Reading a letter to the editor, I find the writer illustrates that the school funding formulas are increasingly complex and the public simply does not understand them.
The writer referenced a September 11 commentary submitted by Jason Taormino and the Chamber Board in support of the parcel tax, Measure H.
As the writer quotes, “… the Davis school district receives far less funding than most school districts in the state and as such, requires community support.”
Naturally the writer is unaware of how schools are funded. She asks, “What is this statement based on? What are the conditions that make the situation in Davis different from other districts? Why is this statement given as a fact without supporting information? Will the current high quality of our schools suddenly plummet without this parcel tax increase?”
With space limitations in newspapers it is hard to build foundation into articles, but this one is well-founded. Last night at the Vanguard’s school board candidates forum, Susan Lovenburg did a great job of articulating the challenge faced by the district in response to a Vanguard question along similar lines.
The state provides the baseline funding for school districts based on a per pupil amount based on ADA (average daily attendance). In DJUSD that represents about 80 percent of the funding. The state then offers additional monies based on the number of low-income and otherwise at-risk students. It is here where our district is put at a disadvantage and therefore receives less funding than most school districts in the state.
As Susan Lovenburg explained, the fact is that Davis, while having a growing number of Title 1 and low-income students, still has a good deal less than elsewhere in the state. The Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) provides more funding for those students as they have higher needs, and that funding can help with a number of programs that would hopefully close the statewide achievement gap.
The problem is not, in fact, LCFF – according to her, the problem is that the baseline funding through ADA is insufficient to fund the programs needed to provide high quality education in districts, including DJUSD.
Our school district makes up for the shortfall in the basic level of funding by raising money locally through the parcel tax. The parcel tax accounts for roughly 12 percent of the district’s funding.
As Mr. Taormino put it, “Measure H, a $620 annual parcel tax, will support class-size reduction, retain approximately 100 teaching and staff positions and assure that our outstanding academic programs are maintained. Measure H continues to support other programs, including reading and math aides, counselors, librarians, elementary science, athletics, world language programs, and technical and vocational training.”
In short, without Measure H, the district would have to cut a lot of the programs that separate DJUSD from other districts.
There are other important questions here as well. The reason that the district has increased the amount from last time, when it was roughly $530, was due to changes in the way money was collected from multifamily units as the result of legal challenges from Jose Granda, one of the school board candidates, and others.
The board made the decision not to go up to $750 or $960 as Susan Lovenburg and Alan Fernandes on the board, candidate for the board Bob Poppenga, and the Vanguard felt necessary. The board had to balance its programmatic needs against electoral challenges of passing a higher tax.
Mr. Poppenga on Sunday indicated that he felt that the district should have polled more to attempt to find a “sweet-spot” – a place where more money could be collected but the voter support would remain at the two-thirds level needed for passage.
In an ideal world, the state would increase its allocation to the district. For DJUSD that might mean another 20 percent increase in funding. That would allow the district the funding it needs to maintain its level of education without a parcel tax.
Then again, in our view, that is still only scratching the surface. DJUSD has had trouble recruiting new and quality teachers, in part because of the inability to match other districts’ salary and compensation systems.
While money is not the only answer here, clearly the district is need of more resources to be able to provide the level of education we expect in our highly-educated and affluent community.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
David,
Thank you for your articles on education. I have a number of comments’
“The Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) provides more funding for those students as they have higher needs, and that funding can help with a number of programs that would hopefully close the statewide achievement gap.”
It could, but of course it hasn’t, as the money has been sucked up by insiders and in most districts has funded 0 new programs or activities. Several districts are currently being sued by over this. However as the entire initiative was a union-driven scam the local districts are committing to money to future pay and benefits in such a way that to redirect it to pupils will result in the bankruptcy of school districts.
“The problem is not, in fact, LCFF – according to her, the problem is that the baseline funding through ADA is insufficient to fund the programs needed to provide high quality education in districts, including DJUSD.” This is an intellectually dishonest statement apparently driven by Susan’s needs to support the political leadership in Sacramento due her day job and her position on the school board. While overall funding for K-12 is way too low and a result of misplaced priorities the state is diverting money from our district so that other districts can offer much more generous pay/benefits to their employees. For example LAUSD announced a 10% increase on a much higher base driven by this shift in funds. In addition LAUSD has increased admin staff by 22% while the census drops dramatically. This is all driven by the LCFF scam.
