Assembly Budget Subcommittee No. 3 on Education Finance, Tuesday, April 14, 2026
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Assembly Budget Subcommittee No. 3 on Education Finance California State Assembly
Follow its sittingsSpeaker 2
In recognition of this alignment between community schools and the LCAP, the administration's proposal explicitly aligns county level community school implementation to the universal targeted assistance that county offices or education are required to provide in their local educational agencies. This makes particular sense given the numerous studies that indicate that community schools result in positive impacts on student attendance, school climate, and academic achievement, all of which are tracked by the California School Dashboard and are addressed by a statewide system of support. The proposal also includes ongoing funding to support the existing statewide and regional transformational assistance center, STAC and RSTAC structures. The STAC will the the TACs will continue in their supportive role to assist schools with implementing community schools with fidelity to the framework. To ensure that community schools are implemented with fidelity and align with the California Community Schools Framework adopted by the State Board of Education, the proposal emphasizes increased accountability through the annual self certification and development of a future accreditation process as has been done in several other states.
As mentioned previously, the proposal aims to better integrate within the larger statewide system of support by clarifying that universal and targeted assistance that county offices of education are required to provide to their school districts and charter schools includes coordinating partnerships and services to support community schools implementation of their county. Because of how impactful and transformative the community schools model can be, particularly for students with the greatest need, the administration's vision is for community schools' whole child's approach to education to be the way California serves students and families. That concludes my remarks. I am joined by Jessica Holmes with department of finance. We're happy to answer any questions.
Speaker 3
Good morning, mister chair, members of the committee. Michael Alferez with legislative analyst office. So, we are recommending that the legislature continue to fund community schools implementation with one time grants rather than provide ongoing funding to schools as proposed by the administration. We recognize that the community schools model has been shown to have a variety of benefits for students. However, we do have broader concerns with establishing a new categorical program that's ongoing, that's restricted for specific purposes.
We note that in 2013 when the state created LCFF, it eliminated dozens of categorical programs with the goal of streamlining state funding, providing funding more equitably across districts, and giving districts more discretion over spending decisions, with the, kind of intent that recognizing local school district decision makers have the, or they're better positioned to make decisions, that to meet the specific needs of their students. One of our primary concerns with establishing a new, ongoing program is that this approach presumes that best practices can be scaled that statewide. Many categorical programs were created to encourage statewide adoption of practices that were shown to be beneficial for students. However, implement implementing best practices does not necessarily result in the same type of strong improvements. In some cases, districts do not have the expertise to effectively implement these best practices, or the state might not have the capacity or expertise to support schools to ensure effective implementation to all schools statewide.
In addition, state required activities may be seen with skepticism and may not have sufficient local buy in to for the practices to be implemented effectively. Another concern that we have about new categorical programs is that they typically provide less flexibility for districts compared to LCFF to use their funding while also creating greater administrative burden as school staff will have to learn program rules and ensure that they are complying with all the additional reporting requirements. Continuing with the state's one time funding approach would avoid some of these pitfalls of establishing a new ongoing categorical program while allowing additional schools to receive a start up funding and leaving the decision locally for school districts to determine to to continue funding the model locally if there's sufficient benefits for their students. If this you know, for reference, if the state were to provide the proposed $1,000,000,000 as one time grants, we think that the state could support roughly 700 additional schools through one or more additional cohorts under the current one time community schools partnership program. We also recommend the legislature consider funding technical assistance for community schools over a longer period of time.
Under current law, the system of technical assistance is only available until twenty thirty one, thirty two. Funding technical assistance over a longer period of time may ensure that districts that have access to support in future years to sustain the model locally. This would provide a baseline level support for community schools implementation in the longer term even if the state does not provide funding for community schools annually. Although we do recommend continuing with the current one time approach, the legislature is interested in providing ongoing funding for community schools. We have several modifications to the proposal that we would recommend.
These can be found on page 16 of the agenda. I won't go through all the recommendations, but I'll kinda highlight three key concerns that we have and our associated recommendations. So the first of their concerns is that, new recipients of community schools funding would have no substantive requirements for the first three years of, receiving funding with the progress report not being due until twenty twenty nine thirty. Based on our conversation with individuals involved in implementing the community schools model, the application and reporting requirements under the current one time program help districts begin to identify their community needs, identify key challenges, and access support from technical assistance centers when needed even before that they were awarded grant funding under that one time program. We would recommend sending annual planning and reporting requirements for schools and districts consistent with the current requirements under the one time program to encourage schools receiving funding to begin their planning and accessing technical assistance earlier on in the process.
Secondly, we raised concerns about the state's capacity to support such a large influx of new community schools. The state has funded 2,500 grantees over a period of four years in four different cohorts, and this are as proposed, roughly 3,700 additional schools could receive begin to receive funding in the budget year, many of which may have little to no experience in implementing the community schools model. To address this, we were make recommend initially targeting a narrow scope of schools and then expanding eligibility over multiple years. For example, instead of setting the duplicate pupil percentage eligibility threshold at 80 65%, the stake is set at 85% and then phase that down over time to the 65% or the at a level the legislature deems appropriate. The last concern that I'll highlight is that the proposed trailer legislation has little detail regarding the proposed accreditation process, or how the process will be determined.
Broad discretion is given to the technical assistance centers and CDE to develop the accreditation process. So we recommend establishing in statutes some expectations around key timelines for associated with the development of the accreditation process, including a status update that includes draft guidelines and estimated costs and to require adoption of the accreditation process several months before districts begin going through the the process. We also recommend staggering their accreditation process based on when schools initially began to receive funding. As proposed, potentially, 6,200 schools will be up for accreditation in 2033, '34, and then every seven years thereafter. So, this could limit the ability for the state to, provide effective oversight.
That concludes my presentation. Happy to answer any questions.
Speaker 4
Good morning, chair members. Kimberly Rosenberger, division director of government affairs at CDE. Crossing out all the great things about community schools because we already talked about it in the oversight. But I do think it is important to emphasize that part of the reason these community schools have been so successful is because they're transformative, and they're anchored in the four evidence based pillars. We do, as we expand, want to ensure that we maintain the integrity of those pillars because that's what makes them so transformative.
So we're not just layering. Coherence is important, but we need to maintain the integrity of the community schools as it was intended. And so with that, kind of responding to the concerns, we think the planning grants are not necessarily required as we expand. We have strong, well resourced universal support system and continuous improvement rather than separate one time planning processes. So we do think there's been an evolution in community schools where we can rely on the regional technical assistance centers and state trans transformational centers to provide robust support structure that can help all schools develop.
That's been an integral in making the community school successful is that support at the local level. Our county offices of ed further strengthened strengthened the system by serving as local implementation hubs, which is also why we are agreeable to the proposal to allow three years for them to kind of figure it out. The community schools are really important to meeting the community, and so there is a learning process where the technical assistance centers and the county office of ed are are really helpful in them defining what, the the program should look like before we institute requirements and reporting. Additionally, we were asked, how many LEAs qualify under the proposal? Using our twenty twenty four, twenty twenty five data, we've identified approximately 6,091 schools that would be eligible for new community schools funding.
Of those, 3,661 schools do not have a grant. This equates to approximately 722 LEAs that would qualify under the proposal and do not have a single community school. We do wanna emphasize the importance that, currently, we have about 2,500 community schools. This proposal would expand it to over 6,000. We currently have 18,000,000 that goes to the county office ed to provide support, and that's really important in making sure that they they do figure things out.
They are getting assistance and meeting things so that when the requirements are in place and the reporting's there, they've already been getting the local support to adapt and change. We were asked, you know, to speak to the the budget proposal on differentiated assistance, and so we just wanna highlight that we think that incorporates county level roles to build community schools' capacity by strengthening county offices of ed as regional coordinators of support. However, you wanna make sure that they are serving both the goals for the differentiated assistance and the four pillars of the community school, and that may be more labor intensive than the the funding provides. And then we do wanna know the department does not collect data on the Dream Resource Center. We're happy to discuss ways to move forward, but at this time, that's not data we have available.
Is there more specificity necessary to effectively leverage community and county resources? We would agree. Yes. We need more specificity. Specifically, it's crucial for ensuring that community school strategy is well positioned to form cross sector partnerships that officially integrate a comprehensive suite of services in local schools, and it's also essential for strengthening partnerships through a shared vision and clear agreements among partners.
Additionally, a multi tiered system of support and a coordination of service teams helps partners coordinate, deploy, and target their resources. This part's a little bit I'm just gonna go out and say it. The 1,000,000,000 is amazing. If we are to scale it to all 6,000, we need to more than double that. Approximately 408 school sites would need roughly 2.845 to maintain the level of, community school implementation, that we currently serve.
The grantees are scheduled to receive a 25% reduction in their allocation in year five, and so we anticipate that 408 school sites will require, that 2,845,000.000 from the 1,000,000,000 available. This additional funding is necessary to align with the funding structure outlined in the legislation. Finally, how does the proposed annual self certification compare to the existing annual progress report? At this time, the proposed language does not provide sufficient detail for us really to differentiate. But on the self cert side, through the existing annual progress report, we think it could be adapted.
Currently, the APR already captures a comprehensive set of implementation accountability indicators, capacity building strategies, school level program narrative, educational partner and stakeholder engagement, whole child and family supports inventory goals, actions, measures, feedback, reflection, and continuous improvement, and LEA and consortium level data are all included under their annual reporting. So for the accreditation that impacts county infrastructures and RTACs, we we believe the process as proposed developed by this STC, CDE, and RTACs, indicates that RTACs will be responsible for conducting the accreditation process within the framework and criteria developed by STAC. We would encourage additional resources so that we can provide robust oversight auditing ability to ensure as we scale to the size proposed in this that we are giving it the proper support at the state level. And then do audit penalties need to be created? It could be included, but we really recommend ensuring that we have we're included in the audit guide to ensure consistent oversight in alignment with established program standards.
The earlier we can engage rather than creating punitive audit penalties, we can help fix and support, and we wanna be a resource to these community schools so that they are open and transparent with their their scalability and and where they need flexibility to help improve at the regional level.
Speaker 1
I think I'm gonna keep you here and spend the next few minutes asking more specifics about the proposal, and then we'll bring up panel two afterwards. Let me start with a pretty fundamental question. I think we all you all referenced the fact that community schools have proven some level of success. I'd like to understand from all three of you, which metrics are you using to identify success? So starting with Department of Finance.
Speaker 6
Hi. Jessica Holmes, Department of Finance. So there have been a couple of recent reports that have come out, from various entities about the efficacy of community schools. And some of the the things that they've seen are, improvements in things like suspension rates, reductions in chronic absenteeism, and growth in English language arts and math outcomes.
Speaker 1
Let me ask the others if you can figure that out. That'd be great. Sure. LAO, which, which data points are you, when you make your comments to you, are you referring to?
Speaker 46
Yeah. Edgar Cabral with the LAO. I think we did we do reference, I think, the the LPA report, which is the most recent one and is also specific to California and to this program. The I think in particular, the findings on chronic absenteeism are significant in terms of the reduction. There are also we did look at and I can't recall the details, but there have been studies in other states like in New York that's that's been a a while now that those programs were implemented.
Speaker 8
But in that, in studies on the effectiveness of that program, I think it was similar in that we saw, like, attendance
Speaker 1
And CDE also, are you referencing LPI report, or is there additional data?
Speaker 4
We are referencing the LPI report for the specific reason that the LPI report takes comparable schools because when we look at it at a statewide level, which we have the data points, it's not gonna show you the net benefit because we're taking schools that have similar absentee rates, similar suspensions, and then they're looking at peer to peers versus an apple to oranges statewide approach. So we do have the internal data, the LCAP that we look at for those dashboard improvements, but we think the LP hot, LPI provides kind of a bigger picture because it's looking at similar schools and then showing that net gain from a community school. Okay. It's really difficult to black and white say it, but we can, by looking at these schools, see clear evidence of improvement on all those metrics that have been listed.
Speaker 6
Just to return back. So there was also the the study I was referencing was a 2025 LPI study. There was also a 2017 study done by the National Education Policy Center along with LPI in regards to, how to implement community schools with fidelity in identifying which, components, were most effective in terms of improving student outcomes. But I would also note that the original CCSPP, the California Community Schools Partnership Program funding included, funding for a state funded study as well. Yeah.
It's just
Speaker 2
So the it's the the process, the HUMRO process that the state has contracts with for the existing program. I don't believe that it's complete, there are internal preliminary results that speak to the outcomes that I think CDE can speak more to.
Speaker 4
Yeah. That's using the APR, so their annual reporting where we're looking at those metrics. But, yes, the Hummer was not
Speaker 1
Thank you. I just wanna make sure we're speaking in the same terms and we're talking about the same outcomes because we're choosing to make an additional billion dollar investment, and it's based on outcomes. What what are the outcomes showing? And, in Department of Finance mentioned, fidelity to the implementation of the program. So I wanna ask about that specifically with this proposal because it appears to me that there are some differences in the program that was implemented a few years ago, which was used to express the outcomes that we've seen and the proposal today, and I wanna make sure I'm not misidentifying that.
Let me let me to to get to that, let me start by asking about the numbers. Let's just talk about the numbers. The previous proposal was a $4,000,000,000 proposal, which has now almost entirely rolled out with the exception of, I think, about $485,000,000 as identified by the LAO, which I'll ask about in a second, but almost $4,000,000,000. And we have 2,500 schools who are community schools. This proposal is a $1,000,000,000 proposal, and the way I'm understanding, so I'd ask finance to please explain this to me, is that we are now going to use cost us 4,000,000,000 to get to 2,500 schools, and now with $1,000,000,000, we're gonna get to 3,700 additional schools.
I like to understand how that is gonna be possible.
Speaker 2
our the governor's proposal the governor's budget proposal as it stands is intended to mirror similarly to the existing CCSPP program and build off of it. So apologies. So the 1,000,000,000 is intended to serve 3,700 more schools in addition to the existing implementation grantees that will be ending their implementation grants. And the intention with this is to serve from the awards are varying from 75,000 to 400,000 in different funding bands. And this is a ongoing proposal that does not separate out because the original program separates out between planning period, implementation period, and as well as supplements the technical assistance structure and coordination grants.
So and as well as the evaluation. So the 4,000,000,000 is inclusive of all of those components. And the 1,000,000,000 at hand is speaks to mostly the the the apportionment amounts that will be going out as well as a 10,000,000 amount that will be going out to $10,000,000.
Speaker 1
I'll ask the LAO to chime in in a second. So what you're telling me is that those four components, the planning and all that is not contemplated in the funding, the $1,000,000,000 funding. It's not you do not use it as an assumption.
Speaker 2
To clarify, the we the administration is using the existing program as it stands and as best we can, mirroring the the the governor's budget proposal based on that. We're intending to structure it in a similar way, but focusing on how can the administration scale up for these schools.
Speaker 6
I would also add that $4,100,000,000, was specific to a seven year program. So it was allocated over seven years, and in fact, it's still being allocated now, which is why I think, my colleague, which mentioned was mentioning that the 1,000,000,000 that we're talking about is very specific to expand or continuing the implementation grant amounts in a in a slightly lower level. So we also
Speaker 1
I'm gonna I'm pause you there because so I understand that you your part of the proposal is to those who are existing recipients. Mhmm. Now you're saying we'll continue to receive funding.
