 Hi, I'm Patrick Shields and I'm the executive director at the Learning Policy Institute. I'm here today to welcome you to this convening on the local control funding formula at 10. The event is designed for us to give us an opportunity to reflect back on all of the accomplishments of the local control funding formula to take a look at the degree to which it has strengthened and supported greater educational equity and quality in the state to examine its impact on student learning and to think a bit in our last panel about how the policy might be strengthened as we move forward. But before we get into the specifics of the agenda I just want to take a step back and think a little bit about how not only deep LCFF was but how broad it was in its policy shifts that we experienced a decade ago in California. So first and foremost of course the local control funding formula was an historic revamping of how state dollars find their ways to local school districts based now on student need. In addition to the base funding formula there's a 20% supplement for each student who is a foster youth English learner or comes from a low income family and an additional 65% concentration grants for each of these student groups when in their enrollment exceeds 55% of the district enrollment. That's a really big thing and made California one of the most progressive funding states in the nation. But there was much more to LCFF and I didn't know how this happened but my curse explained to me this morning it was the magic of the trailer bill where there was a lot of things put in at the last moment. First and unbelievably a radical shift occurred when 41 different categorical programs which were part of the state's funding formula that is dollars that went to the district that said they can only spend for this purpose at this level for these kinds of kids were eliminated and all block granted and those dollars given to the states excuse me to the districts to use as flexibly as they wanted. That was a major change so we not only had a different kind of funding formula but also a much greater autonomy at the local district level and with that autonomy did come the requirement that not only district administrators and school personnel but parents, students and other interest holders be able to participate in the decision making around how those flexible dollars were used. At the same time in this trailer bill the old test based accountability system which was part of the NCLB era that we all know well was thrown out and replaced with a much more thorough and broader accountability system which included eight state priorities including opportunities to learn indicators like school, climate and access to courses. So not only were students and their families being held accountable but adults and schools were being held accountable as well. To support all of that the state built a statewide system of support which included the creation of the collaborative for educational excellence and a renewed role for county offices of education and then concurrent separate it wasn't literally part of LCFF but the state jettisoned its California standards and adopted the common core state standards which focus much greater on meaningful understanding and conceptual understanding of content and throughout the California standards test and replaced it with smarter balance. So all of these things happened concurrently all at one time 2012, 2013 this all occurred and it has had major impact on the radically changing the educational landscape in California over the last decade which is what we're going to hear about from our panelists today and our speakers. So let's turn to the agenda. Okay so we're going to start the day with a retrospective panel that examines the origin of LCFF how we got to where we were and we're grateful to have an amazing cast of characters who were there at the beginning and helped with the origin and the implementation of it. Governor Jerry Brown his then state board president Mike Kirst our friend then finance director Anna Matasantos and public advocates attorney John Alfeld so that'll be the first thing. Then Rucker Johnson our colleague from the University of California Berkeley will report on a recent study that he's done on the impact of LCFF on student learning and other outcomes and following that Governor Newsom who wasn't able to be here today and sends his regrets did participate in a video interview and we're going to show that video after the after the panel. And then we'll close out with a prospective look at how we might be able to strengthen LCFF going forward and that'll include the perspectives from an educator an advocate a policy maker and a practitioner. And then the program will wrap up at 4.30 at which point we'll be having a reception outside that we'd be happy for you to join us. Okay but before we get started I wanted to thank a couple of people first to the California Department of Education Jonathan I is here somewhere for all of your assistance in getting us the data that we needed to do this work and in particular the study that you're going to hear from Rucker today. We'd also like to thank our funders from the Hewlett Foundation the Rakes Foundation the Stewart Foundation the Skyline Foundation and the Kellogg Foundation. And then just a note we'd also like to thank our audience who's joining us virtually got a few hundred people online virtually. This is the first time that we've put on such a hybrid event and we're hoping that it goes well. Okay a few housekeeping rules. We're encouraging people to wear masks if you can they're available outside which right after Thanksgiving as you know there's often upticks in COVID right after that. There is Wi-Fi available it says up here Kimpton Guest the password is fast. The briefing is gonna we're gonna keep going we're not gonna have any break so if you need coffee drinks or anything feel free to get up and go out and get that yourself. And then we're gonna have a question and answer period after each of the panels or speeches today. And there is in your program a QR code that you can use there's a link up there for questions you can see where it is or for those people here in the audience physically there are note cards in your folders that you can just write on and hold up and one of us will come and and get you. Okay so then this this brings us to our first panel which is going to be led by Dr. Linda Darling Hammond who as you know is the president of the Learning Policy Institute and also a professor emeritus at Stanford University and president of State School State Board of Education and someone who's well known here and has done so much for education in the state over the years that we thank you very much. So Linda can you want to come up? I want to call ask our panel to come up and join me on the stage I'm gonna say a few things to set the stage but we will then jump right into our conversation so Governor Jerry Brown who needs no introduction I will look for you at that far end of the served as a state of California four terms as governor I think that's a record with his leadership and support the LCFF was enacted early in his most recent tenure we are so grateful to you Governor Brown for that work and for joining us today my curse to has been mentioned already as professor emeritus of education and business administration at Stanford and my long-time colleague and friend and he served as president of the California State Board of Education for all of those four terms with Governor Brown and he was instrumental in shaping the LCFF and the reforms that accompanied it. Ana Montessantos served as director of the Department of Finance during the Brown administration and then continued to shepherd the policies implementation and evolution in her role as cabinet secretary in Governor Newsom's administration and John Athelt is managing attorney at public advocates where he served as a lead counsel on major school funding litigation and resource equity lawsuits we met when we were working on one of those together and in his work with coalitions like the LCFF equity coalition the California partnership for the future of learning he's played an important role in forming the design and implementation of LCFF and I'm going to start us off with just a couple of minutes of a historical walk down memory lane where we've been and where we're going in 2004 John Merrow did a documentary film called from first to worst that was about 20 years ago. Directing air traffic in our nation's skies building the cars we drive processing our tax returns and handling tasks vital to our health these and other critical jobs will likely be performed by the students now attending public schools in California where one of every eight American children is educated and that ought to scare every one of us we've basically turned our back on schools. Once a leader in public education California is now near the bottom. There's something missing in the system. Those schools are slums there's no better word for it. We're always on a survival level. Coming up journalist John Merrow examines how the nation's largest school system fell from first to worst and why that matters to the entire country. And here we are a few years later well actually earlier when Governor Brown was governor for the first time. This executive order will freeze all job hireings and job replacements in the state of California. California felt the effects of proposition 13 immediately. The first firings were announced in San Diego and across the board reduction in all county departments and what will happen in the schools. Summer school went away for my second child because that was one of the first things to be cut and the textbook became older and the special services for health became less. It affected a whole lot of other things arts programs music programs phys ed language programs counselors nurses librarians libraries. We cut the classroom periods from seven periods to six periods and then some school districts cut the five periods. So we actually cut the school day in high school dramatically. People who came here all through the period of the 80s and into the 90s were shocked at how bad things were in a lot of the schools. I was one of the people who came here in the late 1990s and was shocked by the conditioning California schools. So by 2010 right before Governor Brown started his second set of terms California was one of the lowest spending states overall one of the most unequally resourced and segregated states for students 50th in ratios of pupils to teachers and ministers counselors in the bottom five states on every achievement measure in math reading etc. During that time it was not only that money was being cut because of Proposition 13 but also how it was being spent before 2010. We had more of the money going to corrections which increased by about 900% which finally outstripped the public dollars for public higher education during that period of time. So it was a challenging moment for not only schools but for the state as a whole. We had a test based accountability system as Patrick mentioned that did not improve the outcomes. The tests were focused on low level skills. There was not really an incentive to enrich the curriculum. People doubled down on the math and reading tests. It was hard to know what caused ups or downs in test scores because the drivers of achievement were not visible in the accountability system. The mandated solutions were viewed by districts often as unhelpful. Some of you remember date and state and things like that that were the mandates that came down. And then the focus on rating schools and teachers during that era which was the no child left behind era as well really ignored many things that are important. Poverty, homelessness, the inadequacy of school resources, the role of district and state policies. So then it all changed. Governor Brown was elected, thankfully. Mike Criss became chair of the state board. Tom Trelksen became state superintendent. Bill Honig ran the Instructional Quality Commission. Mike at one point called this the rise of the septuagenarians and we were grateful for the experience and expertise that came to Sacramento. California then of course launched this entirely different path with the new funding plan, the new accountability strategy, the LCAP process to guide investments where communities have to think about these priorities in relation to their achievement and their budget. And then a much more supportive approach to schools. I saw Sue Burr somewhere earlier. There she is. She had a lot to do with this as well, both in the governor's office and then later on the state board, the new standards, curriculum frameworks and assessments. Also, why is this not moving forward? I'm going to need help from the back to get, there we go. This just gives you a quick look at the kinds of opportunity to learn indicators that were developed in the eight state priorities and then later in the school dashboard that really focused on whether kids were getting the opportunity to learn the curriculum, the school climate, the support systems, not just the measuring the test scores. Since 2010 we have had very strong increases in the graduation rate, as you can see. Those increases have been for every student group and especially for black students, Latinx students, Pacific Islander students which have improved at a much higher rate. We had among the largest gains in fourth grade reading from 2011 to 2019 in the nation on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. We had the largest gains of any state in eighth grade reading between 2011 and 2022 despite the fact that during that time our school population became increasingly low income and linguistically diverse. We also climbed in math for a period of time as you can see but then fell back like other states during the pandemic although not quite as much as the national average. But we certainly got hit by the pandemic like other states did. Our progress on state tests is just beginning to rebound and we still have large achievement gaps even as that process is undertaken. So we have challenges yet to confront and we're going to start talking about those now. Among those challenges is that we do have deepening poverty for California school children just last year. The percentage of low income students in California increased from 60% to 63%. More students experiencing homelessness and in foster care. We have learning recovery needs. We have educators shortages that increasingly seem to call for system redesign. We have a rapidly changing knowledge economy that's calling for deeper learning and implications for changes in curriculum and assessment. And we have state revenue challenges that were, if you're paying attention and most of you are, announced just this last week. So it's not that there's nothing