All About What to Know About School District Funding in California by Traci Tran Nguyen

What exactly is the issue at hand?

10568981 — 2024-08-28 16:58:25 UTC

Recently, in 100 of California's 1,000 school districts, layoff notices were issued to about 2,000 teachers. Teacher compensation is based on the average daily attendance (ADA) of students, and with a declining enrollment rate, teachers are unreasonably being reprimanded.

Reflection: Why is this Inequitable

10568981 — 2024-08-28 17:18:32 UTC

The chaos of teachers being laid off becomes inequitable when students' educations are quickly compromised. With such short notice, a stunt in the educational system is created, depriving teachers of wages. Another inequitable aspect of the layoff issue comes about when seniority is the only quality of interest. It creates tension and diminishes the moral compass of what makes a teacher a great educator. As we proceeded throughout our project, we realized it was not a simple task. From an economic viewpoint, it wasn't the lack of funding but where and who was in control of how it is put toward teachers. Though our solution to change ADA pay to solely pay by enrollment, is vague, it takes a unanimous vote to put this change into action.

Who is Currently being Afflicted?

10568981 — 2024-08-28 17:22:12 UTC

In Anaheim, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Farmersville, and Santa Barbara, educators are rising in their local unions and communities to reject these cuts, layoffs, and a broken public school funding system that cyclically upends California school districts and provides our students with less than they deserve.

How Might we Help to Improve our Policies?

10568981 — 2024-08-28 17:22:50 UTC

The issue is not the overall funding distribution of California's budget but the way teachers are paid. According to The California Budget Project, K-12 Education is the highest percentile of the overall budget spending with 39.2%. The second highest percentile would be for health and human services, with 29.0%. This establishes that the issue lies in how payment should not be dependent on ADA, but just the total students enrolled.

Overall Funding Distribution of California's budget

10568981 — 2024-08-28 17:23:21 UTC

CALIFORNIA IS A RELATIVELY HIGH-TAX STATE, BUT IT INVESTS LESS OF ITS TOTAL ECONOMY IN EDUCATION THAN DO MOST OTHER STATES

10568981 — 2024-08-29 17:50:30 UTC

According to the Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE), California ranks 10th nationally in per capita tax revenue. However, it puts only 3 percent of its capacity (its Gross State Product) into education—less than comparable states.

BROCHURE

10568981 — 2024-09-05 17:28:13 UTC