State budget heads to Gov. Brown: How education fared

Facing a midnight deadline, the Legislature Wednesday passed a $171 billion state budget for the fiscal year starting July 1 that steers an extra $2 billion that Gov. Jerry Brown demanded into a rainy day reserve and commits an additional half-billion dollars for early childhood education over the next four years. Brown is expected to sign the budget, which his staff negotiated.

Education will fare well. The 4 percent overall  increase in revenue for K-12 districts in 2016-17, while it pales compared with the unusual 11 percent increase last year, is large by historical standards. Forecasts of revenue in coming years are cloudy and will depend on whether a recession happens, as Brown predicts, and whether voters in November re-up Proposition 30, extending an income tax increase on the state’s wealthiest residents.

 Here are some of the big numbers for education in the budget for 2016-17:

 Proposition 98

• $71.9 billion: The Proposition 98 guarantee, the main source of money for K-12 and community colleges. That’s $2.8 billion more than the revised total for 2015-16, and $3.5 billion more than the Legislature appropriated a year ago for the current year.
• $10,657: Per-student funding, up 4.3 percent from $10,217 in 2015-16, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office.
• $63.5 billion: Portion of Prop. 98 to K-12.
• $8.3 billion: Portion of Prop. 98 to community colleges.

Local Control Funding Formula

• $2.94 billion: Increase in funding for the Local Control Funding Formula, the primary source of general funding for school districts, bringing total LCFF funding to $55.8 billion.
• 96 percent: With 2016-17 increase, progress toward reaching full LCFF implementation. That’s the point at which school districts will be restored to pre-recession levels, plus cost-of-living adjustments. For districts with high proportions of English learners, low-income students and foster youths, who receive extra money under the formula, funding levels are already substantially higher.
• $506: Per-student LCFF funding increase for an average district in which 63 percent of students draw extra dollars as high-needs students. That breaks down to $84 in supplemental and concentration dollars for high-needs students and $422 in base dollars. (*See clarification below.) Automatic longevity raises for teachers and mandated costs – primarily higher costs of employee pensions and special education – could consume $300 or more per student next year, according to several projections.
•  Zero: No cost-of-living adjustment, based on a federal formula, for non-LCFF programs, including special education and child nutrition.

One-time K-12 revenue

• $1.28 billion: Discretionary district funding, which also counts toward paying down previously mandated costs the state had not reimbursed.
• $200 million: K-12 college readiness grants to low-income students to add Advanced Placement courses and the 15 courses, known as A to G, that California State University and the University of California require for admission.
• $18 million: Grants for dropout and truancy prevention programs.

Teacher shortage remedies

• $20 million: Grants for teacher’s aides and other school employees to pursue a teaching credential;
• $10 million: Grants for colleges and universities to establish an integrated or blended teacher preparation program providing a bachelor’s degree and teaching credential in four years;
• $5 million: Re-funding the California Center on Teaching Careers or Cal Teach, a marketing and recruitment effort for teachers that was last funded in 2002.
• Zero: No money to establish teacher residencies and re-establish a loan forgiveness program for teachers, the Assumption Program of Loans for Education (APLE).

Early childhood education

• 8,877: Additional full-day state preschool slots by 2019-20, starting with 2,959 in March 2017, at an additional cost in four years of $100 million.
• 88.4 percent: The projected percentage of California’s eligible 209,668 4-year-olds who will be able to enroll in preschool, once additional slots are phased in; for the combination of 420,000 eligible 3- and 4-year-olds, 61.7 percent will be served, according to the American Institutes for Research.

Note: The final budget does not include Gov. Brown’s proposed $1.6 billion block grant, which would combine funding for the state’s preschool and transitional kindergarten, giving districts discretion over which programs to support.

Community Colleges

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