Adventures in Ed Funding

Adventures in Ed Funding is a podcast series about the money behind California's public schools. It is presented by the California Association of School Business Officials, known as CASBO. Paul Richman is its series guide. The tone is conversational, but the vocabulary is the real thing: the Local Control Funding Formula, Prop 98, Prop 13, base funding, deferrals, cash flow. Guests come from several corners of the system. Carrie Hanell and Jason Willis, co-authors of a report on education funding in California, talk about what it would take for policy experts, political leaders and education stakeholders to push together for more funding. In that conversation, Willis names the move from revenue limits to the LCFF as a source of momentum, and the discussion sets present-day California against the state that passed Prop 13. An episode from the CASBO CBO Symposium puts state revenue and district balance sheets side by side. One speaker calls deferrals the issue of the year. Others stress building and updating cash flow projections to avoid negative balances, and walk through a supplemental funding proposal tied to base funding and the Prop 98 share of the general fund. A district voice describes budget subcommittees that include parents and the need to weigh every financial implication of a settlement. The pandemic comes in as a practical problem. The COVID-19 testing episode considers who should test school employees, relays a warning that county office staff running the tests might lack liability coverage, and notes that testing access has come up in some labor-management agreements. Lenny Mendonca, who served as Governor Gavin Newsom's chief economic and business advisor, steps further back, linking California's globally connected economy and the future of work to how pre-K and K-12 systems might adapt. The show gives history its due as well. A crossover episode from Budgeting for Educational Equity, a CASBO and WestEd podcast hosted by Willis and written and produced by Willis and Richman, revisits the LCFF. In it, one speaker recalls that the formula was built to give low-income children significantly more, adjusted for concentration, and that it deliberately left basic aid alone after Governor Gray Davis failed to repeal it. There is lighter material too. Richman has also used the feed to introduce an education news comedy quiz he co-hosts with Alex Kajitani, in which guests Kevin Gordon and Janelle Kubanek answer multiple-choice questions, including one about how many states have banned or restricted student cell phone use. Tommy Dunbar handles music, sound and editing, and more than one episode ends on Richman's cue, 'Take us out, Tommy.' For the broadest view of the funding debate, start with 'What’s Ahead for School Funding in California?', then turn to the LCFF revisit for the history behind it.