South Kern Parents Voice Their School Funding Priorities

Oct. 20, 2013 / By

By Alfredo Camacho

LAMONT — A large group of parents and their children crowded into the Myrtle Avenue Elementary School cafeteria on a Monday night earlier this month to make their voices heard in the growing debate over how area school districts should be spending their state education dollars.

Sweeping changes to the education system are underway in California, where earlier this year state legislators approved Gov. Jerry Brown’s new Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF), a plan that will funnel more money to the most struggling schools while expanding the power of districts to have more say over how that money is allocated.

The event in Lamont was the first of twelve community forums being billed as the “School Success Express,” a statewide effort by The California Endowment, a private health foundation, to spread awareness about the recent changes to California’s school system and collect input from some of those most impacted by the new policy: parents.

Turnout at the standing-room-only event surprised even some of the organizers, who had reserved two classrooms at Myrtle Elementary for child care, both of which became filled beyond capacity.

“We only booked two classrooms for daycare and they’re full,” one organizer was heard saying to another. “Should we just take the older kids and move them outside?” The same organizer had just finished politely refusing a family’s request for watermelon, since that had also run short.

Read more at South Kern Sol

Tags: