The 2021–22 school year was full of ups and downs, with many challenges confronting CSBA members. One bright spot in the year was the launch of CSBA’s District and County Office of Education Legal Services program at CSBA’s Annual Education Conference in December.

California school districts and county offices of education have long relied on CSBA’s guidance on legislation, policy and general legal matters. However, they have never been able to receive direct legal advice and counsel protected by the attorney-client privilege from the association. When questions came in calling for legal advice and counsel beyond general legal guidance, CSBA members were told to contact their legal counsel — a response that was neither satisfying for the inquirer nor the CSBA attorneys eager to serve our members. Under the direction of CSBA CEO & Executive Director Vernon M. Billy, staff began to research what other state associations offer and Billy proposed the new Legal Services Department to the association’s Board of Directors, who approved the new initiative as a way to provide important and direct services to members. With the arrival of Legal Services, CSBA members can now receive even more benefits from our legal team than ever before.

After a long budget season, the Legislature has returned to Sacramento for the final month of the 2021–22 legislative session. The Senate and Assembly have reconvened with just a few weeks left to conclude their business. Several major education bills have unexpectedly been left behind, while CSBA-sponsored bills will continue to move forward in the weeks ahead.

In the final days before the June 30 deadline to conclude all policy committees, a number of major education bills found themselves caught in the crossfire of a series of contentious education committee hearings. At its June 29 hearing, the Assembly Education Committee, chaired by Assemblymember Patrick O’Donnell (D-Long Beach), opted not to bring two major bills authored by Sen. Anthony Portantino (D-La Cañada Flintridge) to a vote.

As education leaders, it’s important that we demonstrate the same commitment to lifelong learning that we expect of our students and staff. This is especially true at a moment where American leadership is in question across so many arenas, be it government, business or civic life. Public education has certainly not escaped the scrutiny and criticism that is pervasive in modern society, but we can’t let that deter us from our mission. If anything, we should take it as a challenge to redouble our commitment to public school governance, because the stakes are higher than ever before.

That’s why it was so invigorating to convene with hundreds of school board members, superintendents and school staff at the 2022 Leadership Institute in Los Angeles. One of the biggest impacts of the pandemic was the isolation that it imposed on so many of us, creating a void that technology could only partially fill. The chance to be in communion with so many dedicated education leaders, first at the 2021 Annual Education Conference and then this July at Leadership Institute, was truly restorative for me and for many others.

In the more than 40 years since voters approved Proposition 13 in response to rising property taxes, the 1978 initiative has contributed to inadequate funding for public schools, as well as a widening wealth gap and acute housing shortage, according to a new report.

Unjust Legacy, released in June by The Opportunity Institute and Pivot Learning, found that California fell from fifth in per-student funding to 47th in the nation in the two decades following the passage of Prop 13. The analysis found that making certain changes to the way the state taxes its residential properties could result in an increase in funding of at least $1,200 per student.

Maria Echaveste, president and CEO of The Opportunity Institute, noted during a June 22 webinar analyzing the findings of the report that “as the eldest of seven children born into a poor Mexican farmworker family, California’s investments in education gave us — all of us — the opportunity to achieve the American dream. When California was among the top five states in per-student education funding, my siblings and I received a high-quality education, even in a little rural district in Fresno County. The California that passed Proposition 13 is not the California of today. We can revisit decisions of the past and better align our policies with the California we want for our children.”

More than two years since the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in school closures in March 2020, the federal government has provided billions in relief funding to aid local educational agencies in the U.S. to continue educating students through distance learning, implement virus-mitigation measures to aid in safe school reopenings, address learning recovery, and support students’ mental and social-emotional health. Whenever the government distributes large sums of money to agencies or individuals, questions follow about whether that funding was used for its intended purpose. For those who are less familiar with the complexity of school operations, it can be difficult to grasp the variables and considerations that impact school spending decisions.

That is why CSBA embarked on an intensive research project examining how districts and county offices of education are using COVID relief funding to support the health and safety, instructional and social-emotional needs of students and staff. Using a combination of focus group, survey and state-level expenditure reports, CSBA has developed a three-part series that broadly describes the ways California’s school districts and county office of education have used state and federal COVID-19 relief funding. This research also includes the perspectives of superintendents and chief business officials on spending priorities and related implementation issues.

