With West Contra Costa Unified School District’s budget in limbo just before the state’s fiscal year begins Monday, parents are expressing strong doubts that vulnerable students’ needs are being equitably met as is mandated.
The WCCUSD school board on Wednesday didn’t approve a budget as planned because board members voted 2-1 against accepting the district’s Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP), saying it lacked clarity. (One member abstained from voting and another was absent.)
Board members, in rejecting the LCAP, said the district’s plan didn’t adequately explain how $64 million in LCAP funds would be spent to help vulnerable student populations — students who are from low-income homes, or are disabled, in foster homes or are new English speakers, for example.
In a letter to Richmondside Friday, Zelon Harrison, a district parent and chair of the African American Site Advisory Team, said the team urges the WCCUSD board to reject the draft LCAP, stating that there were “no authentic engagement efforts,” as required, and that it lacks crucial information on spending, program effectiveness, and targeted supports for Black students, as is required via the state School Dashboard.
“The LCAP acknowledges that Black students have a 12% suspension rate, 2.5 times the district average, yet it lacks a specific strategy to address these over-suspensions, which is now legally required,” Harrison wrote. “Instead, the LCAP groups all students in the ‘red’ into one broad goal titled ‘Relentless Attention to Achievement,’ providing no specific support to improve suspension rates for Black students.”
Harrison noted that Black students are not meeting standards at Betty Reid, DeJean, Coronado, Helms, and Stege, but the LCAP includes no specific actions to address these inequities.
“The LCAP claims that the district plans to maximize Black students’ academic growth and achievement by cultivating social-emotional well-being and engaging parents and families,” Harrison stated. “However, the actions observed during this LCAP process and over the school year show no genuine attempt to engage us and improve outcomes for our students.”
California school districts are required to use LCAPs to work with parents, educators, students, and the community to show how they will serve high-needs students. A district’s budget can’t be approved until its LCAP is approved.
Contra Costa County Office of Education officials told Richmondside Friday that there is no chance that their office will take control of the district as a whole, as there are several steps to be implemented to ensure that the district continues to operate and pay its employees.
Office of Education communications officer Marcus Walton said that the school board has until the end of the day Sunday to hold a special meeting and vote on its LCAP and $509 million 2024-25 budget.
Normally the Brown Act, which governs how elected public bodies conduct business, requires the public to be notified 72 hours before a meeting is held, but for special meetings a 24-hour notice is allowed.
“If a budget is not passed by June 30, the district will continue to operate, and employees will continue to get paid,” Walton told Richmondside. He said the district would revert to its 2023-24 budget, which was last updated in May, for spending guidance and can transfer funds as needed.
County to intervene if board doesn’t adopt a budget by Sunday
If the county education office intervenes, it will have until Sept. 15 to impose a budget.
“I strongly believe it will be (approved) far sooner than that,” Walton said, explaining that the school district’s financial officer already reviewed the proposed budget and strongly recommended that it be approved.
If the WCCUSD holds a special board meeting this weekend to consider approving the 2024-25 budget, meeting information would likely be posted on the board meeting calendar. For information about who the board members are and how the district operates, read our guide.
The district cannot spend its 2024-25 supplemental and concentration grants until the LCAP is approved. Programs that rely on those funds, which are primarily earmarked for high-needs students, are effectively frozen until the county approves a budget. Once the LCAP is approved the district regains access to the supplemental grant funds, Walton said.
Asked if there’s any chance of a state takeover of the district, Walton said, “The state only takes over if the district has to take out a loan.”
Public Advocates attorney Karissa Provenza told Richmondside Friday that it’s the district’s duty to avoid a county takeover — which, if it happens, would not give the county total control over the district’s use of its money.
“The LCAP is not a living document,” she said. “This notion that they could just pass a LCAP that is out of compliance and promise to make a change in the future goes against the purpose,” Provenza said. “The first thing they can do is correct the LCAP so it’s no longer inaccurate and incomplete. They didn’t go through the proper public engagement processes with the parent community.”
Provenza said she hopes that the board will quickly convene the parent committees to gather feedback and make corrections, and then hold a special meeting to review and approve an improved LCAP.
“It’s really in their hands, for how quickly or slowly they want this process to go,” she said.
Harrison’s letter echoed this perspective, saying that by adopting the LCAP without proper engagement, “…the WCCUSD Board is failing to fulfill their responsibilities and failing our students. We plead with the Board to reject the 2024-25 Local Control Accountability Plan (LCAP) report and consult with AASAT/AAPAC parents and our community.”