to do. We've had quite an important turnaround in the state's capacity for education and we also have a set of challenges for the next 10 years. So we are going to, with this amazing panel, talk about both how LCFF got started, what it looks like today, and where we ought to go in the future. And I want to start with Governor Brown, who got this whole ball rolling. When you came into office in 2011, we had a broken education system, clearly. And you really tackled that task with Proposition 30 and LCFF immediately. I remember you telling the legislature at one point that they were going to have the fight of their lives if they didn't enact this legislation. Can you talk about why you were so insistent on this reform and how you accomplished raising taxes, which was unheard of at that time and distributing funds more equitably? Assuming my memory is reasonably accurate, this is the way it appears to me. First, I started running for governor and when you run for governor, the press likes you to have a plan on all these different topics. Crime, environment, taxes, education, whatever. So I had to have an education plan. So knowing my curse, since I appointed him way back in 1975 as President of the State Board, I called him and said, okay, what's a good plan for education? Give me a plan, I need a plan. Okay, so he told me or I'd heard it before something about a weighted student formula. I didn't know what the hell that was. It certainly did not sound exciting to me. But anyway, I got my plan together. Some were probably online and had a few points to it. And I remember being on the phone talking to Mike and actually typing at the computer as he talked to me and we got this plan going. So that's how it happened. It's pretty simple. You talk to the expert and you write down what he says and then you start talking about it. So that's how local control formats. Mike cursed, I think he read a few other scholars and he'll tell you about that. But I was just the implementer. Now, so that was that. Also, I like the idea of reducing complexity. I am troubled by jargon, by obscurity, by obfuscation, by the miasma of chaos and confusion. I like clarity. Let's get to the point. So the idea that we're going to simplify, not always different categorical programs struck me as a good idea. I remembered the first time when I became governor in 1975, I kept getting all these education bills. And I couldn't tell. I said, well, how did it with this go? I tried to think back when I was in school. All this money and all this, I didn't quite know what it all meant. And so I had a certain skepticism since I had a hard time evaluating these bills. There were sort of not many of them. And so I like the idea that we're going to give money to where it is most needed and where the educational deficiencies show up the most because of inadequate income, because of language, lack of English language skills, or because of the experience of being in foster care. That sounds so clear, so simple. Great, why don't we do that? And so that became our program. Now, as soon as you're doing it in government, everybody wants an equal share, the legislators. Now, this program was not about an equal share. Well, it was about an equal share because it was about moving from an unequal situation to recognizing that we needed to put more funds where the challenges were greater. But that meant taking some money from the suburbs, or so they thought. So that was a big problem. And we have an assembly mayor who can explain it because he was kind of part of the challenge. He represents it. He's right down there by Palos Verdes. And that's not Watts. And that's not East LA. But he's doing his good job, and he's going to tell you from his point of view, which I don't know what it is now because that was so many years ago. But anyway, we had to maneuver around the people who wouldn't benefit the most. And luckily, and actually, because I checked, by the way, because my memory is not perfect, but I called my two legislative advocates, Gareth Elliott and Camille Wagner, and just got tuned in. And they told me, I don't know why they could be so candid, but that one of the Senate leaders, or one of the lay slave leaders, didn't really understand the program and was not getting with it. But after a while, this person really got the program and became a big pusher. And that helped. And then the Black Caucus and the Latino Caucus also got behind it. So that allows us to overpower some of the resistance. I do remember a meeting that was in the small office room. We had the school boards, school boards association. I can't remember what it was all about, but it was basically the people who didn't like it. And they all complained. And we had a meeting. I don't think I convinced anybody. Now, I said, boy, we're going to have to work with them. And then, Gareth didn't think the CTA played a part, but I think we had to get some real muscle from CTA to get this thing done. And that happened. So that's all part of it. Then, of course, Prop 30 with the new money, that made everybody feel good. And we had to get that money. People said, boy, you had to be bold to go after a tax increase. I said, well, not really. Number one, the place was falling apart. I didn't get a tax increase. I might have not gotten re-elected. So remember, politicians think about elections. And when you don't have any money, people get angry. So we had to get more money. And the schools were having layoffs. It wasn't a good thing at all. You saw that in the movie. But when we designed Prop 30, the idea was let's tax the fewest people that we possibly can. And the way you do that is you go to the top 1%, which is not the other 99%. So that's what we did. Now, that's equity, and that's what we did. We went to the top 2% and we got a lot of votes. And 2, there's only relatively few of them so they can't really stop it. And that's exactly what happened. This is not a vote of all the people saying taxes. This is a vote of saying, tax them and help save our schools. That was the idea. And it passed. So the politics were good. Local control. I was this idea of subsidiarity, localism. That was the notion I got in Catholic school and it's an old Catholic doctrine from one of the popes from 100 years ago. The idea that the family is the principal institution. And then other institutions, whether it's the parish or the city government, the state and then the national government. But there's a hierarchy here in trust, the responsibility where something can be best exercised. And in this case the family or the local school. And so I was impressed by that. And it's still a big issue between the parents and the teachers. But I also think knowing how government works if you're going to run anything out of Sacramento which is what they try to do it doesn't quite work. Because when you're in the classroom it's the teacher and the students. You shut the door, that's what's there. Now you've got to have a curriculum. You have to have a good environment. You have to know what you're doing. The teacher has to be skilled. By the end of the day all these thousands of laws. And I've signed thousands on myself. I signed 16,000 laws by 16 years. By the end of the education code all trying to tell that teacher in that classroom and those students how to perform. But at the end of the day it's all about a skilled teacher. You get a skilled teacher by having a good preparation by having good on-the-job training by having good coaching good monitoring and good support and good salaries to attract people which are still not anywhere near good enough. The accountability it's very limited in terms of its impact unless you're building on a very skilled teacher supported in the classroom. And that's why I was very attracted to the idea of cutting the categorical programs giving authority at the local level and even the accountability measures through the local control accountability plan at the local level. So those are the ideas it made a lot of sense to me and that's why I was glad to do it. But again it came from Kirsten these other unknown scholars that he'll tell you about and we're ready for it. And I must say the legislature will always want to add more restrictions more mandates more orders but think of the idea of Leno issuing commands think of the legislature as in a big bunker and they're sending out the commands to 6 million kids and 330,000 teachers do this but don't do that and in minute detail getting ever more minute as the years go on and this will happen more and more. Then you have our friends our good friends in the equity community who want to bring lawsuits to have a settlement and the way you settle is you create a program and once you create a program it's some standardized program sounds like another categorical. People talk diversity but they really like standardization and as being mildly anarchic to fit with my authoritarian aspect I do like diversity of thinking of planning of idea and practices yes and that's the tension because you need some goals you need some standards but you have to let local people do their thing so that was the idea from a philosophical point of view from a practical point of view because all the state can do is issue a law sign a law issue a regulation send out an email they can't go to the school and they can't get in the classroom and if they do it's for one day a year well at the end of the day we are completely dependent on what is occurring in a classroom or in a local school and that's where our focus should be what boosts that up and I think we could get rid of a lot of regulations if we had better training better coaching better monitoring and more money for teachers we had that I think we could cut a lot of the other stuff it's a very well formed philosophy and I was honored to serve as the chair of the teacher credential commission in your administration and to begin some work on that point which I think is very well stated thank you and Mike you used to talk about the hardening of the categoricals which was part of this major reform that Governor Brown has been describing here you had a different philosophy about how to get budgets to drive better decisions which showed up in the notion of the LCAP can you talk about how you tried to get districts to connect budgets to educational ideas and actions through the design of the reform well the original ideas go back to paper written in 2008 for Governor Schwarzenegger he declared 2008 to be the year of the education reform and so Goodwin Lu who Jerry Brown appointed to the California Supreme Court and I began to put together a bunch of ideas and we brought Alan Burson in who was the secretary of education under Schwarzenegger thinking that might influence the Governor but the recession hit and there was no year of education and that got shelled so later on I'll throw out my new ideas for where you ought to go here under physical challenges if you look at something that was really designed in 2008 and it happened in 2013 we got to look at the longer run here so the basic ideas I think were expressed well by the Governor the old plan wasn't a plan it was an historical accretion with no underlying rationale it had no sense of equity in fact there was categorical programs and when they used to get too much to the low income districts they passed a categorical called program improvement grants and it was just for wealthy districts so that they could get to be the same they called it pig program improvement grants and so that was a I mean it was just nuts and so it was a big system and I think that was important as well so as the Governor said we tried to simplify it down to some basic ideas which you've heard about and at that point it became part of a broader reform as it began to pass through the legislature and with the help of a lot of people in the legislature and the legislators and staff as well we broaden our thinking into the kind of comprehensive approach that you had outlined in your opening statement there one thing we did as well as the board the state board was we had in my mind I had the standards meaning the Common Core English Language Arts Maths Science and History Civics at the center of it and then I had a core and I had this wheel around it that we would align and make all our state policies coherent and so yes we redid the assessment into smarter balance and we came up with new frameworks but we also brought in special education in some ways career and technical education charter schools and areas of that so that the policies hung together and we then used our waiver authority at the state board to enhance even more the local control so I think that was the areas the areas that we didn't one area that we did not address in that period which I want to mention is that one of our recommendations in 2008 was to adjust the entire formula for the different costs of living in the different counties if Santa Clara County assumes a dollar there is the same as Nevada or Calusa County it just doesn't buy as much and we never had any pickup on that and I'd like to bring that up and work on that in the future second I will give you a chance to come back to all those proposals yeah and so that's just one of several that I'll pick up later I want to ask you one other thing you're a budget guy initially and you were in DC working on Office of the Budget and this idea that the budget is over here and educational decision making is over here and never the twain shall meet is common in the way that schools and education agencies run but you had this idea about how to bring those together how to get people in the budget office having to think with the people in the education side of the house about what are we going to spend our money on and that was kind of critical to this theory of action around LCAP I wonder if you could just talk a little bit about you know what you were trying to do there and how you think that could be an alternative to the old way of doing things yes well the local control of the LCAP I think one thing it has its problems and I'll discuss them and others will too but one thing that we I think it's largely successful in which is overlooked is that you can't do it without bringing the budget office to confer with the curriculum and instruction area you just can't do it and those areas I observed the budget was over here dealing with an accounting code that really didn't have instruction in any sense as a way that you budgeted and then over here was a curriculum instruction department and there just wasn't the meshing of the two so that was a key idea and I think that has been certainly one idea that has helped a lot the second is budgeting is largely incremental and not really rethinking the base and one of the things we hoped for and was in setting priorities that the LCAP would help with strategy and setting priorities