The Redondo Beach City Council this week unanimously passed a resolution opposing the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF), one component of Governor Jerry Brown’s budget pertaining to education financing.
In April the Redondo Beach Unified School District board passed a similar resolution. The board has been vocal in its opposition to Brown’s proposal, which earmarks the lion’s share of state education dollars for districts with larger populations of low-income students, foster youth, and English learners.
While the proposed formula does not immediately reduce current base funding levels, it provides for “concentration grants” to those districts whose disadvantaged student population exceeds 50 percent.
Many Redondo Beach educators and administrators are resisting the proposal, noting their district will ultimately receive less funding per student than it would under current state requirements. By the time the formula is fully implemented in 2019, Redondo Beach will have taken what amounts to another long-term budget cut.
Most South Bay districts are considered suburban, so they would not be eligible for the same grants urban districts would, nor would they be amongst the top echelon of the wealthiest districts, which retain local property tax revenues under the current financing system.
The decision-making deadline is looming.
The Legislature must pass the budget by June 15, and the constitutional deadline for Brown to sign and enact the budget is June 30.
Already the Senate has passed a version of Brown’s LCFF, which differs in that it eliminates concentration grants for needier students and increases base funding for every student in the state.
The Assembly, for its part, is presenting not an alternative bill but a “Package of Principles,” which provides for fewer concentration grants.
“It’s the guiding principles that the Assembly conference committee negotiators are going to be negotiating with the Senate version and the Governor’s version,” Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi, who represents the Beach Cities, told Easy Reader this week.
Political observers foresee the budget, replete with its LCFF provision intact, passing. Muratsuchi admitted he, too, envisions some version of the LCFF making it past the Legislature.
“As a result of all of our discussions from all the assemblymembers, most of whom stand to benefit from this LCFF, it looks like there’s going to be some version of the LCFF that’s going to be moving forward,” he said.
The Package of Principles, he pointed out, suggests suburban school districts (like the South Bay) can elect to receive the amount of money they would under the Economic Recovery Target – “It’s a lot of bureaucratic mumbo jumbo to basically say that schools would first get paid back what they were owed form all the budget cuts from the past five years,” he explained – or to receive the amount they would under the LCFF.
Muratsuchi has for months been encouraging South Bay residents to make their opinions known at the state level by writing letters and making phone calls to legislators.
“Now is actually the best time to engage,” he said this week. “The governor has made it clear that this Local Control Funding Formula is his number one priority… I continue to fight for our South Bay schools but I’m taking on the governor and a lot of my colleagues in the legislature who stand to benefit from the Local Control Funding Formula. It’s a tough fight.”
