Legislature Adopts 2017-18 State Budget,
Now Pending Governor Approval
June 16, 2017
Just in time to meet the constitutional deadline, on June 15th the California Legislature adopted a state spending plan for the upcoming fiscal year. Governor Brown now has 12 working days to sign the budget. Although the Governor has limited veto power (known as line-item “blue pencil”) to reduce or eliminate any appropriation, we do not expect many changes.
Overall, the final education spending plan provides $3.1 billion in increases to Proposition 98 compared to the current fiscal year, for a total of $74.5 billion in 2017-18. The compromise includes $1.362 billion to the Local Control Funding Formula to help school districts and charter schools reach 97 percent of the full funding targets, and one-time discretionary grant funds for a total of $876.6 million (approximately $146 per Average Daily Attendance). While these one-time amounts are lower than the $1 billion proposed by Governor Brown in the May Revise, the Legislature disagreed with the Department of Finance’s proposed approach of releasing these funds in May 2019, and instead the funding will be apportioned to local educational agencies in 2017-18. The Legislature succeeded in obtaining one-time appropriations to fund legislative priorities including additional funding for teacher-related professional development for a number of specific subject areas, $10 million for supporting refugee students, $25 million to expand the Classified School Employee Credentialing Program to train an additional 1,000 classified school employees, and $50 million to augment the After School Education and Safety (ASES) Program.
As a result of ACSA’s effective budget advocacy, the K-12 Mandate Block Grant will receive an ongoing cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) starting in 2017-18 in an effort to allow local educational agencies to retain its purchasing power as a result of inflation. We are also pleased to see a second ACSA priority in the final budget compromise that will enable school districts and county offices of education greater access to available State Preschool Program slots for low-income three- and four-year old children. Starting on July 1, 2019, a California State Preschool Program operating in a school building will be exempted from the duplicative requirements set forth in the Department of Social Services Title 22 regulations. And in an effort to address concerns with the state’s increased minimum wage, the reimbursement rates will be higher for providers and the income eligibility thresholds for parents to qualify into the program will be revised to reflect the higher State Median Income.
For additional information on other aspects of the K-12 education budget, including funding for CTE, new funding for teachers and school leaders’ professional development, among other issues, please review our prior article entitled: ACSA-Update-on-2017-18-State-Budget-Compromise. For questions, contact Martha Alvarez at .