Speaker 1
And it's in the the table of the enrollment numbers that grant would be equivalent. So I I I understand up until there. How many of those so there's that's 2,500 schools, but there obviously, some are in year one, some are in year two, three, four. How many are gonna be in year five and will require this funding?
Speaker 6
So I I you know, certainly, we can speak to how many folks are in each cohort, but the idea is, of course, that, they would continue to receive their existing CCSPP grants to the extent that their, ongoing grant would be more or or less than than what they're currently receiving. They would continue to receive as much as they would have otherwise received.
Speaker 1
So how many are in the cohort that is running out of funds in current school year?
Speaker 2
So for the budget year twenty twenty six, twenty one, cohort one will be dropping off, and that will be four fifty eight school sites or 76 LEAs. And the subsequent years, if you would like to me to go into that.
Speaker 1
No. Let me let me start there so we can go step by step. Thank you. 458 school sites, and that is gonna be at a at a what is the funding that's required to continue those schools in dollars?
Speaker 2
So the administration's estimate, the drop off of each cohort will be around a 125,000,000.
Speaker 1
So in order to continue those 458 schools into, in this model next year and keep them funded, it will require a $125,000,000.
Speaker 2
Yes. And to clarify, for the governor's budget proposal as it stands is proposing an adjustment. So for the schools for the schools that in the in the budget year Let see how to explain this.
Speaker 1
Let let me let LAO, if you wanna gather some of those numbers. Do you are are these numbers the numbers that you've reviewed in the budget proposal?
Speaker 3
Yeah. I think we wanted to just clarify again that the under the one time program, there's about I think it's roughly 33,200,000,000.0 that's going for implementation grants, and those are five year grants. So that's why under the current proposal, the amount is lower. If we find the cost of providing ongoing funding to the existing community schools, all 2,500 of them is about 500,000,000 annually, but that would begin to phase in once they run out of their implementation grant period, which wouldn't occur
Speaker 1
until So sorry. I'm just just to keep us so this numb what you just said, I think, is the same as what finance said, which was for cohorts who are in year five, roughly a 125,000,000 would be needed to allow them to continue with community schools next year.
Speaker 3
Well, we would note that it wouldn't be until 2728. In the budget year, all of the folks cohort one will be in year five in the budget year.
Speaker 2
And to clarify, it is the 125,000,000 that will be added on, or the finances estimate each year for the cohorts that will be dropping off and, receiving apportionments with the governor's budget.
Speaker 1
Okay. Let's move on to the the the implement the planning portion of the $1,000,000,000. How much of the $1,000,000,000 is set aside for planning for new community schools?
Speaker 2
So the proposal the proposal does the proposal does not separate out in planning and implementation periods as the existing CCSPP program does. What the intention of this proposal is is to allow the first three years to act as a planning period. So up until 2029, we the administration anticipates for these this period to be for schools to ramp up that are opting in in the budget year. And once that twenty twenty nine years year comes around, that is when the submission of the progress report is. That's when the annual implementation plan is should be presented, and that is as well when the self certification process begins.
So and there is not a separated grants. It's a one time apportionment that's ongoing that the administration envisions for the first three years to be to act as a planning period.
Speaker 1
So have we identified that it requires three years now for planning for a community school as opposed to the current practice where that that seems to me, and please correct me, I could be wrong, that you're changing what the planning process looks like from the existing process to a new process.
Speaker 2
The administration's intention was to mirror similarly to the timeline within the CCSPP program. And this the three years are meant to serve as a ramp up period and recognizing the amount of schools that will be entering into the program and that they are entirely new to community schools. And so our vision was to give them sufficient time to ramp up and, really plan for what it means to implement a community schools as aligned with the framework and with Fidelity.
Speaker 1
Are they required to spend three years planning, or can they spend one year planning and then year two they're now implementing?
Speaker 2
The yeah. So for the the 2029 year, if the administration is anticipating for these schools to opt in in the budget year, they will their the planning so the the three years is meant for them to plan. And then 2029 is when the the progress report is due, is when the implementation plan needs to be presented to their local educational body, It is when the self certification process starts. So by way of the requirements, we're intending for that period to be when implementation starts.
Speaker 1
Did did was planning is the current planning system or the current planning approach, which was pretty integral to this whole program, not necessary? It doesn't work well? What's the why is the change? And I'm not opposed to it. I'm just under trying to understand why was there a change.
Speaker 6
I I don't think there really is much of a change, to be honest, with the exception that the amounts that we're providing to these LEAs are a little bit higher than they would have received under CCSPP, and they get an extra year to do it. Other than that, the requirement for the original planning grants for the the CCSP and I'm sorry. Keep using that acronym. The California Community Schools Partnership Program, was, to after those two years and, actually, in in the current system or in the current program, they could have they could have been done after one year, but the some chose to do one year, some
Speaker 6
that they have an implementation plan. And then once they had their implementation plan in place, then that's when they would apply for the implementation grant and then move forward. So we are mirroring the existing we we think the existing process was really helpful and useful, and there was a lot of value there. And so we are mirroring that in the process. We're just changing the amount of money provided from the beginning and then adding an extra year to the extent that folks who are now opting in had never thought about being a community school before.
Speaker 4
And then just from the existing perspective, there was, originally in the initial cohort, a much longer planning and implementation period. But as we scaled up and had much more supportive technical assistance centers, we found that that timeline wasn't as needed. And so it did kind of decline to one to two years for planning because they have such robust support, and that wasn't available in the initial few years.
Speaker 1
I I heard a response that I probably misunderstood, so please clarify. Implementation utilizing these funds doesn't have to wait till 2029, does it? And in the previous response, I thought I heard that, but I think I heard that incorrectly.
Speaker 2
Correct. Yeah. The implementation does not have to wait until 2029 if a school site believes that they have adequate resources in place and, are able to implement the community schools at full scale for their school.
Speaker 1
But I also heard, I think this was correct, that, there is no planning required, and implementation can begin as soon as they receive the funds.
Speaker 2
So I believe that the our intention with this proposal and and and given CDE's answer add on as well is that with the adequate with the technical assistance structure that's in place at the, regional and state transformational assistance center level as well as within the counties, with the, existing coordination grants as well as the support that will be coming in the budget year with, within the statewide system of support that this this support will be, able to help facilitate schools that are just starting within the program.
Speaker 1
I I understand that's hard, and I'm not wanna cut you off. I just wanna keep keep this going because I have other questions about the numbers. The the the number of schools that that answer clarifies to me that, yes, while their support system exists and people can schools can choose to do that, they also may not and my I'll just express my concern, and, certainly, the next panel can provide some feedback. You know, it it we we don't wanna create a system where where schools are just chasing money for the sake of chasing money. The point of the program is very intentional.
And so if schools are just gonna go after money because it's there and not spend the time and the effort to do the work and the due diligence to get the program to what it needs to be, I'm concerned about about the effectiveness of those in the out years. So that's why I'm asking those questions. Let me ask more about the so if a 125 of the 1,000,000,000 now goes to to continuing the cohort whose year is coming to an end, there's 875 that remains. None of that is going specifically to planning. So you're saying that 875,000,000 will reach how many schools, to be become new new schools?
I I are you saying 3,700 new schools will be funded with $875,000,000?
Speaker 6
Sorry. Just to clarify one thing. Mhmm. So you you said that, no one's being funded for planning, and I just wanna clarify something.
Speaker 6
Understand. Specifically for planning. So at the end of this three year period and any time before that, so up until that period, an LEA, in order to continue to receive these funds, has to complete an implementation plan. Mhmm. The implementation plan is the planning document that was required in in the current iteration.
So I think we disagree that there's no planning process envisioned here, that LEAs can just go for a money grab and not have to do anything, meaningful to get those funds. I think we feel very strongly that we've built that into this. So I'm I'm gonna let my colleague answer your question about the number of schools you're thinking or we're thinking would be covered by the eight twenty five million, but just wanna make that clear.
Speaker 2
Yes. And I also would like to add on, for your comment that it was the administration's envision to for community schools, given how impactful they have shown to be through data, to be implemented with fidelity and to have accountability measures, that ensure that it's, you know, using your words are not a money grab. And the administration feels very feels that this program is very impactful, and we would agree that we would want it to be implemented with fidelity. And I'm sorry. Could you repeat your question about
Speaker 1
The so a 100 we've identified what a 125,000,000 of the 1,000,000,000 is, which is for Yeah. The 458 schools that are going to phase out of the cohort the first cohort, which we need that just to continue funding. The remaining 875,000,000, I said, is that going to fund 3,700 new schools to become community schools?
Speaker 1
How are how how is this scaling up from it took, you know, multiple years to get to 2,500 to what are the efficiencies that were created? And I think the Department of Education talked about technical centers have become much more sophisticated and can can support. Are are technical centers, have we have we consulted them and they believe that they can onboard 3,700 schools in one year? The assistance that exists?
Speaker 4
We we do think there's additional support needed for like, the technical centers need to be maintained
Speaker 4
At the county office of ed levels. There is a desire to combine that with a differentiated assistance support. But if we're to scale, there probably needs to be additional resources. We could use extension plan funding, but they will probably need the dollars to specifically help community schools and maintain the the support level they have currently.
Speaker 2
So the governor's budget proposal does include an additional 10,000,000, dollars ongoing for the technical assistance structure and as well as mentioned in my opening remarks, the separate governor's budget proposal will include 13,300,000.0 towards the universal technical universal and targeted assistance within the statewide system of support, which is intended for those funds to also for our county offices of education to integrate their supports and and with the community schools model so the counties are able to support community schools within that universal and targeted assistance bubble.
Speaker 1
So how how how many schools how many technical assistance centers do we have?
Speaker 1
K. There's eight. And so are they each roughly divided the three seven hundred schools will be divided into the eight for assistance to get up and running?
Speaker 1
You have eight centers, and so you're expecting the 37 schools to sort of equally be divided among the eights to get the support they need to get up and running?
Speaker 2
So yeah. To clarify, it's eight regional transformational system centers and one state TA center.
Speaker 2
So the vision is for two in the proposal, the language includes 2,000,000 ongoing to the state tac s tac and the rest to be divvied up between the other RTACs. And the language as it stands is at minimum five RTACs, and so it's up to CDE to contract from currently, are eight contracts they have, but it could be between five or as many as CDE contracts with.
Speaker 1
I don't know if you heard it before, but I think I heard it pretty clearly now from CDE who is in charge of that, that, that is not enough to be able to support the the the need of expanding in this way. Is that something you had heard before?
Speaker 6
Yeah. I think it's important to note that so so to your earlier question about evenly distributed amongst the it won't be because, currently, the the, CCSPP grantees are not equally allocated, and there's slightly there's a slight differential in the funding amounts as a result of that. I would also note that the the dollars that we are proposing are in addition to funding that these folks will continue the RTACs and the STC will continue to receive all the way through 2930. In addition, county offices of education will also be continuing to receive, their coordination grants. That's 20,000,000 a year all the way through 2930.
So I think that, you know, we there's certainly significant resources in the technical assistance, centers currently, and we anticipate that there'll need to be a conversation in the coming years about how we deal with the cost of that in an ongoing manner. But, certainly, there's quite a bit of resource in in the the tax right now in the counties.
Speaker 1
Okay. So I'm just was conferring on whether we have a breakdown of all that because you've mentioned a few very important things that are gonna get funded to offer that support. That's that's information that we don't fully have. And so what I'd request, rather than keep going and asking you more questions here, because I can go on forever, and I don't wanna keep people that long, is, I like to better understand what is the funding you being used in ongoing basis? What is the one time?
What are they funding exactly and the expectations and the outcomes of each of these funding mechanisms? I think you just stated that you you believe it's enough funding for the ongoing support for the regional technical assistance centers, and that may be new information for to CDE and to LAO. I don't know. But I think we're missing that information to fully understand, and that's what my questions are about trying to fully understand if we wanna I think there's universal support of of of doing this and investing in a way that continues this program to being successful, but we wanna make sure that the the components of it are all there. And so because we don't have all the information, all that is being funded, I'd like to get that certainly before we take action here and, hopefully, before the before or with the May revise since that's typically what happens with our request.
So on the numbers, I think I'd the the the last one I wanna ask about and is on the $485,000,000 that are being reverted. What excuse me. The LAO identified that this funding could be potentially used in some way. What what is the intention of of the governor's office and the utilization of that funding?
Speaker 8
Yeah. So, in recognition of the fact that, extension grants will likely no longer be necessary when we put in this ongoing funding, we are proposing to revert. We did not have a plan for expending those funds at this point, but plan to have a more detailed, proposal in the mayor revision. I think, you know, hearing from the field about the different needs, I think there's probably, certainly some needs, around the the ongoing support structure, the system of support, that is specific to the community schools, and we can certainly, well, we're certainly talking to folks about that. I know there's also interest in, understanding better the specific impacts for middle schools and high schools.
Speaker 6
So is that something that we're also looking at? And then also whether there are needs within the field for schools that are just coming on, around things like professional development, or other components of community schools that there need additional funds on a one time basis to kind of bring themselves up to speed on. So we're getting a lot of, really important and rich, feedback from the field, and we'll have a proposal for you in May.
Speaker 1
I'm glad to hear there'll be a proposal, and I'm very, very glad to hear you must have, heard somewhere or listened in some at some point about the middle schools. That is one of the research that you all cited that I am very well aware of of and and read twice. Middle school community schools are definitely a not following the trends of others. And, clearly, there's some modifications and investments that need to be different. There needs to be some some different types of approach there because, we're not seeing the results as we are in many of the other types of schools, subgroups, etcetera, etcetera that you all know so well.
So thank you for bringing that up. I'm actually gonna bring that up with the next panel as well and continue that conversation. I'm gonna move on from this panel, but please stick around because I believe there were oh, I'm sorry. Of course, colleagues. I remember Mike Fong.
Speaker 42
Thank you so much, mister chair, and thank you for the robust presentation here as well. And just to follow on the chair's comments, I heard a number of questions around the opt in process for planning grants and the community school frameworks. I think as we get more information there, I think that'd be very insightful. So I really wanna uplift the chair's comments around those. I just had a couple quick questions.
Speaker 9
And then you might have touched it earlier in your comments, but how does, like, the community school approach integrate with other programs like ELOP, school meals, the LCFF equity multiplier? Is there anyone?
Speaker 2
sure. The one of the four pillar pillars of community schools is integrated supports, and this governor's budget proposal intends to continue to uplift the community schools framework inclusive of those four pillars. And so for new grantees or I'm sorry. For for new school sites that are opting into the apportionment, they are required to submit a implementation plan in the twenty twenty nine year and lay out how they will bill hide how they will be facilitating and implementing as aligned with the community schools framework. And so a school is provided this funding and have this flexibility in order to leverage different state programs inclusive of universal or ELOP, TK, universal meals, etcetera.
Speaker 4
would just piggyback on that. That is not only just part of the pillar, but in the annual planning report, they have to identify sustainable methods for, maintaining the program, and that includes looking at existing resources and bringing together, their funds. So, the coherent sustainability is is the core of community schools, and so it's utilizing the twenty first century, the ACES, and the ELOP to build on the community schools as well. I would say that that our technical assistance centers have been really instrumental in helping them determine the best ways to utilize those dollars, but the expectation is that there is supposed to be coherence amongst the funds. Okay.
Speaker 9
the presentation as well, but for the high school models, are they inclusive? We know they were very challenging times here. Are the high school models inclusive of a Dream Resource Center as well?
Speaker 4
We don't collect data on the Dream Resource Center. I think that was asked previously.
