Lawmakers should keep handcuffs off districts and extend local control
Once upon a time, school districts were mainly controlled by locally elected school boards and district management. The landmark court decisions of Serrano v. Priest (1971 & 1976) and the famous initiative, Proposition 13 (1978), unintentionally shifted the real control of local school districts from localities to Sacramento. Prop 13 was designed to keep senior citizens from losing their homes, and Serrano was meant to equalize school spending in rich and poor school districts. Together, they also changed the funding source of local school districts to the state capital. Consequently, over the decades Sacramento politicians have determined that since they were passing out the money, they should also make the rules. After all, everyone is an expert when it comes to education.
When a person becomes a school board member, a plethora of training ensues. Approximately 50 percent of what the new board member is taught revolves around not micromanaging and how to resist the temptation to do so. There is good reason for this. It is easy for elected public officials to think they have the answers concerning how to “fix” education in their town. Almost all, if not all, local school board members who micromanage, or attempt to, end up harming the district.
Micromanagement from Sacramento has the same effect. “All-knowing” politicians mandating how funds can be spent is not the best of ideas. These “reforms” often are packaged as “categorical programs” or “restricted funds.” Most of these “reforms” have affected local school districts negatively. Others have simply resulted in a poor use of precious funds. Some have been positive.
Over time, Sacramento has created more than 50 categorical programs that mandate how the funds provided can be spent. Programs such as Art and Music Block Grants, Class Size Reduction, International Baccalaureate, Oral Health Assessment, Physical Education Teacher Incentive Program, and many others all send funds to school districts with instructions on how they can and cannot be used.
Returning more actual control to local K-12 school districts would not be a “cure all,” but it would be a significant step in the right direction. Local school districts have a superior chance of putting educational dollars to better use. There are 1,047 school districts in California; they don’t always all need the same thing. Flexibility would be much smarter; it would allow each school district to decide what it needs and how best to spend the available funds. Additionally, reducing the number of the categorical programs would diminish some of the need for district office personnel to oversee the often complex requirements.
In the last few years, local districts have been given some flexibility regarding categorical funds. This is largely because state politicians are only in favor of local control when there are cuts to make. If there ever is additional money available, the state legislators will probably become experts again and tell local school districts how to spend it.
The state government should determine an equitable formula and send the funds to local school districts. Legislators should refrain from micromanagement and allow local districts who are familiar with the needs of the community to allot the funds in a manner that is best for the children they serve.
Stephen P. Blum is the president of the Ventura Unified Education Association and a member of the Ventura County Community College Board of Trustees. He served as a high school teacher for 25 years and as the cross-country and track coach at Buena High School for 22 years. He has a Juris Doctorate degree, a Master’s degree in education, and a Bachelor’s degree in history. His wife has been a teacher for 30 plus years. Their daughter is a student at California State University at Channel Islands.
At the outset, let me state that any views expressed in this essay are solely mine and not the views or positions of any other entity.
While I have great respect for Mr. Blum, whom I’ve known for nearly twenty years, I would like to comment on two common misperceptions the general public has regarding the evolution of public school funding in California and is promulgated today by Mr. Blum in his fine opinion piece.
Contrary to Steve’s assertion, Proposition 13 was SOLD to the voting populace on the emotion that senior citizens on a fixed income MIGHT be kicked out of their houses unless Prop 13 were passed.
Prop 13 was DESIGNED to freeze commercial property valuations as of the specified date with a simple loophole that exempted commercial property values from the automatic price escalator upon their being sold that applies to residential properties. In effect, it allowed corporations to enjoy having its (near) annual 2% increase applied only to the tax the corporation had to pay on its valuation in 1978, even if the property had been sold one or more times in the intervening 30 years. Any non-partisan analysis of property rolls in California since 1982 will show that this is precisely what has happened.
A second misperception repeated by Mr. Blum is the notion that the state invented categorical programs so it could control (micromanage) how its money was spent at the school district and school site levels.
Categorical programs were invented for the sole reason that many, many school districts did not provide programs for students with special needs, regardless of how much money the district had. Class Size Reduction, longer year, Bilingual education, migrant education, and Gifted and Talented Education programs are very good examples of this.
So the state began to offer financial incentives for districts to offer programs for the special needs that some students have. The concept was simple: if you want the money, you must offer the program and follow certain general regulations. It was not mandated that you offer the program.
In short, do the right thing and we will reward you.
Admittedly, categorical programs have grown way beyond their original intent and scope but that is because politicians now want control, primarily because they don’t know the history of them.
If you need further proof, research recently released has positively established that in the last 5 years that districts have been allowed to shift categorical funds around in the name of greater flexibility, most money has been shifted away from programs like bilingual education, migrant education, Economic impact aid, class size reduction, Bilingual Teacher Training,and longer school year into facilities, maintenance, technology, outside consultants and lawyers.
In short, many districts are no longer doing the right thing for some groups of their students.
One final thought.
The last round of elections seems to be proving that we are inexorably making our way into the deplorable situation that was to have been rectified by Serrano v Priest.
As most know, many districts are attempting to prop up their finances by trying to pass parcel taxes. This is a trend that has been increasing over the last three years.
It does not take a great deal of acumen to note that the districts which have been successful in getting the two-thirds vote necessary to pass the tax are school districts and communities which are affluent and least in need of additional funding. The great disparity is returning.
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If I understand this right, the idea is “Give us the money and don’t ask questions”. Sort of like schools saying “Get rid of NCLB because we don’t want to prove we’re actually teaching kids, especially poor kids because they’re hard to teach and we don’t know how to do it.”
Mr. Blum states that local school districts know better what to do with the money than state legislatures. This is asserted without any supporting evidence. Regrettably, “Proof By Assertion” seems to be the modus operandi for the education establishment. There’s a reason funding comes with strings attached. Most school boards are just upper-middle class sock puppets for the administration so really the central administration runs things, and given the freedom to do so they will run it for the benefit of themselves and the politically strong, not for the poor and those most needing financial support. The current party line that Ravitch, Valerie Strauss, and others so relentlessly parrot, that teachers are helpless as long as the US continues to allow poor people to exist represents the futility with which too many of the education old guard regard those that are actually hard to educate. Poor folks tend to vote in smaller numbers and so can be more easily disregarded by the central admin. Someone has to look out for them and by default it is the central governments.
One of the current topics is what other countries (other than itty-bitty little countries like Singapore and Finland of which Dr. Ravitch is so very, very fond) do to get high scores on international tests. One of the features of some educational systems is rigid central control. Maybe things have changed but for ages it was true that the French education minister in Paris could look at his watch and tell you what every single student in France was learning at that moment. My understanding is that Japan modeled their educational system on that of France. That seems to work here too. Districts with benchmark tests every 6 weeks or so to keep teachers on track see a positive effect on test scores. Even the AP graders complain that teachers of AP history are not getting to the end of the course study on time. As a species we have a short term, self-interested view of things and it is necessary for external authorities to exercise some scheduling and allocation of funds. That education got away without any external discipline for so long is remarkable but no one else goes without accountability and budget constraints so why should education?
One obvious place local control fails is the ghastly joke that state standards became when states were told they would be held accountable to them but could make up their own standards – hence common core.
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Wonderful article. I’ve spent fifteen years on a school board and CSBA trying to promote such a return to local control. If public education is to “compete,” local boards need to have their hands untied like charter schools and private schools so that they truly can give their local communities and kids what they really need and want.
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