Categorical spending questioned
Public Advocates wants more accountability
Gov. Jerry Brown generally favors giving school districts more control to spend state dollars as they choose – the same position as his predecessor, Arnold Schwarzenegger. In his new state budget, Brown is proposing to extend temporary control that the Legislature gave districts over some previously earmarked money for two more years, through 2014-15.
But deregulation comes with an obligation of transparency. Districts should tell the public and report back to the Legislature on how they spent the money, much of which was supposed to be targeted to poor children.
That hasn’t happened, according to the advocacy group Public Advocates. Although the Legislature required districts to hold separate public hearings on how money for the “categorical” programs would be used and to do accountability reports to the state, the Department of Education let them off the hook with an advisory letter in 2009. The Department said that districts didn’t have to do either step. In budget hearings today, Public Advocates will ask the Legislature to insist that districts follow the law.
The money – more than $4.5 billion – had been divvied up among 40 categorical programs for designated purposes, including instructional materials, teacher development, adult education, remedial instruction, and regional occupational centers.
In permanently cutting the budget for categorical programs by 20 percent in 2009, the Legislature said that districts, faced with a financial crisis, could set their own priorities and spend the money as they wanted. The Legislative Analyst’s Office, which did a survey of districts last year, reported that many districts did shift money from maintenance and materials to prevent further layoffs and to pay for basic costs. Last month, for example, the San Jose Unified trustees voted to divert the adult education money to core K-12 expenses, which they said should be their first priority. (Update: The LAO today released an updated district survey. Its conclusion: “Compared to 2009–10, however, a higher percentage of districts in 2010–11 are either diverting funding from flexed categorical programs or discontinuing them altogether.” The LAO is recommending deregulating additional categorical programs, including K-3 class-size reduction, a popular program championed by the California Teachers Assn.)
Researchers affiliated with Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) and the RAND Corporation are following the impact of deregulation but reported that a lack data from the districts is hampering their work.
Some of the biggest categorical programs – class size reduction subsidies and economic impact aid targeting the largest low-income districts such as Los Angeles Unified – are still off limits. But the LAO and many districts favor further deregulation.
Gov. Brown and his chief education adviser, State Board of Education President Michael Kirst, advocate eventually creating a new funding system by redirecting all money from categorical programs to a per-student formula with more dollars for low-income children, English learners, and high-cost and rural districts.
It’s a good idea, but it presupposes that districts will spend the former categorical money on kids most in need. That’s why, Public Advocates says, it is important now to start tracking what districts are actually doing – and for districts to hold hearings explaining their decisions to parents.
It’s doubtful that the Legislature will reimpose categorical spending of the 40 programs it has liberated; once given control, districts will fight to keep it. But legislators should keep watch; they’ll be able to do that only if they demand more detailed reporting from districts.
Clarification: Here is the 2008 study that Michael Kirst co-authored. As he mentioned in a comment, categorical money for special education is not included in the weighted student formula that he proposed. An updated version, done last year by researchers for the Public Policy Institute of California, also exempts Economic Impact Aid, another large categorical program.
The proposed finance plan done by Bersin, Kirst, Liu in 2008 does not recommend all categorical programs be merged into the basic grant to districts. We exempted several programs, and subsequent work by PPIC on this proposal exempted some more. The blog is incorrect, and there are categorical programs like special education that cannot be merged into a basic grant. Each categorical needs to be considered for inclusion based on specific criteria.
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Over the last year, the budget process from the community perspective has become more challenging with little transparency that is parent or student friendly. This has resulted in public school parents and students being left feeling confused and jaded with their future, their daily lives lying in the hands of the Legislature and the Governor with little to no input in the “democratic” process.
In San Francisco and across the Bay Area, we have witnessed hardworking parents, stressed students, and community be left struggling with how to maintain a quality education for their students. As the budget process drew out again for months after the June 30th deadline, they have sat up late nights trying to understand the budget process, trying to develop ideas and plans to fill funding gaps with fundraisers, dramatic increases in volunteer hours and in financial contributions to schools, whether families had or didn’t have jobs. Yet, when the opportunity for their hard work to be repaid comes, what do those in power do? The question I wish that was constatntly framed on the floor is: What is the message that must be sent to parent and students that our students are the priority as our state’s future workers and leaders?