Speaker 6
But I I think it's important to note that there is statute in the current CCSPP program that encourages CCSPP grantees to adopt include Dream Resource Center along with their community schools model.
Speaker 9
That's good to know. Think especially in these challenging times, Alhambra High School to Summit District has a Dream Resource Center. I think as we provide additional resources to our students, anything we can do to continue to amplify these types of models are critical. So thank you so much, mister chair. Appreciate it.
Speaker 1
Thank you, mister Fang. Thank you for asking that that question again. Okay. So we'll ask the LAO now to take a seat up here so we can have enough room for the next panel. So I'll ask panelists to please come forward.
We have six of you that are coming forward. And as you come forward, I know that you have heard from our, committee the request on your testimony. We have heard a lot of wonderful things about community schools. Definitely have heard the research. Some of us have spent a lot of time reading the research and reviewing the research.
We've had testimony on what's working well at specific school sites. And so I asked of you all not to focus on specifically what's what's working well at your school sites, but more specifically to focus on this proposal that is before us. You heard some discussion on that already. You hear what the intent is. I like to get your feedback specific to that, and I'm going to apologize ahead of time if I hear that you are not focused in on that topic.
I'm gonna ask you to redirect and to talk about this specific proposal. So thank you for the work that you all do in your respective roles for schools, for students, and, obviously, on the community schools front. We know it's valuable, it's meaningful, it's important, and it's making a difference. We wanna hear about how we can ensure that we make it better in the long term with this proposal. So with that, we will begin.
We have an order here. I hope that works for you all. If you need to reshuffle, feel free if you've had that conversation amongst yourselves. But we'll start with Linda Darling Hammond, who is here with the Learning Policy Institute, the research that has been referenced, quite a bit by everybody this morning. Welcome.
Speaker 10
Thank you, and, good morning, chair Alvarez and members of the committee. It's, great to be here to talk about this important topic. I'm here in my role as founding president and CKO chief knowledge officer of the Learning Policy Institute. As you noted, our previous study was referenced. I am not going to go back and repeat those findings.
But I will quickly point to two other data points since you were asking about data that inform my recommendations. We are conducting a rigorous study of cohort two right now. But meanwhile, there are other data available. If you look at page three, paragraph one of my written testimony, just looking at the state data that are publicly available at the rate of growth, in our schools generally and in our community schools, the, first and second cohorts of community schools have been improving at a rate significantly outpacing our average achievement gains. We've, calculated that from the data that we have.
By twenty twenty four, twenty five, the roughly 1,000 schools in the first two cohorts have seen gains in math proficiency rates of four percentage points, which is a percentage point higher than the state average. It's a 25% increase for cohort one schools, a 20% increase for cohort two schools. The state as a whole is is progressing at a rate less than 10% gain. So you can just see that the community schools are gaining both in English language arts and in math, and those data are there on page three. And then to understand what drives community school improvements, we've deeply studied two initiatives.
The West Current Consortium is a rural group of districts in Central Valley and LAUSD, the state's largest district. Both of them had community schools initiatives on a smaller scale before the current CCSPP. I are we supposed to say out the acronym every time? Everybody maybe knows it by now. I know it's acronym city in education.
But if you look at page five, there's two graphs that show that when they first launched the community school initiatives in their districts, the blue line, you can see a modest gain in achievement for the community schools relative to other schools. When the state grants came in, there's a very sharp increase in achievement. So over a seven year period of time, you can see that the state's investment really multiplied greatly and accelerated the sharp increase in achievement both in Los Angeles and in Kern. And the comparison schools that were also schools that are high poverty schools were sort of flat during that first period of time in LAUSD and then improved at a much less steep rate. And in Kern, the comparison schools were going down and did not improve even as the community schools increased.
We did a deep dive to really look at why. And so that's going to inform my recommendations. And I'll go right to those because I know we have a lot to cover. There are five things that emerged for us as we have looked at all these data. First, that technical assistance for the grantees promotes effective implementation particularly if it focuses on on certain things.
And so I wanna note that, of course, we have this robust technical assistance center system, and it is important for it to continue as you've already noted. The things that seem to really matter are focusing on centering high quality community connected instruction. In LAUSD where they showed these very outsized gains, they focused on project based learning, on restorative practices. And for the high schools and middle schools, they focused on link learning, which is a way to redesign those those schools. Providing ongoing professional development for community school staff, some of that is role specific.
So having community school coordinators have professional development, you know, as a group on an ongoing basis. Having the principals get professional development about leading it and, of course, the teachers and others. A third piece is cultivating a positive relationship centered school climate with attention to social emotional learning and restorative practices has been a really big game changer in a number of places. And then instituting data driven practices both around attendance, like keeping, you know, very careful tabs, but then having a system by which you address the data immediately with a set of community supported initiatives. And so those are among the things that really matter in the technical assistance.
The second thing that we would note is that secondary schools may benefit from specialized supports to take full advantage of community school investments. The LPA study found that within that first cohort of of schools, elementary schools and smaller elementary and secondary schools or secondary schools with small learning communities had larger improvements in attendance and achievement, signaling particular challenges for large secondary schools that were not able to fully leverage the benefits of the community school investments. And as I mentioned a minute ago, the larger than average gains in Los Angeles were associated with their efforts to redesign middle and high schools by supporting the adoption of the link learning pathways and the project based experiential learning as personalized supports and advisory systems and all of that that comes with it. The third point I would make is that integration of services at the local level can lay the groundwork for more coherent implementation of multiple state programs and accountability systems. We found in our case studies that investment in local decision making also built in some of these places site level capacity to engage in things like developing the single plan for student achievement and the local control accountability plan.
As member Feng intimated earlier, you know, we could increase coordination and engagement in the highest need schools and allow more coherent implementation of all of the different plans and and complementary funding sources such as the local control former funding formula equity multiplier, the expanded opportunities learning program, the support for literacy coaches and reading specialists in high poverty schools, The community schools, RFA does emphasize that the funding is not to launch programs, but to help coordinate and extend the state district and school initiatives ranging from the youth focused behavioral health initiative, nutrition, universal pre kindergarten, expanded learning, multi tiered systems of support, social emotional learning, college and career readiness, school improvement. We have tried to support schools with many, many, many initiatives. And unless they have strategies to integrate those, it feels like a sort of a blizzard of of programs. But we have seen in these schools methods to integrate both those programs and the reporting strategies. And I think we should take a lesson and maybe figure out how the state can also help consolidate grant application and reporting processes for these related initiatives.
And then ensure that the technical assistance infrastructure is designed to support that coherence and that integration. So that would be like a next stage, I think, in the work. The fourth point is that school networks play an important role in a in improvement. So I think it's very important as the program expands that we continue to require LEAs to organize networks of schools and new schools that opt in to be part of those networks so that they learn with and from each other. They have proved critically important to a lot of the advances, the networks of principals and teachers and community school coordinators engage in shared professional development and in problem solving, allows them to learn more productively and more efficiently together.
And then also the way that counties and districts can coordinate the resources to arrive in the schools is done more efficiently when they're working with a group of schools around a common approach. We used to have community schools that were tubs on their own bottom and they had to do everything all themselves. And I think you could see that in the graphs I showed earlier, the modest improvement that that allowed for. And then when we tried to when we started the I'm gonna use the acronym CCSPP. It, you know, dramatically increased.
I think partly because they were working in these communities. The fifth point is that a statewide interagency working group such as a children's cabinet might be worth considering to support community school implementation and link efforts across initiatives. We saw this in the West Kern consortium. They did that at the county level. And many states have created children's cabinets that work, you know, interagency working groups that formally gather the representatives of different agencies that serve children and families to better align their work, increase service access, and engage in strategic planning.
Again, around the theme of coherence that you've taken up, you know, as well, you know, we need a variety of ways to help get to that coherence. Could also connect to the services that are supported by Promise Neighborhoods in a number of communities as well. So I think that's a an additional way to think about the future. Finally, because it came up, I'll just add that certification can also play a role in ongoing improvement. We did do a study at LPI at the behest of New Mexico, which is also doing community schools, to look at such systems.
Florida and Georgia have had certification processes for community schools. We also looked at the certification process that Linked Learning uses for its schools, and we did find that it can stimulate fidelity to the model and also focused forms of learning. And there's some good templates to consider as a starting point for what California would invent as a certification process. So I think we're in a wonderful moment in California. The legislature with the administration has really designed and launched a powerful approach.
I think it's more powerful than any of those elsewhere in the country, and it is a wonderful moment to think about how to improve on where we've been and take it further. Thank you.
Speaker 1
Thank you. Next, I think we'll hear from, Celia Medina Owens from Pittsburgh Education Association. Welcome.
Speaker 16
Thank you. Mister chair and members of the committee. I'm Celia Medina Owens, president of Pittsburgh Education Association and an elementary teacher of over twenty two years. I started when I was two. My teaching experience includes pres preschool, dual immersion Spanish kindergarten, second grade, and adult English learners, all of which I have served in Pittsburgh.
I'm also a mother of two boys and a proud grandmother of a nine month old baby girl. Thank you. I currently sit on the California Teachers Association Community School Steering Committee, and I also sit on the Pittsburgh Unified School District district wide steering committee as a union partner, and I also sit on the Antioch Unified School District district steering committee as a parent partner. All 13 schools in Pittsburgh are community schools. Nine schools receive grant money from the CCS P program with other four funded through other means, two of which did have a CCSPP funding, but we ran out.
Pittsburgh schools and students have seen impressive gains in literacy, math, and science assessment scores following adoption of the community schools model. We know that when educators and support staff are empowered to collaborate with school and district leadership, we can focus on the students and their individual needs, and everyone thrives. CTA as a whole is a strong proponent of community schools and strongly supports the governor's proposal to provide an ongoing annual appropriation of 1,000,000,000 to the California Community Schools Partnership Program. Community Schools goes beyond traditional education models to focus on the whole child by transforming our schools into neighborhood hubs that integrate high quality curriculum and instruction braided with essential health, social, emotional, and other community services to support students and their families. They foster trust and engagement through meaningful shared decision making models and the implementation of tailored supports based on a robust local assets and needs assessment.
As we shift towards the transformative work of community schools with within California, there are three key areas of reform the legislature prioritize. Number one, meaningful embedded collaborative leadership and shared governance structures into every layer of the community schools infrastructure. Two, strengthening eligibility oversight and accountability measures for all entities receiving community schools funding. Three, improving systems of support to provide implementation guidance and assistance at the site, district, county, and statewide level. Let's start with embedding collaborative leadership and shared governance structures into every layer of the community school's infrastructure.
A commitment to shared governance and collaborative leadership cannot just be rhetoric. This is why as a union leader, we stayed at the bargaining table with our district management team for eight months until we secured a memorandum of understanding that ensured shared leadership and decision making in the implementation of community schools. Clear language should be added to the trailer bill to ensure that these core principles are embedded into the plan and implementation of community schools and a requirement to receiving funds for this purpose. Similar language already exists in the LCAP general waiver request or for individual education programs meetings. The legislator should ensure that schools are truly committed to including students, parents, teachers, and the community in the planning and implementation of a community schools program.
This should be a condition for eligible eligibility to receive community schools funding. This brings me to our second priority, which is strengthening eligibility, oversight, and accountability measures for all entities receiving community school funding, adding minimum eligibility criteria for receiving funds. While increased investments in community school is critical, funding alone cannot guarantee program success. I wanna say that again. Funding alone cannot guarantee program success.
It must be paired with clear, enforceable eligibility standards that ensure schools are prepared to implement community schools in accordance with the CS community schools framework adopted by education the state board of education and implement excuse me. And implement the program with fidelity. Under the California Community Schools Partnership, receiving funds is conditioned on participating in a competitive grant process administered by the CDE with conditions that receipt of the funds on eligible entities meet eight different priorities. In contrast, this new proposal for community schools only has one requirement for funding schools. That did not go through the existing competitive grant process.
Schools must simply be in an LEA with at least 65% EBP. That's it. In addition, of course, to requiring schools to commit to a system of shared governance and collaborative leadership. The legislature should require as a condition to receive these funds school attest to a commitment to follow the State Board of Education approved California Community Schools framework. The framework now serves as the guiding document to support the implementation of the community schools at the school district, county, and state levels.
Schools should commit to following this framework as a condition of getting community schools funding. The adopted framework also states there are many models for staffing community schools for success. All of these models include a coordinator who is responsible for the overall implementation of community schools processes, programs, partnerships, and strategies at the school site. The importance of the role of a community school coordinator cannot be understated. For schools with over 151 students enrolled, those sites should be required to staff a community schools coordinator position as a condition of receiving community schools funding.
As it relates to oversight and accountability, the current proposal requires the STEC to develop a self certification process and the accreditation process for what may include up to 6,100 community schools across the state. It's important that the developed process be transparent, inclusive, and properly funded. While we understand the development of these processes can take extensive time and research to create, the current language only states that the CDE as a party to be consulted in the developmental phase. Language should be added to clarify that STEC work should work with the CDE and other education interest groups in developing these processes. Additionally, the STEC should present their plans for self certification and accreditation to the legislator and the state board prior to these going into effect.
Lastly, I will speak on improving systems of support and technical assistance structures. The legislator should additionally consider necessary reforms of the systems of support provided through the State Transformational Assistance Center or STC and r tech centers. Under the cc SPP in approving an l e a for the role of s tech or r tech, a preference was given to l e a's that commit to partnering with higher education institutions and nonprofit community based organizations. CTA is concerned that this preference was removed in the new proposal for community schools, and we asked the legislator to maintain these existing preferences. Additionally, preference should be given to LEAs that partner with districts doing innovative work at school sites implementing community schools with fidelity in a way that can be modeled for others.
These are sometimes referred to as learning labs. Anaheim has an excellent learning lab. The legislature should additionally clarify the organizational structure of community schools technical assistance entities, While the STEC intended to serve as the lead entity within the statewide systems of of support, its authority over the reed TAC is ambiguous at its best. Clear language should be added to clarify the part that part of the s tax responsibility includes self selection oversight support and an evaluation of the art tax. This clear organizational structure will help ensure alignment and synergy throughout the community schools technical assistance models as a statewide and regional at the statewide and regional level.
Lastly, embedded collaborative leadership and shared governance at every level of community schools must be included at the RTEC and STEC level. STEC and RTAC should have a steering committee composed of students, parents, teachers, administrators, and community organizations to help guide the work, identify areas of need, and ensure tailored assistance is provided. In closing, community schools are cocreated, co led spaces that reflect the assets and needs of each unique school community, both inside and outside of the classroom. When done right, community schools provide not only opportunities for innovative student learning and success, but also offer offer opportunities and transformation to entire communities. By pairing sustained funding with clear eligibility standards, strong accountability, and aligned support system, the legislature can help ensure that community schools remain transformative spaces that uplift students, families, and entire communities.
CTA is committed to the community school movement and welcome the opportunity to engage with all parties to ensure its continued success. Thank you for your time.
Speaker 1
Miss Medina Owens, you must be a wonderful teacher. That was a great presentation. Thank you. What I would have liked to have heard. Very specific, thank you.
Speaker 1
And now you all have a very high task because you gotta match up. Otherwise, you missed the mark here. Welcome to, Jason, with Seneca Unified. Welcome, Jason.
