“I’m proud of the consistent effort our members and CSBA’s staff, working with our education partners, put into communicating to the Legislature the dire need for increased base funding, a greater investment in home-to-school transportation, and providing attendance relief due to COVID disruptions,” said CSBA CEO & Executive Director Vernon M. Billy. “Our collective persistence paid off and local educational agencies will see more state funding to support schools.”

All told, transportation funding increased by $637 million in ongoing Proposition 98 funds. The investment will come with new requirements for LEAs, which will need to develop and adopt a plan to prioritize transportation services for low-income students and be prohibited from charging cost-sharing fees for unduplicated pupils, but avoids the unsustainable mandates proposed earlier in the legislative year.

After many years of disinvestment, dedicated advocacy overcame skepticism and resistance to secure an unprecedented opportunity to give millions of students the benefits of school busing, from improved attendance to safer access to school programs and services and less pollution and traffic.

CSBA’s budget advocacy also secured $2.8 billion in critical protections for declining enrollment and COVID attendance relief. Knowing that without relief schools would lose $3.3 billion in ongoing funding, CSBA pushed for a budget that would recognize the devastating impacts the delta and omicron surges had on attendance during the 2021–22 school year, address declining enrollment and help schools to maintain some semblance of fiscal stability as they emerge from the pandemic.

To accomplish this, CSBA and ACSA proposed allowing LEAs to be funded at the greater of their current year average daily attendance (ADA) or their current year enrollment adjusted for pre-COVID attendance rates for the 2021–22 fiscal year. This plan was adopted in the education budget trailer bill Assembly Bill 181, a major win after the Legislature struck it from the initial budget bill. The final budget offers relief to districts that can demonstrate they offered independent study to students who were absent due to mandated public health quarantine. Declining enrollment protections were also folded into LCFF, allowing school districts to choose one of three options in the calculation of their ADA funding apportionment: current year, prior year, or the average of the three prior years’ ADA. 

Another major achievement was securing a double-digit increase to LCFF base funding. Despite the oft-cited perception that schools have received a great deal of new revenue over the last several years, CSBA stressed to Gov. Gavin Newsom and Legislature that the vast majority of those dollars were tied up in new federal and state categorical programs, much of it in one-time money, programs with eligibility restrictions, and competitive programs that many districts lacked the capacity or resources to access or sustain — all while districts were fighting to keep the lights on as the costs of basic operations soared.

The final deal provides a 6.56 percent cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) and another $4.32 billion increase to the LCFF base — a cornerstone of CSBA’s budget priorities for this and previous years as schools contend with rapidly increasing costs and other pressures. When combined, the total represents a 13 percent increase in the LCFF base. This new revenue will help schools contend with increased costs and maintain existing operations, remain competitive as they work to recruit and retain high-quality staff, and implement new and innovative educational programs.

From the beginning of this budget cycle, CSBA advocated for sufficient funding to allow for a successful expansion of universal school meals. and the initial budget bill included $611.8 million to increase reimbursement rates for school meals under the state’s new universal school meals program. 

The trailer bills built on that funding with additional investments of $600 million in one-time funds for kitchen infrastructure grants to support LEAs in preparing for universal meals implementation and the preparation of healthy, local, plant-based and dietary-restricted meals. $100 million was also dedicated to a one-time school meals Food Best Practices procurement grant, with eligible foods including California-grown, plant-based and special dietary-restriction necessities for students in the existing universal school meals program. The new investments recognize the costs associated with scaling up staffing and providing additional meals and will allow LEAs to hire and retain staff and successfully implement this important policy goal.

From the hundreds of school and county board members who attended Legislative Action Week in March to dozens of meetings held with the Newsom Administration and key legislators to the thousands of emails sent to local legislators, CSBA and school and county board members across the state worked tirelessly to ensure that this year’s budget truly reflects the needs of California’s students. The 2022 budget cycle was a long and winding road for schools, and it was dedicated advocacy that made this historic budget — and the long-lasting benefits it will have for students across the state — possible.