Report 2019-101 Recommendations

To increase the transparency of LCAPs, by February 2020, the State Board should change the LCAP template to merge the Annual Update section with the Goals, Actions, and Services section.

To increase the transparency of LCAPs, by February 2020, the State Board should change the LCAP template to require districts and other local educational agencies to include analyses of the effectiveness of individual services, in addition to analyses of overarching goals.

To ensure that districts and other local educational agencies produce clear and effective LCAPs and to reduce the likelihood of stakeholder complaints, by April 2020 the State Board should revise the instructions for the LCAP template to include, as best practices, key information from CDE's stakeholder complaint decisions about how districts and other local educational agencies can successfully demonstrate that they have principally directed districtwide spending for services toward intended student groups.

To ensure that districts and other local educational agencies produce clear and effective LCAPs and to reduce the likelihood of stakeholder complaints, by April 2020 the State Board should revise the instructions for the LCAP template to instruct districts to ensure that their LCAPs are sufficiently clear and effective, including but not necessarily limited to ensuring that they articulate a logical connection between their needs and goals, that districts provide sufficiently detailed descriptions of services with the LCAP's Analysis subsection, and that LCAPs are written in a manner that is easily understandable.

To increase the transparency of LCAPs and ensure that stakeholders can provide an adequate level of oversight, the Legislature should amend state law to require districts and other local educational agencies to specify in their LCAPs the specific amounts of budgeted and estimated actual supplemental and concentration expenditures for each service that involves those funds.

To ensure that intended student groups receive the maximum benefit from supplemental and concentration funds, the Legislature should amend state law to require districts and other local educational agencies to identify any unspent supplemental and concentration funds annually by reconciling the estimated amounts of these funds included in their LCAPs with the actual amounts of these funds CDE reports having apportioned to them.

To ensure that intended student groups receive the maximum benefit from supplemental and concentration funds, the Legislature should amend state law to specify that unspent supplemental and concentration funds at year-end must retain their designation to increase and improve services for intended student groups and be spent in a following year. The Legislature should also require districts and other local educational agencies to identify in their LCAPs for the following year the total amounts of any unspent supplemental and concentration funds. In addition, it should direct the State Board to update the LCAP template to require districts and other local educational agencies to report in their LCAPs how they intend to use any previously unspent supplemental and concentration funds to provide services that benefit intended student groups.

To provide additional data for the State and other stakeholders and to align spending information with the dashboard indicators or other student outcomes, the Legislature should require CDE to update its accounting manual to direct districts and other local educational agencies to track and report to it the total amount of supplemental and concentration funds they received and spend each year.

To provide additional data for the State and other stakeholders and to align spending information with the dashboard indicators or other student outcomes, the Legislature should require CDE to develop and implement a tracking mechanism that districts and other local education agencies must use to report to it the types of services on which they spend their supplemental and concentration funds.