Speaker 18
Thank you, sir. Good morning, chair Alvarez and members of the committee. I'm here today representing the courageous community school team of San Diego Unified. I wanna uplift community school site coordinators, educators, staff, students, principals, parents, and community partners across the 35 community schools in San Diego Unified who are implementing this strategy, and I wanna in honor their impact, vision, and voice in this space. My name is Jason Bavano, and I'm fortunate to have served as our team's senior director since 2022.
Our learnings and experiences over the last four years have highlighted several core elements for successful community schools implementation. I'd like to share what those are, where we see the governor's proposal supporting these core elements, and where we see opportunities for adjustments that would ensure we maximize the impact of this historic investment to drive lasting change. Firstly, this transformative work is a process. It takes time. The entry points for all schools vary.
The foundation of this strategy is collaborative leadership, and it cannot be assumed that this is an easy endeavor to engage with based on the hierarchical culture that public schools have been associated with for decades. This requires prioritization of trust building and community buy in that is critical component of execution, coherence, and sustainability. Secondly, the people leading and facilitating this work are key to its sustained success and require an ongoing investment. There is a reason that having a full time community school coordinator at each school is a proven practice of this framework. They are the ones aiding the school teams to maximize the existing supports provided on state and local levels in response to their school community's assets and needs.
These practitioners uplift objective collective voice, facilitate continuous improvement, and are connectors of all pieces that are required for authentic, sustainable school transformation. Thirdly, we cannot lose sight of the vision of this strategy, which is to create culturally relevant, racially just, innovative learning environments and experiences for our students. Student outcomes are currently moving in the right direction. Yes. But for them to improve to the degree we are all seeking, it will require transformative shifts in tier one instruction, which necessitates high quality professional development and coaching.
We cannot emphasize enough that the community school strategy is absolutely about teaching and learning and should be leveraged as a conduit of other state education priorities. As Lincoln High School principal Melissa Agadello shared at a recent hearing, these core elements are already shifting outcomes for students at our community schools, and I'm happy to provide more details on that in the q and a. But for now, chair Alvarez, I'd like to highlight where we see governor's the governor's proposal supporting high quality implementation and where we see opportunities for greater alignment. With these core elements as our guiding principles, we believe that the governor's proposed shift from one time grants to ongoing funding is a positive and transformational change. This strategy offers a methodical process that guides schools to be inclusive, collaborative, and innovative learning communities we aspire for each of our schools.
Consequently, this takes time and human infrastructure. Ongoing reliable funding allows for us to honor a commitment and process without rushing to the next initiative. It provides the stability needed to build trust and buy in from school communities and retain the essential staff who make this work possible. Community school staffing retention is a vital component of sustaining culture change, partnerships, and continuous improvement. And without the dedicated funding to support the ongoing cost of these positions, we risk regression back to the very norm this strategy is aiming to change.
This shift to ongoing funding affirms the state's commitment to the continued success of community schools and recognition of the value this equity strategy brings to our students and communities. However, while we deeply appreciate ongoing funding for all reasons described, we urge the allocation allocation methodology to be reconsidered to prioritize sustainability. The governor's proposal would add nearly 60 new community schools at San Diego Unified, more than doubling our current number. In theory, this expansion is exciting, but adequate support at each of those schools is critical for long term success. Under the governor's proposal, the funding levels at all of our existing schools would be lower than our current grant funding, and more importantly, it would not be adequate to support our core community school staffing at 87% of our community schools.
With a deep commitment to teaching and learning, our community school staffing includes a point two FTE site coach position and a point two FTE central office resource teacher position at each site who are dedicated to providing project based and community based learning professional development and coaching to build the capacity of educators in our schools. Our educators have committed themselves to shifting their practices to uplift innovation in classrooms that truly reflect the students that they serve. But this learning takes time, takes risk taking risk taking, collaboration, and discomfort, all of which are necessary components to transforming teaching and learning. These positions should not be deemed extra rather as priorities alongside our coordinators. The cost of salary and benefits of these instructional positions along with a full time coordinator is 255,000 a year in 2526.
While there are exceptions at the extreme ends of school size in general, our core costs don't scale with the size of the school. For San Diego Unified, sustainability is our top priority. Our goal is not more community schools for the sake of increasing volume. It is effective community schools that move student outcomes. We deeply appreciate this historic proposal to expand access to community schools, and we urge this to be done in a way that prioritizes sustainability first and provides adequate funding for long term success.
Finally, with sustainability at the forefront, I'd like to recommend that school and district's commitment to this transformational work is protected and not minimized to a simple opt in process. Our schools demonstrated collective commitment and readiness prior to being designated a community school by our steering committee, and I'm confident this is a key factor to the success of the system that we have built. Deconstructing current ways of being creates discomfort that has to be thoughtfully and courageously wrestled with by all educational partners. This requires intentionality, effort, and collective buy in. At San Diego Unified, our community schools process ensures schools have laid this groundwork and are ready to implement before they fully launch.
This is not unique to San Diego. I've been asked to share in a number of state and national communities of practice, and I've gleaned quickly that the districts and schools who have established a commitment prior to receipt of any funds are in significantly better positions of success. Requiring a certain level of school site and district preparation, intentionality, and accountability from the start helps maximize strategy execution and the value of the state investment. Above all, the community school strategy is about changing mindsets. I commend the governor's proposal for acknowledging the fact that mindset shift takes time and for prioritizing an inclusive framework that authentically supports our educational partners' process to honor each and every one of our students in their classrooms.
Thank you.
Speaker 1
Thank you very much. Appreciate that. Very well done as well. Now we have Gina Amaro McNamara from Fresno County superintendent schools. Welcome.
Speaker 17
Thank you. Thank you so much. Good morning, chair Alvarez and members. Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today. My name is Gina Amaro McNamara, and I serve as the director of the Central Valley Regional Technical Assistance Center.
And I get to represent 11 counties, which includes Fresno, from Kern County up to Santa's Las and Amador Counties. I appreciate the committee's attention to this critical issue today. As a key member of the technical assistance structure from day one, I have witnessed impact from the community schools work in the Central Valley and in the state. And what makes this model so unique is that it's about local needs, meeting the needs of our community. And that's why structured county level support for the community schools implementation was the very first part of this investment.
A $140,000,000 started the work with community excuse me, with county offices of education. That was just a little bit more than 3% of the $4,100,000,000 investment. Those resources went directly to county offices which currently serve as the hubs of the wheel, developing and maintaining cross sector partnerships with public health, behavioral health, social services, and community based organizations to ensure the academic success of our students. This coordination is not incidental. It is foundational to the success of the community schools model.
So now I'm gonna speak to you a little bit about the regional work. In Fresno County, the work of our community schools coaches begins with relationships. Relationships with the other county offices in our region. Coaches engage in regularly month scheduled monthly meetings and also convene monthly meetings with all 11 county offices. This is to designed to foster collaboration, shared learning, and ongoing connection across the region.
Speaker 29
In some of the smaller counties our community school regional coaches support directly at sites because our counties are so small and don't have the capacity to serve their community schools. The coaches also work with other educational experts activating relationships with mental wellness, expanded learning, finance, early childhood education, CTE, and ROP as well as academic experts. Because the coaches work so closely with the county offices, school districts, and sites, they are able to identify bright spots. Bright spots are areas where we see activation of the community school framework coming to life and making making learning better for students. This allows for peer to peer learning across our region.
Speaker 17
Just last week, was speaking to Kingsburg Unified School District where they shared with me that they went to Madera Unified School District to see community schools implementation happening. In a conversation with a superintendent last month, she shared with me that because of the support provided to her school district by the regional team, she has had a significant decrease in parent issues. Basically, because of the regional support, families are getting what they need and barriers are being removed. The team also leads network improvement communities with four other departments in our county office and some community based organizations. That community continues to grow with new community schools each year.
It is coordination that improves outcomes for kids and community. This community school's framework not just in talk but in action. Also, I get to sit on our leadership team for AB twenty eighty three where our educational systems come together with government agencies. Across the Central Valley, we are not only aligning educational systems but also building intentional partnerships with workforce development. Through this work, our regional team has partnered with workforce leaders to develop building better leaders initiatives that strengthen leadership from the boardroom to the classroom.
This ensures that our efforts are not isolated to schools but are connected to the broader economic and community outcomes for students and families. Fresno hosted All Systems Go event where 18 county offices were represented. Experts in the field shared their work and how it comes to life in school districts and sites. In the Central Valley, we understand that real impact happens when every arm of the educational system is aligned, and this is what it means to have all systems go. As community school advocates, county offices are thrilled to see the billion dollar investment to expand and then sustain the model.
But I wanna raise two policy issues for the committees. First, the governor's budget eliminates the county office coordination role in 2031 just as new schools are onboarding. This removes critical resources needed to do complex work of integrating systems of support for students. This is ongoing work within with ongoing work with funding needs. While we understand the intent to fold this role into universal and targeted assistance, combining those responsibilities will dilute both efforts.
It's true. The mindset of community schools should permeate every department and site of an LEA, but the state is not ready to lose support structures for county coordinators. There is significant risk of fragmentation and and an impact. Second, community schools eligibility requirements outlined in the governor's proposed budget precludes many small and rural districts from qualifying thereby eliminating access to transformational program. Equity requires that all students regardless of where they live have access and support.
Consider Sierra Unified School District in Fresno County, a small rural district approximately 2,500 students that does not meet the 65% unduplicated threshold. While Sierra Unified serves students with clear and limited health access to health care, mental health services, and community based supports. To conclude, I am here today because I am a product of a village. We are a product of a village, and I deeply believe in the promise of education and this work. I'm grateful to both the administration and the legislature for their continued commitment to community schools.
I respectfully urge you to restore and make permanent funding for COEs, county offices of education, community school coordinators, and expand eligibility so that all communities can benefit from this transformative program. Thank you for your consideration, and I can speak further during questions and answers around evidence.
Speaker 1
Thank you, and thank you for the two specific policy recommendations. Now we'll move on to the partnership for the future of learning, Angelica Honko. Welcome back. Thanks.
Speaker 14
Good morning, Terry Alvarez and committee members. I'm Angelica Honko, deputy managing attorney with Public Advocates. I'm honored to be here again before the subcommittee representing thousands of students, families, and community leaders, some here today whose organizations like my own are part of the statewide alliance called the California Partnership for the Future of Learning. The California Partnership has been supporting students and families to partner with their schools, districts, and the statewide system of support to advance community schools as places of deep learning, belonging, and joy. In recent weeks, the California partnership submitted a letter and budget alert to this committee with the support of a broad cross section of a 112 youth and family leadership organizations, community labor and advocacy groups, as well as schools, districts, and county offices of education from across the state.
All excited that California is poised to deepen and expand the community schools approach for our students. Partnership also submitted a joint letter with the California Teachers Association. These are in the materials being provided to you in the colorful folders. No surprise. What we really like about this proposal is the bold equity based $1,000,000,000 investment in ongoing funding expand that school communities and districts can rely on year over year.
It will sustain transformation efforts across 2,500 schools and extend this opportunity to thousands more. So, yes, I completely agree sufficient ongoing funding is key, but funding isn't enough. That funding must come with guardrails and support for strong implementation in line with California's community schools framework, which was developed through an extensive process of community driven feedback and guides implementation under the current community schools partnership program. Fidelity to California's exemplary framework is of the utmost importance to school transformation. While it's referenced in the current proposal, we urge you to strengthen the trailer bill in the following ways.
First, at a minimum, schools and LEAs should make an upfront express commitment to implementing the community schools framework in advance of receiving funding. This could look similar to the attestations required to receive CCSPP grants, in particular for the first cohort, which lack time to prepare a community school plan. Likewise, the framework must be the touchstone for robust accountability, whether through certification or accreditation or both. We shouldn't rush development of this process if we are to get it right. Rather, as with the local control funding formula and the development of the community schools framework and RFAs, education interest holders who've been implementing the community school approach and framework must have a seat at the table in giving feedback on processes and criteria related to receiving funds funding to ensure they're equitable, manageable, and provide the necessary levels of accountability and transparency to the community.
Thus, the language should explicitly require partnership with education interest holders including those at the site level in developing these criteria and processes. For example, to develop a workable and effective self certification and accreditation process, significant research and partnership with education interest holders will be required. In addition to collaborating with the department, the trailer bill must instruct the STEC to partner with other education interest holders engaged in community schools. Indeed, the trailer bill should explicitly preference partnership with community at every level of the system from benchmarking the progress of community schools to selecting STAC and RTACs who partner with community based organizations as the current c s CCSPP does. Next, a coherent continuous community schools improvement process that leverages resources across the community is critical to a successful community schools approach.
In the past week, the world has been riveted with the efforts of NASA and Artemis two. For the first time in fifty four years, human beings approach the moon. For us who are committed to California students, we're in our Artemis two moment. Operating a system of successful schools that launch students towards the future of their dreams is just as important as putting a person on the moon. Just as many and many engineers, scientists, and mathematicians work together to launch the Artemis two crew into space, families, school staff, communities, and students themselves, many who are here today, need to work together to launch children's learning.
An intentional and inclusive community schools planning process is necessary to assemble a school's mission control and set the stage to successfully launch, assess, and complete their shared mission of student success. This team process is at the heart of what ensures community schools are of effect effective for their local communities. It builds leadership capacity and breeds coherent strategy. And the best proof of that will be the students who are gonna speak in public comment today who are part of their community schools process. They are from high schools and middle school across across the state.
Yet the current proposal contains no planning or reporting requirements requirements for new schools until after three years of funding. Consistent with the current CCSPP, a stronger approach would require each school to have a shared decision making team inclusive of students, families, community partners, and educators. That team should co develop and co present annually on the progress of their community school plans to their school communities. In turn, the LEA should draw upon these school reports to present on the progress of community schools overall to the school board and ensure that the plans are posted and available at the district and site level. This reporting should begin at the end of the first year of funding rather than waiting three years.
In the first year at a brand new site, this might look like reporting on the outcomes of needs and asset mapping, goals for the next year, and efforts to establish a shared decision making team. To streamline and minimize the duplication of effort, the state must strive to align such reporting with existing continuous improvement reports like the school plan for student achievement and LCAP as well as the other whole child initiatives being discussed today. This will require a concerted effort over time in the coming years and is a process where the department, state board, and education interest holders should be engaged. Finally, the capacity building system of support has been key to the success of this strategy. We would strengthen the proposal in the following ways.
First, as you've already heard, to make sure the system is up to the massive task of supporting and accrediting more than 6,000 schools, resources must grow to meet the growing need. Second, the STAC and RTACs should be more integrated and aligned through a hub and spoke model where the STAC serves as a central hub for the RTACs and county offices of education to build the capacity to provide high quality support for this transformative approach. And all levels of the system of support should be engaged in communities of practice and evaluated on a regular basis with the input of TA recipients and other education interest holders to ensure they're serving their intended purpose and inform any further restructuring and integration efforts. In addition, we recognize stronger integration and alignment of community schools TA with overall statewide accountability and school improvement efforts is a worthy goal, But the current proposal folds the county coordination support for community schools into universal and targeted assistance without adequate consideration of the runway needed for intentional integration. As a result, it risks losing the specialized expertise that has been developed through county coordination grants and critical alignment with the STEC and RTEC community of practice structure.
We strongly support a longer timeline for intentional integrated and aligned capacity building across the statewide system of support, including the county offices of education to support a community school's approach to continuous school and systems improvement. This would mean funding county coordination grants beyond their current expiration date. Across the state, community school mission controls are leveraging the CCSPP funding to launch meaningful changes in student learning and experience, but they're also worried they'll have to abandon their efforts mid flight. One time funding forces districts to wind down the coordinators, partnerships, and capacity building work that drive the success just as this work is taking off. Already, CCSPP grantees are starting to cut back on promising strategies as they deal with anticipated funding cliffs.
