The San Francisco Unified School District calls the LCAP its “most important plan.” That’s because the Local Control and Accountability Plan will map out how SFUSD serves its highest-need students: English language learners, foster and homeless youth and socioeconomically disadvantaged students. Districts receive more state funding based on these groups, meaning more resources are allocated to schools that have the most high-needs students. This model is called the Local Control Funding Formula, or LCFF. This academic year, nearly 15,000 English learner students are enrolled in the district — with the highest percentage being Spanish speakers (57%), followed by Cantonese (22%), Mandarin (4%) and Arabic (2%) speakers. These students are considered high-need under the funding formula, and the state adjusts its spending by the amount of such students in a district. Of SFUSD’s approximately $1.1 billion operating budget, more than half comes from LCFF funds. When former Gov. Jerry Brown signed this new funding model into law in 2013, replacing a 40-year system, he declared that the dramatic shift in funding would allow schools to target investment where it was needed most. This gave school districts more control and flexibility with state funds, which account for the bulk of its operating budgets. “The theory was, if you take off constraints on funding and increase the amount of funding districts get for students who are more expensive to serve and have a higher level of need, (school districts) would use the LCAP process to determine what students need to thrive, and then spend the (LCFF) money to meet that desire,” said Heather Hough, executive director of Policy Analysis for California Education at Stanford University. SFUSD will host a series of town halls in the coming weeks to develop its next LCAP - meetings that are, technically speaking, the only oversight SFUSD’s LCAP will receive. After a community engagement process, the superintendent and his staff will develop a budget proposal based on the LCAP, including funding the district can expect from the state and other sources. The Board of Education will review the proposal in June and ultimately decide whether or not to approve or amend it. Every school district is required to engage their community in the LCAP process, district spokesperson Laura Dudnick confirmed; but once that ends, and the board of education adopts the plan, oversight in “the formal sense does not exist,” Hough said. Legislators and activists have noted this lack of transparency and oversight, leading to the funding formula’s redesign under Gov. Gavin Newsom, that may be adopted later this year. And although community engagement is a critical requirement, “authentic stakeholder engagement has been one of the hardest things to achieve” when considering the state’s landmark funding formula, Hough said, adding that “there have been challenges in using those tools in ways that meet the spirit of the law.”