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Public Budget Forum: 6:00 p.m. November 25, 2013: District Office Board Room

Steps in developing a Local Control and Accountability Plan

In June of 2013 a new era of school finance in California was signed into law by Governor Jerry Brown. The new funding model is known as the Local Control Funding Formula(LCFF). It reshapes school funding, with the promise of additional funding (trying to recapture the level of 2007-08), and squarely aimed to improve achievement for all students.

LCFF, and its local accountability counterpart, the — are anchored by the notion that California must do better for its underperforming students, who in fact make up a sizable portion of the state’s school-age population. The LCFF significantly changes the funding formula for school districts — more money is attached to students who are underperforming. The LCFF identifies three categories of students requiring greater resources: 1) students who qualify for free or reduced priced meals, 2) students who are English Learners, and 3) foster youth. Together, roughly 40% of Berkeley students are among the population that fall into these categories, and for which the state will now provide additional need-based revenue to the district.

School districts must create a Local Control and Accountability Plan to spend the increased money. The LCAP must be passed by the School Board by June 2014. According to the projections used by Governor Brown to create the plan, school district funding will rise in increments over the next seven years.

This set of web pages is designed to provide three main strands of information:
1) Basic information about LCFF and its impact in Cutler-Orosi Joint Unified School District.
Click here to download a PDF of a presentationby Superintendent Carolyn Kehrli presented at the November 12 meeting of Cutler-Orosi staff members.

2) Information about the steps to create aLocal Control and Accountability Planfor the district.

·        The steps to creating a LCAP will include many opportunities for participation by school families, COJUSD employees, and the Cutler-Orosi community as a whole.The LCAP Calendar can be found here as a PDF.

As is true of any complex piece of legislation that touches so many facets of life in California, the state departments of Education and Finance are finding that writing and implementing the LCFF’s many details will take significant time. There are questions that remain as of yet unanswered, and school districts, including Cutler-Orosi, are closely following developments in Sacramento and in other communities as the implementation of the new formula and plan evolves.

This set of web pages will lay out what we know, and also what is still unclear, so that Cutler-Orosi Joint Unified staff, families, and community are able to participate as fully as possible in the LCAP creation and revision in future years.