On top of that, thousands of students and families across the state are waiting for their school communities turn for liftoff. As you can see from the audience, California students and families are counting on the state to sustain the momentum of California's transformative community schools approach. On behalf of the California Partnership for the Future of Learning, thank you for this opportunity to be in dialogue.
Speaker 1
Thank you, Angelica. Always great to have you here, and thank you for those specifics. I'm running out of room. You guys are providing a lot. But that's exactly what we requested.
Thank you so much. The last panelist on, here for to for this item, and then we'll turn into questions and comments, is Pirwal. She's with the Sacramento County Office of Education. Welcome.
Speaker 19
Thank you. Good morning, chair Alvarez and members of the committee. My name is Navdeep Pirwal, and I serve as the assistant superintendent of educational services at the Sacramento County Office of Education. We lead the California Community Schools Partnership Program State Transformational Assistance Center in partnership with the UCLA Center for Community Schooling, National Education Association, and Californians for Justice. We strongly support the proposed ongoing funding for local education agencies along with accountability aligned to the California Community Schools framework and the continued investment in the transformational assistance centers.
Together, these elements will sustain a high impact system wide community schools approach. First, the proposed $1,000,000,000 in ongoing funding for local education agencies is a critical and meaningful investment. As my colleagues have mentioned, community schools are not a short term strategy. They require sustained resources to transform how schools serve the whole child, school, and community. This funding ensures continuity, stability, and the opportunity for expansion.
Importantly, this investment supports the essential infrastructure needed to sustain this human centered collaborative strategy, particularly community school coordinators who have been essential in building trust and elevating the voices of students, families, and school communities. Second, the requirement that look funded local education agencies annually report community school plans, including prior year data and outcomes at both school site and in the public governing board meeting is fundamental. This level of transparency strengthens community engagement, deepens partnerships, and fosters collaborative leadership, all of which are necessary to support the whole child. Additionally, the requirement to report annual programmatic and expenditure data is essential for measuring the implementation and effectiveness of the community school strategy. This includes reporting data aligned with the framework as well as information on whole child and family support and progress towards specific community school goals.
Third, continued investment in the state and regional transformational assistance centers is important as these centers provide the backbone of implementation support. The State Transformational Assistance Center develops tools, training, and resources, analyzes statewide data, and ensures alignment across regions. It also plays an integral role in aligning community schools' transformational assistance within the statewide system of support and major state initiatives, such as expanded learning opportunities program, children, youth, and behavior health initiative, universal meals, and the community engagement initiative, reinforcing that community schools are not a standalone program but a unifying strategy. At the regional level, transformational assistance centers provide coaching, professional learning, and direct support to counties and local education agencies. Their work ensures that implementation is not only consistent with the framework, but that support is coordinated, needs based, and differentiated.
Now turning to what is absent from the January budget proposal in supporting a sustained high impact community schools approach and system. One of the key elements missing is a clear mechanism to ensure high quality implementation of this community school strategy. While a request for application process may no longer be necessary for local education agencies to receive funding, certain foundational expectations should still be required. Chair Alvarez, you mentioned this idea around not wanting schools to chase money. We feel the same way.
Funding recipients should commit to aligning their implementation with the California Community Schools framework. This includes embracing its collaborative approach and implementing research based practices, such as maintaining a community schools coordinator, conducting community asset mapping and gap analyses, establishing LEA and site level advisory councils, and integrating whole child family and community supports. Without these guardrails, there is a risk of inconsistent implementation that limits impact. A second concern is a misalignment in how funding for county office of education is structured. Currently, county offices of education receive coordination grant funding based on the number of participating schools and students served, which enables them to provide critical on the ground support.
This funding structure is a key lever for ensuring the vertical alignment between the state, regional, and county system. County offices of education play a unique and essential role. They build cross agency partnerships, support implementation at scale, and help shift the approach from compliance to transformation. They are also central to efforts like integrated systems of care, which rely on strong coordination across education, health, and community partners. Maintaining and strengthening dedicated funding for county offices of education will be essential as the number of participating schools continue to grow.
While there is broad agreement on the importance of accountability, it is worth questioning whether placing community schools under universal and targeted assistance achieves that goal. The community school strategy is fundamentally focused on student well-being and meaningful engaging learning for all students. A system designed around these principles may be more effective than one narrowly focused on specific student groups and state indicators. Continuing to invest in the county office of education led support structures could not only strengthen implementation, but also serve as a model for supporting all schools more broadly through the community schools framework. Third, the proposed funding levels for the transformational assistance centers are unlikely to meet future demand.
As the program expands, both new and existing participants will require sustained differentiated support. Without adequate investment, we risk undermining the infrastructure necessary to effectively support the statewide expansion. Finally, the January budget proposal lacks clarity and sufficient resourcing for the development and implementation of this accreditation process. For the State Transformational Assistance Center to partner with the California Department of Education and design and administer an effective system, additional time and resources will be necessary. It is critical that any accreditation process be streamlined with existing systems to avoid duplication, including those used by WASC, Linked Learning, positive behavior interventions and supports, and after school education and safety.
Despite their significantly smaller numbers of community schools, initial research into community school accreditation models in states such as New Mexico, Florida, and Georgia underscores the complexity of this work. Without the necessary investment, there is a risk of creating a process that is burdensome rather than purposeful. In closing, the January budget proposal includes several strong and promising elements that can sustain and expand a high impact community school system. At the same time, strengthening implementation expect preserving county level support, adequately resourcing transformational assistance centers, and thoughtfully designing the accreditation process will be essential to realizing its full potential. If provided the opportunity, we look forward to partnering with the administration and legislature to ensure that California's community school strategy remains coherent, effective, and transformative for students, families, and communities.
Thank you for your time.
Speaker 1
Alright. Thank you. Thank you all. Really, really well done. Thank you for, committing to our request on your presentation you all provided.
I I I don't wanna offend anybody else, but certainly some of the best testimony that I've heard. And I wanna give some credit to our consultant who helped structure this this way. She does a great job. Erin does. And, certainly, the way it was presented in order, but also, in the direction given to you and and and what you presented, real phenomenal.
Very helpful. So, but it's also a lot. So I'm gonna try to be very respectful of everybody's time, and I know we have testimony. I am gonna make one announcement now that I know for certain because of commitments that myself and doctor Patel and mister Fong have at twelve to be at caucus. We received a a message about that.
We will not be getting to the fourth item that is before us today, is universal school meals. And we are likely not get to get to item number three either, differentiated assistance today. We have April 29 as a date that we believe we will be able to do that. So out of respect to everybody who's here for those two items, wanna notify you that I I I definitely don't think we'll get to four. Probably won't get to three.
Wanna get through one and two for sure today. So just for those who are here, thank you. And I apologize for for that, but also thank you for your understanding. So with that said, I'm gonna try to provide a a summary of the points that you all made and just to sort of set the table. And then I'm gonna ask a few questions on a few of these because some of them make a lot of of common sense, and they build off of the questions during the prior panel.
And then others, I do think, may be worthy of a little bit more conversation. So let me just start. I'm just gonna not identify who said it, but I think you'll all recognize it. So technical assistance being critical to the ongoing effort in the proposal, making sure that there's, fidelity to that. And some points into that is ongoing professional development, like, high quality as assistance, data driven practices with information gathering and an action that follows that.
Second main point, secondary schools, a critical outlier. And so particularly large secondary schools that did not indicate performance at the levels that we'd like to see, and integrating that with redesigning of secondary schools. So this is one that I wanna get into. Third, I heard increase in coherence and integration of programs and strategies that already exist. Fourth, school school networks being critical and important as we can learn from each other.
Fifth, interagency of children cabinet to make sure that all the work that is being done in California on behalf of of children is integrated. Then I heard about shared governance being critical and making sure that that is as it is required in other instances such as the LCAP, that that is not just acknowledged but required. Strengthening oversight and accountability being very critical with some the current proposal missing some of the requirements of the RFA and the requiring the work of STEC with other groups. That's missing as well. Systems of support are important.
And we heard about, obviously, ongoing funding being critical and acknowledging that that is important and making sure that that is correctly identified in terms of the needs, especially in light of current staff that is serves at a as a critical role not being funded specifically with this proposal. And then making this not so and focusing on sustainability, and then not making this just an opt in option, but actual, fundamentally, aligned to the goals of the, CCCSP. County office coordination being eliminated really is a problematic here. Eligibility requirement for small and rural, I heard that. I wanna acknowledge coming from non small or rural.
That is something that I know we've tried to raise that elevate that issue here, recognizing that there are many Californians who live in communities like this. So I'd like to learn a little bit more about that. Committing to a framework with fidelity required or to the framework with fidelity required. Continuous improvement. I wanna talk about this as well because it's something that I'm very interested in and not just continuing to fund the program for the sake of it, but how we're ensuring that we are identifying what's working, what needs to be adapted.
The lack of reporting until year three, very specifically, seems to be a a concern that I align with. Timeline for integration of some of these changes, and, specifically, mapping advisory councils and their role and how critical that is to, getting this going. And lastly, where I also wanna spend a little bit of time on is the design of accreditation or certification model. I hope I did you justice in your tremendous testimony. Points.
And if I did not, I definitely ask that you submit to us in writing because this is something we wanna follow-up on all these points that I identified and the ones that I did not from your testimony. But, again, thank you. Really critical. So let me first start. I'm gonna pick just a couple and then turn it over to doctor Patel.
I wanna talk a little bit more about secondary schools because you heard that in the questioning earlier. We know what the data has shown. Linda Darling Hammond from the LPI specifically mentioned this. Others did not. So I wanna hear if there's a couple others that have identified certainly from the LEA perspective of what is happening in middle schools.
Linda, you talked about the the large secondary schools and the positive impact of redesigning secondary schools as a potential merging of those two approaches to potentially ensure that in this next round, we are doing, a little bit more, when it comes to secondary schools, might receive this funding. Can I ask you to elaborate just a tiny bit on that, please?
Speaker 10
Sure. We have seen that happening, intensely in Oakland and Los Angeles where strategies to redesign secondary schools, middle and high schools are connecting to community schools. What are those consist of? One piece of it is creating relationship centered structures so that students are organized in small learning communities. They are in teaching teams that share a group of students as a cohort and plan and work around those students and take responsibility for them.
Advisory systems, so there's a family group that they're part of. That adviser then also knows what community school resources they need to be connected to because they're seeing 15 or 20 kids every day, you know, in that setting to support their social and emotional and academic development in various ways. Block schedules which reduce the pupil load for teachers and also give you time for deeper learning. All of those pieces are part of that along with often a sort of rethinking of the curriculum so that it's more purposeful and experiential and project based. So we've seen that, as I say, in a couple of places.
Los Angeles, had these outsized gains including for their secondary schools that were involved. And then also in Oakland, we're seeing the same kind of thing. So we do do know it's possible and that personalizing yeah. The factory model did not really think that relationships were important. You go along every forty five minutes to another teacher.
The teacher may see a hundred eighty, two hundred, even 220 students in California as they go behind you know, in front of them for six periods a day. It's very hard in that setting to then really access the relational sides of community schools and to do the deeper learning.
Speaker 1
I definitely wanna hear from you. Let me just do a little bit of follow-up. And when we're talk just to, again, set the table, when we're talking about secondary schools, is that data indicative of both high schools and middle schools?
Speaker 10
And middle schools. Yeah. And middle schools are a particular challenge in The United States. In fact, there's one study that shows that in general, do better if they don't go to middle school, if they go to k eight or six to 12 schools. Because at that developmental moment, shifting into sort of the factory model, you know, structure is particularly challenging and problematic.
So middle schools are, you know, a a specific adolescent development need as well.
Speaker 1
I you know, I want to as as you're saying this, and I know you and I have talked about this before, it's particularly middle school. I I realized and I may be remembering incorrectly, but we seldomly have middle school teachers, administrators testifying on anything. And I think I I don't wanna say that that's indicative of overall the education world. We respect what everybody does, but it seems like it's a very we forget about that age group quite quite a bit, and I say that as a someone who's married to someone who works at a middle school. Mhmm.
And god bless the work of middle school teachers and educators and staff and everybody. But I I wanna focus a little bit on that. So I'll turn to to you, Jason. And I don't know if you have more to add on on the middle school and if you have any participating middle schools and what you're seeing, what you're learning, and how we could potentially integrate this redesign conversation into what happens in our community schools at the middle school level.
Speaker 18
Yeah. Absolutely. So I think with middle school as well, I wanna point out that we probably don't pay enough attention to it, and we need to because that is a huge transition from the way that school is conducted k through five to now middle school where they have all of a sudden different bell schedules and different teachers and just developmentally, they're in a space that they're very vulnerable. So I say that because I really wanna, you were speaking my language, Linda, in terms of secondary. And I think the way that we need to zoom out and and simplify the fact that structurally with elementary schools and secondary schools, it the student experience is significantly different.
We have elementary schools where we have students who are with the same teacher all day. We have teachers who build robust relationships with those students all day over the course of a year, and that goes with parents and caregivers as well. At the high school setting, we have and Linda touched on this. We have students who are going from period to period, who have multiple teachers within a day, who are shifting what content areas they're learning about, which in elementary school, they're learning about those different content areas, but they're in the framework of one they're in one day with one teacher. Why that is important is because I believe at the end of the day, the reason that we're lagging in indicators for secondary is because there hasn't been as much of a focus on the instructional element of the community school strategy.
Linda talked about school redesign. That is what it's going to take, and the community school strategy and leaning into it is the answer. It is the way to make it happen. It is a framework and a process that uplifts specifically what needs to be done to elicit the outcomes that we need and that we want from our secondary students. If we focus on redesign, like link learning, career and technical education, these are the avenues where we can provide those relevant hands on learning experiences for our secondary students that are certainly going to elicit the outcomes that we are seeking.
Right now, it's disconnected. It's simply disconnected. And don't get me wrong. Our high school educators are doing a wonderful job, but this allows for coherence and provides a framework for leaders and districts to be able to lean into to say, here is what we can do. Here's how we can redesign.
It's a way. It's a process. And so I I wanna lean into it, and I wanna just double down on school redesign as a way, and the community school strategy is the process that we can help make it happen in secondary schools.
Speaker 1
Thank you. Let me try to get a a sense just to make sure I'm actually, capturing this correctly. And I see some nodding of heads, but I wanna make sure. Is the sentiment similar about middle and I wanna keep this to middle school just for the sake of this question. You know, I know there's this is beyond that, and I don't wanna make it a middle school hearing.
But with yeah. We'll do another one next time on this. Do you believe that perhaps in this next iteration of community school funding that at the when we're talking about middle schools, we should perhaps be more inclusive of an additional component like a school redesign to make sure that everything that gets captured in primarily a k k five, but also in in high schools is as aligned to middle school needs? Is that I'd love to hear your your thoughts on that.
Speaker 16
I'd like to speak on that, please. We have a needs and assets survey, and that needs and assets survey is already embedded in the grant as part of what we do. And so in Pittsburgh, because we have a robust needs and assets survey under the grant, It gave us the data that we needed to know what our students and our families and our educators at the middle school level needed. And so we have a very robust community school program at the middle school level Mhmm. Specifically speaking in Pittsburgh.
