First pass at finance reform

05-02-2011

Blog by John Fensterwald/Educated Guess

Assembly Education Chairwoman Julia Brownley has fleshed out the bill that she hopes will be the vehicle to overhaul the state’s school finance system, beginning in 2015-16. AB 18 will get its first public hearing in her committee on Wednesday. The bill’s goals are to simplify convoluted funding formulas and to target more money to poor students and English learners. The bill clearly would do the former, by consolidating base-level funding and funding for dozens of specified programs known as categoricals into four basic areas. The bill would not explicitly increase spending for needy kids, but it would make a “Targeted Equity Pupil Grant” one of the four new categories with the intent that lawmakers give it proportionally more money than districts receive now through existing categorical programs. Click here for a summary of the bill, which Brownley expects will go through multiple revisions. (more...)

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