Photo by Judy Baxter

Photograph by Judy Baxter

At what may turn out to exist a landmark hearing in Sacramento today, country senators  will review a sweeping proposal by Gov. Jerry Brown to reform California's notoriously complex schoolhouse finance system that distributes funds based more than on decades-old formulas than on pupil needs.

The simpler system Brown is proposing — explained in this Department of Finance briefing newspaper prepared for today's hearing — would give school districts a base amount, and and then additional funds based on the number of depression income students and those classified as English learners.

Although Chocolate-brown's program would be far more streamlined and transparent than the current system, information technology is withal non ane that the average Californian would easily understand.  (For details, meet this description by John Fensterwald.)

It would phase out 44 so-chosen "categorical programs" — funding streams targeted as specific programs such every bit instructor training, school safety and form size reduction — and instead offering school districts the flexibility in how they spent those funds — on their original purposes or on something completely different.

The only categorical programs that would remain intact would be special teaching, schoolhouse nutrition programs, pre-school and later school programs, funding for small-scale school districts in remote parts of the country, and schools funded through the Quality Teaching Investment Deed as a issue of legal settlement.

Brown proposed a streamlined school finance organization in his education platform during his gubernatorial entrada. The detailed platform got almost no attention at the time.  After he became governor, Brown barely referred to it. Instead,  his focus during his first yr in office was on reducing the state'due south budget deficit, along with his unsuccessful endeavor to convince Republican lawmakers to place a taxation initiative on the election.

Then in a surprise move, his January budget called for the reforms that will be discussed at a hearing of the Senate Upkeep and Fiscal Review Committee today, chaired past Sen. Marker Leno, D-San Francisco.

The hearing, along with the materials prepared in advance for information technology, propose that Brown is serious virtually wanting to transform the arrangement that consumes over 40 percent of the land's general fund.  His assistants has projected the amounts that every school district would receive under a reformed finance organisation, and also includes draft legislation to enact his proposals into law.

His plan would be phased in gradually, and districts would be guaranteed the aforementioned corporeality of funding they received adjacent twelvemonth every bit they practice this year.  The plan has many features in common with one proposed in a neb (AB eighteen) authored  by Assemblywoman Julia Brownley, D-Santa Monica, the chairperson of the Associates Education Committee, which stalled in the Legislature last year.

California'south school finance system has a Dr. Seuss-like quality, an archaic organization based on outdated formulas established decades ago.  It has besides resulted in significant inequities in how schoolhouse districts are funded.  Disparities in funding oft coincide with how rich or poor a district is, but that is not always the case, as an assay by California Watch highlighted.

Some  depression-income districts receive far less than other comparable low income districts. In other cases, depression income districts can receive more per student than wealthier ones, typical as a outcome of funding streams from whatever number of "chiselled" programs.

It will require a deeper analysis to determine the extent to which Brownish'southward plan will eliminate these disparities, which are exacerbated past differing amounts districts are able to generate from local sources (such equally parcel taxes and private fundraising) as well equally how much they receive from the federal government.

Brown's programme based on an a academic paper written nearly five year ago by iii authors.  One is Michael Kirst, a Stanford Emeritus professor who Brownish appointed to the State Lath of Teaching, and is currently its president.  Kirst served in the same role during Brown'south first stint as governor, and is Chocolate-brown's oldest counselor on teaching.

A co-author of the paper is Goodwin Liu, whom Dark-brown appointed to be a justice on the California Supreme Court, later Republicans blocked Liu'due south nomination by President Obama to be a approximate on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.  At the time he wrote information technology, he was a law professor at the Earl Warren establish at the  Berkeley Police force School at UC Berkeley.

The third author was Alan Bersin, the quondam superintendent of the San Diego Unified School District.

While Dark-brown's funding formula has given new prominence to the ideas in the Kirst-Liu-Bersin paper, Information technology will be months earlier it becomes clear whether the paper'south core ideas will be transformed into land law.  What is notwithstanding far from articulate is whether the multiple constituencies with a stake in California's public schools are ready or able to dismantle the convoluted edifice of school finance constructed over many decades — and whether they have  the volition to practise so.

The job will be complicated past the fact that California has nearly ane,000 schoolhouse districts, each its own school lath. Many of them  will have an interest in preserving the status quo, especially if they risk eventually lose funds under the reformed arrangement Brown is proposing.

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