We have the change of systems that we're seeing because of the survey. So to answer your question, I believe the survey would does and will continue to meet that need. In Antioch, because I said on the district steering committee, we're in the planning stage, and we're intentionally targeting just the middle school and the high school that neighbors so we could help with that transition and the needs. So to answer shortly, I the needs and assets survey.
Speaker 1
I I'd love to hear more about, and not today, but as maybe you can follow-up with us, what, what was identified and what was perhaps any challenges or difficulties in implementing those changes at the middle school level that perhaps more focused support may have allowed your schools to to to do more of that, both in the existing at Pittsburgh, but then then also your experience as you're ongoing with with Amdiok. I'd love to hear more about that. Yes.
Speaker 14
Yeah. And I think, again, at the middle school as at every level, what's really important is are you doing the work to form that, you know, to understand your local context and get together a team. And what's exciting at the middle school level is the students can start to be involved. In fact, we have a middle school student here from Salinas who's part of her leadership team. And the more you have the students involved, the more you're actually providing solutions that are gonna meet their needs.
So where my daughter's an eighth grader in Oakland, she is going to a community school. So this gives you a little bit of a longer runway on that where she does have a redesigned school today. She is in, you know, a four by four schedule. She has advisory. They're focused on restorative practices.
For me as a parent, I knew social emotional learning at that age was really important to me and the relationship centered school culture, and that is happening. And that makes the learning and the relationships with the teachers more possible. Also, there's more attention, I think, to the coordination across the feeder patterns too, and you you'll hear about those examples, like, in Anaheim where then they can be learning and coordinating already around those transitions from elementary into the middle school and from middle into high school. And, also, I just wanna reemphasize this redesign point and what an opportunity is. Mhmm.
We have families here from San Bernardino, and the students have been leading efforts around educator pathways. San Bernardino City did not actually I think only six of their schools are getting the CCSPP grant, and so they would have a real opportunity to grow that. And the community schools funding would give them the opportunity to have the approach to really think about if we wanted more of these teacher of educator of tomorrow pathways, how would we have the resource to do that?
Speaker 1
Yeah. It sounds like, universally, the community schools process is integral, but then there are potentially, in this case, middle schools, redesign supports that could help elevate that and bring it to to fruition. I know you wanna say something, but I have specific questions for, for county folks. So, if you don't mind and you you wanna add, we can. I wanna make sure there's time.
Let me ask about let me just let me just end with asking that there's a lot more, but from my my standpoint right now, on the issue of accreditation and, certification, and that was raised very specifically at the end. But I think, you know, I heard it a few other times, embedded in your your other talking points from the rest of you. What do you potentially envision that being? And I heard something about integration with other because we are not trying to add more, reporting or work certainly, on folks. But what could that look like?
Actually, before we talk about that, I wanna capture the concern I heard from you all on the timeline from integration. I actually heard it from, I think, somebody else, but it related really to the to the counties. This this budget eliminates the county office of coordination role in 2031, and whether that's kind of abrupt seems to be one issue. But then, also, if we'd like to see continuous improvement, which is something I'd really like to get into as well, that doesn't that that probably requires more integration to allow through both time and through some process where this happens. So I know that was raised by by a few of you, and I asked the county folks maybe to to share some of the thoughts about about that.
I think the first reaction potentially could be whether they just want more funding in 2031. You've laid out why that funding is is critical and important to now. What could that look like beyond 2031 in terms of integration, or is this always a sort of stand alone that that you expect to be there to make sure that we maintain the fidelity that you all talked about was important?
Speaker 17
This role is the mortar. It's the mortar to the work, not just the support to the grantees or the new community school people in the county, but it's a mortar to the internal structure of the county office, connecting different initiatives and funding strings to ensure maximum maximum academic achievement for our students. So it is vital as we continue on to have this role in place to do such things as connecting our funding strings. We our divisions in our county offices currently don't always talk to one another And yet, we're trying to serve students. And I call it like divorced parents.
So how do we come together and speak similar language, understand, listen to our community, our, through the advisory committees, and better serve our kids and community.
Speaker 19
I'd also like to share, you know, it's it is a unifying strategy at the county office of education level, but what we have seen is when we have the community schools county office of ed coordinators partnering with, let's say, our expanded learning opportunities program directors that support the regions or the counties, and we show up together to a site and do a site visit or just check-in, that is actually doubling down on this idea around coherence. It's actually modeling what we are asking our LEAs and our sites to do. And if we cannot do that at our county office of education levels, that's You know, it kind of pushes us back a little bit. And folks can point fingers and say, Well, you're not doing that. You don't come together.
And so we've done this in a way where, you know, President Darling Hammond mentioned a children's cabinet at the state level. My belief is that every county should have a children's cabinet that feeds up to a statewide children's cabinet. And this work of the county office of Ed community schools coordinator has essentially started that work. We are connecting with the ecosystem of care, around eighty twenty, eighty three, as Gina had mentioned, working around bringing together other county governmental agencies. The first bullet point on that grant award notification for county coordination grant funding is for our county offices of ed to come together and partner with cross governmental agencies so that we are aligning services for those districts and schools in our counties specifically.
And so the better we can do that, right, through something like a mechanism such as AB 2,083 System of Care or other partnerships, we're better able to sustain and support these services. One thing that we saw, specific Sacramento County, we partnered with Behavioral Health in Sacramento County. They were conducting suicide prevention trainings. We had districts using funding, community schools funding, right, to conduct suicide training prevention, prevention trainings. And so how do we streamline that support?
And we have an opportunity at the county office
Speaker 1
Thank you. I'll end my my I wanna acknowledge everything I said that I outlined, not only because you said it, but it definitely there's alignment, and so I don't wanna minimize any of that to folks who are listening, especially to to finance who's refining the may revise. These are all things that I certainly expect at least some level of response as to what we're doing if there isn't a response of in the affirmative of of of actually incorporating these requests. And we'll certainly follow-up individually on that. But on the certification accreditation, to me, you know, we can't just do this work, the mapping, the the planning, the community.
I know annually there's work being done, but, you know, it feels like initially when a community school comes on online, that's when, like, the bulk of the effort and the participation is at its peak, and I could be wrong. You can correct me on that, but it seems to be the case. And so you gather, I think, the the the best, most accurate reflection of the needs that we are trying to meet with our families that we serve. That happens at the beginning. And I know, again, there's annual assessments that happen, but, again, correct me if I'm wrong, they don't appear to be as as robust as when it originally happened.
So the the idea of continuous improvement to me lines aligns with either recertificate certification, recertification, accreditation. And so I guess the first fundamental basic question is, I think I heard all of you, and maybe you can just raise your hand if you agree, that a certification accreditation process makes sense for community schools. Do you all agree with that?
Speaker 1
Okay. So Some some sort. In the middle. Some sort. Okay.
So It's like let's get some thoughts on what that means for everybody because I like to hear what the why there's a little bit of hesitation to that from some of you. Let's start with this end of the table.
Speaker 19
Sure. So absolutely agree with the continuous improvement. I think for any personally, professionally, all of these different aspects when we're implementing strategies, one of the concerns is adding on another layer. I think one of the things we realized in implement supporting community schools implementation, we heard so much from the field around another plan, another reporting requirement. We know we already have the expanded learning opportunities program plan.
We already know there's reporting requirements there. We're actually perpetuating this idea of silos and incoherence.
Speaker 1
Okay. I I I completely understand where where you're from. Next opportunity?
Speaker 17
I just it it needs to be on an annual some sort of reporting, APR reporting at least on an annual basis with starting with the plan for implementation and sustainability and the reporting at the end of the year.
Speaker 18
I'm okay with an accreditation process as long as it's done in a very thoughtful way.
Speaker 18
It would require some level of accountability, frankly. We need to see student outcome shifts. We need to see that this process is being implemented. It's not a money grab. This is money to help drive strategy implementation.
If we do not focus on districts actually implementing the strategy to Fidelity with Fidelity, which requires districts to understand what the strategy is, frankly, then we are we are setting this investment up for failure.
Speaker 10
I'll just piggyback on that. I think that is the goal. Right? And to your point, if we were to do an accreditation or or certification strategy, it should not be an add on. So the way one might wanna think about it is that there are set of features in our framework.
There might be another set of features that have to do with the redesign components that we want to see that could become I don't know if this would work or not, so I'm just you know? But I've heard from folks at WASC that they'd like to be able to incorporate this kind of work into their accreditation. So it would not be an extra thing beyond what schools currently do, but it would have to be extra. It would have to be defined, and it'd have to be those features of the framework and the features of the design. And it would probably need to be done in partnership with the state technical assistance center
Speaker 10
But it's interesting to me that we've had the we have these Monday morning calls of a lot of people come on and and listen. And in both sessions recently on community schools and the sessions on redesigning, secondary schools, the WASC folks were there saying, we'd like to help. We'd like to engage. So there may be a possibility to, integrate rather than laying on.
Speaker 14
Yeah. So agree. It needs to be feasible. It needs to be effective, and it needs to be anchored in benchmarks on what really matters. And so the process for developing it, it has to be transparent.
It has to include education interest holders, especially those who are really invested in in, you know, these commune this community schools process. So that has to be required so that so that we're actually measuring what matters in it. K. And then, you know, when we designed the LCFF accountability system, if we're wanting this to be integrated, it went through the state board of education. There were public comment opportunities.
You know, there were opportunities for people weigh in. So I think that was more our, as my daughter was there, my six seven on it was really because of that. And, you know, and for the California Partnership for the Future of Learning, we would you know, folks would wanna be able to weigh in.
Speaker 16
Yes, please. From a teacher perspective, we don't know what the accreditation would look like. However, we do, as you mentioned, to be inclusive of not just the management team, but also the parents, the community members, the students. We would like for it to be transparent, as you mentioned. Right?
We need to know what the conversations what are they? What's happening? And then we need them to be properly funded.
Speaker 1
Right. Yeah. Thank you. Okay. Well, that was all very good constructive, additional to that to that thinking.
Appreciate that. I'd now like to turn it over to doctor Patel.
Speaker 20
Thank you. Thank you all for being here. I do have several questions, but I know my time is limited, so I'm gonna try to stay focused. A couple very technical questions. Looking specifically at the community schools model from the first panel presentation.
So those of you who are in the first panel, if you wanna give some contributions to responses, that would be appreciated. Specifically, Department of Finance and LAO, when we are looking at the $10,000,000 budgeted towards technical assistance for, STAC and RTAC. Given the potential for the increase in the number of schools participating in community schools, is that a calculation? Is that a budgeted amount that's based on, you know, what amount of technical assistance was needed for the first 2,000 whatever number of schools, or is this just an amount of money that's available? And so we're saying this is what we're gonna put for technical assistance.
Is it actually tied into the expected amount of work that is coming our way. And I'm sorry. We're we're gonna do a little musical chairs. We appreciate you hanging out close by.
Speaker 2
Shade Nareth, Department of Finance. So the technical assistance structure amount was taken intended to mirror similar to the per year allocations because for the technical assistance structure, it's a three year contract. And so per year allocation for the tax, it's around 2 to 3,000,000 per year for the for the contracts currently existing and then the one that starts in the out years. So, overall, our intention was to mirror similar to what the existing contract looks like right now and to provide a supplemental add on to what is currently, the contract amount that they have. And just to clarify, does that include, you know, what's gonna happen with COLA, rising costs of of everything over the next several years, as
Speaker 20
well as the the increase in number? The first batch was for 2,500 schools. We're now looking at 3,700 schools potentially. Does that take into account that there'll be more schools that will be requiring technical assistance and perhaps more complex issues that they'll be dealing with in out years?
Speaker 20
Or is it just kinda steady mirror mirrored steady with what was experienced in the past? Mhmm. Yeah. The I'm worried just just, know, I'm worried about it being under budgeted.
Speaker 20
Okay. Okay. But the I'm talking about the technical assistance component. Like, there will be increasing costs even with staffing of that technical assistance and the types of programs that they'll be providing assistance on. So I just wanna make sure that we're we have an increased number of schools that we're gonna support.
And these are in out years where we don't know what the exact impacts are gonna be.
Speaker 20
Maybe what maybe the way I can get to it is the $10,000,000, what is it actually budgeted for? Is it staffing for technical assistance? Is it softwares and tools? Is it?
Speaker 6
So to hi. Jessica Holmes, Department of Finance. So to answer your question, so first off, we are not currently proposing to add COLA to the amounts that we're proposing for, the technical assistance funds. So secondly, I think it's also important to note that the initial allocation of technical assistance funding was also to set up it was not only to to to help support the 2,500 schools, but it was also to set up the structure. The structure didn't exist, prior to this.
And so I think there is it's not exactly an apples to apples, the current funding and the ongoing funding Okay. Because we're building off something that we already have now. Okay. The It's
Speaker 6
And I think the other thing to keep in mind too is that, you know, there there is there was a a multiyear sort of ramp up. So some we we just have we just awarded last year the last cohort of implementation grants. So there are some folks who are newly coming on board still, but there are other folks that are further along in the process. So we're building on top of something that's already still moving as well. So I think we recognize that it's, you know, a significant increase in the number of schools that need to be supported, but we also are building off of something that is already kind of up and running.
And so we're balancing it. You know, I think I think if you're asking for, you know, is it perfectly precise and accurate? I think it's our best estimate of where we think it needs to land in order to support increase in schools. But, you know, it's not an exact science.
Speaker 20
Yeah. And certainly, expect the things in the education community landscape are constantly changing. Mhmm. So it's never gonna be precise and fully predictable, and I I appreciate that. Just wanna make sure that we're not under resourcing something as we look forward and as we expand and grow and entertain concepts of perhaps a middle school redesign, which is something that in my work as a school board trustee in Power Unified, we worked very long and hard on and realized that it definitely needed to happen.
But in a LCFF base funded district, we didn't have the extra resources to, give release time for staff to look at what it would take because of how complex it is. But appreciate that. And I I want to echo some of the sentiments from our panelists here that the opt in, without having any rigorous kind of planning is a little bit troubling. I wanna make sure that we're not just doing some of these are new LEAs that are joining community schools. If there are new schools within an LEA, maybe an opt in may make more sense to have a simplified streamlined process.
But for new LEAs, this is a whole new endeavor. They're engaging completely new community partners and new health agencies, perhaps even departments of health that haven't been part of a community school before. So we want to make sure that it's not just an easy opt in, that there is rigorous planning, and that will help ensure success. So I'm hearing that echoed throughout many of the panelists today, and and that is registering. It's also also registering that as we onboard new schools and LEAs, that county level technical support, the county coordinator is going to be critical, especially for these counties where or these regions where we're seeing a significant increase in the number of schools that are participating.
When we look at community schools specifically, do we see, any kind of regional distribution or pattern with where they are located throughout our state? I'm imagining our rural communities will see more of them. I'm imagining urban areas may see more of them. Are we seeing any geographic distribution patterns?
Speaker 19
I will say, actually, rural, we're not because of this unduplicated pupil percentage. The required the eligibility requirement, which it was a priority in the initial cohorts, but it's not included in the budget at this time, which is why there's that concern that Gina had mentioned around the rural districts, LEAs having being eligible at the 65%. We're actually seeing them more in the urban areas. I think we see quite a bit in Southern California, Central Valley. There's a a denser we do, like, a heat map.
