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Build Your Own LCAP Campaign, With Samples

How to Learn About Your District

To support your campaign, you should learn more about how your district is doing so that you can use that information to support your arguments. For example, if your district suspends high-need students or students of color at high rates, you should reference those numbers if you are fighting for restorative justice or other practices to change the culture at your schools. Here are some key resources where you can find information about your district:

The California Dashboard: http://www.caschooldashboard.org/

Provides color coded charts that make it easy to see which sub-groups of students are not performing well in different categories. You can also see these reports by school to see which schools are doing better or worse on different indicators. For an individual school, you can also review the sub-group data for that school only. 

Data Quest: https://data1.cde.ca.gov/dataquest/

Dataquest provides more data, but in a less user-friendly format. For example, Dataquest can be used to review expulsion rates, chronic absenteeism for high school, suspensions by offense category, and various other reports that are not available on the California Dashboard. Dataquest can also be helpful to view metrics across multiple years and to separate by grade span, gender, charter versus non-charter, and type of suspension.  

ACLU Education Justice Tool: www.aclusocal.org/edjustice

The ACLU publishes an online data tool that allows community members to determine how many school counselors, school psychologists, school social workers, and school nurses each district has.  You can access a feature of the school that lists and shows the thousands of schools across California that have police but lack one of the four school-based health and mental health positions by clicking here. The tool also provides information about whether districts provide enough arts access. Finally, the tool provides data about how much each school district is arresting students or referring students to law enforcement. 

Other Helpful Data Sources:

  • California Healthy Kids Survey Dashboard (https://calschls.org/reports-data/public-dashboards/) and Core Survey Dashboard (https://dashboard.coredistricts.org/public/core) provide school climate survey data. You can also ask your district to provide the data from school climate surveys on their own websites. This is a best practice that Oakland Unified follows. 
  • The Education Data Partnership (https://www.ed-data.org) provides user-friendly charts on student-to-staff ratios, teaching diversity and experience, and demographics, among other indicators, and allows for easy comparison of schools and districts.
  • School Accountability Report Cards (https://sarconline.org/) provide information about student outcomes, facilities conditions, teacher credentialing, amongst other things at the district and school level.

Submit a Public Records Act (“PRA”) Request

If the information you are looking for is not available from the sources above, you can submit a PRA request with the district. The California Public Records Act requires that school districts provide most, but not all, records to the public when requested. For more information and guidance on PRA requests, see the resources below:

How to Advocate with Your School Board

One very effective way to be heard by your school district is to speak at school board meetings.  While you can feel free to speak at any board meeting, there are two particular board meetings you should target: (1) the board meeting where school staff first introduce the LCAP to the board between April and June and (2) the board meeting where the board votes to approve the LCAP, usually in June.

You have a right to speak at any board meeting.  School board meetings are governed by a law called the Brown Act, which makes sure that the public has full access to the way local governments make decisions.  Under the Brown Act school districts must: 

  • Take all formal actions or decisions at a public meeting
  • Provide prior notice of public meeting and an agenda:
    • Generally, the agenda must be posted at least 72 hours before meeting
    • Materials considered during the meeting must be publicly available (including the LCAP)
    • The board cannot consider items not listed on the agenda
  • Members of the public must be allowed to provide comment on any item
  • Communication about any formal action that involves a majority of members of the body cannot occur outside of a public meeting

Practical tips:

  • While all districts must follow the rules above, they may also create their own additional rules, check your district’s website to understand the procedures
  • Usually you need to show up early and put your name down on the speaker list or grab a speaker card to make sure you can speak
  • Comments are usually restricted to 2-5 minutes, so make sure your statement is short, clear, and strong
  • There is strength in numbers – gather friends, family, and other partners to share the same message
  • Sometimes board meetings are recorded and sometimes they are not.  If they are not, you may want to record audio or video or take notes to keep a record.

Resources

For more information about board advocacy, including meetings with school board members, holding a rally, and using media and social media strategies, please check out our full LCAP campaign toolkit.

How to Write Your Demands in a Letter

It is helpful to explain your demands in a letter. The letter can be used as a tool to clearly identify the problems with the LCAP and how you want the LCAP to change. You can send the letter to all school board members before public meetings or to individual board members before meeting with them. The best time to send a letter to your school board is before they adopt the LCAP, which usually happens in June.

If the district ignores your demands and adopts the LCAP without making the changes you requested, you can also send a letter to the County Office of Education urging it not to approve the LCAP. The best time to send a letter to the County is in July, after the district adopts its LCAP, but before August 15th, which is the deadline for the County to question the district’s adopted LCAP.

Resources

Sample advocacy letter – Klamath Trinity Joint Unified (stakeholder engagement and proper use of supplemental and concentration funds)

How to FILE A COMPLAINT

If your district’s LCAP has illegal spending, such as S&C funds on law enforcement, or if your district did not consult with community or parent committees when developing the LCAP, you can file a Uniform Complaint Procedures (“UCP”) complaint. In most cases, you must file the complaint first with the district, but you can also file it with the County Office of Education if it approves an illegal LCAP. Each district and COE has its own procedures, which are usually available on its website. The complaint form is simple, and you do not need a lawyer to file one.

The district has 60 days to do an investigation and prepare a written decision, unless you agree to give them more time.  If the district denies your complaint, you can appeal to the California Department of Education within 15 days by sending your complaint to [email protected] and explaining why the district is wrong.

Resources

For support or assistance in filing a UCP complaint, please contact Public Advocates.

Using Media Advocacy to Support Your LCAP Campaign

Reaching out to the media and getting your message out through other methods can be a powerful way to achieve your goals.  The media and public pressure can help convince decisionmakers like school district staff or school board members.

Social Media

Choose the social media platforms that make the most sense for the targeted demographics. Make sure you define what your goals are for your social media strategy (reach, video views, engagement, etc.) It is important to understand that social media is a “pay-to-play” platform and that your organization may need to invest in social media ads to reach more people in your district. Find the school district and school board members on each social media platform and direct your messages to them. Encourage your friends and allies to send messages to them as well. For more guidance on social media strategy, check out our full LCAP campaign toolkit and social media samples.

Op Eds/Blogs

An op-ed is an opinion piece (usually in a newspaper) written by local citizens, organization leaders, experts, or others who are knowledgeable about an issue. They can sway public opinion about an important issue. They can run anywhere from 300-700 words, and most often a biographical paragraph or two accompanies the piece. 

Blogs are a tool that can help develop an online presence, attract leads, and engage with an audience. Blogs can often have the same purpose as an op-ed, but usually has a smaller audience.

For more guidance on op-ed and blog strategy, check out our full LCAP campaign toolkit and samples.

Press

Reach out to your local newspaper and see if they are interested in running a story. Find out which reporter covers education-related issues by doing a google search and send them a tweet or email. Try to make your pitch as interesting as possible! A sample press release is available here.

A full list of samples to build your own LCAP campaign

Including letters, complaints, press releases, social media posts, op-eds, blog posts, and board comments.

Sample UCP complaints, appeals and decisions

Sample social media

Sample op-eds and blog posts

Sample advocacy letters

Sample presentations

Other Resources

The following resources may also be helpful as you build a LCAP campaign in your district: