Our View: School funding formula needs tweaks

Perhaps few Californians realize it, but the state is in the midst of transforming the way it finances public education. The change was long overdue and the system that Gov. Jerry Brown is replacing was broken beyond repair. The governor’s laudable goal is to direct more money toward schools with tough-to-teach or disadvantaged students.

It’s a new system, and nothing involving 6.2 million students and more than 100,000 teachers will work without flaws. So the report from the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California suggesting the new system might need some tweaking before it can live up to its promise is not unexpected.

The PPIC report notes that 63 percent of California’s public school students are considered high need. More than half qualify for free or reduced-price school lunches, and nearly one-fourth are English language learners. Many, if not most, of California’s classrooms are filled with children from different cultures, different ethnicities and with different capabilities. Most want to learn and all deserve the best opportunity to do so.

Under the new approach, every school district gets a base grant with an identical amount of money per student. On top of that, districts get a supplemental grant for each student who is poor or not yet fluent in English. Research shows these students are tougher to teach, requiring smaller class sizes or additional teacher aides, for instance. These grants are equal to 20 percent of the base grant for each student.

Plus, districts with higher concentrations of high-need students – more than 55 percent of their total enrollment – get another grant, equal to 50 percent of the base allocation for each student over that threshold. The PPIC report shows that Merced County, for instance, is among the counties with the highest percentage of high-need students.

The combination of all of these grants can be dramatic. The report highlights two districts of nearly equal enrollment – Fremont Unified in the Bay Area and Stockton Unified.

In Fremont, about 31 percent of students are high need. In Stockton, the number is nearly 90 percent. As a result, Fremont gets about $8,200 per student, while Stockton receives $10,400 per child, or about 27 percent more.

Here’s the problem: In some districts, the high-need kids are concentrated in just a few schools. That means while those schools have all the challenges of highly concentrated schools elsewhere, they don’t get extra money because their entire district is not impacted.

While that’s a problem in many Southern California counties and in Sacramento, it’s less of a problem in Merced and Stanislaus counties where there is less income variation from school to school.

One of the goals of Brown’s reform was to have state money follow the students so that needs and the funding to meet them were better matched.

The governor and the Legislature ought to consider a midcourse correction to better pinpoint specific schools most in need, then direct state money to where it will do the most good.

This story was originally published March 18, 2015 at 8:18 PM with the headline "Our View: School funding formula needs tweaks."