There's more community school grantees currently there now. I think with the 65% or above, we, interestingly enough, we probably won't be able to, include rurals at that. Amo, there
Speaker 10
are a lot of rural districts that came in when we reduced the I just say from the state board front put put on my state board head for a second. The initial grants went primarily to folks with 85% or above, and then we brought more rurals in by dropping it down to 65.
Speaker 14
I've also seen a a map. Bellwether research prepared a map for us. So aft by adding the 65%, there will be community schools in every county in the state. There's only one county that won't get an any more community schools because they just don't have that concentration. But I'm happy to share kind of the distribution.
It is true while the percentage is higher in some there are rural counties like, you know, Riverside that are, you know, that are going to, you know, be above 77% of their schools will have access. I'm not seeing Fresno right here, but if we take
Speaker 17
a look, it'll be live here. I can speak to the fact that Lake LA County Office of Education currently has about 500. We have 510 grantees. 11 counties, 510 grantees. LACO has 500, give or take.
They can't their their schools will be 1,600 increase. Our Central Valley region will be 559 at the 65% and above unduplicated. So just an example of the difference.
Speaker 14
And this is getting it to counties that under the CCSPP actually had no grantees. They are going to be moving up in the the percentage of their schools.
Speaker 20
So what I'm hearing is that that there's this 85% on UPP threshold that we're looking at for community schools. 65. 65. 65. Okay.
65. We want continuous ongoing funding. We want accountability. We want a strategy and a plan. It sounds like this really is, if we look at ongoing funding, a new bracket of LCFF is what it's sounding like to me.
Yes. And I know this budget year is a very, very challenging budget year to think about ongoing funding, and even with the next out year, maybe two out two years out. But it sounds like what we're getting at is maybe this is difficult to say out loud for our education community folks,
Speaker 7
a new bracket within LCFF where there is a concerted effort to have ongoing funding for a model that is designed to improve outcomes for students. And I don't know what that looks like, chair Alvarez, But it sounds like these intervention models, if they continue to be as efficacious as we hope them to be and that continuity is really important to see that, and the challenges that our students are facing are not going away. They're only increasing. Perhaps we do need to think about a a more sustained approach that is integrated within the current funding mechanisms. And then the reporting require requirements, the community outreach requirements would then be folded into the existing LCFF framework.
Speaker 20
I am just brainstorming here. This is not an actual plan. This is based on what all of you are sharing with me right now for the last two hours. It it sounds like it's pointing us in that direction, and maybe this is an opportunity for us to start thinking about, is it time to revisit LCFF? Chair Alvarez, I know you keep talking about that.
It's been on your mind for quite a while. So thinking about that as well as we look forward, not just for today's item, but when we think about how we do sustain it and how we do, you know, make sure that it's accountable and that there's continued input. I do have a couple questions on the the ELOP item, and that is again, and I think this came up through community schools as well, though, how are we looking at effective funding for ELOP, ACES, the twenty first century programs, all of these different programs, for middle and high school students? We we talked a little bit about middle school students. Certainly, are many reasons why middle school is a really, really challenging environment.
It's not just that our children are going through changes in adolescence, but it's also a very short time period to be attached to a school. It's a lot of transition in a very short period of time, steep learning curves and looking at teacher to teacher variation. It's supposed to be an opportunity for kids to learn how to change, but instead it's creating barriers and challenges. And so when we look at our systems of support for secondary, how does that how do we integrate ACEs, ELOP, community schools, all of that into a more coherent structure and framework so that we aren't duplicating programs and we're being better aligned and synergistic even. Yeah.
So in Pittsburgh,
Speaker 16
through our needs and assets assessment, certain schools wanted more, tutoring that they couldn't get during the regular school day. And so we partnered through e l o p, ELOP, to provide that support, but not double dipping. So when folks would bring proposals that had, like, tutoring, well, we we kind of connected them, and so we aligned our services to not double dip and not duplicate them. And then what we did in Pittsburgh and some of our middle schools is some of the funding came from community schools and some came from ELOP as well.
Speaker 17
And currently, our expanded learning is t k six. Just a few weeks ago, I will have the opportunity to be in some legislative offices talking about the opportunity to making that seven through 12. But we know that there's opportunity to build bridges and open doors. And so one of the things that we're doing in the Fresno area with our network improvement community, which is really about continuous improvement, is working with our expanded learning partners in the county and our content experts, our educational experts during the day and aligning the practices. Not compromising the the after school opportunities, but really aligning the practices.
So we do see some of our school districts sharing some of their expanded learning dollars from t k six with their secondary, but we'd love to see that be part of policy as well.
Speaker 20
It's very interesting as we think about that continuum. And when we do talk about community schools, we also have to think about when we have feeder schools that have different access to community schools then rolling into the same middle school or multiple middle schools with different accesses to community schools feeding into the same high school that then may or may not have a community school. Students and families, grow accustomed to the levels of support that they receive.
Speaker 20
And then losing that possibly as they shift from one grade span level to the next can become problematic. And so looking at coherence I keep looking at you, president of of our board, but through your position in LPI also, as we study and look at coherence, my worry is that in developing community schools, we then create a new fractured system as it pertains to how students experience education and the supports that we give them. So it's just something I wanna throw out there to think about that as kids grow and it could even be that your elementary school has a community school, your middle school doesn't, and then your high school does. Right? We have these situations where the UPP numbers float in and out, and then we don't have that continuum.
And I would love to see us find a way to bridge that so that as the student experiences school, they can experience it with the similar levels of support as they go through life. Because chances are for that kid, they're not seeing additional comforts in life in middle school than maybe they would have in elementary school. You have thoughts?
Speaker 14
I mean, I think that's why the framework is so important and the capacity building. Because as you're building that skill, we're seeing even in districts where they you know, some schools didn't get the CCSPP, they've seen how effective the approach is. They're building those skills and strategies, so they're applying it across all their schools. So I think it's still possible that we can really be moving towards a community school state. And this is a huge we made that a huge down payment.
This is an investment in expanding, but it will continue to multiply. And I think raising that question is important, but I don't think that it's necessarily a barrier to being able to Yeah.
Speaker 20
And I certainly hope it's not a barrier. I I hope it's inspiration that that we can continue to work on this and that we make our models transferable and translatable to other districts that may not have the money for release time for their teachers to build these these programs or their their faculty or their staff, right, their principals, their administrators. So we need to make sure that that they're they're translatable and transferable to other districts.
Speaker 10
Because I think this point about, again, coherence and consistency. One of the reasons it's so important that LEAs are involved in this and have responsibility is so that they can think about spreading these practices across their schools, and some are doing that. Others probably need more help to do that. But, you know, the old model of community schools, individual schools, as tubs on their own bottom did did none of that. So I think we wanna be thoughtful about what LEAs are expected to do as they are part of this.
The other thing is that, you know, of course, we have all these elementary districts which are separate from our high school districts in California. We have declining enrollment. It's a moment when consolidation encouragements to unify so that we have more coherence are also potentially
Speaker 10
Important. We just did a study of positive outliers for English learners, districts that are positive outliers, and unified districts did much better than others, probably because they had a coherent policy and strategy to support English learners. That's probably true for others as well.
Speaker 20
I really appreciate that you brought that up because that's also important as we look at budgets if we do consider unifying schools. I believe Marin County had done a study for their elementary school districts as well as their high school districts, and they found that they could potentially lose funding because they would slip from a concentration funded district to a non concentrated unified LEA. So we would have to think about holding harmless, etcetera, etcetera, as as we look at that. We wouldn't want them to then lose a community school's funding stream because we ask them to unify. There's lot of things to think about all at the same time.
Very encouraged by this conversation and your testimony here today. I think there's a lot for us to work on. Chair Alvarez took that long list down. I I think we're all excited about the potential we have to continue to strengthen our community schools model. Thank you.
Speaker 1
Thank you, doctor Patel. And, yeah, we have been talking about the LCFF and the coherence conversation, how do some of these investments that have been transformative become part of of funding for schools. And so I think this is indicative. I you you may have stepped up just for a minute given that we have to be in multiple places this morning when the LAO raised the issue of this is starting to you didn't use this word, but I I think this is what you were referring to. It's starting to become a quasi categorical program.
And so where does that fit into LCFF, and where does it fit into the the framework that the state board has for what schools, you know, should be expected to do. And and so I think that competition is is ongoing, and and we will continue to have that. I think for purposes of this proposal, what I take away is that we have evidence that indicates success, and we we have both data and research that that is in numbers, but also in testimony that we hear consistently. And whether it's at school sites, which we've all visited, or in in this in the halls here at at the Capitol. So all that to say, I think, two things, phrases that come to mind.
One, which Erin reminded me, you know, we can we can go slow to go really far, and that's okay because we the goal is to go far. The other one that goes with that, though, in my opinion, is going together also gets us further. Mhmm. And to the point of almost everybody, the collaborative approach of making sure that we integrate students and families and teachers and staff and administrators and everybody, our education partners generally, that's what's gonna drive the results. And so from my standpoint, this is a significant investment that should be the cornerstone of that should be those two things and ensuring that we continue as use people use the word fidelity, but certainly the consistency of what we've identified to work.
And so I have enumerated all the things I heard from all of you. I am hoping that the administration identified those as well and that we are able to to get a response on why some of these components are not in the current proposal. And we will definitely, you know, hold this issue open. And if need be, given that we just spent three hours today, probably four hours on the oversight hearing before, obviously, it's it is something that matters a lot to the legislature. I have to say and acknowledge the leadership of the administration, of the governor, and of all the partners to get us to where we are, but it's not it's it's we can't just claim mission accomplished yet.
There's work that needs to be done and replicating and scaling, I should say, always rerun the risk of of missing some steps, and we don't want to do that. And that's what this hearing is about, and that's what we hope to hear in response to all the items identified by all of the panelists by the LAO and additional questions made by this committee. So we we hope to to hear back on all this come May revise. And, again, if we if we must, we will have a additional hearing on this issue because it's so important. I've neglected to say I apologize to the ELOP.
It's really not never my intent to not stick through the agenda. This is a very significant time, and we we I I will have to close the hearing earlier than expected, so we will not have that item. We'll also push that to the date of the April 29. And, again, apologies. I the point and the main reason is because there's so much testimony on community schools here and wanna hear especially from students who have been so intensely listening for the last couple hours, and so we wanna hear from their testimony.
Again, thank you all. I think the framework, certainly, secondary schools from SBE is something that remains in my mind. The accreditation, how to do that correctly remains my top of mind. And then, again, the continuation and the sustainability of the program in a way that's really with the intention that is that is sought by everyone. Those are sort of the the big takeaways.
I think everything fits under there, but thank you all and look forward to hearing some feedback on all the things we raised. Thank you to this panel. I'll now ask this if we can ask the students to come forward. I know a lot of you that we I I will make sure if I, for some reason, need to end the hearing because I must go to to the next, I wanna hear from the students first. So I'm gonna ask the students to line up first, and then all the other professionals that, know how to do this and do this, visit us frequently.
If for some reason, and it's not the intent, if for some reason I do not get to you today, I will promise that we will have an opportunity for public comment on this, in the future. So I appreciate that, and we'll have that on the twenty ninth, so you have a time certain of when that can happen. With that, typically, we give a minute. Ask students. You may have prepared your comments.
I'm asking you to please narrow that to thirty seconds. I think I understand you're all gonna hear be here to speak in support, so I get that. But if there's a very specific thing you wanna mention, just get to that as as as soon as you can in your testimony, but begin by introducing yourself, and we'll start with our first speaker. Welcome.
Speaker 24
Good morning. My name is Hailey Sotelo. I had previously prepared a comment, but seeing as we now have thirty seconds, I'll just go through the most important bits. As a student, I see myself reflected in the curriculum that I'm learning through the history I learn and through the services that are provided to me because of community schools. At my school site, which is a community school, and I attend Savannah High School in Anaheim, I have health services that are going on different weekdays and offering students resources, whether that's with dental help or trying to get glasses, which is a resource that I know I've used.
Speaker 23
And it's important because the core focus is being able to see students as not only the transcript, but in the context they live in. When communities are doing well, so are students. And quickly ending, I wanted to really emphasize, you all are making very important decisions, and that is understandable. And I'm sure you all have very busy schedules, but I would like to invite you all to go to a community school because it's one thing to read about it, but
Speaker 1
Thank you. So just to let you all know, that was a minute. Thirty seconds go by very fast. And just to let you all know, we had another hearing, and we heard about all the things that people like about schools. Today's hearing was about what's the governor proposal.
Thank you for your your comments, and, appreciate you. So we have a proposal today. Tell us about the proposal and what you see as perhaps needs to be changed in that proposal. If you can get to that, I would appreciate it. Thank you.
I'm gonna cut you off for thirty seconds. Okay? So
Speaker 1
That's totally fine. Thank you so much. Good afternoon. My name is Eva Swanson, and I'm here in support of the funding. Just a little bit about me.
Speaker 24
I'm a student consultant serving on statewide student advisory board with a bunch of students behind me as well. With this proposal, what I wanna say is in my line of work, I hear from students too often that they hate school, and that is something that should never be the or norm in our education system. I personally believe that community schools is the future of education. This proposed budget of adding a billion dollars is going to help so many students, families, and communities truly feel connected and supported throughout our state.
Speaker 41
Good afternoon. My name is Miley Del Sid. I'm a junior in Hawthorne High School with the SSA board. The primary thing that I would like to speak to you all today is the extracurriculars that community schools brings to so many different schools throughout California that incorporate that hands on project based learning that so many were talking about earlier. I know that I've experienced it, and I'm just one example of it.
Speaker 26
And it opens up so many doors and opportunities, for students to really dip their toes in the water and see what else is out there, and I think that's so important for all of us. Thank you so much.
Speaker 11
Good afternoon. My name is Sandra. I'm a high school junior from Los Year High School in Riverside. Just gonna get to the main points. At our school, I believe our concern should be our academics, and through community schools, the partnership, it has become possible for students who are struggling.
Speaker 22
At our school and many others who work in community schools, we're able to get food, housing, transportation, clothes, and other resources with the funds we get. These things are sustainable, and I think that students find these things so important. And if we continue to get the funding, then more schools and more students will
Speaker 12
Good morning. My name is Kenya Naomi Salso Nuno. I'm part of the SSA in eighth grade. Primarily, I think community schools really have helped me, and I think they're really important. At my school, we have a bunch of resources that help students both academically and mentally, and some students don't have that.
Speaker 27
And community schools are the initial step to create that, so I think community schools are really important. Thank you.
Speaker 22
Hello. My name is Indra Guerrero, and I'm a student with SSA. Community schools are not a side program. They are proven investments in workforce readiness, economics, stability, and long term growth. When students have access to tutoring, mental health support, and career pathways, they gradually prepare.
They enter the workforce with skills, discipline, and direction. Businesses need that. Strong schools build strong employees. In my own experience, support as school changes comes when students trust the adults around them. Attendance rises, performance improves, and the goal becomes real.
Speaker 21
Good afternoon. My name is Charlie Von Daly. I'm a high school sophomore and a representative of the statewide student advisory board from Riverside, California. As a black student who finds pride and motivation in my heritage, it's crucial to me that school will be a place where I can openly embrace my culture. Just yes last year, it was reported that when schools adopted the community schools approach, black students experienced more than double the reduction in both suspensions and chronic absences.
Funding community schools isn't just about better education in the present. It's about equity and helping us all move better better futures for ourselves.
