The LCAP Survey
Make your voice heard
If you have students in grades TK-12, you’ve likely received a request recently to fill out an LCAP survey. LCAP stands for Local Control and Accountability Plan and it details how the district will utilize state funding and how they will measure the effectiveness of their programs. Every school district and charter school in California is required to adopt an LCAP annually by July 1. And part of adopting a plan includes getting input from the local community, including families and employees. That’s where the LCAP survey comes in.
2024-2025 LCAP Survey
Before we get into the details, the important thing is to make sure you fill out the survey for your district(s) before the deadline.
EUSD
The Escondido Union School District’s LCAP survey is open until February 27, 2024. Initially slated to close on February 2, the day after the final community input session was scheduled to be held, the survey was kept open when the February 1 community meeting was rescheduled due to inclement weather. The community input meeting will now be held at 6pm Tuesday, February 27, at Farr Avenue Elementary School.
You can read more about the LCAP in general, and view the district’s previous LCAPs from the EUSD LCAP webpage.
EUHSD
The Escondido Union High School District’s LCAP survey opened on February 1, 2024 and is open until February 29. The EUHSD LCAP webpage also has a link to the survey and provides drafts of previous LCAPs.
SPUSD
The San Pasqual Union School District’s LCAP survey for the 2024-2025 school year is closed. You can find their 2023-2024 LCAP plan on their LCAP webpage.
School funding, local control, and accountability
School funding sources and funding allocations are continually changing. Our current funding model is the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) which was established in 2013. Previously, from 1978-2013, school funding was centralized, with the state largely deciding how funds were spent at the district and school level by allocating funds categorically. Funds had to be spent on the program for which they were allocated, such as class size reduction, student transportation, or instructional materials, and could not be reallocated based on local needs.
LCFF
The LCFF has given school districts greater control over how their funding is allocated. But other changes came with this shift in control. Most notably, the funding a school district receives is now based on the demographics of its students, so that districts with a larger share of students with higher needs receive more funding. And when measuring results, the state moved from a single metric to a multifaceted dashboard.
LCAP
Under the LCFF, districts document their goals in their annual Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP). The LCAP is a 3 year plan that districts update annually, documenting their goals and how they plan to achieve them. To help hold them accountable to their plans, districts must get community input, present the plan at a public school board meeting, have the school board approve the plan, and then present a mid-year update on the plan at another public school board meeting.
Parents, guardians, district employees and members of the community can provide public comment at school board meetings when the LCAP is proposed and during the mid-year review. But the school community is also invited to provide input via the LCAP surveys which are sent out before the LCAP is finalized. School districts also get input from parents and guardians who sit on various advisory boards such as School Site Councils (SSC) and the District English Learner Advisory Committee (DELAC).
Needs based funding
Recognizing that some students have higher needs for academic success, California provides additional funding for these students. Specifically, these are students who are learning English, living in low-income households, or in the foster care system. The term unduplicated pupils is often used to refer to these students, because even though some of them may fall into more than one of these categories, they are only counted once for funding purposes.
Districts receive:
a base amount of funding per student
an extra 20% supplemental funding per unduplicated student
a higher concentrated funding (additional 65% of base funding) per unduplicated student over a 55% threshold for the district
Although the state funds school districts based on their demographics, the districts themselves ultimately determine whether and how their funding is used to address the needs of all students in the district.
State priorities
While districts have more say over how they use their funding, they must show how their funding allocation supports the state’s priorities.
The state has 8 priorities that districts must address in their annual LCAP, across 3 categories: Conditions of Learning, Student Outcomes, and Engagement. (In the image above, the priorities of Expelled Youth and Foster Youth are priorities that only apply to County Boards of Education, while the remaining 8 priorities apply to all districts and charter schools.)
Basic Services
Students should have access to fully credentialed teachers, standards-aligned instructional materials, and well maintained school facilities that are safe both physically and socially.State Standards
Schools must implement academic content and standards established by the State Board of Education and ensure their programs and services make these standards available to everyone, including English learners.Course Access
Students should have access to a broad course of study, including all core subjects, such as English, mathematics, social science, science, visual and performing arts, health, and physical education as well as career and technical education to prepare them for college and career.Parent Involvement
Districts should promote parent involvement in decision-making at the district level and across school sites and promote parent participation in programs to help meet the needs of their students.Student Engagement
Schools should provide engaging courses and programs that keep kids in schools, as measured by chronic absenteeism, dropout rates and graduation rates.
School Climate
Students should feel a sense of safety and connectedness with school, as measured by suspension and expulsion rates and surveys of parents and students.Student Achievement
Schools should improve student achievement as measured across multiple metrics including test scores, English proficiency and share of students who are college or career ready.Student Outcomes
Other student outcomes across all areas of study.
Measuring success
California has a Schools Dashboard that displays various metrics for each school and district, related to the 8 state education priorities. For example, for EUSD, we see the following on its dashboard:
Scrolling down the EUSD dashboard, you can find details on each metric.
Previously, California ranked schools solely on standardized test scores, using a metric called the Academic Performance index (API). The API, however, was strongly correlated with wealth and was not a useful metric to help schools improve. Instead, the dashboard looks at multiple metrics that can help a district measure the success of their programs across all state priorities.
Be sure to include your voice as the districts prepare their LCAPs by filling out the surveys before they close on February 27, 2024 (EUSD) and February 29, 2024 (EUHSD). And if you have students in EUSD, attend the community input meeting at 6pm Tuesday, February 27, at Farr Avenue Elementary School to make your voice heard.