraging data it already tracks and focusing on the delivery of core instruction, California can build a stronger foundation for student success.

    •••

    Lindsay Dworkin is senior vice president of policy and government affairs at NWEA, a K-12 assessment and research organization.

    The opinions in this commentary are those of the author. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.





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  • Joyce Vance: Do Republicans Care About Trump’s Tyranny? If Not Now, When?

    Joyce Vance: Do Republicans Care About Trump’s Tyranny? If Not Now, When?


    Joyce Vance was US Attorney for Northern Alabama and a steady voice of reason. She wonders in this post what it will take to awaken Republicans to Trump’s erosion of the Constitution and our rights.

    She writes:

    Why doesn’t any of this break through? Why do Republicans still support Trump?

    The reporting in The Atlantic on the Signal chain? The voter suppression executive order Trump issued…? The foul-ups in deporting supposed gang members who turn out not to be? Why aren’t Americans out on the streets protesting in massive numbers like we have seen people in other countries doing—Israel, Georgia, Turkey, South Korea, and others? In part, it’s because a large number of people who are Trump supporters just don’t care. Their guy can do anything, and they don’t care. They’ll believe any lie, and they’ll ignore any horrible; they’re all in for Trump for reasons the rest of us still struggle to understand.

    The question is, how many of the rest of us are there? By that I mean Americans who, regardless of party affiliation, still care about truth and democracy. Those words are no longer just philosophical notions to be bandied about, an elite construct. They are the reality of what we are fighting a rearguard action to try and save.

    Statistics from the last election provide reason for some optimism. Donald Trump won with 49.9% of the popular vote. Although he has claimed he has a mandate for a radical transformation of government, the numbers just don’t back that up. And they don’t suggest there’s a mandate for putting out military information on a Signal chain being used on personal phones, rather than on secured government systems. If there ever truly was a mandate for Trump, the reality is, it’s evaporating day by day as egg prices stay high and people lose their jobs. And now, there’s this, a cavalier disregard for the safety of our troops, lax security with one member of the Signal group apparently in Russia while communications were ongoing, what looks like an effort to do an end run around government records retention procedures.

    Will the Atlantic story break through? It should. Trump’s Vice President, his Secretary of Defense, his CIA director, his DNI, all put American pilots in harm’s way. If that’s not enough for Senate Republicans to break ranks with Trump, especially those on subcommittees that have oversight into military and intelligence community operations, it’s hard to imagine what would be.

    Why use Signal in the first place when American leaders have some of the most secure communications technology in the world available to them? Is it just for convenience? If so, that’s sloppy, and they should be committing to do better, not arguing over whether the information was classified or not. (But if it looks like a duck…) 

    The truth is that by going to Signal, they avoided leaving a paper trail. No annoying records that could be unearthed down the road. Remember Trump’s first impeachment? It came about in large part because after the call where he threatened Ukraine’s president with withholding security aid if he wouldn’t announce his country was investigating Joe Biden for financial misconduct, records of the call were buried inside a classified information system where they didn’t belong. That was what got the ball rolling. It was about trying to hide records of an official call that everyone knew was wrong. 

    As far as we know at this point, there was nothing improper about the attack on the Houthis. So why were high-ranking members of the Trump administration communicating off the books? How pervasive is the practice, and who knows/authorizes it? We are a government of the people. Transparency isn’t optional. There are rules about public records that have to be followed, and this president who likes to operate in secret and at the margins of our laws has frequently tried to skirt them.

    It’s hard to imagine that the Signal chain for the Houthi attack was just a one-off, that they only went to Signal for this moment. Is this how this new government is operating routinely—off the books, in a hidden fashion designed to avoid scrutiny and accountability? 

    It may seem like a minor point with everything else that’s going on, but this is how autocrats work, not how a democracy operates. That’s the danger we are now facing, and this is another marker on the path to tyranny.

    Calls are mounting for Hegseth and others to resign. Anyone who would engage in this kind of behavior and then argue that it was not improper rather than apologizing and promising to do better should leave government, whether voluntarily or not. But they should never have been confirmed in the first place. There is a cancer on the heart of the presidency, to quote from the Watergate era, and it’s infecting all of us.

    We’re in this together,

    Joyce



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