Meeting notes from the June 1 community forum on Funding Excellence in Public Schools: New Possibilities. At the end is a brief summary of the new revenue measure being considered by the School Board.

Trina Ostrander, Executive Director of the Berkeley Public Education Foundation opened the June 1st community forum on funding public education, reminding everyone of the grim reality of K-12 education funding in California:
--48th in the nation in number of teachers per student,
--last in the nation in librarians per student,
--$22/student in textbook funding when the mandatory first grade math workbook costs $25, and
--no commitment from the governor to remedy the situation in future years.

Schools Superintendent Michele Lawrence spoke for a bit about her vision for Berkeley's education future, and then introduced the featured speaker. After Professor Picus spoke, Lawrence expanded on her earlier remarks. In order not to confuse you, we'll start with the large vision as enunciated by Picus, and then follow with Lawrence's vision of how this fits into the scheme of things in Berkeley.

First, Picus talked about the scale of the education system. In the context of the state budget, which has a significant structural deficit [meaning that even if the economy improves, the budget will remain unbalanced unless taxes are raised or significant cuts made], K-12 education is a very large amount of money, about 40% of General Fund expenditures. Total K-12 spending on education in California is about $54 billion, which, if it were a single company, would rank 19th on the Fortune 500, equivalent to Boeing. There are over 6.2 million public school students in California. Berkeley Unified's budget is about $85 million [this does not include the Adult School or various bond-funded building improvements].

There is a growing national movement to define and implement educational adequacy. Lawrence prefers to speak of adequacy as the "essential ingredients of education."  Picus defined adequacy this way: “Adequacy requires the provision of sufficient fiscal resources to enable all schools to deploy educational strategies that can educate nearly all their students to the state's proficiency standards.”

Picus suggested that adequacy was a 4-part process.
1. Define the standards. While one might argue about details, this has already been done by state, though a community would be able to set its own definition.
2. Create a system to achieve the standards.
3. Measure the costs and expenditures.
4. Implementation concerns: How to do it and how to evaluate progress.

Various states have done adequacy studies, often implemented by the a court order. Wyoming, Maryland, Oregon, Arkansas and New York were discussed. All required significant revenue increases to implement, but the legislatures were quite a bit more willing to do so after hearing the study results.

There are four popular models for determining adequacy, according to Picus:
1. Cost functions. These are mathematic formulas to that determine adequate resources given various data about the students, schools and district. Cons: hard to understand, often show urban districts need 2 to 3 times the resources of suburban districts, thus hard to implement politically.
2. Successful districts: Make models based on districts that meet standards. Cons: Not many districts to choose from; often have few low-income families. Districts can meet standards one year, fail the next. Some districts spend as much as the model requires yet still fail [example: Cleveland].
3. Professional judgment: Educational experts decide what resources are needed. Districts get money based on model, plus extras for student population, district characteristics [rural districts have high transportation costs], and geographic cost differences. Question: should the money come with a model a district must implement, or just a block grant, or something in-between?
4. Evidence-based approach. Study the best research on how children learn, and develop effective schools based on that research. As this is Picus' field, the majority of the discussion focused on this model. Tends to be lower cost that "professional judgment" model.

Implementation Issues: A model for an effective school should be:
--Simple
--Transparent
--Easy to Understand
The question remains: How proscriptive should it be? Meaning, how closely should the model be adhered to at the district or school level? Picus noted that Berkeley was a good size to do an adequacy study: large enough to allow differences in implementation between schools while small enough to allow the Superintendent and staff to follow progress at each school [unlike LA where there are 674 schools].

