Toolkit

Photo credit: Gente Organizada

How to Work with your School District to Win your Priorities

All parents, students, and community members have a voice in the way their schools spend money. This toolkit explains how school districts spend money and how you can advocate for the resources, personnel, programs, and services that are best for you and your community.

The toolkit focuses on advocacy through a system called the Local Control Funding Formula (“LCFF”), which is how school districts are funded in California and the way they decide how to spend their money. LCFF creates rules that districts must follow when spending certain funds. For example, special funds called “supplemental and concentration funds” must be used to increase or improve services for students who are low-income, foster youth, or English learners (“high-need students”). Such funds should not be spent on law enforcement or other school hardening measures.

LCFF is important because it is designed to help high-need students succeed, increase decision-making power for families, and create schools where students with greater needs have more money for more and better resources. When it is working correctly, LCFF allows community members to (1) learn how and why their school districts are spending their money, (2) give feedback on how the money is spent, and (3) force the district to spend the money the right way if it is doing something wrong. This toolkit will show you how to develop a LCFF campaign to win the resources you need for your school and our students. To review our detailed toolkit on how to use LCFF to win your priorities, click here. You can find the documents referenced in the toolkit below.

LCFF Reports

You can find helpful information for your advocacy in our LCFF reports and publications:

• Our Right to Resources: School Districts are Cheating High-Need Students by Funding Law Enforcement – An investigative report of 136 districts in Los Angeles, Riverside, and San Bernardino Counties by ACLU, Public Advocates, and Gente Organizada

If you have questions about your district’s LCAP or would like to consult with us about your campaign, please contact Nicole Gon Ochi, senior staff attorney at nochi@publicadvocates.org.