Speaker 9
My name is Rita Sanchez, and I'm a youth leader with OCO on the SSA board. I'm from Anaheim, California and a senior at Anaheim High School. As a commissioner of community schools at my school, I played a key role in our current redesign process, working with staff and students to reimagine what support and opportunity can look like on our campus. I firsthand seen how the community schools model has transformed my school, a title one campus that is 97% Latino by expanding access to essential resources, strengthening relationships, and creating spaces where students feel seen and supported. Because of this work, more students are stepping into leadership roles, getting involved in their communities, and developing a real sense of
Speaker 9
Good morning. My name is Coraline Salazar, and I'm a student, with OCO and SSA from Anaheim, California. And I just wanted to say that community schools has done so much for me to even open a door where I am part of the redesign team at my school, and I have been able to reimagine how my school can better my my peers and my my school to be better for students. Thank you.
Speaker 13
Hello, everyone. My name is Alejandra Ramirez Peralta. I'm a first year student at UC Davis and a student leader with True North Organizing Network representing rural schools. Community schools has helped us reestablish the ELAC, the school site council, and his interest the the transition from middle schools to high schools. So I urgely I strongly encourage you and urge you to support community school fundings.
Thank you.
Speaker 35
Good afternoon. Darby Kernan representing In Child Poverty California. We work with the California Promise Neighborhoods and regional place based initiatives. Every Promise Neighborhood, including Chula Vista, partners with their community schools. We support the January budget and believe a stronger, more formalized partnership between community schools and promise neighborhoods could benefit both.
Speaker 30
The partnership Promise Neighborhoods, and Regional Place Based Initiatives can be powerful partners. Community schools are school centered. Promise Neighborhoods are neighborhood centered. Together, they will be strong.
Speaker 10
Good morning. Good afternoon, chair and members of the committee. My name is doctor Jamie Parsons representing the Orange County Department of Education and a statewide coalition of more than 30 other agencies who have submitted a letter of support for ongoing funding for the California MTSS investment. California's investment in community schools represents a strong and necessary strategy to address student needs comprehensively. The question before us is how to ensure those investments deliver measurable sustained outcomes.
Speaker 31
Community schools define what we aim to provide, which is integrated supports, family engagement, and expanded learning. However, without a coherent implementation framework, these efforts risk remaining fragmented
Speaker 11
Good afternoon. I'm Rindy Duvall from Butte County Office of Education in partnership with the Orange County Department of Education for California MTSS. Ten years of implementing California MTSS has given us a great amount of data, including increased student outcomes in e ELA and math and significant improvements in chronic absenteeism, specifically in middle and high schools. We have data that shows schools who have been implementing California MTSS and who are in high poverty and rural areas reduce their suspension days significantly. For schools, specifically rural schools, a whole child
Speaker 2
Madam chair, Jeff Frost representing the California School Library Association. We think that, that both sustainability and planning language in the trailer bill, should be expanded to ensure that there are robust libraries that create family engagement. On behalf of the Central Valley Education Coalition, we wanted to make sure that the c o COE coordinators are funded in the budget. Thank you.
Speaker 15
Good afternoon. Brianna Brenz with the California County Superintendents. I'll be brief and wanna echo some of the comments that were made today, emphasizing the importance of the COE coordinator role in the success and ongoing success of the program. So we hope that those will be continued to be funded in the program rather than being layered into the universal and targeted assistance program. And finally, we'd encourage the legislature to look at the eligibility requirements to make them more accessible to small and rural areas of the state.
Speaker 37
Good more good afternoon, madam chair of the other committee. Good to see you today. Thank you very much for the opportunity to testify. Pamela Gibbs representing the Los Angeles County Office of Education. And today, we wanna urge you to continue to, fund community schools with fidelity to make sure that students who are facing a lasting impacts of generational inequity and, also, ongoing disparities, are are funded.
Speaker 1
Just a reminder, everybody can all submit in writing and definitely comes to us, but thank you.
Speaker 25
We've submitted in writing. Hi. I'm Jessica Gunderson with the California After School Advocacy Alliance. We represent over 43 agencies across the state of California, representing 3,000 school sites. If we're gonna do ongoing funding for community schools, which we strongly support, we're gonna need to, have ongoing funding for middle school and high school programs through expanded ELOP and ACES.
Speaker 36
Right? Like, you can't have this model without ongoing funding for middle school and high school as well. And then there's two other pieces in the governor's proposal. One is you need to integrate all those different plans. You heard that.
Two is there needs to be explicit language making expanded learning and community schools at the county level work Good
Speaker 5
afternoon, mister chair. Dan Moran on behalf of California School Boards Association. I would just like to uplift LAO's comments and questions around community schools, not undercutting the importance of the program, but that's a vast infusion of one ongoing funding when we've seen pretty historically low COLAs as well as a withhold of 5,600,000,000.0 that could be used for other purposes as well, like continuing this program. Thank you.
Speaker 43
Michelle Warshaw, on behalf of the California Teachers Association as well as on behalf of my colleague from the California Federation of Teachers, we strongly support the 1,000,000,000 ongoing funding for community schools. And Celia already did a fantastic job. Just wanna emphasize one of her points on meaningfully embedding collaborative leadership and shared governance structures into every layer of the community school structure.
Speaker 33
Thank you. Mister chair, Carson Digne, California Charter School Association, the expansion plan for community schools would unfairly exclude nonclassman based charter schools from
Speaker 40
45 NCB schools have already received grants. They're providing community services to 26,000 students. We project a 128 NCB schools serving over 76,000 pupils would be eligible for the new thresholds but are gonna be denied the opportunity to participate. We understand the language is gonna be changed to preserve existing schools' eligibility. We think those 128 schools that would otherwise be eligible should continue to be allowed to apply.
Thank you.
Speaker 26
Good afternoon. Christina Salazar with the Riverside County superintendent of schools. Just wanna say we support the ongoing funds and want to keep, school services closest to schools and their families. And also want to say, thank you, doctor Patel. To your point, the role of the county coordinators to support LEAs for effective implementation will be critical.
Speaker 7
Good morning. My name is Jalen Woodard. I'm with the Alameda County Office of Education. We support the ongoing $1,000,000,000 annual community schools investment, but urge the legislature to make, the county office of, education or or COE coordinator funding permanent and separate from universal and targeted assistance. Such as partners, COEs need this ability to ensure vital community partnerships that meet the needs of their students and families.
Speaker 16
Good morning. Maury Elliott with Gateway Community Charters. We currently receive CCSPP funding for both our c based and nonclassroom based schools. In our hybrid nonclassroom based models, hundreds of students receive community school services every day. The current proposal would take that away and not allow ongoing funding.
Speaker 42
We're requesting that funding stay in place for our most vulnerable students in our nonclassroom based settings. Thank you. Thank you.
Speaker 38
Good afternoon. I'm Julie Crandall. I am the principal superintendent of Home Tech Charter in Paradise. We are also considered a nonclassroom based school. However, we do have a brick and mortar site.
Speaker 43
We have students, staff, and teachers on campus every single instructional day. And so that, excluding nonclassroom based schools really does not help our students. In our first year, we increased our academic achievement on all SBAC measures, reduced chronic absenteeism, increased our stability rate, and ninety eight percent of our parents report positive school climate.
Speaker 17
Good afternoon. My name is Luke Anderson. I'm the executive director for prevention at Placer County Office of Education where I lead community schools and MTSS initiatives. I am here to request sustained multi year funding for MTSS implementation along with community schools' work. Through our community schools' work, I've seen firsthand that this work needs an implementation structure to deliver the results that it promises, Yeah.
Speaker 45
Kaitlyn Zhang, on behalf of the San Diego County Office of Education as well as the Small School District Association, I wanna align our comments with those from the county superintendent's association, particularly around the need for permanent funding for the county office coordinator positions outside of the targeted assistance system, as well as looking at the eligibility criteria so it's more inclusive of small and rural districts, including those, like, isolated districts that kind of don't have access to the current proposal.
Speaker 46
Good morning. My name is Nora Barrera, and I'm a parent leader with Sacramento ACT and Luther Burbank in Sacramento School District. Community schools work to strengthen relationships and leadership among families, students, and the community. Through communities through community schools, I became a leader at my school once again. We have the power to build strong schools based on building relationships and sharing shared decision making.
We urge you to support the annual investment of $1,000,000,000 for community schools. Thank you.
Speaker 41
I'll keep it brief. I'm Nicole Taylor. I'm the assistant superintendent of Sci Tech Charter High School. We have a team here today, and they will give you the rest of, our spiel.
Speaker 15
Hello. My name is Terrence Thomas. I'm the community schools engagement coordinator for SciTech Academy South. Two years ago, using community schools funding, we were able to bring students to the student advisory board of legislation and education by way of the California Association of Student Councils. They fought for immigration and, reform historic justice reform, which resulted into senate bill fourteen forty five headed by senator Cortisi.
Speaker 4
Hello. My name is Jose Martinez. I'm the principal for Sciatic Charter School in Imperial County. And for the year and a half that we've been implementing our this funding, our ADA in attendance and also graduation rate has increased more than 20%. Thank you.
Speaker 28
Hello. My name is, Tom Healing with SciTech Charter Schools. I am also a community school engagement coordinator. I just wanna express my govern concern with the government's proposal exclude nonclassroom based charter schools from community's case community schools funding in the future. You've heard from several of our students, our people, that that we were being successful.
Speaker 48
Families are are are being engaged. Students are tenants incomplete. So I just wanna urge legislature to reconsider their exclusion of our school. Please do not exclude our school. Non non classroom based classrooms observe our purpose.
Thank you very much for your time.
Speaker 12
Good afternoon. My name is Selena McLurkin with Catalyst California and the California Partnership for the Future of Learning. We strongly support the $1,000,000,000 in ongoing funding for community schools and urge you to ensure that there is meaningful community partnership throughout the development of the program. The Equity Alliance for LA's Kids hosted a town hall in South LA where students, families, educators, and community members were able to share directly with LAUSD school board members. They talked about how programs have supported their mental health, their sense of self and belonging, improved their college and career pathways.
These stories show why community partnerships should be embedded in the development of the program. Thank you.
Speaker 6
Thank you, mister chair members. Andrea Ball here on behalf of the Orange County Department of Education. Want to align and lift up the comments you heard from our colleagues at the California County superintendents and the panelists from Fresno County in support of the $1,000,000,000 ongoing for community schools, recognition of how important technical assistance support is, and you heard from my colleague earlier about the importance of the multi tiered system of support is integral to successful sustainability of community schools. Thank you.
Speaker 27
Afternoon. EJ Aguayo on behalf of A Plus, which is the Association of Personalized Learning Schools, respectfully oppose the proposal to change eligibility requirements for community school site funding to exclude nonclassroom based, charter schools. The proposal continues a pattern of unjustified exclusions for nonclassroom based charter schools. At its core, this ultimately harms students when the true goal should be to ensure they are not
Speaker 48
Good afternoon. Sorry. Good afternoon. My name is Brian Osorio. I'm with Building Healthy Communities Kern.
Speaker 51
I'm proud to be here alongside education partners from across the state. I'm coming to you for today from Delano, one of our Kern County communities receiving this funding, directly. In In Kern County, nearly three quarters of our students are classified as high needs, but it's not a current reality. It's a California reality. It's why we strongly support the core community schools framework and the 1,000,000,000 annual investment in community schools.
Thank you.
Speaker 25
Good afternoon. Rickam Ralles with Ed Trust West. We would like to plus one our support for community schools as this program has been one of the most effective tools the state has to close opportunity gaps in schools and improve learning outcomes for students of color and low income students, especially black students and English learners. Thank you.
Speaker 23
Thank you. Good afternoon, chair Alvarez. Jonathan Munoz on behalf of Children's Institute, which is a community school partner with three LEAs. We deliver on-site behavioral health services to which our students receive timely integrated support. Our our work reduces barriers to attendance through targeted strategies, including chronic absenteeism, interventions, care management enrollment, and family support.
Speaker 52
We support the governor's proposal to invest an additional billion dollars in community schools and ask for your support. Thank you. Thank you.
Speaker 39
Good afternoon. My name is Zazi Dolan. I'm a student leader with Inland Congregations United for Change and a high school senior at Pacific High School, a community school in San Bernardino. I just wanna emphasize the importance of community schools receiving the funding and ensuring that the students have the necessary resources to succeed in their future. Thank you.
Speaker 19
Hello. My name is Maria Garcia. I'm the mother of a student who is part of the Pomona Unified School District, where there is a high percentage of students that come from low income families who would, benefit from the community schools since they are essential to transform education by offering a safe environment where students, families, and community members, together with educators, work together to improve the conditions that favor the whole learning.
Speaker 31
Good afternoon. My name is Sevelia Rocha. I am a parent organizer in Pomona, where 88% of the families in Pomona are socioeconomically disadvantaged. And I believe that community schools will be great for all our students so they could try thrive. Thank you.
Speaker 34
Good afternoon, Saravaches, with children now echoing all of the wonderful comments of our youth and parents, the reasons why community schools deserves ongoing funding. Thank you.
Speaker 3
Good afternoon. My name is Dulce Sotelo. I'm a parent in the Anaheim Union High School District and a community member involved with OCO. The community school approach at its core is an intentional relationship between families, schools, and community that focuses on making students and students feel seen, heard, and supported academically, socially, and emotionally. With the support, students are more likely to thrive.
Speaker 54
In order to continue that collaboration, we need the $1,000,000,000 of ongoing annual funds. Thank you.
Speaker 21
Good morning. Rachel Murphy with Public Advocates and the California Partnership for the Future of Learning. We believe that the trailer bill language can be strengthened by ensuring that the various eligibility notification certification and accreditation processes are developed in partnership with education interest holders who've been involved in community schools implementation, and annual reporting at the school level has been a critical piece of school transformation as it builds capacity and contributes to continuous improvement. We provided detailed recommendations in the packets that were provided to you this morning, and we would be happy to discuss further.
Speaker 47
Good afternoon. Brian Ericks with the Los Angeles Unified School District. We wanna, appreciate the governor's investment in community schools and support his proposal. We would notice, however, a decrease from the previous funding mechanism to the new funding mechanism and some of the, available money available to our smaller schools, so we would like to, reexamine the, ratios. But other than that, we very much support the proposal.
Speaker 32
Good afternoon. I'm Tara George, a student at UC Davis and a policy intern representing Youth Spire here today. We believe that financial aid completion is a missing area of focus from these student need discussions. California has been making great progress in increasing our FAFSA completion rates over the past few years. But in order con to keep making progress, we need to build a culture of financial aid completion in California.
Speaker 57
That starts with making sure financial aid completion is made a key performance indicator and focus area for programs like CCSP. We believe our state students would benefit from more clear language tasking community schools with supporting students and families with financial aid completion.
Speaker 39
Good afternoon. My name is Katie Nunez Adler, and I'm the statewide coordinator with the California Partnership for the Future of Learning. I just wanted to share again that we're urging the $1,000,000,000 investment in ongoing funding. As you heard, we today, we have about 50 students, families, organizers, advocates that are here representing thousands and thousands more who are partnering it with educators and community partners at every level of the system from their schools to the districts, the county offices of education, RTACS, and STACS, and are really invested in making sure that we continue and that we expand it and make this a true community school state. So thank you so much.
Speaker 1
Thank you very much. Is there anyone else in public who'd like to make a comment? Okay. Thank you. Thank you all for your contributions to the conversation.
Appreciate you being really succinct, and you all got your message across. Thank you very much. We will hold this issue open as stated, and we will now adjourn today's meeting.
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