One Model for Effective Education
In Arkansas, the model school for effective education was based on 500 students [multiply by 2 for a middle school like King, or 5.5 for Berkeley High]. It would be staffed as follows:
One principal. The class sizes were 15:1 in K-3, 25:1 in 4-12.
An addition 20% teachers were used for resource teachers.
Additional support teachers: 1.5 elementary, 2.5 middle schools, 3.5 high school.
Lots of teacher mentoring and staff development: 2.5 positions plus 5 additional days for staff development.
For every 100 students in the Free and Reduced Lunch program [a measure of poverty] two addition positions were added, one of them a certificated teacher. Also additional positions based on number of ELL students.
Additional money for expanded preschool.
A PDF file of full text of the report is available for download at:
http://www.arkleg.state.ar.us/data/education/web.htm

Picus also talked about the need for long-term revenue stability, which is not found in California. He suggested that with revenue stability it would be easier for districts to create ten-year plans, which he thought crucial to improving instruction.

In response to a question, Picus noted that while most of his work was with states, he was working with four districts on adequacy studies, though because of court rulings he could not discuss those in detail [and indeed offered none at all]. But that brings us to Berkeley….

Taskforce for Berkeley
Schools Superintendent Michele Lawrence sees the coming year as an opportunity to get out of the spiral of budget cuts followed by budget cuts while improving instruction at the same time. She called the two-year tax measure expected to be put on the November 2004 ballot by the School Board a vehicle for the district to fund critical programs that were lost in the last three years of budget cuts [lowering class size, strengthening libraries and music instruction, etc] while allowing the discussion of essentials to proceed and culminate before the expiration of both the BSEP measure and the new measure [if it passes] in 2006. [See information on new measure at end of this article.]

Lawrence indicated that she would form a taskforce in the fall of educators, parents, unions, and community members. The first step will be to define the "essential education you want for your children," and then figure out how to provide all or as close to all of that as possible. She defined Berkeley as "a community rich in resources, a generosity of spirit, and volunteerism unparalleled in California." The University, the city, the county, and various other agencies are all providing resources for our children, she noted, and while there were pockets of cooperation, there is a need to expand those relationships. One facet Lawrence sees as essential is the philosophy of "one child, whole child"--that all the needs of the child must be met: mind, body and spirit.

An attendee asked the obvious question: How, in Berkeley, will the Superintendent get taskforce members to work together productively, rather than on each individual's agenda? Lawrence's answer was blunt: "That's what frightens me the most [about the process]," but noted that there is no alternative to cooperation: "either we find a way out of this [meaning ongoing state cuts to education] or we will be right back where we are today [with inadequate resources to fully educate our children]." Lawrence asked attendees to let her know if her plan had their support, and promised not to let the taskforce be thwarted by “paralysis by analysis.”

Closing Notes
Ostrander noted that Professor Picus had donated his time for the event, and the Education Foundation contributed the remaining costs. The event was co-sponsored by a range of community groups and elected officials: The Berkeley PTA Council, Berkeley Schools Now!, Berkeley Alliance, The League of Women Voters of Berkeley, Albany and Emeryville, Assemblymember Loni Hancock, Mayor Tom Bates, and the Bay Area Coalition for Equitable Schools (BayCES).

A quick note on the potential new tax measure.
A proposal is before the Board would to put a new measure on the ballot that would expire in two years [at the same time as the current BSEP measure] and raise about $8 million annually. It would be based on the square footage of improved property [both homes and businesses] in the city, the same as the current BSEP measure.

The proposal states:
“Funds raised by this special tax shall be deposited in restricted accounts, with the available funds raised by this special tax to be allocated as follows:
•    Smaller class sizes and expanded program offerings   68% (of funds raised)
•    School Libraries  16%
•    Music Programs  7%
•    Program evaluation and teacher training 7%
•    Parent outreach and translation 2%”
As above, the bulk of the money [about two thirds] would go to lower class sizes:
“The goals for class sizes to be achieved with the use of these monies are:  a district-wide average class size of 20:1 for grades K-3; 26:1 for grades 4-5; 28:1 for grades 6-12.”

There are Board meetings scheduled every Wednesday in June. Public comment may be made at any of them, but the June 9th meeting will be a chance for the Board to hear from the public on the new measure.

Meeting notes by Jay Nitschke, a Jefferson school parent. jay@jaystoys.com