Preparedness and the ability to lead through challenges was a major theme among keynote and breakout sessions at CSBA’s 2022 Leadership Institute.

Local educational agency leaders from across the state converged in Los Angeles July 22–23 to connect on topics including mental health, crisis communications, community engagement, effective board meeting management and financing an equitable education.

CSBA’s School Boards in Action campaign is kicking off its second phase this month — focusing more than ever on highlighting the critical work that school district and county board members do to serve California’s nearly 6 million public school students.

Phase one, which took place last year, generated greater recognition of the complex nature of responding to an everchanging pandemic as well as the variety of innovative programming offerings districts developed to support students, staff and families in unprecedented times. It gave an in-depth look at how board members and local educational agencies dedicated themselves to providing online learning, returning students to in-person instruction, jumpstarting learning recovery efforts and addressing social-emotional needs.

As board meetings became a hotbed for contentious conversations around COVID-19 mitigation strategies and other topics, countless trustees faced historic rates of harassment.

In its most recent term, the United States Supreme Court ruled on two cases related to education: Carson v. Makin and Kennedy v. Bremerton School District. Both cases relate to the interaction of religion and public schools and consider what is constitutional when allowing for the free exercise of an individual’s religious beliefs and speech rights.

The Court held in Carson v. Makin that limiting Maine’s tuition assistance program to “nonsectarian” only schools violated the Free Exercise Clause of the Constitution. In Maine, because less than half of the school districts offer secondary education, the state created a tuition assistance program for students to enroll in private secondary schools. To receive the tuition directly from the state, schools had to be “nonsectarian.” Here, the Court agreed with the students and parents who chose to enroll in a private religious school by finding that Maine could not provide “tuition” to private schools that are not religious without also providing such assistance to private religious schools. By doing so, the Court held this constituted “discrimination against religion.”

The California State Board of Education’s July 13–14 meeting included board approval of another delay in the state’s mathematics framework timeline and action on an updated accountability reporting template.

The state’s accountability system “really looks at providing the data needed for decisions to be made at the local level,” said board Vice President Cynthia Glover-Woods. “We’ve navigated away from the name-and-shame game … to a system that I’ll admit is complex. It’s more than a single number — it is really looking at all these different areas that help our school systems to know how our students are doing.”

During an update on the indicators, history and implementation of the state school accountability system, several public commenters expressed that the state’s school accountability tool, the California School Dashboard, sets too low the expectations for how many English learners should be progressing in proficiency each year. It also lumps students still learning English together with those who have achieved fluency in determining performance, many advocates said. A student is reclassified from English learner status to Fluent English Proficient (RFEP) status upon the student meeting all the criteria found here.

Family reunions, picnics and barbeques in the park, and reading at the beach are all well-worn summer rituals. Something that’s probably not on board members’ summer to-do list — but should be — is stepping back to evaluate the effectiveness of their district or county office of education’s process for reviewing board policy.

The time spent now reviewing procedures for keeping the district or county office board policy manual current sets a solid foundation for the board’s policy review and maintenance once preparation for the new school year begins. CSBA has a wide range of supports to help boards get their policy manual looking just as good as their summer photo albums.

Summer break is an ideal time to take a step back and reflect on how well current processes are working. Some boards have a subcommittee that reviews policy to become intimately knowledgeable about specific policy before the board as a whole reviews and adopts it. Others authorize the superintendent and staff to give recommendations for the board to consider when reviewing and adopting policy. Some superintendents delegate proposed policy updates to applicable departments.

As the impacts of climate change continue to affect school communities, the physical health of children and their quality of life, it is critical that county offices of education take steps to promote education in environmental literacy, resiliency and sustainability, according to a report from the California Environmental Literacy Initiative.

“Environmental Literacy County Office of Education Leadership Case Studies,” released March 31, illustrates how two COEs in Orange and San Mateo counties “broke new ground in environmental literacy and sustainability leadership in ways that are already improving the lives of the students and other residents of their communities.”

Andra Yehogian, environmental literacy coordinator at the San Mateo COE, said in a companion webinar to the report that COEs play an important role within California’s massive K-12 system, and would be the easiest to invest in if the state wants the biggest bang for its buck in kickstarting environmental programming.