and it's had its problems with that but at least it's a forum for that and I think that the the underlying budget structure is really just not working well and I think that it still needs more work but I think we made some progress much more to make also involving parents they couldn't get into the incremental budgeting it was an accounting codes that were not meaningful recently we added the students to it wish I thought of that in the original part of it and I think that's enhanced it as well and so I think we've tried to bring it much more in as a programmatic priority setting area of still work to be done to make that happen given all the compliance parts of it that have been part of it I think locals ought to think of strategy priorities first then fill out the compliance part and instead often they go to the compliance part complain about that and don't get enough to the strategy I will say talking to people all across the country I think is particularly important about what happened with LCFF and LCAP is that we have these priorities we have a dashboard we ask the communities to look at how kids are doing on each of those elements of opportunity to learn and outcomes in various ways and then make some decisions together about how to spend their money and when I talk to folks around the country about accountability and dashboards and things like that I think it's important for anybody to ever look at the dashboard and have a conversation about what is it telling us about what we ought to do and then have some reason to have to get together with others and do it so I think it's been an engine for those conversations and for attention to the many measures about learning that very few states have I want to turn to Anna because you were there in the very beginning to do this and what to do and then had another bite of the apple in the Newsom administration to kind of take it further and I know that we're talking about these systemic reforms that you have a very I don't know what the adjective is very well defined vision of systemic reform that creates equity and opportunity across the whole system rather than just little incremental dollops and I wanted to know how you think about and how you think we should think about this idea of a progressive system reform I'll take a stab so if we step back and we kind of the way in which I translated our direction from Governor Brown was we got to solve for equity, we got to solve for opportunity we got to solve for results and we got to make sure that whatever we do is practical so that it happens in the foreseeable future as we go to getting back to the different elements as I think about kind of that overall frame and I think about the journey in my mind it's been about continuing to focus and continuing to double down on that base premise and that base premise that I think if I remember correctly I always think about the difference between 2012 and 2013 and in some ways the focus of what LCFF was about I thought got really sharp in 2013 and there are many things that changed me forever in the process of working for Governor Brown but there are three conversations that are very much top of mind for me and all of them in some ways tied to LCFF one was his underlying continued point of fiscal prudence is not the enemy of democracy and in my mind democracy and opportunity it's his fundamental predicate the second one was about was a conversation around LCFF and the importance of making sure that as we were thinking about equity and as we were thinking about opportunity we were thinking about it in all ecosystems and that we were focused on the principle that he reiterated when arguing for the LCFF which is that equal treatment of people in unequal positions is not justice yield and so as I think about what was being done then and what's been done since it's around really focusing on that principle and first with the focus of how we fund schools and the focus of outcomes in schools second with the focus on making sure that schools have the essentials and third really bringing that focus on equity to all of the necessary ecosystems to make sure that our state is doing what it can to ensure that we are supporting families and providing opportunities so hopefully that answers the question but that's kind of part of how I think about what that journey was about and how those pieces have continued to be part of the anchors and the focus of work that's been built on those elements. That resonates for me because I've heard you talk about it as we've been thinking about the later steps so I also want to just go back to the strategy of getting this done because it was enormous. It was really quite historic and so you've got philosophy which is well articulated here in goals and then you have to have strategy or strategic that happens in the moment to get the thing done and I just wonder if you could comment on some of the strategic questions you had to deal with and issues you had to deal with to get this going after such a huge drop. So my former boss will correct me but I think one of the things was around well there were a lot of discussions at the point in time which was like okay governor we hear you we got to get to our system being more equitable but we will get to our system being more equitable after we have gotten everybody back to equal. So it was basically like governor we hear you and we'll set up a formula that will get implemented on the 12th of never because we have to achieve adequacy first and so part of the initial question was in setting up the table and part of it in the second year was okay we'd recognize we get it we got to get to hold harmless. We got to get enough funding for everybody so that it can work and we got to get the biggest amount of funding to the places where we have the greatest needs. So the conversation first became about clarifying then became about using those two levers for solving so what's the base grant level and what is the concentration level that makes sure that at the end with the formula you're achieving the goal of equity. One thing that was happening was the whole harmless level kept ratcheting it up and it kept not being enough and I remember going to and Sue checked me if I'm off but I remember going to talk to the governor before putting together the May revision and he was like stop we've changed it three times just stop let's change it when we know what is going to get us across the finish line. So it was like really helpful in terms of focusing on where do we need to go so my recollection is CTA was the first statewide association that endorsed the LCFF even though it caused all kinds of challenges within the membership and Joe Nunes was very much focused on we're going to get this done in 2013. Interestingly my recollection is the Senate Republican caucus was the first caucus to endorse it because they thought it was the only way to get to a place in local control. So it was kind of interesting in terms of how it was moving and then we basically got to a point where I think the formula was pretty much you know landed and and then we were in like a place of word salad with a lot of confusion on the accountability system and then it became well we can't move on the formula until we have the perfect accountability for all of time and I think we had like maybe four weeks and then Sue and I were like we cannot and then folks who were opposing because they didn't want to do the redistribution were focusing on the accountability side which to me reminded me of single-payer folks that were saying there were single-payer advocates killing health reform to be able to protect the old insurance market rules and you're just like okay how are we going to get past go here and so Sue and I reached out to Bucks and John and said okay guys like we're about to get there and this whole discussion of we don't have the accountability system fully wrapped up is going to be the death nail and that can't be so you guys come back to us with like what do we got to do so that we can land this plane and so I guess that's a bit of my recollection of some of the twists and turns and I guess if I step back the main thing was we we had a boss who made us focus on where we are and where we need to go and be very creative in between and my colleagues Nick Schweitzer and Thomas Todd and Chris Ferguson saw the sunrise of the Department of Finance more days than I care to remember different iterations of how to make the math work and our other colleague who would always when we started meandering and losing our focus was bringing us back to what are we doing with Sue and we all were constantly iterating until it landed and then we pinched ourselves and then we said oh god now we got to get to implementing so that's what I remember it's a wonderful account yes I think one element is somehow we put this in the budget and everything else was closed down and the legislators wanted to get the budget done so you have the hammer of putting substantive measures in the budget and you push it across the finish line and this is not an easy thing one of the things that's extraordinary about LCFF is that there wasn't an immediate lawsuit usually school finance reform happens on the heels of a lawsuit at that moment and this was really coming out of the legislative and gubernatorial leadership process but there had been a lawsuit and John was one of the people who brought that lawsuit way back in early late 1990s really 2000s with Williams and that ended with a small settlement really was useful but it didn't do all of the redistribution that we're talking about here so what do you think was important from getting from that point in almost a decade earlier to the kind of reform that we ended up with LCFF? Yeah thanks and a really honor to be here with such a esteemed group of colleagues the LCFF I think reform would not have happened without Governor Brown's leadership and my cursed sort of intellectual power and Anna's ability to implement it and make it happen so all three of these were really critical but it didn't spring like wholly formed in 2012 as Wade has been funding in 2013 it really was a long process of examining the school funding system and a lot of advocacy from grassroots groups and equity groups to say the current system is now working it's not adequate it's not equitable it's not fair and we we need to get some you know new structures in the system the Williams case there was a even before the Williams case the commission on the master plan for education I know you submitted a lot of papers on that and geniokes and others probably in this room that started to get the weighted student funding formula in the conversation in California and then Williams in 2000 was filed that said look the state's a wash and money at that point it was the first internet bubble but we have we're 49th out of 50th and some of our schools are in third world conditions they're not 33% of the teachers reported in our statewide survey that they didn't have enough books for their kids to use in class and take home for homework and our experts in Williams had to go to the third world research where such conditions existed to say what's the impact of not having books in your schools so Williams kind of set a marker to say look the state has a responsibility to ensure the basic conditions of learning are met and it was not about ultimately affecting the funding system per se we continued the grassroots groups to advocate around this in 2000 we fought the budget cuts that turned out thousands of students and parents in 2008 and 2009 we had a bill that Assemblywoman Brownlee carried for us that was proposing to put a bipartisan blue ribbon panel together to reimagine the school funding system adequate equity wage student formula it passed unanimously through the Assembly and all but two or three votes in the Senate and Governor Schwarzenegger vetoed it concerned about cost pressures and the following year we did follow a lawsuit that was on about adequate school funding the campaign for quality education in California and then the CSBA and PTA filed a robeless one case both of which said we got to make this thing more rational built on a lot of Mike's research we've got a way to funding system we got to have a concentration factor and we got to have adequacy well we didn't get that part but I think all of that advocacy and those grassroots voices did inform the thinking when we got to LCFF and as Anna said there was a realization that year by the administration that we need equity voices to support this and come out strong and if they don't this thing could teeter and we use that leverage to you know radically ramp up the engagement to get parent involvement as a state priority and to win proportionality which was not part of the original Brown plan it was more what I call a carte blanche more money to the districts to do what they want with as they see fit and we said no no your theory is kind of an inputs in that more money for poor kids are going to help so there ought to be some parameters not the tight categorical parameters but there needs to be some parameters that that extra funding is going to increase improved services for kids and we did get that and in the statute and then we really really got at the state board when Mike was chairing. So I know all of you have thoughts about what we should be doing next so we've gotten this far it's made some difference we're going to hear more about that but I do want to give you an opportunity to say some things about the next ten years if you will Mike I know you have that list so we'll start with you. Yeah I'll go fast. Cost of living I think we need to look at that we need a study of that New York does an adjustment for different costs in their counties Texas and Florida all three states so we're a vast place so I think we need to take a look at this as the economy gets more intense and expensive in certain places. Second the big categorical that was not in the paper that Goodwin-Lew and I did in 2008 when Goodwin was a professor of law at Baldhall UC Berkeley was special education we didn't really understand it well enough to do anything and we also felt that it would be difficult to attach all those changes you need in special ed to the single bill and so I think we need to address special education there's three studies by WestEd one on finance one on governance one on accountability I think they provide the background to do it and I think having that population out there and not really part of this is not good. Third we need a new measure of poverty and need I think the school lunch program is now widely spread and pace and other groups are looking at how to learn from the federal programs like the old food stamp program called SNAP and others that has more precise measures of poverty and what are we going to do about enrollment