Marin County's schools face rising costs, particularly for pensions and declining enrollment, which is not sustainable. Teacher salaries and recruitment are affected, with limited public awareness of district flexibility to respond to rising pension costs. Parcel taxes have faced opposition, and a statewide funding solution is necessary to support student success and stop financial distress. Building awareness of pension costs' impact is essential, and benefits and salaries are necessary to retain teachers.

This case study examines the looming deficit faced by Sacramento City Unified School District and the challenges it poses for students, including declining enrollment, increasing special education and pension costs. It also highlights the impact of SCUSD's budget practices and labor-management relations on its current budget situation. The report offers considerations for policymakers, including addressing unaffordable teacher benefits and increasing funding. Although the district's fiscal crisis cannot be solved overnight, stabilizing the situation and restoring public confidence are crucial.

This report highlights the challenges that California’s school districts face due to increasing employee health benefit costs, including retiree benefits. Such costs strain district budgets, making it harder to address other priorities, like increasing teacher salaries or supporting disadvantaged students. The brief suggests that districts must navigate these costs more effectively, with potential help from state policymakers, to ensure they are sustainable and not left as unfunded liabilities.

With a new governor, state superintendent and legislators in Sacramento and a diminished federal role in education, there is an opportunity for California’s leaders to take stock of recent educational reforms and make necessary improvements. There are also a host of new and looming issues in K-12 and higher education. As California’s leaders confront these and other issues, where do California voters, including parents, stand on education and education policy? The newest edition of the USC Rossier/PACE Poll shares voter perspectives on a wide range of education issues.

American schools have long suffered from inequitable distribution of funding, resources, and effective teachers. The LCFF reform in California is a promising solution to address achievement gaps for high-need students, but successful implementation is critical. Research has found that stakeholder engagement, explicit equity frameworks, and evidence-based programs are crucial to ensure positive impact. Studies have also revealed challenges such as underspending funds and insufficient stakeholder engagement, highlighting the need for continuous improvement.

The Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) replaced categorical funding for schools in California in 2013, providing flexibility, targeted student funding, and local accountability. Two years in, research shows optimism and concern. The Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP) faces challenges, stakeholders need more engagement, and implementation requires capacity and overcoming the emerging teacher shortage. Public awareness of LCFF lags at 65%.

CA's school finance is highly regulated, with state funding allocated through categorical programs. In 2008-09, 40 Tier 3 programs were given fiscal freedom, leading to concerns that districts with more Tier 3 funding were disproportionately affected by the state's budget crisis. However, data show that all districts lost a similar share of their budget, with no large-scale changes in spending. Districts with more Tier 3 funding spent relatively more on alternative education, adult education, and non-instructional goals, and more of their budget on pupil services and special education.

California's system of school finance is highly regulated and prescriptive. A large share of state funding is allocated through categorical programs, that is, programs whose funding is contingent upon districts using the money in a particular way or for a particular purpose. In 2008–09, the strings were taken off 40 of those programs, collectively known as the "Tier 3" programs, as part of a budget deal that also reduced the funding for those programs.

This report commemorates the fifth anniversary of the Getting Down to Facts project, which sought to provide a thorough and reliable analysis of the critical challenges facing California’s education system as the necessary basis for an informed discussion of policy changes aimed at improving the performance of California schools and students. The report focuses on the four key issues that received emphasis in the Getting Down to Facts studies: governance, finance, personnel, and data systems.

Governor Jerry Brown has called for a major overhaul of California’s school finance policies. His proposal for a weighted pupil funding system would simplify the rules that govern the distribution of funds to schools and school districts, while targeting a larger share of available resources to the schools and students with the greatest needs. In this policy report Mary Perry offers an overview and analysis of the policy change that the Governor has proposed.

This report explores how 10 California school districts responded to the deregulation of $4.5 billion in education funding, which became entirely flexible in 2009. The study investigates how district leaders made budget decisions and what local factors influenced their responses. The research was conducted by a team of scholars from the RAND Corporation, UC Berkeley, UC Davis, and San Diego State University.

This report discusses the effects of California's partial release of categorical funds to local school boards in 2009. The increased flexibility has provided an opportunity to observe how districts respond to the policy change, but the impact is difficult to isolate as most districts have been struggling to maintain core services during a severe budget crisis. The report includes preliminary results from an ongoing study of district responses to the increased categorical flexibility.

African Americans and Latinos historically have lower educational attainment, achievement, and wages compared to whites. Narrowing education gaps between minorities and whites should narrow wage gaps. This report analyzes whether California's education gap improvement between minorities and whites led to a parallel reduction in wage gaps. The report finds that the educational attainment and achievement of California's minority youth improved significantly from the 1970s to 1988.

This report discusses the importance of forecasting revenues and expenditures for public sector planning and budgeting. It highlights three characteristics of California's recent experience. First, K-12 funding rose 91% from 1980 to 1989, but real revenue growth was tempered by inflation. Second, California relies more on state revenues for K-12 education than the rest of the US. Third, California's "effort" in raising K-12 revenues in 1986 was lower than the US average, and revenue efforts for both schools and other public functions are below the national average.