A Searchable Database of Every LAUSD School’s Budget
In California public education, the money follows the student. When Governor Jerry Brown signed the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) into law in 2013, he took that principle one step further. School districts began receiving extra funding to help them reach the hardest-to-serve students: low-income students, English language learners and foster youth.
So, for example, a school like 93rd Street Elementary in South L.A., where 96% of students are high-need, would get extra money to educate those students. At least, that’s what was supposed to happen.
But research by organizations including the Education Trust-West, United Way of Greater Los Angeles and University of California-Berkeley, as well as lawsuits by the American Civil Liberties Union and Public Counsel, have shown that the extra funding isn’t going where it’s supposed to.
A NEW TRANSPARENCY
Building on these efforts, we’ve created a database showcasing the budgets for each school in L.A. Unified. Using publicly available data, the database lets anyone – parents, teachers, advocates – see not only how much money the students at their school generate, but also how much of that money the school actually receives.
A quick look at the database reveals that 93rd Street Elementary keeps just 63% of funding generated by its students – while $4.6 million is withheld. Hamilton High School keeps just 67% of the funding generated by its students; $10.3 million is withheld.
The database, which was built using publicly available data, does not show where the missing funding is being directed; it only shows that it is not built directly into the school’s budget.
We hope this database is another useful tool to help the Los Angeles community better understand how public schools are funded, as well as to examine the disparities that exist.
The following searchable database shows the budget for every school in L.A. Unified. We’ve divided the budgets into three categories.
Severely Underfunded School receives less than 80% of the funding its students generate |
Underfunded School receives between 80% and 95% of the funding its students generate |
Funding met School receives more than 95% of the funding its students generate |
Is your school underfunded? Severely underfunded? Search the database and find out.
Sortable Table of All Schools
Click on a column header to sort the schools by that column.
If the Total Funding the School Doesn’t Keep is red and negative, this means the school receives more funding than its students generate. If the Total Funding the School Doesn’t Keep is black and positive, this means the school receives less funding than its students generate.
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.
Table A. Step-By-Step Overview of Methodology | ||
Step 1 | Downloaded school budget information from District website. | |
Step 2 | Requested PRA to cross-check publicly available school budget information with historical expenditures at the school-site. This expenditure is labeled as “Total Funding School Keeps.” | |
Step 3 | Analyzed the revenues each school would generate for the district given the demographic of students served by the school. This revenue is labeled as “Total Funding School Generates.” | |
Step 4 | Subtracted the “Total Funding School Keeps” (e.g. expenditure) from “Total Funding School Generates” (e.g. revenue) to receive the “Total Funding the School Doesn’t Keep”. This figure demonstrates the funding a school is entitled to receive. When a school is in the negative (e.g. - $3,567,483), this means the school receives an additional $3.5M in funding its students did not generate. When a school is in the positive (e.g. $3,567,483), this means the school does not receive the $3.5M in funding its students are entitled to and the funding is redirected elsewhere. |
Table B. Funding Level Profile for Specific Schools | ||
School Name | 93rd Street ES | Hamilton HS |
Board District | 7 | 1 |
School Type Description | Elementary School | Senior High School |
Percent High-Needs Student Population (%) | 96.3 | 57.6 |
Total Enrollment (#) | 1,115 | 1,694 |
High-Needs Student Population (#) | 1,074 | 1,694 |
LCFF Funding | $10,846,892 | $26,921,679 |
Other State and Federal Funding | $1,782,950 | $3,860,093 |
Total Funding School Generates | $12,629,842 | $30,781,772 |
Total Funding the School Keeps | $8,007,406 | $20,502,827 |
Total Funding the School Doesn’t Keep | $4,622,436 | $10,278,945 |
Funding Category | Severely Underfunded | 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.
This database is just the latest in a long line of efforts by community groups to bring transparency and accountability to L.A. Unified's spending. Read about some of those efforts:
The Education Trust-West released a report documenting that schools serving the largest share of disadvantaged students are not receiving equitable state funding.
"Even under adjusted funding formula, California’s poorest schools still lose out" (L.A. Times, April 6, 2017)
Public Counsel and the Children’s Defense Fund filed a lawsuit charging that Long Beach Unified is spending up to $40 million on district-wide programs instead of on high-need students.
"Long Beach Unified accused of misspending money for neediest students" (L.A. Times, April 5, 2017)
The University of California-Berkeley and United Way of Greater Los Angeles released a report demonstrating that L.A. Unified has been deliberately withholding funding that was intended for the neediest students.
"L.A. Unified diverts funding for neediest students, report charges" (Ed Source, March 20, 2017)
An independent blue ribbon panel of financial experts from multiple industries, commissioned by L.A. Unified's superintendent to review the district's finances, issued a report highlighting the district's $13 billion in unfunded liabilities and warning that the district is headed toward bankruptcy.
"Panel conveys dire warning, board seems to get message" (LA School Report, November, 2015)
The ACLU of Southern California filed a lawsuit against L.A. Unified accusing the district of failing to adhere to the Local Control Funding Formula and charging that the district “manipulated a budget calculation to reduce its obligation to add new or better services for high-need students, including English-learners, over time.
"Suit accuses L.A. Unified of diverting millions meant for needy students" (L.A. Times, July, 2015)
In their first analysis of L.A. Unified’s spending after the adoption of the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF), UC-Berkeley and United Way reached similar conclusions
"Report: LAUSD's short-changed, disadvantaged schools, students" (L.A. Daily News, June 2015)
This database was prepared by a veteran of public school business management and operations at numerous California school districts, with support from the California Charter Schools Association, whose vision is to increase student learning by growing the number of families choosing high quality charter public schools so that no child is denied the right to a great public education.