decline we have had a huge enrollment decline and carrying all those districts that hold harmless through the pandemic boy if we come down on them all at once there's a lot of districts that are going to be howling so I think we need to be very nuanced and we're not we've never faced an enrollment decline like this all at once and I know Linda you estimated through between 200,000 and 300,000 even with TK traditional kindergarten coming in so I think that's an important I think as far as the the issue of low income schools in districts that are not primarily low income the administration has their equity multiplier that's an interesting idea I think we need to think that through more carefully on how to do it what I don't think is right is to go to a Title I program where the money has to go by direction to the state to particular schools I think we've been through a recession and a pandemic and a post pandemic all of those to me argue for the principle of subsidiarity and I think that's a major issue and then finally I think we need a study of the LCAP it's been amended six times and the last study was by Pace and getting down to facts and that was after the first change there's five more and they didn't really have a complete handle on the first one so I think we need to step back say we've done a lot we've really changed there's a lot of legislation I'll put it that way what has this done and there's a lot of more regulation and how can we really rethink it at this point So Anna you had that opportunity to come back around after watching what was happening with the Newsom administration what would you say guided the direction that this administration has taken and where you think we can continue to lean in with a longer answer than Linda Darling Hammond Yes please So I mean as I mentioned earlier I think it's kind of been to double down on focus and taking on kind of the extension of the LCFF principles so it's partly focused on what are some of the elements that we think are essential in order to be able to have the results as Governor Brown spoke focus on the teacher pipeline recruitment, retention and those elements kind of the schools and the broader community community schools some of the early childhood elements and I think you've seen a variety of different elements that are around the value proposition that is public schools focus on extended year focus on extended day focus on on the on getting to TK so I think that it's kind of in my mind it's been those elements when we see the and continued focus and we see that in the multiplier this year on making sure that we are that we continue to refocus on what else do we need to be doing to ensure that the principle of equity we're continuing to look at it we're continuing to go back and say where do we need to deepen our level of focus so first with some of the increases on the concentration side now with that principle I think of it in a simplistic way in terms of double down and increase the focus and where we see that the tools are needed across the system like in support for our teachers and for our number of teachers doing that where we see it's needed in terms of increasing support for families the important investments in CalWorks and if I can speaking to the fact that you know we're looking like we're about to go into into a downturn I think just as the focus on equity was part of the state's plan during the pandemic continued focus on the issue of the day but that North Star you know the same you know first the state is in a much better position than it was before Governor Brown school districts are in a stronger position than they were before and continuing to maintain that focus up and down is in my mind part of an important element right the state is in a good place with reforms that we see are having results so how to continue to have that focus and deepen that focus as you continue to deal with you know cycles in my mind that's been part of what the administration worked to do and part of what I see as elements for the state continuing to move forward so this idea but I hear this notion of this broader ecosystem and families in what you're saying and then the reinforcement around investing in teaching so John I want to ask you give you an opportunity to answer the same question but I also want to use a question from the audience that relates to this so what do you think is our greatest challenge in the next decade with LCFF and our greatest opportunities as you think and ahead? Yeah so I think the greatest challenge remains one that was there at the outset which is as Mike has acknowledged several times in his career we didn't deal with the adequacy we haven't dealt with the adequacy and one of my greatest fears is people say well that LCFF thing and the equity it didn't really work well for it to work we need to have the base grant be an adequate level to educate an average child and we don't have that and as long as we don't have that districts are forced to cannibalize some of that supplemental and concentration grant to just provide the basic services so California continues to get an F on the education law center yearly analysis of school funding in terms of effort we're one of the wealthiest largest economy in the world and percent of personal income spent on public education is one of the worst in America so we have the means we need to figure out how to in a 5 or 10 year plan get to adequate funding so that the formula will actually work there are other problems or other improvements that really need to be made 20% supplemental I mean the proposal is 37.5 many states have 70% or even 100% supplemental grant for high need kids 20% is not really sufficient in my mind we probably should be duplicated not unduplicated so there we have other challenges in front of us but I think it all kind of underlies getting to adequacy is one of the most important ones Governor Brown you get the last word in reality is that those who are better off are doing better and those who are worse off are doing worse so if you look at the scores black and latino it's down in the low 20s in terms of performance on state standards particularly in math if you look at the higher income middle class, upper middle class doing a lot better although still 55% so the inequity the dislocation the stress on people who don't have adequate income is so powerful that everything we try to do is still going to be modest relative to the challenge of a profoundly unequal society so we start way behind the line if we want to have an equitable society and I can tell you I have a school with 95% so-called low income and a little hot lunch and it's very challenging and what I see needed is you've got to pay the teachers enough and in these poor places like Oakland, San Francisco the cost of housing is so high how do you get the teachers then the students are there's a lot of troublesome students you have to deal with them big teacher burnout lots of teacher burnout so you need you've got to pay the teachers more you need coaching, good coaching you need some kind of school for principals so the principals have to be at the top of their game and then the teachers have to be continuously improving and it's a big challenge I just want to say we've got everything we've got 18 uniform members of the National Guard I've raised 18 million bucks for the school over the last 21 years and we are still challenged our scores are low we're fighting to get them up we're hiring I'm spending $400,000 for outside coaching Bill Honig's people are now in that company I'm throwing everything I can at it it's difficult to have the resources that probably most of the people in this room have that is however we overcome that that's what's needed we can have all the formulas, concentration I don't know what all that means all I know is these kids need a lot more than they're getting and the teachers need a lot more because a lot of times they can't manage the class they don't know enough they need a lot of coaching they need a lot of encouragement I think these are huge substantive problems just helping the teachers and the principals get better then of course you need a lot of money in the system and unfortunately you've got a lot more stuff now you've got Pre-K you've got universal healthcare with all the expanded Medi-Cal and then you've got the prison system we've got a bunch of stuff and then we've got climate coming down so I would say things are going to get tougher that's my thought it's a realistic ending well I just no because you're all here you're here for a reason know what the problem is and get at it and I think the fundamental point that you've made which we have been keeping under the rug since the 1960s or 70s is the profound inequality and income in the society the top 1% of people have more wealth than the bottom 50% combined and it's been since 1929 and children are not generally supported in society we're now 63% of kids in California public schools from low income families that's a huge change but it's nationwide and so there is a bigger picture here beyond schools that schools are trying to deal with how do you create the ecosystem in schools that's pushing back on the social neglect so on that note I know that we have used all of our time this is an amazingly brilliant panel help me thank them wow that was really something thank you very much okay so next we're going to hear from Rucker Johnson who's the chancellor's professor of public policy at the Goldman School at UC Berkeley he's also a faculty research fellow at the national bureau of economic research and a senior fellow at the Department of Public Policy Institute this is the second study he's done with LPI this one entitled school funding effectiveness evidence from California's local control funding formula welcome Rucker so great to be with you all and to follow the distinguished first panel I am particularly delighted I think to build on the conversation that happened with the origins of LCFF I think more attention is typically given to short run budget deficits versus the deficits of opportunity facing children particularly from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds that fuel achievement gaps and that influence the socioeconomic achievement mobility trajectories into adulthood and so often right the political process incentivizes short-term thinking the short-sighted policy approach ignores many of the large returns and long-term benefits to children and to society of the robust public investments in K-12 when we pre-K through 12 when we make them and these really deliver large returns on investment for the government and even pay for themselves down the road now why I'm here in part is to highlight first how money is spent matters but the funding itself has to be adequate equitable stable from year to year and to enable districts to spend strategically so that when they're targeting one resource they don't have to cut another in order to make that possible so we want to recognize the visionary leadership of Governor Brown of Newsom to continue that students aren't taught by dollar bills but that the price of educational opportunity and what money buys is really what we're trying to feature and so part of that bringing that into focus is a recognition that cross-sectional data is a snapshot a still photograph of a point in time and we're seeing that kind of photograph but what we're recognizing is that an analysis of the causal impacts of funding on student achievement trajectories requires longitudinal data akin to a movie that better illuminates the origins, development and the dynamics of learning over time and so we're going to bring that evidence the student level public full universe of public school students followed from kindergarten and even before kindergarten throughout their K-12 experiences and we're going to put that in stark contrast to using aggregate time series just snapshots that give incomplete and inadequate picture and descriptive even portrait of the causal roots of achievement gaps and instead of looking at kind of just time series aggregate time series data we're going to be looking very closely at the district and school level resources linked to the longitudinal student level data for the full universe of public school students in California I'm talking about 6.2 million students across their K-12 years I'm going to put the highlights of LCFF we've already seen some of the elements of LCFF highlighted in the prior panel so I'm going to kind of focus in on the evidence that shows how the evolution of LCFF impacted student achievement where I'm going to show causal impacts for spending for each grade every subject is the first comprehensive study for all grades all subjects for a variety of student outcomes and I'm going to also zoom into the distributional school specific effects of that spending to highlight how the spending matters but how what ways the spending was done impact the effectiveness of K-12 funding across schools now part of the exploring the mechanism is also to be able to replicate success requires us to know what school investments matter most based on the evidence and then thinking about what these next steps are we're going to talk about let me be clear about the movie that I'm describing we're going to stop at 2019 partly because that's when the pandemic starts setting in and so part two will be you know the sequel when we talk about how we recovered from the pandemic and how we got back on track but what I'm really just trying to describe first is the evidence for the first seven years of the rollout we're talking about all ten thousand schools thousand districts in the state with particular focus on the rollout period of LCFF implementation from 2013 through 2019 now the funding the 18 billion dollar commitment it became fully funded in the 2018-19 school year so that we don't bury the lead we find positive significant effects of LCFF induced increases and per people spending for every grade every subject and every school that experienced the new infusement of school state funds we see a significant upward trajectory we find that the results clearly demonstrate a dose response such that the longer students are treated for the symptoms of poorly funded schools and the higher the doses of school funding reform administered the larger the improvements in student achievement trajectories are found to be we also want to underscore that beyond describing questions around whether money matters we're putting particular new evidence about contributing to understanding of the types how when why and for whom school funding matters most now again we find the impacts of achievement increase with school age years of exposure and with the amount of increased LCFF funding I'm like wanting to okay I'm needing maybe some help with the fast forwarding capabilities we find impacts