State Slashes School Award Funds

Celebration is slowly giving way to disappointment at many California schools as budget woes in Sacramento force education officials to slash millions of dollars in academic performance awards.

Legislators and the governor’s office are discussing how much to cut from the $157 million in rewards once promised to schools that met their academic targets last year.

The amount has already been trimmed to $144.3 million, but as the state tries to control a growing deficit, the California Department of Education says it cannot guarantee even that amount.

The department eliminated the entire $100 million from another incentive program this year. The Certificated Staff Performance Incentive was meant to reward employees--from librarians to teachers and principals--of low-performing schools that significantly raise their Academic Performance Index scores.

The index, based largely on how well students score on standardized tests such as the Stanford 9, is part of a 3-year-old carrot-and-stick program designed to make schools more accountable. Those that consistently fail to improve could face state and federal sanctions.

But the budget deficit--$20 billion and growing--has taken a big bite out of the carrot.

“Of course we’re disappointed,” said Carolyn Williams, principal at Dana Hills High School, which qualified for nearly $160,000 in Governor’s Performance Awards. The prize has been cut to about $145,000 so far.

Unlike the staff awards, the governor’s awards are open to any school that meets API growth targets, and the money goes to the school.

Williams said she started celebrating and congratulating students and teachers last fall when the scores were announced. Dana Hills, a high-performing school, had earned its first cash prize. Now, Williams worries about how much money will be left, especially when the budget crisis is hurting school funding in other areas.

The money, she said, “is certainly an incentive. We should be working every day to do well and to excel [regardless of awards], but it is motivating to know that your hard work will be rewarded.”

Officials at Francis Parkman Middle School in Woodland Hills, which qualified to receive about $97,000 in awards, had hoped to use the money to bolster tutoring programs.

“This money is like a shot in the arm for us,” Principal James Avallone said. “We have a difficult time finding the funds to do the things we need to do to boost our kids. But at this point, we can’t plan too much because we don’t even know if we’re going to get the money.”

Overall, 285 schools in Orange County and 894 in Los Angeles County qualified for the Governor’s Performance Award based on their API scores, which were announced in October.

State officials were unable to say how many schools earned staff awards since the program was eliminated. Last year, more than 12,000 teachers, principals, librarians and others at 304 schools received bonuses between $5,000 and $25,000.

For this year, only the governor’s award remains. Roughly 3,500 schools raised their scores enough to qualify this year, down from 4,502 last year. As schools raise their scores, it becomes harder to make further gains.

Now, it looks as though the state is having a tough time maintaining the incentive program.

“This is a pretty profound budget crisis we are going through,” said Bill Padia, California Department of Education’s policy and evaluation director, who has fielded calls from concerned school officials. “But the awards are not going away permanently.”

In the meantime, Padia said, there should still be plenty of motivation to keep raising scores because parents will be looking at the API and rating their schools.

Rosemary Davis, principal of Clinton-Mendenhall Elementary in Garden Grove, agreed.

“No one goes into this profession for the money,” Davis said. “The reason we get so excited [about the scores] is not the monetary awards. It is truly just because we are working as hard as we can.”

Last year, Davis’ school won $45,000 in Governor’s awards. Combined with other grants, the money was used to upgrade the campus Internet connection and to fund field trips among other things. This year the school will receive $37,000, perhaps less.

Cash is always needed at schools, the winners say, but the prizes make some feel uncomfortable. Education is a tough job regardless of where you teach, they say, and to recognize the work of some and not others seems unfair.

“The money muddies the water,” said Debbie Schroeder, principal of Thomas Edison Elementary School in Anaheim, which qualified for awards two years in a row. “It is like watching your brothers and sisters working like crazy and then you get the money and they don’t. It is awkward.”

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Times staff writer Claire Luna contributed to this report.