The AASAT team is requesting:
- Revised policies and regulations to ensure the legal requirements for Black students are met.
- Data on the implementation of universal systems that include Black students, showing spending, program effectiveness, and targeted support for Black students.
A closer look: What the WCCUSD LCAP covers
Like other school districts in California, WCCUSD receives funding from local, state and federal sources, but the majority of its revenue comes from the state through the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF), which was established in 2013.
A requirement of the LCFF is that school districts create a Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP).
The LCAP is a specific outline of the way a district will spend funds to empower students to achieve educational goals, with an emphasis on high-needs students such as English learners, foster youths, and those from low-income families.
In WCCUSD, the LCFF funding generated from high-needs student enrollment will be about $64 million next school year — about 20 percent of the total projected LCFF funds.
The district’s 2023-24 27 LCAP programs included dual language immersion initiatives for bilingual learners, arts programming, and an international baccalaureate program.
Some of the current year’s programs were condensed and consolidated in the proposed 2024-25 LCAP. Interim Associate Superintendent Kim Moses said at a June 12 meeting that this decision was made to more effectively measure progress and provide updates.
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“The money that was budgeted for LCAP last year was well-budgeted and spent according to the program goals,”
— Interim Associate Superintendent Kim Moses, at a June 12 school board meeting
“The money that was budgeted for LCAP last year was well-budgeted and spent according to the program goals,” Moses said at the June 12 meeting, in response to a parent who questioned whether the previous year’s funds had all been spent.
The first year of the three-year LCAP was first presented for review at this meeting, before it was rejected on Wednesday.
Parents, students react to uncertainty
Numerous parents and students asked the school board Wednesday to ensure that they were preserving funds to cover all programs in the budget. Many also decried budget cuts at certain campuses.
Sandy Davis, a Fairmont Elementary parent from El Cerrito who spoke, called the whole budget flawed, since her site faces a two-thirds budget cut of more than $80,000.
“A school district is not a business simply cranking out numbers,” Davis told the board at Wednesday’s meeting. “It has become clear that these decisions are based on information that is flawed at best and grossly inaccurate at worst.”
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Our plans are failing our students, and each year we watch their academic numbers decline. Yet we keep cutting and pasting and funding the same services and programs year after year to no avail.”
— Yolanda Vierra Allen, WCCUSD parent
Pedro Ruiz, a recent graduate, said at the meeting that the district must address chronic absenteeism and increase enrollment by expanding programs, but instead district officials blame external issues for a lack of internal solutions.
“The district has worsened matters by cutting recent teacher positions as many vacancies still remain unfilled,” he said. “The district continuously blames statewide systemic issues for these problems and blames charter schools for declining enrollment.”
On Thursday, Lucas Menanix said that he and other parents across the district’s school sites do not want “panic” spreading that there may be hiring freezes. He said he was assured by site supervisors that this is not the case, since the school district is relying on the amended previous year’s budget.
Stephanie Sequeira, a mother of an elementary-school child, vice-chair of the district’s LCAP parent committee and co-chair of the Multilingual District Advisory Committee, said Thursday it’s frustrating to see some school board trustees making public statements online that the overall school budget is frozen without an approval.
“It is important to clarify that the district is still able to utilize the previous year’s budget, and there is no complete freeze on spending,” she said in a Facebook post shared with Richmondside.
“The LCAP is a dynamic document that can be amended, but any changes must follow the proper procedures outlined in the adoption process of a local control and accountability plan,” Sequeira’s post stated. “It is up to the district to address this matter before the beginning of the school year. The district needs to fix what they have done wrong. They should convene a special meeting with the necessary committees to assess and make recommendations and provide written feedback to the committees.”
A call from Richmondside to the district Friday morning was not returned.
Yolanda Vierra Allen, a parent living in El Sobrante, told Richmondside that the frustration parents are feeling stems from “at least 10 years” of requests for administrators to report consistently on the current progress of LCAP-funded programs.
“They have consistently failed to do so, yet our trustees continue to support that failure by adopting a plan without specificity, built on hopes and dreams with no proven outcomes of success,” Allen said. “Our plans are failing our students, and each year we watch their academic numbers decline. Yet we keep cutting and pasting and funding the same services and programs year after year to no avail.”
Richmondside freelancer reporter Julia Haney contributed to this report.
