In order to create the database, we accessed school budget information that is posted on the public website of every school operated by LAUSD. Please see Table A for an overview of this methodology. The budget information contains projections for how much the district intended to spend at each school-site during the 2015-16 school year. In addition, to ensure there was alignment between the district’s budgeted expenses at the school-site and the actual expense, we also made Public Records Act (PRA) requests of the district to receive historical expenditures at the school-site.

The PRA requests revealed that, with only few exceptions, there is a high level of correlation between what the district budgets and what the district actually spends at the school-site level. In other words, the public budget information posted on each school’s website is a good estimation of the resources that are actually being spent at the site level. This budget expenditure is labeled “Total Funding School Keeps.”

Next, we analyzed the revenues each school would generate for the district given the demographics of students served by the school. Those revenues include the base, supplemental and concentration funding generated under LCFF, special education revenues, California state lottery funds, and funding coming to the district from the Federal Government under Titles I and III. This revenue is labeled as “Total Funding School Generates.”

Lastly, we subtract the “Total Funding School Keeps” (e.g. expenditure) from the “Total Funding School Generates” (e.g. revenue). This calculation paints a clear picture of how much funding students at the school are entitled to but do not receive. This figure is labeled “Total Funding the School Doesn’t Keep.”

To more clearly articulate the funding level of each school, we developed a framework to categorize every school according to its funding level in light of what its students generate under the LCFF. In short, this allows us to more clearly distinguish the funding levels for each school. This framework includes three specific categories:
  1. Severely Underfunded: school receives less than 80% of the funding its students generate;
  2. Underfunded: school receives between 80-95% of the funding its students generate;
  3. Funding met: school receives more than 95% of the funding its students generate.

Table B provides a snapshot of two schools – 93rd Street Elementary School and Hamilton High School – which allow us to clearly explain the methodology. The students of 93rd Street Elementary School, for example, generate approximately $12.6M, yet the school only keeps (or is allocated by the district) $8M. More than $4.6M is redirected elsewhere. In another example, the students of Hamilton High School generate a total of $30.7M, which is intended to be spent on the students at the school, yet only $20.5M of the total is kept at the school-site – the remaining $10.2M is redirected elsewhere. Both of these schools are severely underfunded.

By comparing the revenues and expenditures at a school-site level, we begin to highlight severe discrepancies in funding, particularly the funding generated through LCFF and intended to serve high-needs students.

Cautions
While we believe that we have devised an overall approach to reporting revenues and expenditures at the school-site level that is accurate and reliable for purposes of making general observations about the budgetary situation of each school in the district, we must acknowledge that there are limitations to our approach.

It is Difficult to Calculate the Cost of District-Run, Centrally-Operated Programs
There are several centrally-operated programs that serve schools throughout the district. If the management of these programs were to transition from Beaudry to the school-site, these additional costs may change the overall financial picture for the school. Further exploration of how those budget dollars are allocated out to schools, compared to the needs of those schools, could yield additional insights.

The Impact of Special Education Funding on the District’s Bottom Line
It is no secret that the cost of special education significantly impacts the district’s budget. However, for purposes of this report, the most important fact to keep in mind is that the district chooses to regionalize many special education services. This means that the district chooses not to provide all special education services at each school but instead to provide services at just some schools and to transport students to those locations and to provide additional resources to the receiving schools to cover the additional cost of educating those students. As such, the economic impact of special education is not localized at each school but is spread across the district and distributed to schools differently.

To account for this complexity, we calculate the amount of revenue that each school’s students are generating for purposes of special education and then show how much the district is expending on special education services at each site. Our belief is that, while there are clearly many nuances that would not be built into each school’s budget¹, we believe this modeling gives a better general picture of the financial dynamics playing out at each school.

LCFF Funding for Some Schools Is Not Included in This Study
While LAUSD has received a reported $4,970,177,837 in LCFF funds (per the CDE LCFF Snapshot for LAUSD as of 2015-16 Annual Certification posted in February 2017), our study used $4,859,072,071 in LCFF funding total for all 688 regular schools in grades K-12. This difference of $111,105,766 was generated by student average daily attendance at schools not included in our study, such as continuation high schools, community day schools, regional occupational centers, and others, as well as by limitations in adapting the LCFF calculation worksheet to individual schools.

¹ Namely, those nuances include how many special education students from inside the school’s attendance boundary may be sent to another school for services or how many students from outside the attendance boundary are being transported in, as well as which specific special education services the district is choosing to make available and not make available at every school.