on college readiness and high school graduation rates we're going to try to continue that to be able to look at college level outcomes we're finding significant narrowing of the achievement gap by race and class significant reductions in social emotional markers that are connected to student behavior problems with significant reductions in suspension and expulsions and significant improvements for the learning trajectory of English language learners who are identified as EL students in kindergarten and most importantly it's important to recognize that because of the cumulative nature of learning early learning begets later learning and therefore the higher baseline achievement is a conduit that enables students to take greater advantage of subsequent learning opportunities in school that's further augmenting this achievement growth and that's part of the connection that we're finding synergistic effects of transitional kindergarten with the early elementary school spending increases and so I'll close on those pieces as we move forward now remind yourself where we started this is a figure that represents the whole universe of public schools in the country every dot represents a school district and the size of the dot is in proportion to the district enrollment what I want to highlight here is red represents Massachusetts one of the very significant spenders in public education and one of the most progressive funding formulas this is on the eve of our LCFF passage before it had been instituted California is in the white dots what I'm just trying to underscore here is in great level equivalence students in our most disadvantaged socioeconomic districts versus our most affluent we're seeing about a two to three grade level difference in achievement but I also just want you to fixate on not just the socioeconomic gradient in achievement but how even within particular socioeconomic strata that students in Massachusetts districts were outperforming those in California and that the gradient in achievement was much starker in California relative to Massachusetts what we document is the funding formula both the adequacy and the progressivity were a big factor and we're able to see evidence of closing of that gap and that's what I'm going to try to highlight here so remember this prior panel went through a lot with regard to it's not targeted district property wealth but the students based on free reduced price lunching goes language learners homeless foster youth so I'm not going to replay all of that but remember we're talking about a base grant of $8,000 per pupil with a larger amount allocated to the early elementary school grades to keep class sizes smaller in those early grades we got $1,600 for each high need student from the supplemental grant and importantly to account for the concentration of poverty a concentration grant to realize that equal educational opportunity can't be realized without having that additional dollars in the concentration grant 5300 per high need student in districts that are greater than 55% high need so what I want you to see about that is part of what Governor Brown was even emphasizing is this tension between increased autonomy and accountability and that what we were at the extreme in rigidity and restrictions and so one of the things that the LCFF did was also give in grant greater autonomy over how to use the money but remember we were in a situation where the hemorrhaging of funding after the great recession right that wasn't going to be turned around without LCFF's passage but the rollout was incremental and what I want you to see is this rollout is what we are leveraging to be able to identify the causal impacts of the funding independent of the coincident other policies that are happening the thing I want you to see in this figure is the 55% kink and I want you to kind of realize that funding that's both predictable and flexible allows districts to focus the spending on the needs of the local community and what we're trying to underscore is that if funding is indeed mattering we should see a reflection in the achievement outcomes that reflect that subsequent rollout and I'm going to document that is indeed what we find now again 6.2 million students we're linking the finance data for the full universe of districts dating back to 1995 we're looking at test score outcomes and all of the array of high school graduation college readiness etc ok now what you want to realize is that these pieces are interconnected and so you have to think about not just funding at a point in time but the duration of exposure so when you look at the data that I'm going to underscore we're wanting to link the funding reform to how did they spend the money is it class size reductions that were prioritized teacher salaries is it how does that affect teacher turnover guidance counselors health services we're compiling all of the fiscal data administrative salaries buildings teacher professional development we're breaking down to follow the money so that we can look at how it's connected to the student achievement and ultimately mobility patterns now this is just a summary of looking at the evidence from the elementary school grades so by the end of elementary school if we're looking in here documenting think about 2014 is really before LCFF had been really implemented and contrasting that with students from the same school who are in these grades in 2018-19 school year so we're comparing students in the same grade from the same schools but across successive cohorts that experience differential exposure to the spending increases and what you're seeing is on the left side is the left side of less than 55% disadvantage what you're seeing is an improvement in math achievement across the full distribution where the X axis is the district proportional students disadvantage so we're seeing a significant increase in math achievement in elementary school from the 2018-19 cohorts that were exposed to the LCFF throughout their elementary school years or at least a significant number of those years relative to 2014 cohorts from those same schools before LCFF had been introduced and notice we're seeing this improvement but we're seeing it most pronounced on the other side of that 55% where the concentration grant again was targeted these are not just something we see in math achievement but we see the same pattern of improvement notice 0 usually if you look at the pre LCFF period there's a significant declining gradient of achievement according to district proportion disadvantage after LCFF the improvement controlling for the baseline uh level differences in achievement and the pre-existing achievement growth differences across district that becomes important we don't just see this happen overnight so what I want you to see is what I showed you in the figure before was the darkest blue line but notice the red line is one year after LCFF the gray the kind of pinkish line is like two years after and you're seeing improvement but it's not happening overnight in other words it's the duration and the consistency and the sustained investment that's leading to the transformation we don't just see this in elementary school we see the same pattern in math achievement in the middle school years we don't just see it in math achievement we see it in reading achievement we don't just see it in middle school we don't just see it in elementary school we see this build toward the high school years that are important for college preparatory and when you put the pieces together what we see is that the evidence demonstrates that a thousand dollar increase in per people spending experience for three consecutive years led to a full grade level improvement in math so if you were able to receive this funding in your third grade fourth grade and fifth year we saw fifth grade achievement be a whole grade level improved relative to earlier cohorts from the same school prior to those funding increases we see the same magnitudes of a full grade level improvement in reading again for three consecutive years so if we're looking at eighth grade reading I'm talking about being exposed to this funding throughout your middle school years we're seeing a eighth grade reading achievement a full grade level improvement over previous cohorts from those same schools now what we're trying to also illustrate is that this translated into significant improvements in high school graduation rates about a five percentage point increase for students low-income students in districts that got a large spending increases versus a small spending increase and it's all being identified through focusing on the spending independent of these other family and neighborhood background what we also think is striking is the increases in college readiness that we have markers for college readiness and there's big achievement gap differences by race and class but what we see is that if you experience this thousand dollar increase in purple people spending throughout your high school years I'm talking about ninth grade tenth grade eleventh grade thousand dollar increase translated to a nine point eight percentage point increase in the likelihood of reaching math college readiness standards 14.8% or 14.7% increase in the likelihood of reading college readiness standards these are transformational and reasons to celebrate now at the same time there's big challenges by trying to understand what are the pathways which types of spending are appearing to matter most okay now this is where we break down not just the average effects but we break it down by all of the ten thousand schools and districts and this is just a histogram for example of sixth grade math achievement so controlling for the third grade math achievement I'm looking at the fourth fifth sixth grade thousand dollar increase in fourth fifth and sixth grade holding the third grade achievement looking similar and just looking at how does the sixth grade math achievement as a function of this increase in purple people spending we're seeing when you look across all the schools notice it's centered on one meaning on average it's a whole great level improvement but the most important thing I want you to see is not the heterogeneity or the differences in school spending effectiveness across schools but what I really want you to see is this is zero all of the histogram is to the right of zero to say all of the spending in all of the schools that received it we're seeing significant improvements okay now 84 to 95% of the school spending effectiveness in terms of differences we find that three or four major factors can dominate the explanatory power of what's explaining things class size reductions teacher salary increases that led to teacher turnover reductions that those three pieces are some of the most essential school investments that we saw consistently boost student achievement we saw accompanying that with increases in resources for guidance counselors and health services and teacher professional development that helped implementation of the common core standards for example now because I'm running short on time let me say a few things first I want you to recognize the significance of the early years and particularly even the years before kindergarten entry are a big part of you can see this just reflected in the fact that about half of the achievement gap that we see at third grade half of that was already apparent at kindergarten entry and so what I really want to highlight here is that it's not just that the funding and that students experience the largest achievement gains when instructed by high quality teachers that experience credentials and the stability of that teaching workforce matter but I also want to highlight that LCFF till the soil for the significant achievement growth students experience but the introduction and expansion of transitional kindergarten has continued to water and nurture that accelerated growth now what I want you to kind of understand is what we see is that for low income children transitional kindergarten magnified the impacts of the LCFF induced increases in elementary school and vice versa that when kids showed up at more school ready we see significant improvements so again this is all pre-pandemic but we saw about 66% of students who are eligible actually enroll in transitional kindergarten when those first rolled out we're seeing the original rollout was focusing on that December 3rd cutoff and so you can see on either side of the cutoff and we see basically this big significant improvement where if you attended transitional kindergarten and it was accompanied by a well resourced elementary school we saw a much more sustained impact of that access to early pre-k experiences and again it's not just that the early pre-k or in this case transitional kindergarten matters but it's the quality and the consistent exposure to high quality school learning environments now again I'm out of time so I'm going to close here we're here in part because there's a collection of high level policy makers researchers advocacy organizations where we're trying to know what works we're trying to know when does it work the research community is really trying to do that work I'm here representing some of that but how do we make it work on the ground and that practitioner community to kind of think about is it working in how we recover from the pandemic and the school reopenings and closing that requires a coordinated effort and the thing I just want to underscore about my final remarks is that adequate and equitable pre-k funding are the keys to seeding the future and teachers are the water and sunlight develop the skills, nurture the socio-emotional development and cultivate the gifts of our young people it's a shared investment that we make in all of our children and all systems change starts at the people level and so the recipe is really before us and the question is how do we continue to fulfill the hopes and expectations that our public school system can achieve so I want to thank you for your time I apologize for going a little over I look forward to the question answer Governor it's good to see you for sharing your thoughts with our audience on this 10th anniversary of LCFF as you know just a decade ago California's education system was failing in every imaginable way we had among the worst funding systems and the lowest achievement in the country we also had the largest class sizes and the most impoverished curriculum and LCFF began to change all of that during Governor Brown's administration over these last four years you've added more than 30% to the LCFF base budget that goes for core school operations and you've used those equity components of the LCFF formula to allocate nearly twice that much to schools from other state and federal funding sources but beyond that you've allocated billions of dollars