What I would like to hear more of is the number of inter-district students and what effect they have on our average spend. While I can see some benefits from spreading costs over a larger base they do not pay the Parcel Tax and therefore lower the average funding per pupil. Is there data in these students?
quielo: What I would like to hear more of is the number of inter-district students and what effect they have on our average spend. While I can see some benefits from spreading costs over a larger base they do not pay the Parcel Tax and therefore lower the average funding per pupil. Is there data in these students?
There are ~580 inter-district transfer students this year. Most of them are transfer students by virtue of parent employment in Davis. This is legal under California ed-code. The two largest employers in this category are UCD and DJUSD. Increasingly more teachers in the district live outside of the district, because of cost of living. As discussed previously on this blog, DJUSD teachers are falling behind neighboring/nearby districts in compensation. One compensation that can be available for teachers in absence of salary/benefits is being able to enroll one’s child in the district. Inter-district transfer is available on a space available basis. Once classes are determined for the year, if there are classes that are still under the pre-determined cap for class size, then students can be accepted. Some classes don’t have caps or have very high caps, such as music performance classes and PE. Allowing inter-district transfer students allows for more efficient staffing while the district collects state ADA money for that student.
If you want to reduce the space available for students to come in by inter-district transfer, then you will probably see teachers less likely to apply to work here, other current teachers leaving, and additional pressure for the district to raise salary/compensation for teachers.
At the current level, I think it’s a net benefit for the district to take inter-district transfer students.
wdf1 wrote:
> One compensation that can be available for teachers in absence of
> salary/benefits is being able to enroll one’s child in the district.
Thanks for the info that there are ~580 inter-district transfer students this year.
Do you have any idea how many kids have parents working for DJUSD or UCD?
If you don’t have any “data” on this do you have any idea (even “balpark” idea) of the numbers (like ~10% DJUSD parents, ~20% UCD parents, ~70% Other parents)?
I don’t have specific numbers. But it is “attendance by parent employment” that allows for the transfer. Without it DJUSD teachers would not have the opportunity to enroll their kids where they work. But it also allows other out-of-town Davis employees to do so as well, so other business have that benefit of attracting a larger applicant pool.
wdf1,
Thanks for the numbers. Could I ask where you got them? Bob is on the right track IMO in working with UCD. Someone need to talk to them about providing cash or “in-kind” aid to our schools. Channeling Theodore Roosevelt the stick would be a reduction in transfers.
The second part of the equation is looking at district performance comparing the two groups. If the IDT students are higher achieving then we want to keep them, if they are lower then we should get rid of them and if they are the same then we need just go with the financials.
They aren’t commodities. They are here for a reason. We did IDT because we worked here, our kids had preschool here and daycare here, and this was our community. We just happened to live outside of the district.
By the way, you can’t just “get rid of them.” You can phase out accepting new ones, and you can require that IDT attendance be uninterrupted. Even that would result in a substantial loss of revenue to DJUSD, and as noted inter district transfers are on a space-available basis.
Overall I strongly believe IDT students are an asset to the Davis schools, not a liability.
Why would UCD care? People seem to think we have leverage over UCD. We don’t.
“We just happened to live outside of the district”
You could certainly ask to be annexed to the district. My understanding is that the county board of education controls that process. I would like to see all the attendees paying the parcel tax. I think it’s highly unfair that some people pay and some don’t.
Free riders include
IDT,
opt outs,
apartment dwellers
people who live in state exempt housing
If people in adjacent areas want to join the district I would not oppose that as long as they paid like I do.
The district will certainly not annex in someone who lives in Solano County. They wouldn’t even annex in someone who lived literally yards from the district boundaries between Davis and Woodland.
We offered to pay the tax. We offered to pay a fee. We were told repeatedly that there is no legal way to mandate that IDT parents pay to attend the district. None. Any that chose to do so could make voluntary contributions, but it could not be mandated in any form.
As it happens, I pay the parcel tax because we own the property where our business is located. That seemed important to some of the county board members when we appealed (to the county board) the district’s attempt to remove IDT’s in the 1990’s. And our appeal was upheld, as were a few others (including the family that lived just outside the boundary). But I did learn the ins and outs of inter district transfers to a degree that I never expected when we enrolled our kids in kindergarten originally.
In my opinion, based on what we learned during that process, the district cannot remove a child who has come into the district due to parental employment in or by the district, and who has attended as a transfer student without interruption. State law seemed pretty clear on that, though the district disagreed; I would note that Elk Grove district agreed with our interpretation as they dealt with some overcrowding issues at the same time. No precedent was set in our appeals.
