Commitment to education

The May revision of the state budget reinforced Governor Jerry Brown’s commitment to drastically change education to help schools with a high percentage of English learner students.

The revised budget invests more money in Brown’s school proposal, the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF). This formula allocates additional funds to school districts with low-income students, English learner students and students living in foster homes. It also provides a subsidy to fight the high concentration of poverty in areas where these students are the majority.

At the same time, it establishes an oversight system for the use of the LCFF’s funds, which did not originally exist, and provides an additional $1 billion for the implementation of the new academic standards known as Common Core.

It is understandable that there are people who would have preferred for the governor to be less cautious with the numbers and for the surplus to also reverse the cuts that were previously made to health care services. We hope this starts happening as the state’s coffers begin to grow.

However, it is very good for Brown to stand firmly behind his school project, especially when facing criticism from Democratic lawmakers who want to distribute school funds in their own way. Their proposal dilutes the strong economic impact that the LCFF will give the neediest school districts.

This is the first state surplus after many years of deficits and draconian cuts that damaged both education and health care services, among others. This is an opportunity to repair the damage, in this case to K-12 education, in a different way that really has a long-term impact on the students who are in the most disadvantaged situation.