to initiatives that further expand educational opportunity can you talk about what's motivated you to make these investments and your vision for where you think our education system should go in the future well the through line for all of this I think for every administration at the end of the day I think all of us would agree with this is our kids it's about setting them up for success in every conceivable way possible and I think that's fundamentally at the heart of the local control funding formula it's the promise of equitable education grounded in what has been identified in many ways as a revolutionary approach to school funding and by the way that approach you've got to give credit where credit's due I want to thank Governor Brown for his vision and leadership in this space and of course Anna Montessantes who I saw she carried that torch between administrations so we can continue that progress without them we simply would not be where we are today their work has created advantages and opportunities that parents now are seeing in many respects as table stakes as standard so our administrations collective investments build off that and they now are allowing us to lay claim to this and I never imagined 10 years ago we'd be laid claim to this that we now have investments that place California well above the national average in spending well above the national average in spending I know it's not enough but it's well above the national average today you know what we're also doing is kids are spending more time most now of their time most of the day at school and so we've got to make every second count and that's why we're investing just over the last two years as an example some half a billion dollars $500 million to new literacy coaches and reading specialists something I needed as a kid for high need schools in particular addressing the concerns around learning loss and addressing addressing those stubborn gaps we're also increasing learning opportunities through before and after school programs unprecedented investments simply put we've never done more and before and after school also spending summer school programs the investments place us I think in the top tier in the United States as well as the investments we're making unprecedented investments major investments in child care needs supporting our parents in their child care needs and it's not just slots we're really investing in quality I know we have a lot more work to do in that space but we're doing more in that space and we have in the past and forgive me for being so unwanted in response but we also creating a brand new grade TK for all a brand new grade it's now pre K to 12 not just K through 12 and and that is an exciting prospect and and that will continue to roll out like our after school and summer school for all programs over the course of the next few years the funding is there to make that real by the way speaking of funding last just to brief points our community schools you know 4.1 billion dollars of investments to focus on the whole person wrap around services blur those lines between the school districts and the cities and counties that surround those districts so that kids have a nurturing learning environment we're competing with the best that are out there and well endowed and supported other private schools and charter schools we're also investing and I want to thank you for this investing in the gold pathways program to build vocational programs in high schools and and doing more to integrate the work K through pre K to 12 schools and our university system to advance more successful career pathways and finally got to mention this is really important this past year we've also incorporated a new equity multiplier in partnership with the legislature and we incorporated that equity multiplier into the formula to amend the accountability measures to ensure that equity gaps within the school districts are identified and profoundly and importantly address equity is grounded in access and we're pulling out all the stops to ensure all that all our kids all our California kids have equal access to learning opportunities our work is not done but the progress we made in the last decade last 10 years I think is nothing short of amazing the seeds we've planted nothing short of amazing and I'll just close and thanks for allowing me to be a little on-wind in our response but I want to thank again you and your team and everybody out there for the progress so many of the people that are gathered in this room today that progress is because of you and your faith and devotion to our kids and and the cause that holds us united and holds us together here in the state of California so it's a long-winded way of saying this two words thank you great so as we heard you know the the governor acknowledges you you know it's many of the people in this room who work so hard to make this possible and we'd like to thank you as well okay so we're going to get to our final panel of the day which we taking up some of the ideas that we've heard so far but really looking forward as we can think about what we might be able to do over the next decade to strengthen and increase the progress that we've made so far and Tara Kenny LPI chief of policy and programs will be leading the panel and will introduce the panelists Tara come join me choose your seat I didn't know about you all but my brain is buzzing from the conversation here so far today we've heard about the vision for the local control funding formula and some of the impacts it's had and some of the challenges it wasn't able to solve at the time including how to adequately fund special education how to address widely varying costs of living across the state as you raised for us Mike how to get to adequacy Governor Newsom just described for us the ways that his administration in partnership with the legislature has sought to build on this foundation and strengthen it even further including funding LCFF so that we're now well above the national average in per people funding and creating an equity multiplier and the related changes in the accountability system to ensure equity gaps are identified and addressed today I have this distinguished set of panelists who can help us look to the future as we consider the next decade of LCFF how might it be further strengthened I'll briefly introduce them and I'll point you to their bios that are longer on our event webpage if you want to read more Assembly Member Al Muratsuchi represents California's 66th assembly district located in the South Bay and Harbor area of LA County he's a former prosecutor deputy attorney general with the California Department of Justice and former Torrance School Board member Assembly Member Muratsuchi chairs the education committee where he plays a central role in shaping California's education laws Superintendent Lamont Jackson leads the San Diego Unified School District the second largest district in the state of California in his more than 30 years working for the district superintendent Jackson's held the position of teaching assistant teacher and coach principal, chief human resources officer and area superintendent Julian LaFortune is a research fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California where he specializes in education and economics. His primary areas of focus include K-12 education finance, school infrastructure human capital and labor market policy and his work includes recent analyses of LCFF which he'll be sharing with us today and Martha Hernandez is the executive director of Californians Together a coalition focused on improving schooling for English learners she has 42 years working in public schools in California including serving as an assistant superintendent for Fillmore Unified School District curriculum director of Ventura County Office of Education and as a district administrator, principal staff developer and bilingual and special education teacher and she's the former president of the California Association for Bilingual Education. So with this incredible group of people we have the expertise in the room to thank Big on an open canvas about the future of LCFF and explore a range of ideas and perspectives. So Assemblymember Merzucci, I want to start with you first so we heard from Rucker in his briefing just now about which instructional expenditures were most closely associated with improved student performance including reductions in class size, teacher salaries and reductions in teacher turnover and so from where you sit as a policy maker how are you thinking about the implications of these findings? Yes, well, thank you. First of all, I want to thank the Learning Policy Institute for inviting me to join this distinguished panel as well as this great conversation that we're having here. I was going to start off by saying that I was always a true believer in the local control funding formula until Governor Brown threw me under the bus earlier and I wanted to talk a little bit about how I was one of the increasingly smaller number of legislators who are still in the legislature who was here when we first passed the local control funding formula in 2013 to highlight where I think we need to move forward in terms of strengthening the local control funding formula. So 2013 I arrived in the legislature and I had just come from the Torrance School Board where I was, I like to say I survived the Great Recession. I survived all the budget cuts of the late 2000s and I wanted to spell any false notions about suburban school districts swimming in funds. During the Great Recession Torrance Unified had to lay off I believe was around 10% of our teacher workforce as a result of the state budget cuts and so I want to use that to tie into what John Affle was talking earlier about highlighting the issue of adequacy. Back in the late 2000s right before we passed the local control funding formula California was still near the bottom in terms of per people spending and then we got this proposal to redistribute funds to give more to students districts with the students the largest number of students with the greatest needs in order to address their greater needs and as a Democrat it just makes sense to me as it does and we've seen Professor Johnson findings confirming that in fact was the right way to go but at the same time my concern at that time was that the base grant was not enough to ensure adequate funding to make sure that we can provide a basic education to every 6 million California public school students whether you're in a large urban district with a high number of students with greater needs or whether in a suburban school district or whether in a rural district and so I think that is one of the challenges that we're going to continue to face especially where we're looking to start entering into tougher budget years how are we going to continue to build on the success of the local control funding formula while at the same time making sure that we are providing adequate funding for all of our school districts to make sure that we're providing a quality education to all of our kids but having said that I want to focus specifically on Professor Johnson's findings the three most effective ways of funding to make a difference in terms of student achievement lowering class sizes increasing teacher salaries and reducing the teacher turnover to me all three of those are in one way or another directing focusing funding on supporting the classroom teacher and I know that research after research shows that the biggest way that we can make a difference in terms of the quality of education is getting the best teacher in the classroom and so class sizes what does that mean especially I learned this from the budget cutting years smaller class sizes means hiring more teachers having more funding to hire more teachers teacher salaries of course attracting and retaining students for teachers encouraging young people to go into the teaching profession the number one factor that's going to drive that is increasing teacher salaries and last but certainly not least the teacher retention not only increasing salaries reducing class sizes but also providing the professional development the whole child programs that Governor Newsom and the legislature have championed in the recent years those are all you know areas that we need to continue to focus on I do have a bill Assembly Bill 938 that is focusing on increasing teacher salaries by 50% by 2030 trying to use what Governor Brown originally championed in the original LCFF having funding targets to build toward that goal of increasing the essential school staff salaries by 50% by 2030 you know while I know that that's going to be difficult with upcoming budget challenges we still need to keep an eye on making sure that we are doing everything we can to address the teacher shortage crisis thank you so much and I think that that theme which we heard so much about on the first panel from Governor Brown from Anna I think one of the goals of investments in the teacher workforce the folks who are in front of students in classrooms and other staff in schools is key and the notion of how do we increase the base to be able to support those investments I think is an important one I'd like to turn to you next Superintendent Jackson so you bring a unique perspective as superintendent of a large urban district you've been working on the ground but you also have the experience of having worked under the prior school funding system as well and I'd like to ask you how you see the theory of action of the local control funding formula playing out in your district this notion of giving districts both more funding and more flexible funding guided by the state priorities but with the focus and then leaving it to you with your community to make the best decisions for your district Thank you and it is a great honor to be a part of this panel and it was great watching Governor Brown and others do their thing and I would say you know given the history of education in California I shouldn't be here because I'm a product of the broken system but what's different and what's aligned I'm a product of great educators and before I answer that question of you know what's been working I'm going to say this there are some other factors that I shouldn't be here right I'm a black man from a divorced family raised by his grandmother who passed away in his senior year the following year best friend committed a triple murder a year later his sister was shot and killed a year later his father passed away and one of his great teachers passed away of AIDS I should not be where I am but it was for as Governor Brown says great teachers providing me opportunity and access that allowed me to pursue my own career teaching it was teaching credentialing program that I was a part of that allowed me to be here is Governor Brown mentioned