Miguel Hernandez

Miguel Hernandez
September 11, 2014

Every bit schoolhouse staff and families caput dorsum to school this fall, districts and communities are ramping up for the 2nd twelvemonth of the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF). Like many parents around the state, I'm starting the new school year with both excitement almost the potential of this historic reform and with hope that we learn from last year's implementation and take the needed steps to ensure that the LCFF lives up to its promise of equity and shared decision making in our schools.

Last year provided a glimpse of what is possible when we engage parents, students and community members in new and powerful means and dedicate resources to increasing opportunity and improving outcomes for students who've historically been underserved by our public instruction system. In my district of Santa Ana, where my ii daughters attend school, an estimated 3,000 parents participated in one or more of the LCFF/LCAP listening sessions and i,700 students weighed in on district priorities, according to the district's Local Control Accountability Programme (LCAP). These numbers, which reverberate the interest and excitement that PICO California saw in schoolhouse districts across the state, speak to the cracking desire of parents and students to contribute to the planning for their schools and districts.

In Santa Ana, the Orangish County Congregation Customs Organization (a PICO California affiliate) and its partners in the Santa Ana Edifice Healthy Communities collaborative embraced the opportunity of the LCFF. We conducted trainings for parents and students and held meetings with district staff, school board members and the superintendent to larn more about the process. Agreement the connexion between school climate and culture and students' social-emotional wellness and ability to acquire, we advocated for more resource to create safer and more than welcoming schools past advancing restorative justice practices and implementing parent- and student-led school climate oversight committees – two elements of the commune's approved LCAP.

These are important steps forrad for Santa Ana and its students, particularly depression-income students of colour, who have felt the disproportionate impact of unjust and unequally administered discipline policies. Only the changes would not accept happened through listening sessions alone. The claiming in Santa Ana and in districts effectually the land is to move to partnership and capacity building. Imagine what would exist possible if even a small-scale fraction of the 3,000 parents or i,700 students who attended a listening session or answered a survey concluding yr had the opportunity to participate in a preparation where they learned how to analyze achievement information or wrestle with the intricacies of local funding dynamics. Imagine the possibilities if members of School Site Councils and English Learner Advisory Committees debated priorities and practices and, ultimately, created a shared vision that was then integrated into a district plan.

Parents and students are ready to step into this space. Parents like Guadalupe Valdez, a leader with Orange County Congregations Community Organization, who attended the district-level input sessions in Santa Ana and then, with her principal, organized a deeper conversation in her school customs. That'due south the potential of the LCFF – developing parent and student leaders, engaging in deeper conversations and creating a shared vision for schools. But that's not the reality – yet. Nearly parents and students didn't have Guadalupe'southward feel. Fifty-fifty with strong outreach, they were invited to attend former listening sessions, without the follow-up of an ongoing collaborative process that congenital capacity and allowed for real ownership and accountability.

The Country Board of Education is reviewing revised regulations and a reworked LCAP template that become a long fashion toward creating the foundation for equity and shared decision making in every district.  Although the board can't legislate a modify in culture, information technology can and should create clear baseline standards. Nosotros've seen many critical improvements to the regulations, including much-improved language around the need to appoint students in the LCFF/LCAP procedure and the requirement that districts demonstrate that supplemental and concentration funds are principally directed toward strategies that are constructive at coming together commune and statewide goals for low-income students, English learners, or foster youth. These changes are critical and should be approved.

We believe the Country Board of Teaching is inside its purview to get further – to provide more clarity on the part of parents and site councils and to take boosted steps to improve transparency. We expect forward to working with partners and the State Lath on refinements to the regulations and on the LCAP evaluation rubrics and will keep to explore ways in which we can larn and improve equally we move frontward with this historic reform.

Of form, state regulations are necessary, but they're non sufficient to consequence in a ocean alter in our schools and districts. For that, we demand thousands of students and parents like Guadalupe to go along to step in – to learn, to lead, to advocate. And we need principals, superintendents and schoolhouse board members to encompass the opportunity to truly partner to create a vision for our schools and students rooted in equity and shared decision making.

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Miguel Hernandez is a parent, former teacher and the executive director of Orange Canton Congregation Community System, an affiliate of PICO California.

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