It’s Time to Fix School Funding

* Steven Frates’ April 16 column on the responsibility of the Legislature relative to the Irvine Unified School District’s funding dilemma included several cogent points.

What was missing is the relationship of that district’s fiscal plight to the way the state funds its public school districts.

California took over the direct funding of all the state’s public school districts in the mid-1970s on the heels of the Serrano court decision and Proposition 13.

One would have thought that the state at that time would have provided a dollar allocation in which each California public school student would have generated the same amount of revenue.

Rather than take that logical and equitable step, however, California devised an arcane funding formula that provided per-pupil allocations to districts based upon the level of local taxation in place in each community at that time.

Since public education is essentially a state responsibility, it is unconscionable for California to continue this grossly unfair practice more than 25 years after it was first instituted.

Many people may not be aware that Irvine Unified, like Capistrano Unified, is classified as a “low wealth” school district. Not only is Irvine below the state average in its assigned per-pupil allocation rate, it happens to be the very lowest unified district in Orange County.

Based upon the state’s antiquated funding guidelines, if students in Irvine Unified received the same level of per-pupil base funding as the highest district in Orange County, Los Alamitos Unified, Irvine would have $6.7 million more to spend in its budget.

No district should have to suffer the continuing indignity of being classified as low wealth, and no group of students be given the message from our state leaders that they are less worthy of full state funding by pure accident of where they happen to live.

JAMES A. FLEMING

Superintendent

Capistrano Unified School District