great leadership under Alan Burson the superintendent then superintendent part of the educational leadership development academy as a administrator so why I say this is because we already know the answer we know what it takes to provide opportunity and access to children like myself where my father worked at UCSD and made a salary of $14,000 and creating the hope and the promise that we can break generational poverty and so for me and for San Diego Unified we've benefited because that's where we have been focused to make sure that we have not only smaller class sizes as suggested by Rutgers data but quality educators because I can tell you this you can have one-on-one if you don't have a great educator no one wants their child in that classroom so you need to have qualified and quality educators so that means teaching credentialing programs that provide access to great pedagogical practices likewise you need to have great leadership focused on equity focused on creating conditions for students to belong and creating opportunities for students to thrive and that's the foundation so for us our investment has been around that and providing coaching and support side by side educators during the school day and focused on data not the specific outcomes the summative assessment but the formative assessment to drive the changes in practice and then you say okay is that enough well we're talking about our black and brown children who have been most historically marginalized our students with disabilities with IEPs our students who are multi-lingual learning a language other than their native language we're talking about a group of students who have historically not had opportunity and you have to commit to that and you have to make sure you're putting money in those areas and monitoring and so as governor Brown mentioned it takes a firm commitment this notion of the bureaucracy and strings and categoricals is just not what we need we need more money in the base we need more opportunities for students to study outside the school day you know in the video we watched the movie it talked about you know we moved from 7 period days to 6 period days we're moving from 6 period days to 7 period days to 8 period days to 4 by 4 schedules in our secondary schools for students to have opportunity in the school day and then we're investing in extended learning opportunities I had Al down you know seeing our student interns who were recruiting in the teacher pipeline program as juniors and seniors working with our elementary students that's where we're investing in the teacher pipeline such a rich example you know we talked about TK we did universal TK we were committed to using our base dollars to fund universal TK before we were getting funded from the state that is our commitment 4,400 students were involved in our program with 90% of those students staying in our district so as enrollment was declining our TK programs were sustaining that and so we've been able to use these dollars in great ways committed to putting our dollars with the most our students who need it the most thank you I think those examples are really helpful and really help flesh out that flexibility in spending guided by your data pointed you to in terms of investments in your teacher pipeline and staffing expanded learning time in a longer school day and universal TK I wonder if you could share with us a little bit about what being a concentration grant district has meant for you what is it meant to be to receive that kind of resource we heard a bit about the importance of that from Rutgers research and I think I think I know Mike Kurtz talked about the future and I would double down on all that he said because as we talk about concentration for San Diego Unified we are a concentration district at 60% we're right on the cusp if you would and that translates to about 30 million dollars and that's great but the context of San Diego Unified is changing and most recently I saw a study and I don't know the details of the calculation but we are one of the most expensive cities if not the most expensive in the nation now and I think that looking at regional aspects as Mike Kurtz suggested is going to be critical because we've been able to utilize those dollars for we have a large Latinx population many students who are language learners many students who are in poverty and when we look at poverty now we have to think differently because it is playing out in San Diego Unified a little bit differently and we could lose that 30 million dollars and but what we've been able to do in the schools where our students are showing up in great need and providing additional reading supports math supports mental health services extended learning opportunities these are our priority students these are what we say our spotlight students where we can put more educators there lower class size provide additional resources and paraprofessionals more counseling support so that's how we've been able to use these dollars but we're certainly paying attention that we're right on the cusp and a loss of 30 million dollars would be significant as we head into the out year of we're looking at a 30 million dollar reduction coming out of ESSER funds and the elimination of about $166 million to San Diego Unified and over 900 people and so we can talk about the great things that we've been able to do in terms of mental health clinicians extended learning opportunities middle school athletics that has just become bigger and greater opportunities for students to showcase greater opportunities in visual and performing arts but we're at risk of losing that and so we really do need to lean on the theory of action of the LCFF over the last 10 years but now rethink how we think about concentration dollars, supplemental dollars specifically the base grant thinking about regional aspects and the reality if San Diego Unified is facing this I imagine we're facing in other parts of California where educators are leaving and so teacher salaries and that's ongoing it's not one time and so we need to think about those things but concentration has really been powerful for us in meeting the needs of our students who need it the most it is sobering to hear you say what it means to be on the cusp and what your outlook is in terms of potential staffing cuts in what that means for your students especially in the highest need school and just we were able to do a little calculation and this is a very complex concept but you can see the dollars so we're 60 percent the cut point is 55 percent it's about 30 million dollars if we look at duplication versus unduplicated at ten thousand dollars of students we have about 15 thousand students you take the 13 who are duplicated and you run those calculations you're going to see supplemental supports of 27 million dollars concentration of 88 million dollars so you're talking about 120 million dollars roughly that you would see just simply saying that someone who is a language learner has this need and they are also facing poverty those are separate needs and deserve to be looked at individually but that's the delta that you're looking at from our district and if you combine that that's a delta of about 150 million dollars significant when we're talking about equity and access and opportunity thank you for making that real for us and I know I heard John Affleck mention it earlier and I think others on this panel are on that wavelength as well and thinking about maybe the importance of having a conversation about duplication and the count so Jillian I want to come to you next because like Rucker you've done extensive research on LCFF and you recently published a paper at the public policy institute of California in September examining the reach of targeted school funding and I'd love for you to share with us a little bit about what you found in that study because it looks further than LCFF further along in years than Rucker's study did and so we'd love you to build on that yeah absolutely and first I just wanted to say how honored and humbled I am to be a part of this panel a part of this event in the room with so many of you who've helped shape and implement, pass LCFF and really bring us to where we are today so that's a great honor and really pleased to be here and share some of the work that we've done and as you mentioned we looked at outcomes first and foremost we focused on the impact of the concentration grant which Rucker talked about and just to kind of put that into context districts that are at the highest levels of concentration of need 90, 95, 100% high need over the last nine years we've seen an investment just through the concentration grants of about $16,000 per student more in funding and that's led to in those districts 13% more of their students achieving grade level standards and that's about the same number pre and post pandemics that kind of the impact of the funding the impact of the sustained funding has had a great impact and so that's kind of where we started at but then when we look deeper the question that we had and that we've heard a lot and maybe this is coming from a place of skepticism from those who can't hold these two ideas of well we have these great impacts and yet we see these really enormous achievement gaps that have been persistent and the state's achievement is not where we want it to be and of course we've come a long way and so how do those two coexist with one another and when we've looked at it we find it's really in our view comes down to two things and one the concentration grant has provided immense amount of resources and great benefits to students in these districts that get a lot of the funding but in districts like Superintendent Jackson's that get a little bit of extra funding they're just not getting the same level of concentration grant and actually about a little over half of the state's students are in districts or the state's high need students are in districts that don't get as much money under the concentration grant or don't get these large amounts of influxes when we're looking in the thousands of dollars per pupil that have these robust impacts and so that's kind of a question really of adequacy when we get back to what other panelists have talked about and then the second part is when we look at these districts that then get less concentration funding in total and less supplemental funding the question then becomes well with that funding they're more socioeconomically mixed are they targeting those dollars to the students that have the greatest need and when we looked at that in multiple ways we find that it actually varies a lot across districts some do a very good job of this and others don't and when we looked on the most recent LCAPs that we had available and we did a statewide study of LCAPs we found about 60% of districts didn't even plan spending enough money on targeted high need student groups as they received supplemental and concentration and so that's not even just about the actual distribution just in terms of the plans that they had and so we think that that's kind of one of the mediating factors we have a lot of need there's a lot of needy students in districts that aren't just at the top where we funded very well and so how do we get it to those districts and then you know how do we make sure that these targeted dollars are reaching the students you know at the school sites and even in the classrooms that have the greatest need and so that's kind of you know I think those are the two most important points in our research. Thanks for that and you know two really important findings I'm curious if you could speak to what do you think the implications of those findings should be as we think about this audience of policymakers of staff of advocates of educators how should people be thinking about this as they think about the next decade of LCAP? Yeah I think you know as I mentioned targeting how do we target need within the district there's a lot of variation in districts so how do we make sure these dollars are targeted to the students and the school sites that have the greatest need I think that's a challenge and that you know we've talked about there are school sites with great concentration of need that exists within districts that maybe don't get as much funding and how do we make sure we can fund those districts do we get you know do we duplicate counts when it comes to funding and recognize that student need is multifaceted with coming in with various needs that exists both inside and outside of the classroom so I think that's where we want to go you know in the next decade another thing that I want to bring up and this has come out of some of our research is that we're often looking at dollars and you know are we making dollars more equitable across and within districts and this has certainly happened but when we break that down into the specific resources you know class sizes, teachers, quality educators makes the biggest difference in a district what we see is that often times there's still this gradient where the most experienced, the most credentialed educators are in the most affluent schools within a district and even districts that actually tend to spend more at their higher need or their lower income school sites often have schools at those sites or they often have schools that have fewer teachers or fewer educators so smaller class sizes but also less experienced educators and so there's this kind of trade off where we have these schools with a lot of turnover, with a lot of need and yet we have less experienced educators in these school sites where in the more affluent side of the district there may be educators with more experience more qualifications but we spend a little bit less on those schools because we have larger class sizes is that the right trade off is that what maximizes or helps kind of promote the equity that we want in the system I'm not sure what the right level is but I think that's something really worth considering going forward is how do we kind of break that disconnect that we have that once we get dollars to the district it's really about providing these quality educators and are we doing that and are we doing that consistently without the levels of turnover that we see in these school sites with the greatest need and I think we see those same inequities play across districts and so being a district with a high concentration of high need students that can take those additional resources and put them into say increased salaries in a place like Oakland or San Diego or San Francisco which is my district can be critical to tackling those inequities as well and I think Martha I'm guessing a lot of this resonates with you given the work that you do at Californians Together and you know we know that we're a state serving a very linguistically diverse population more than half of