Community members can now view and provide feedback on the new Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP) draft to ensure state K-12 funds are spent on resources for the student communities that need it the most.
The draft was released last week and presented to the Long Beach Unified School District (LBUSD) board at their Wednesday meeting.
The LCAP is a three-year plan that describes the district’s goals, plans and actions to support and address local and state priorities. The plan also showcases how to spend the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) funds which is the state funding of K-12 education.
According to Viva Mogi, LBUSD’s director of strategic programs and policy development, the LCAP is currently in its final phase of the budget engagement and development plan, which involves a public review of the draft LCAP and drafting a Budget Engagement Community input report.
Mogi also pointed out that parent advisory groups, student engagement groups and focus groups were involved in every previous phase.
Of the 2,300 participants in the community outreach, over 25% were students, according to data presented by Director of Equity, Engagement & Partnerships Lucy Salazar.
Student participation increased from 13% to 27% since the last LCAP update on April 13. Board President Juan Benitez pointed out that he had never seen such a high number of student responses in his four years on the board.
James Suarez, assistant director of equity, shared some of the broad highlights of the draft with the board which included:
- Equity: The main lens through which the majority of services and actions were selected.
- Local Control: Suarez believes it is important to allow the people dealing with students directly to decide how best to support them.
- Learning Acceleration and Support Plan (LASP): A single document that shows the “braiding of multiple resources” in an attempt to look at the budget as a whole as opposed to multiple separate plans.
- LCAP Continuing to Address Pandemic Effects: Some of these effects include academic and mental health. Many COVID-19 services present in last year’s LCAP remain in this year’s draft.
The LCAP draft highlights three main budget priorities: staffing and staff training, foreign language and other electives, and mental health programs.
The 60-page draft lists five goals ranging from academic progress on Common Core standards to school safety and access to services and resources. Each goal includes a description, information on measuring and reporting results, actions and an analysis of the goal for 2021-22.
There are currently no budgeted dollars for each action or program on the draft as LBUSD is waiting on the governor’s May budget revision.
Long Beach Education Connection and Parks Commissioner Mariela Salgado addressed the Board on action 3.12, the Black Student Achievement Initiative, and expressed her discontentment with the lack of substantial updates on resources for Black students.
The analysis of this action in the draft indicates that there are “no substantive differences in planned actions and actual implementation.”
Salgado mentioned that a Black Student Achievement Advisory Committee was established this past year and has met regularly, but LBUSD has not provided information on the progress the committee has made towards ensuring the success of Black students.
“Why are we continuing the same goal for the next year and not implementing programs and services that will make change for Black students immediately?” Salgado said. “If the district’s goal is to truly ensure Black students’ success, it will prioritize implementing programs and services and continue those that proved themselves successful at making substantive progress.”
The deadline for LCAP approval is the same as the deadline for approval of the district budget, June 30. Until then, community members can still provide feedback or ask questions here.
“We invite the community to review the draft and we will continue to take our show on the road to district parent groups,” Suarez said.
