In the most-recent Burbank School Board meeting at City Hall that lasted three and a half hours, the highlight was Stephanie McCoy’s update on the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee’s response.
Those surveyed included school employees, students and parents and those who responded numbered more than 300 employees, more than 400 students and more than 1,000 parents. Roughly 6,000 people were given the questionnaire.
The goal of the questionnaire was to conduct a thorough audit of diversity, equity and inclusion in the Burbank Unified School District and then make recommendations regarding future implementation of policy, practice, instruction and engagement.
Additionally, it would focus on long-term, sustained work, engaging in multiple stakeholder groups, including but not limited to students, teachers, certificated staff, classified staff, administration, parents and caregivers.
It would also conduct formative and summative assessment focused on impact of DEI training on teacher efficacy and content changes.
And it would also conduct formative and summative assessment focused on impact of DEI training from a student perspective and provide regular updates to the Board of Education regarding the achievement of those goals.
And lastly, it would address the culture and organization through research and assessment.
Another key moment came when Dr. Matt Hill, the Superintendent, provided an update to the School Board on Senate Bill 830, which was authored by State Senator Anthony Portantino, who represents the 25th district, which includes Burbank.
The existing law establishes a public-school financing system that requires state funding for county superintendents of schools, school districts, and charter schools to be calculated pursuant to a local control funding formula, as specified, that includes average daily attendance as a component of that calculation for these local educational agencies.
Existing law requires the Superintendent of Public Instruction, on or before February 20 of each year, to make a first principal apportionment of funds and, on or before July 2 of each year, to make a second principal apportionment of funds to each local educational agency.
The bill would define “average daily membership” as the quotient of the aggregate enrollment days for all pupils in a school district, county office of education, or charter school, from transitional kindergarten to grade 12, inclusive, as applicable, divided by the total number of instructional days for the local educational agency in an academic year.
The bill would also require a local educational agency’s average daily membership to be calculated using data from the same fiscal year or years that the local educational agency used to calculate its average daily attendance for purposes of state appointment, as provided.
For any fiscal year before the 2022-23 fiscal year for which average daily membership data is not available, the bill would require the Superintendent to use a local educational agency’s census day enrollment count, as provided.
The bill, commencing with the 2022-23 fiscal year, would require a local educational agency that submits enrollment data to the Superintendent and demonstrates a maintenance of effort to address chronic absenteeism, as provided, to receive as supplemental education funding the difference between what the local educational agency would have received under the local control funding formula based on average daily membership and what the local educational agency received under the local control funding formula based on average daily attendance for that fiscal year, as provided.
The bill would make that maintenance of effort requirement subject to an annual audit and would provide that failure to meet the maintenance of effort requirement shall result in the loss of the supplemental education funding. The bill would require local educational agencies to use at least 30 percent of their supplemental education funding for local educational agency expenditures to address chronic absenteeism and habitual truancy, as provided.
The bill would, for purposes of calculating a local educational agency’s daily membership, require the Superintendent to issue directives and guidance on determining the date of withdrawal for a pupil deemed habitually truant.
The bill would require the Legislative Analyst’s Office to submit a report to the Legislature, on or before November 1, 2028, on the implementation of the average daily membership funding in local educational agencies selected by the Legislative Analyst’s Office, as provided. The bill would expressly state that funds to implement these provisions would be continuously appropriated in the annual Budget Act.