As we speak, every dollar in our system significantly counts, though not every dollar is accounted for. As a public school alumni, current parent and the Education Equity Campaign Lead at Coleman Advocates, my family and members find this to be an unfortunate reality at a time when community is the state’s greatest resource. It is our hope, that through our member’s campaigns, our allies, the Campaign For Quality Education and the Alliance for Education Justice, that parents and students are respected as we call for our community’s leadership in the decisions of our education system so that we have an education system that prepares all students to be college and career ready. Our state budget process and funding of education can and must shift for all children in California to have the opportunity to learn regardless of ethnicity or neighborhood!
To get to this beautiful vision of a state education system where funding is adequate, we have come to find several dynamics in this conversation to be true barriers. First, we say the word “transparency” with conviction that we are all speaking the same language when indeed we are not. Transparency is above and beyond parents’ and students’ access to documents with numbers. It includes developing a budget process that values their input and is therefore designed for all to understand regardless of language. It also includes the education system being clear about what is being proposed, how those decisions were made and where parent and student input is able to shift decisions and when it is not.
To be clear, flexibility in spending is a luxury long overdue to our education system. However, it does not mean that the highest need students in our state, the students we were so happy to deem a part of the achievement gap just a couple of minutes ago must continue to suffer. Categorical funding was deemed such to insure that funds were spent on the state’s highest need students for specific services and programs aimed at increase our education system’s capacity to raise student achivement. We must insure that if this funding is flexible, LEAs are doing such as a last resort so that we are not continuing to perpetuate the very national problem we all believe is the civil rights and social justice crime of the century.
Unfortunately, there is not a current way to understand where funding from these previously categorical funds have been spent across the state. In many cases, even the LEA itself cannot answer the question. For this, an injustice is yet again committed to the students for which this funding was originally designated.
Though many may find this hard to believe, it is highly possible to give flexibility to LEAs when it comes to categorical funding while requiring transparency and the engagement of students, parents, teachers in the budget process. It is possible to find a common ground in every district and at the state level that protects the highest need students while maintaining district accountability to the education of all students. These things are possible because with parents and students in the process as valued contributors, they bring a conviction stronger than any vote: Every idea is a potential solution that will give to my child the opportunity to learn, the opportunity to a future full of options.
Last year, as SFUSD shifted its budgeting process. Coleman Advocates and community were successful with adding an amendment into the budget that required an Equity Report that detailed how general and categorical funding was proposed to be spent and their impact to the highest need students in our district- African American, Latino and Pacific Islander.
With the Equity Report, a different conversation was able to take place, leading to numerous requests from Commissioners, students, parents, teachers and community to have a budget that details spending by program, not just the categorical grant. As we face additional cuts beyond projections, it is our hope this year that we build upon this effort by designing more community input into the process and requiring a more detail Equity Report.
If every LEA did a similar process, a major and dramatic shift in state budgeting would be more possible today than ever before. It is of importance that Sacramento pay attention to the on-the-ground effect of policies to learn valuable lessons for how to move to a systemic reform of our education budget process forward.
Lessons like SFUSD and many other LEAs who have shifted their thinking in the midst of budget crisis to include more community involvement, show how students, parents, teachers and community can assist with developing innovative strategies that are helpful to long term reform and potential savings.
Remember, every dollar counts… the question is do you want to know where every dollar is?
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Time is also a factor in consumption. If the public can’t understand the budgets, all the transparency in the world doesn’t matter.
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What made the categorical funding concept an easy target for inclusion into the general fund, was the intolerable beaurocratic baggage that came with it. Districts always felt that they could use the money effectively without the inordinate costs to track it. There is a medium point in this argument for accountability. Unfortunately, the necessary component is “the integrity of the District”. Anyone who has tried to get some support from the state level for obvious transgressions by District Administrators for intervention and enforcement of code: That is what you heard. To rephrase; “We at the State level have no real enforcement authority. We rely on the integrity of the District”. With this vapid support system, why not just give it away?
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