entering kindergarteners speak a language at home that's not English and at any point about one in five students in California is classified as an English learner so recognizing this LCFF pay particular attention to the needs of English learners and these students along with students from low income families and students in foster care are one of the groups that generate the additional funds so in your work you have played a key role elevating the needs of English learners and monitoring how LCFF is working to meet those students' needs and what have you seen in terms of how LCFF has focused attention on the needs of English learners and so thank you Tara and also I want to also express that I am honored and humbled to serve on this panel with this distinguished you know individuals so thank you to the Learning Policy Institute and yes for over a decade since 2013 we have uplifted the needs of English learners and in fact in collaboration with the Center for Equity for English Learners at Loyola Marama University we have written and published four reports over these ten years and we have looked and analyzed a district LCAPS for their targeted attention and focus to English learners and I do have to say that after every report we hoped that the findings would be different but really overall our findings have underscored that there has been limited sporadic targeted attention to English learners in district LCAPS and of course this is very troublesome because of the fact that there continues to be a persistent achievement gap and so but I do want to say that after ten years there is progress and there is something to celebrate and and so we have kind of made a decision that we will probably even though we said that we would not we probably will write a fifth report and it is we are anticipating that we will find that there has been a sharpened focus on English learners due to the new LCAP template and to the governor's budget trailer bill SB 114 you know in our fourth report we noted that there was an absence of differentiated growth targets which means that districts were not being very much attention to gap closure you know there is just very little and so we are you know we are very concerned about that but we are celebrating that the new LCAP template is requiring specific metrics for identified student groups in terms of desired outcomes and goals and so we you know celebrate that this is a big step in the right direction and in terms of the equity multiplier we know that those LEAs those local educational agencies that have schools that will receive this that those schools will be required to provide a focus goal for these identified student groups and so we believe that there is going to be a change in that actually English learners and not just you know monolithic English learners but the different profiles of English learners will have added attention. I think it's very important to note that we feel really you know pleased that the new LCAP template has affirmed the importance of educator partner input specifically in terms of providing input about the disparities between student groups and I do have to say that we are happy that now there is a requirement that long-term English learners be reported as a you know specific student group and that their needs will no longer continue to be invisible more visible and hopeful that districts will actually you know grapple with how to meet the needs of these very needy students. Thanks for pointing out that important change and you know there's been a lot of discussion today about the local control accountability plan. Thank you. And the importance of that document right first for fostering conversations at the local level about what is our data look like and what does that mean for our educational goals as a district and where we want to focus and then how do we connect that to budget decisions and that the LCAP will do that around long-term English learners as well as and I think an important step forward and it's also a lot of change for districts to adapt to right. We heard from Mike it's been through six changes and that is a process each time. What else do you want to share in terms of opportunities you see to strengthen LCFF over the coming decade. I'm happy you asked. You know on July 12th 2017 I was privileged to witness the State Board of Education under the leadership of then President Michael Kirst to unanimously adopt a very research-based comprehensive aspirational English learner policy the English learner roadmap that superseded the English only policy of Proposition 227 that was in effect for almost two decades and I really think that this policy is really a critical crucial framework in terms of providing coherence for California's 1.1 million English learners and so I am looking for perhaps some alignment between LCFF, the LCAP and the English learner roadmap when we're talking about what we need to do for English learners and we're talking about alignment in terms of a district's goals, actions and services and so what can we do to provide guidance and resources and tools and technical assistance to make that happen I also think that we need to embed the English learner roadmap into all levels of the system of support and I think this would go a long, long way in addition to perhaps revisiting the calculation for the LP, the English learner performance progress indicator progress indicator to really help to set aspirational goals for English language proficiency and then this speaks of course to the importance of supporting and expanding a comprehensive English language development program in our schools I also want to say that all of this should be backed with a statewide implementation plan for the roadmap we've talked about policy the policy implementation gap we really need to support our districts providing guidance and other technical assistance to help them implement this very big lift because it is a big lift it's a very aspirational comprehensive policy and I think that California could take the lead in terms of providing assets based and research based strategies for educating our English learners and I do want to say a couple of other things one is in terms of biliteracy we just saw a report from the Century Foundation about the fact that English learners do better when they're placed in some form of bilingual setting and so my thought goes to I mean I think to kind of semi quote the report said that English learners do better learning their home language they do better learning English over time and they do better in academic subjects and so why can't we somehow leverage LCFF to expand initiate these type of programs to promote these programs for the benefit of these 1.1 million English learners and so I probably have more ideas and others on this panel too so like one of the things I'm taking away from what you're saying is the importance of coherence amongst policies and the opportunity right thank you we want to get to all these questions so I'm going to ask you all anybody else want to chime in on the next decade of LCFF and additional opportunities that we have you see to strengthen this policy I will first say thank you for that we are designing our goals around the LP which is going to be critical for San Diego Unified and our students the additional piece that I would say in terms of alignment is and we heard it with the first panel is really getting down to the site level and so some of us might say single plans some might say site plans but the plans that are designed at the schools really with specific students in mind our Latinx students our language learners our students with disabilities our black youth we need to really tie that into our LCAP and make sure that the funding is specifically going to those those schools why that's important as we think about LCFF going forward and Martha you mentioned this we say English learners as a broad group of students but newcomers are very different than students who are in their second or third year very different from a long term English learner very different from an English learner who comes from native lands where they have education versus students who have no formal education and so just in that narrative we have five or six different types of students so we need to pay attention to the individual student because that's the spirit and the development of the LCFF as spoken about earlier and so I really I want to just reiterate what Mike Kurtz mentioned about paying attention to the region we are very different post-COVID we're very different ten years from where we were in 2013 and we need to pay attention to those regional aspects we need to think about the economic construct within school districts within cities and counties and the state that's important but I think is crucial many times students don't have their needs being met we go to referrals and they're being assessed for special needs right and so our increased numbers are in the realm of students with disabilities or students needing an IEP and the fact that we don't consider that as one of the factors I think we're missing out and we're not aligning the theory of action and the the central idea of LCFF with a large group of students many of them who are disproportionately black and brown children and language learners and so I think we need to pay very, very close attention as mentioned earlier in that way and I was talking to Superintendent from Mount Diablo I don't know if he's still here and while our districts are vastly different and I don't know his district at all one thing we agree with is that all money is not good money the money that comes with strings is very difficult for us without the flexibility to design for the children that we serve he serves a group of students that are different than the group of students I serve they may be black, they may be brown they may be language learners but they're very different the communities are different and so what I would suggest and I'm not speaking on behalf of all superintendents is more flexibility more money in the base and hold me accountable for making sure that it's in the plan that it's aligned to the goals and the expectations and I'm yielding the results that we expect and if not hold me accountable don't punish the children that's on me as an adult Thank you Superintendent Jackson for bringing us back to the theory of action right there I want to get to at least a couple of questions and very patient with us on Q&A so I'm going to point this one to you Assemblymember we know the fiscal outlook is not as positive right now for California so how might policymakers think about strengthening LCFF in tighter fiscal times? Yeah I just had an opportunity to talk with Linda Darling-Hammond before this conference in a general sense that we're all going to be watching closely when the legislative analysts gives their updated projections in terms of the budget shortfall for next year tomorrow but in the meantime I think we're all expecting tough challenging budget years not only next year but possibly thereafter and so I think a lot of the discussion that I'm hearing the legislature is that we need to focus on improving implementing the programs that we have already initiated whether it's the community school movement that I think has been a reflection of the increased investments to the students with the greatest needs trying to provide that wraparound services to address the whole child whether it's to continue to build on efforts to improve instructional programs for our English learners that we need to focus on improving the implementation of existing programs rather than adding new programs so I think I'll thank you for that I don't envy you in your job right now it's coming up so I think we have time for one more question and I'll pose it to anybody who wants to jump in here as you think about the next decade of LCFF what are you most optimistic about and what are you most concerned about as it relates to English learners and that is we need teachers who have the skills and who are qualified to address the needs of all students in California whether that's our special needs or whether that's our English learners and that we also have a bilingual teacher shortage so it's a little bit nuanced that it's not just teachers and when I'm thinking about planning the seeds I'm thinking about TK I believe that we want TK to be additive and if we want it to be additive I'm just kind of thinking what are our plans to ensure that these students build on their home language as well as learn English and what are we going to do in terms of providing them with bilingual teachers that they need to thrive so I'm thinking about our youngest learners at this time in the classroom anybody else with a quick answer? Yeah I think I would say I'm optimistic because I get to be in classrooms on a regular basis when Al came down and we were in classrooms I think we left recognizing that we have a large number vast majority of our students who love to be at school and we have educators who are happy that we're providing spaces and places for our students to grow and to thrive and despite the challenges financially within communities our students love education and our 11th and 12th grade interns who want to become educators recognize the difficulties that our educators are facing and articulated to us but we walked out of there with great hope and a beautiful outlook and I get to see that on a regular basis so I'm hopeful and I'm deeply committed with a tremendous board of education and a tremendous group of parents and labor partners so I have great hope I'm excited I think what what I want to say I'm not discouraged by it but I want to encourage us to stay focused on the theory of action and our core values at the end of the day folks ask me how do you deal with parents who are upset and my perspective is this they love their children every single parent loves their children so much that if we're not meeting their needs they're going to let us know and so for me I just want to encourage us to remain focused and I hope we don't lose that focus thank you I think that's a pretty good note to end on and I know happy hour I'm seeing the red sign happy hours out the door I want to thank you all I think you surfaced a lot of very important ideas for this community to be taking up and all of the folks who are joining us online will be showing up at your committee I'm sure and we have our work cut out for us in the decade ahead thank you thank you thank you so much that was a wonderful panel we're done for the day we're ready to go outside to our reception but before we do want feedback so there is a survey link in your program and in the slides and if you could take a chance to do that we'd appreciate it thank you very much and for those of you remote thank you for sticking with us good bye