Spring flowers are blooming and budget season is picking up in Sacramento as the Legislature continues to hold hearings on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s January Budget Proposal. Despite a stormier fiscal outlook than in recent years, many important TK-12 priorities were shielded from cuts in the Governor’s January Budget.

As budget hearings continue and the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office predicts further budget downturn for the Proposition 98 Guarantee, CSBA is committed to defending the historic gains made over the last several years, which have allowed school districts and county offices of education to fund academic interventions, supplemental services and mental health supports to help students rebound from the pandemic.

As negotiations move forward, here’s where CSBA is focusing its budget advocacy this year.

The devastating global pandemic that shut down schools, reordered the norms for gathering in public spaces and forced many into quarantine fundamentally changed the way we live and work. These changes have taken a toll on everyone at every stratum of the socioeconomic landscape. The fallout can clearly be seen in the emotional lives of our children — and nowhere is the crisis more on display than in the classrooms, cafeterias and playgrounds of our public schools. Students’ struggles with emotional well-being and its connection to behavior is a national issue.

Even prior to the pandemic, social-emotional learning (SEL) was being incorporated into classrooms to help improve student outcomes and conditions of learning. The Common Core Standards and implementation of a Multi-Tiered System of Supports were intended to act as a foundation to promote and support robust strategies for engagement.

As part of the roadshow, CSBA’s top staff are touring the state to initiate a dialogue with members, hear your ideas on education issues and student needs, provide updates on political and legal news, and share information about trainings and other CSBA offerings. The feedback staff gains on these visits informs our legislative advocacy and helps us develop programs and services that are responsive to your needs.

“Despite the lower estimates of the guarantee, the Governor’s Budget has about $5.2 billion available for new K-12 spending. This funding is due to lower baseline costs for the Local Control Funding Formula and the expiration of various one time grants funded in the June 2022 budget,” according to the report, The 2023–24 Budget: Proposition 98 Overview and K-12 Spending Plan.

A new report, Summer 2022: How California schools are making the most of new increased state investments, released in January by the Partnership for Children & Youth, offers an overview of trends from the first full year of Expanded Learning Opportunities Program (ELO-P) implementation and recommendations for districts and the state around summer and year-round offerings.

California has allocated billions in ongoing funding to ELO-P. Before 2020, $783 million in state and federal investments went toward expanded learning, according to the report. In July 2021, the state invested $1.75 billion to develop ELO-P, which was established through Assembly Bill 130. By July 2022, ELO-P funding had increased to $4 billion with $5 million identified in state budget toward technical assistance, training and evaluation by county offices of education. By July 2025 the program will be fully funded at $5 billion.

The Menifee Union School District carries a deep urgency for learning recovery. We have added instructional minutes to the day, brought back summer school programs, begun scaling our Expanded Learning Opportunities Program and, most notably, continued in the implementation of our Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) plan. Through substantial input from educators across the district, we were able to identify 18 high-leverage practices that are sure to have a positive impact on the academic, behavioral and social-emotional success of students. One of our district’s practices that truly energizes me is the ongoing observation and data collection. District staff consistently review data provided by rigorous assessments, whether formative or summative, and couple that with “Learning Walks,” which are critical opportunities for our staff to observe practices, not people. Additionally, we have a comprehensive school counseling program that works in tandem with the MTSS plan to support students’ development.

Local educational agencies are increasingly using online programs for student learning. With any use of such websites and applications, there is a concern about the safety of students who are utilizing them, including in the collection and use of personal information. In its most recent session, the state Legislature added more safety requirements with which businesses that provide online products, services and features for children’s use must comply.

While the Legislature did not place any specific requirements on schools, local educational agencies need to know about the new requirements since they often utilize the online products and services involved for educational purposes. The requirements can provide some measure of reassurance that school-provided online services that are likely to be accessed by children will be safe for students.

Improving air quality and modernizing and maximizing natural light in classrooms have been linked to increased concentration, comprehension and engagement, as well as improved test scores and overall academic performance.

Yet, following decades of underfunding school infrastructure, national spending for K-12 school buildings falls short by an estimated $85 billion annually, according to a 2021 analysis from the 21st Century School Fund, which estimated that it would cost $1.1 trillion to modernize and replace obsolete school buildings and systems over the next decade.

While student mental health issues presented a challenge prior to the pandemic, the isolation, stress and grief over loss of friends and loved ones further increased youth needs for mental health resources and services. Currently, suicide is the third-leading cause of death for youth ages 15-19, and one in four adolescents ages 12-17 report having recently experienced a substance use disorder or a major depressive episode.

The Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program is a large federal investment in high-speed, affordable internet. A January brief released by the Pew Charitable Trusts details the goals, requirements and other considerations that states, territories and federal agencies need to meet to access the funds.

BEAD dedicates more than $42 billion to construct broadband networks, offers subsidies to offset the cost of internet service for lower-income households, and makes available programs to provide users with the devices and training they need to use the new and upgraded networks.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), which administers the program, has established five minimum requirements for all BEAD-funded projects. They must:

Professional development opportunities were discussed at the California Collaborative for Educational Excellence’s governing board meeting on Feb. 2.

Staff updated the board on the Learning Acceleration System Grant, which is meant to promote rapid improvement in student knowledge and skills following the pandemic, and provide related professional learning opportunities and resources for educators.

There are three projects led by county offices of education that were funded by the grant. The California Collaborative for Learning Acceleration (CCLA) is led by Santa Clara County Office of Education and focuses on math, literacy and language development; the California Literacy Elevation by Accelerating Learning (Project CLEAR) focuses on literacy and language development and is led by San Diego COE; and the Rural Math Collaborative is led by Lake COE.

In its first meeting of 2023, the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC) outlined its work for the year, reviewed analysis from the first three years of the Teacher Residency Grant Programs, and, after much discussion, approved Literacy Program Standards and Teaching Performance Expectations for Education Specialist Low Incidence Disability areas, which include students with visual impairments, deaf and hard of hearing students, and children aged 0-5 with disabilities.

New Chair Marquita Grenot-Scheyer opened the meeting with a review of the commission’s responsibilities, and a pledge to continue to be bold in fulfilling those responsibilities. The CTC has four areas under its purview: educator preparation and assessments, educator licensure and related discipline issues, developing and disseminating reports on key issues, and administering and monitoring grants for educators entering the teacher pipeline.

In a win for equity, AB 2638 author Assemblymember Richard Bloom was also successful in gaining an additional $5 million dollars for the Drinking Water in Schools Program in the California State Budget for fiscal year 2022–23 (AB 179). Disadvantaged schools were prioritized from the outset for this program that provides funds and technical assistance for school drinking water safety and access, including new water stations and point of entry (POE) and point of use (POU) water filtration for contaminants. Previous allocations to this program were $9.5 million in 2017 (Senate Bill 828; Guidelines) with awards made to about 70 school districts, and $6.8 million in 2019 (SB 862; the approved funding list for “Round 2” has not yet been released).

The Roadmap to the Future is a long-term plan to help effectively coordinate the services, supports and opportunities that children, youth and families in Yolo County need to thrive, as well as establish a shared framework to ensure their healthy development.

“The trustees of the Yolo County Board of Education have been concerned with the gaps in services to meet the needs of our students and the students in our communities,” said Shelton Yip, Yolo COE board vice president. “The county superintendent and staff — in collaboration with the County Board of Supervisors, city governments, local educational agencies, county behavioral health and other public/private agencies — is working to produce an outline of existing community assets and conditions to better understand and allocate resources needed to enhance youth development and success.”