But canceling IDT’s is very disruptive to the child, and of little benefit — probably actually a net cost — to the district.
Don,
Agreed that state law tends to side with uninterrupted schooling though I believe there may be an inflection point when students move from elementary to junior high. As I have noted elsewhere it is my belief that IDTs have better results than local students but I would like to see that data to be sure. We could certainly stop accepting new IDTs if it made sense or expand the district boundaries. There is no obligation in other counties to accept IDTs based on employment and I would be skeptical that we could restrict acceptance to DJU employees though perhaps I am wrong.
I see two other possible paths:
Redraw the district boundaries to the city boundaries. Possible but difficult.
Start a parents group of IDTs and encourage them to donate.
quielo: opt outs,
That includes SSI recipients, which I believe is the only income-connected condition for opting out. So you don’t want to include them as acceptable for exemption either?
apartment dwellers
The school parcel tax assessment for apartment dwellers used to be higher because of a separate assessment rate, but Granda signed on to a lawsuit that did away with that, so apartment dwellers generally pay a lower rate. Now he attacks school parcel taxes because apartment dwellers pay such a low rate.
Don wrote:
> The district will certainly not annex in someone who lives in
> Solano County. They wouldn’t even annex in someone who
> lived literally yards from the district boundaries between
> Davis and Woodland.
I know that everyone “South of Davis” (and South East of Davis in El Macero) is in the DJUSD (and pays school parcel taxes). Is there something different for those “North of Davis” between Davis and Woodland. Some new homes have been built just north (and east) of Davis in recent years and I always assumed that they would automatically get to send their kids to DJUSD schools.
My neighbor is a 20+ year elementary school teacher for DJUSD. When he learns that one of his students is an IDT, he is wary. In his experience, parents keeps kids in neighborhood schools unless there is a behavior issue. Sometimes coming to Davis takes care of it, but a number of IDTs require a lot of extra attention.
This is why Granda should get everyone’s vote for the school board. It’s statements like Poppenga’s where they want to extract every penny from the voters that they think they can get away that I have a problem with. Granda will be the best steward of our money.
I came from a district where the schools added more than $250k to the value of the homes. I arrived at that number by looking at similar houses across the street from each other along the district edges. That district took very few Inter-District Transfers so the only way to get in was to live there. It did have significantly higher scores though. For example
Previous Elementary School
English Proficiency (state avg 44%) 88%
Math Proficiency (state avg 33%) 85%
Current Davis Elementary
English Proficiency (state avg 44%) 69%
Math Proficiency (state avg 33%) 66%
So not sure what value the schools are adding but it is something.
Quielo: Perception is more important than reality and people believe Davis Schools are probably better than they are, hence your point…
CF,
Probably they feel they have to better than Woodland and Dixon and then call it a day.
quielo: I came from a district where the schools added more than $250k to the value of the homes….
Standardized test scores of a school are a way of telegraphing the social level (by income and parent education level) of the neighborhood. High test scores mean that only more affluent families will be able to afford a house in the neighborhood, which plays out in housing values. Instead of saying, immodestly, “we moved into the affluent neighborhood,” you can say, “we moved here because the schools are good.” There is self-selection going on.
In Davis, lower income families can still live here by living in the student economy for housing. That may not have been the case for your previous community.
There is of course a prestige aspect however that is not all of it. But to your point one of the first things I noticed in Davis was that people are not interested that much in the appearance of their houses. I’m very comfortable with the low-key lifestyle.
Some people really do care about the education of their children and if you are considering private school paying another $400k for a house and saving $30/year makes a lot of sense.
Barack Palin: I don’t see why Granda would gain my vote. The statements I have read from him indicate he doesn’t understand finances very well. I would rather a school board member looking to maximize school funding.
Chamber Fan, how about a school board member looking to get the maximum out of what funding they have?
For instance, a friend told us of a kindergarten teacher who only teaches for 4 hours in the morning and has the rest of the day for prep time. Really, how much prep time does a kindergarten teacher need? I remember when I and my kids attended school the kindergarten teachers taught two sessions per day. How much of this type of waste is going on?
I’m no expert on teaching. But if heyou don’t understand how funding works, I don’t see how he can be the kind of watchdog you’re looking for.
Who says he doesn’t understand how funding works? You?
I am under the impression that one reason entry level teachers are paid less in Davis is because of the smaller class sizes. Therefore, I would think DJUSD would attract teachers who value the lower class sizes. If teachers don’t value lower class sizes than we should find out why.
