The Los Angeles County Office of Education is withholding approval of the Local Control and Accountability Plan drawn up by the Los Angeles Unified School District pending clarification of the $700 million the school district says it spent last year on low-income students, English learners and foster children.

Los Angeles Unified is receiving additional funds for these three categories of high-needs students as a result of the state’s new funding law championed by Gov. Jerry Brown, and approved by the state Legislature a year ago.  As a result of the law, for the first time this year all California school districts and charter schools were required to draw up a Local Control and Accountability Plan, commonly referred to as an LCAP, by July 1.

The LCAPs were supposed to outline a district’s plans for improving education outcomes for high-needs children, and how it intends to target additional state dollars it receives from the state on services for those children.

The next step in the process is for county Offices of Education to review and approve the plans within their county’s boundaries, coinciding with county offices’ requirement to approve school districts’ annual budgets by Aug. 15.

LA Unified is only one of five districts out of 80 that the county has so far not approved. By last week, LA Unified’s plan was still “in process” of being approved, according to county education officials. “The LCAP is not disapproved,” county spokesperson Margo Minecki said in an email. “The approval is pending clarification from the district.” 

In a brief letter sent to Los Angeles Board of Education President Richard Vladovic last Wednesday, county officials noted that the district said it had spent $700 million last year on high-needs children, and asked Vladovic “to provide (the) rationale that supports the identification of these expenditures.”

Based on complicated formulas set by the law, the amount a district spends in a prior year on high-needs children has an impact on how much it must spend the following year on those children.

Go here for a full explanation provided by the California Department of Education on impact of prior year funding levels. 

Both county and district officials declined to provide any additional information about what the county’s concerns might be.  “We will respond to them at the appropriate time,” district spokesman Daryl Strickland said in an email.  The district has 15 days to respond to the letter. 

But John Affeldt, managing attorney of Public Advocates, a legal advocacy firm that is heavily involved in state education policy, said he believes the county’s concerns about the $700 million it referred to in its letter has to do with LA Unified including nearly $450 million it spent last year on special education services.

In a June 6 letter to LA Unified School Superintendent John Deasy, Affeldt and David Sapp, director of education advocacy for the ACLU of Southern California, charged that the district should not have included special education funds as part of the $700 million it said it had spent on high-needs children last year.

If the special education funds were not included, Affeldt and Rosenbaum say the district should be required to spend an additional $133 million, on top of the additional $137 million the district is already  intending to spend on those children during the current school year.

Affeldt said yesterday that he hoped the county’s holding off on approving LA Unified’s accountability plan “will lead the district to remove special ed from their prior year expenditures, and add $133 million in additional funds for services for high-needs children.” He said that special education services are normally provided to all children, regardless of income or language ability , so that the costs for those services could not legitimately be counted as targeted services for the categories of children specified by the new funding law.

But without any comment from the district or the county, it is impossible to say at this stage whether the special education issue is at the heart of the county’s concerns.

This story was updated at 11:30 a.m. on August 19, 2014. 

 

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  1. Don 10 years ago10 years ago

    "The next step in the process is for county Offices of Education to review and approve the plans within their county’s boundaries, coinciding with county offices’ requirement to approve school districts’ annual budgets by Aug. 15." Maybe I'm mistaken, but I believe that county offices need only approve the traditional schools within their boundaries and not their locally authorized charters (LEA authorized). Which lead me to the next question. At my son's charter … Read More

    “The next step in the process is for county Offices of Education to review and approve the plans within their county’s boundaries, coinciding with county offices’ requirement to approve school districts’ annual budgets by Aug. 15.”

    Maybe I’m mistaken, but I believe that county offices need only approve the traditional schools within their boundaries and not their locally authorized charters (LEA authorized). Which lead me to the next question. At my son’s charter middle school. authorized by SFUSD, the Board of Trustees passed it, but who oversees it. And, as I’ve stated before on another thread, the manner in which it was developed and passed not only didn’t adhere to the legal requirements for community input (not in the least), but the Board’s passage of the LCAP was not consistent with the LCAP requirements or the Brown Act.

    Why did the Legislature require the oversight by counties of traditional public schools, but give charters a pass in this regard? They could have excluded them entirely from the LCAP process, but they didn’t do so. So who will question the school’s LCAP contentions as the county has questioned LAUSD’s?

    Replies

    • Manuel 10 years ago10 years ago

      On what do you base your belief? The way I read the LCFF law is that the state has given the county offices of education the responsibility of approving all LCAPs within the county boundaries. Else why would the so-called "affiliated" charters of LAUSD had to produce their own LCAPs? Interestingly, how these LCAPs were approved and what they contain has yet to be made public in the usual LAUSD web sites. (If you are wondering … Read More

      On what do you base your belief?

      The way I read the LCFF law is that the state has given the county offices of education the responsibility of approving all LCAPs within the county boundaries. Else why would the so-called “affiliated” charters of LAUSD had to produce their own LCAPs? Interestingly, how these LCAPs were approved and what they contain has yet to be made public in the usual LAUSD web sites. (If you are wondering why LAUSD should, well, if LAUSD makes the affiliated charters’ budgets public under its own systems, why not their LCAPs too?)

      Out of curiosity, I visited the web site of one of these affiliated charters and all I could find about their LCAP was this paragraph buried in the minutes of one of the meetings of its governance council:

      “As an affiliated charter we must write our own LCAP to state how we plan to use our LCFF funding. **** has 82 students who fall under the English Learner, Foster Youth, and Low Income category. Funding for these students ($27,634) will go towards a Coordinator position and addresses all areas of the LCAP. To address attendance issues we have a PSA. *** **** made a motion to approve the LCAP. Motion passed under vocal vote. Council approved LCAP as written.”

      That’s it and there is no attached document showing what the LCAP actually contains. Nor is it available in their web site. So how’s the money going to improve the learning of these students? By paying for a coordinator? Who will be doing what exactly? How does this meet the requirement that this funding be spend so students will be given greater or better opportunities for learning?

      If this is the extent of the effort this otherwise well-run charter made to comply with the law, I wonder how many others are sitting in LACOE’s not-yet-approved pile. It can’t be only 5 schools as the article reports.

      Similarly, the “independent” charters should have filed their LCAPs with LACOE directly. I guess it will take a California Public Records Act request to find what is in them. But what parent is going to risk destroying their working relation with their charter board by doing so? Maybe they can get the ACLU or Public Advocates to ask the tough questions.

      We should be grateful that LAUSD at least is making its process and submissions public. Ah, but what a mess shows up once closer scrutiny is applied.

  2. Gary Ravani 10 years ago10 years ago

    Obviously the LCAP statues stand between LAUSD management and their usual high standards of demonstrated competence. No doubt the statues are “unconstitutional.” Now to find a judge who can be counted on to overlook all of the obvious illogic in that assertion. Hmmmm…

  3. Steven Nelson 10 years ago10 years ago

    Yeah LA COE, ACLU and Public Advocates. Democratic reforms work best with oversight, and independent “watch dogging.” This is a good example of the play-of-forces in a multi-year public policy debate. Thanks for the COE update!