The Weighted Student Formula (WSF) was designed to distribute funding to schools based upon per pupil needs and the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) was intended to provide the funding for districts to do just that. So you have to wonder why SFUSD, an early adopter of the WSF, has decided not to use it as a means to distribute LCFF's supplemental and concentration grants, only the base grant. (I will tell you the reason shortly.) I naturally assumed that the Board of Education was going to revise the formula to account for the increased funding to the targeted groups, FRPM, LEP and foster children. But according to Guadalupe Guerrero, Deputy Superintendent of whatever, SFUSD has decided to forego inclusion of the two grants into the WSF.
For those of you I've
gotten ahead of, LCFF divides education funding into base, supplemental and
concentration grants. The base grant provides the foundational money to run the
schools. The supplemental grant is for low SES students, English learners and
foster kids. The concentration grant targets the same populations but adds more funding (unduplicated)
for every eligible student in excess 55% of the district.
Back to the
story. We have a district dedicated to serving its underserved populations and
the WSF was implemented by Arlene Ackerman for that purpose. It is widely
hailed as a forward thinking reform and many districts across the country have
adopted it. So why isn't SFUSD using the formula to roll out the
implementation of LCFF? There's only one possible answer. The leadership
wants to hold the purse strings to these funds to use as it deems appropriate.
If SFUSD were to roll it into the WSF, the money would be distributed
automatically according to need - the whole idea behind LCFF. But that would also mean
Superintendent Zone schools would only receive whatever LCFF funding was due them via
the WSF and the leaders wouldn't be able to fund their special project to the level they'd like. (It should be remembered that not all funds are distributed through LCFF's
three grants. Some state and all federal funding is still categorical and this money will continue to flow separately.)
The decision
by SFUSD also raises the issue of compliance with the LCAP - the Local Control Accountability Plan. This is the accountability portion
of the LCFF law . Among other things, it requires districts to get input from the community and to
incorporate that input into their district plan. So why has SFUSD already
decided not to include the supplemental and concentration grants in the
Weighted Student Formula even before it gets the feedback from the community?
Again, that
is not hard to figure out. The community engagement process is just a dog and
pony show this district puts on to comply with the State law. To illustrate my
point, I attended the first LCAP community meeting last Saturday. The meeting was
scheduled from 9 am to 11:30. At 11:00 they were only beginning to get the
input from the attendees and the meeting went only 5 minutes overtime. The whole first two hours were taken up by speeches by the Superintendent and his functionaries and some people from Parents for Public Schools - the sponsor of the event. Much of it had nothing to do with the LCAP. Among other unrelated topics, I even ended up voting to reelect the board of PPSSF, an organization of which I'm not a member and decided to forgo nominating myself under the circumstances. I could go on about the so-called LCAP community forum, but
suffice is to say, it was a pointless exercise brought to you by the public relations arm that is in essence the soul of SFUSD.