A number of years ago now, I looked at the step schedules for a number of districts in our area. It was true then that an entry level teacher was paid less in Davis than elsewhere, BUT 10 years in and after earning a masters degree, DJUSD passed the other districts–our experienced teachers would have higher salaries that would be used to calculate retirement benefits. Here are links to the salary schedules of some local districts Woodland JUSD, Natomas USD, Elk Grove JUSD. I cannot find the certified schedule on DJUSD’s web-site DJUSD Salary Schedules or I would perform the same comparison now.
The prime reason is the theft of our taxes by Sacramento. They have taken our money and given it to other districts so they could pay more than us. From listening to SL last night I have the distinct suspicion that she is complicit in this process as it advantages her professional life to not rock the boat in Sacramento and there is no advantage to her to fight for our own teachers.
By the state giving more to some districts over other districts just puts a bigger burden on homeowners to have to pay more while the higher funded districts get a free ride.
Generally it costs more to educate children who come from lower income families. The districts that are getting more state money for K-12 education have more lower-income kids. I guess that’s not your concern?
And provided no net benefit as the money went to current insiders. From http://laschoolreport.com/ Can’t wait to see what our local union mouthpiece has to say about this:
A state lawmaker is challenging California Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson‘s recent assertion that grants intended to help low-income, English learners and foster youth can be used for across-the-board teacher raises.
Assemblymember Shirley Weber, a Democrat from San Diego, says Torlakson’s interpretation of the law could completely erode the purpose of the grants, opening up other uses of the money that the legislature did not contemplate.
“That is not what we intended at the state level,” she told LA School Report.
“It seems like it’s never going to end, there is no question about it, and that’s my great concern,” she added. “Once you open up this, you open up something else, and then you find yourself in a position having taken this money for these schools and these kids and not being able to produce the results.”
The California Teachers Association, a major donor to Torlakson’s relection campaign last year, backed Torlakson’s interpretation and said it “believes the law is clear: The money can be used to attract and retain quality teachers in the classroom,”
Except of course the CTA opposes any measuring of teachers at all so just give it the current members and let’s party!
And then how do you attract teachers to lower performing districts?
“And then how do you attract teachers to lower performing districts?” The teachers there are already paid more than our are. if they said “we have bad teachers because we have not been paying them enough so we are going to fire our current teachers, because they suck, and hire good ones with this additional money” then you may have a point.
They did not do that. They just divvied up the money among the current employees and told the kids to go suck eggs.
When I think of under-performing schools & districts, I think about this article. It’s about the Normandy school district, a suburb of St. Louis that is near Ferguson. It was also featured in a long form radio piece on This American Life last weekend as a repeat, the program was called, The Problem We All Live With. The podcast actually highlights a recent experiment in desegregation connected with the Normandy district. When I listen to it, I think that there’s not much incentive to make me want to teach there. It’s not LA, but it sounds like you’re going to assure me that L.A. Unified and maybe Oakland, et al. are different from this.
wdf1; Does not matter whether it’s different or not. The money is a payoff to the unions that fund the legislators and the kids have gotten nothing. We are now into the third act of the usual theft of government funds tragedy where the school insiders have made commitments to employees for the money and will claim that the state cannot use it to actually educate students because now they need it to pay the pensions increases brought about by the pay raises and if they try to take the money back it will bankrupt the district.
I am confident you will see the same playbook on the cap and trade funds dedicated to environmental justice.
That may be the root cause of pay disparity, but it doesn’t account for individual teacher choices, for which pay is only one factor. What does DJUSD control and what doesn’t DJUSD control? Waiting for Sacramento to make things right is an excuse to not do what we can today.
Salaries are often cited as the sole factor California doesn’t have a better educational system. Salary is one factor, but not the sole factor. It is also a slippery factor at that, since people adjust their expenses to their salary so quickly, a pay raise is quickly not enough again.
DJUSD and DTA leadership should focus on making DJUSD a good place to work and learn. As leaders of a key government institution in our community, as well as custodians of a number of pubic buildings, they should also focus on being the Community Leaders that they are.
If 20:1 isn’t necessary to bring out the best in our teachers, then we should challenge the assumption that it is, raise class sizes, and give them a raise. If it does make the classroom a better place to be for both teachers and students, then it’s time to focus on other things that make DJUSD a good place to work. For example, parent relations. What if the Administration decided to become excellent leaders with respect to parent-teacher interactions? If a teacher could trust that the Administration was on their side–wow–that would be a good place to work and a differentiator in the job market.