A decade after California revolutionized the way it funds schools, nearly everyone agrees the initiative has done what it was meant to do: improved math and reading scores and brought more resources to students who struggle the most. And nearly everyone also agrees that the Local Control Funding Formula, as it’s known, could use a tune-up. Black and Latino students’ test scores have improved but still lag behind their white and Asian peers, and schools in affluent areas still spend far more per student than schools in poorer neighborhoods. But overall, researchers and superintendents say, the system introduced under Gov. Jerry Brown has remade California’s schools for the better. Brown, who was elected to his second stint as governor in 2010, said he got the inspiration to overhaul school funding from Mike Kirst, who served as president of the State Board of Education during both of Brown’s stints as governor. Kirst and his colleagues had proposed the idea of a weighted formula a few years earlier, but it was shelved when the economy crashed in 2008. A handful of other states, including Florida and Oregon, had already adopted formulas that give schools more money for high-needs students. Gathering support from legislators, teachers unions, parent groups and school boards, Brown, Kirst and their allies helped get the funding formula enacted in 2013. “Brown told the Democratic Legislature they’d have the fight of their lives if they resisted this,” Kirst said. “We were elated when it passed, although it didn’t feel like a risk. There wasn’t really a downside.” The simplicity, along with shifting power away from the state, appealed to Brown.