By Jason Islas
Staff Writer

November 20, 2013 -- Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District (SMMUSD) officials gathered in the cafeteria at Lincoln Middle School Tuesday to discuss the biggest changes to school funding in 40 years.

Tuesday was the first of many meetings leaders expected to hold with community stakeholders to discuss a new California law meant to target needy students for more funding.

While Governor Jerry Brown’s new Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) means that all of California’s school districts will see more State money, those with high-needs student populations will see their funding increase the most.

“You get to decide what (the new money) means for you locally,” Sheila Vickers, vice president of School Services of California, Inc. told the crowd Tuesday. But “you really have to focus on underachieving students.”

The formula is designed to give extra funding to districts with high concentrations of students who are in the foster care system, are English language learners and are from low-income backgrounds.

Within Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District, about 30 percent of students fit in one or more of those categories.

While SMMUSD -- and other California districts -- will see an increase of about 20 percent for each of those students, needier districts will see their State funding go up faster.

For example, nearly 74 percent of Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) students are on free or reduced lunch programs -- an indicator that they come from low income families -- and about 27 percent are English language learners.

Like other districts in the State, LAUSD will receive an additional 20 percent increase in funding per student in those categories but because the district has a concentration of more than 55 percent of high-needs students, it will receive an additional 50 percent funding increase per student in those categories.

While the new LCFF gives local districts more control over how funds are allocated, districts are still required to demonstrate that they are using the money to meet broad State priorites.

Among those priorities are “parental involvement,” “pupil achievement” and “pupil engagement.”

All districts will have to draft Local Control Accountability Plans (LCAPs), which show how they are spending the new State money to address those priorities, as part of the their annual budgets. ("Santa Monica-Malibu School Board Holds Special Meeting on State Funding Changes," November 19)

Tuesday’s meeting was “just the start,” said SMMUSD Superintendent Sandra Lyon.

“We wanted to have the opportunity to have the community here” to talk about the LCFF, she said about the meeting.

In communities as engaged as Santa Monica and Malibu, officials believe that it won’t be hard to get people involved in the LCAP process.

“We have a number of existing groups” that are prepared for that type of discussion, said SMMUSD Board of Education President Laurie Lieberman.

She said it’s simply a matter of logistics to bring all the interested groups together to draft the LCAP.

The State isn’t expected to have a template LCAP ready until March 2014, but since the District will have to approve its LCAP along with its budget in June, Vickers recommended moving forward with the process as soon as possible.

“You can develop goals without having a template,” she said, adding that she was glad to see so many turn out so early in the process Tuesday.

Lyon said that she hopes to have another meeting in January, though the specific date has yet to be finalized.