California plans to spend $13.3 million over six years to identify and replicate successful ingredients of community engagement, an essential but, for many school districts, elusive part of local control — the shorthand for setting budgeting and academic priorities under the state’s school financing law.
The new money — included in the 2018-19 budget — will fund a network that eventually will reach as many as 80 districts. The funding represents the first substantial state effort to strengthen community involvement as required under the law, known as the Local Control Funding Formula. The school funding law, which Gov. Jerry Brown championed, shifted control over decision-making from Sacramento to school districts.
As a report in March by the Berkeley-based nonprofit Opportunity Institute noted, “Ongoing dialogue among a variety of stakeholders is not only legally required, but is essential to the advancement of excellence and equity in our schools.”
[For more on this story by JOHN FENSTERWALD, go to https://edsource.org/2018/netw...aging-parents/599644]
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