It’s the same budget

I promised that I would share the test scores for economically disadvantaged students across the district’s elementary schools but first wanted to post these numbers that I pulled from the District’s slides from last night.

To note, these are not spreadsheets from the District, but these are their numbers. I took the numbers and rather than rolling them into one lump sum and then divvying them up by number of students I separated the unrestricted dollars including unrestricted general fund and parcel tax money from the restricted dollars. The total unrestricted is money that the district can distributed more subjectively. Restricted dollars are just that. They have to be allocated in a very specific way because of how they are allocated to the district. So when we say that we are distributing money with a lens toward equity we are, but we aren’t. We have to send Title 1 dollars (restricted) to Title 1 schools. That’s why you see only three elementary schools receiving Restricted General Fund money.

In hindsight I should probably have not rolled together LCFF Supplemental and Restricted General Fund because there is a level of subjectivity when distributing the LCFF Supplemental because even though it comes into the District based on need, it’s not strictly restricted like, well, Restricted GF. Because if you look at how, say LCFF Supplemental money is allocated to Maya Lin which has the highest unduplicated population of the non Title 1 schools, they’re only receiving $774 per unduplicated student. Compared to that Edison with 22% unduplicated students is receiving $1310 per unduplicated student.

If you look at where the LCFF money is going to it’s all staff. With the exception of Ruby Bridges and Love which have higher LCFF Supplemental allocations (which they should) all of the other schools are getting an extra staff person with that money. Oh and except Franklin which is only getting half a person. So, essentially, regardless of need, nearly every single school (exceptions are Ruby Bridges, Love, and Franklin) is getting the same as the benefit as the next school: an additional certificated staff person using LCFF Supplemental money. Ruby Bridges, with an unduplicated count three times that of Bay Farm is receiving enough money to fund 3.4 staff people which is sort of just the baseline established by allocating LCFF Supplemental to each school site to fund an additional staff person. So it’s not as though we’re doing more for Title 1 schools in Alameda. We’re just kinda doing more of the same and hoping for a different outcome.