Credit: John C. Osborn/EdSource Today

Credit: John C. Osborn/EdSource Today

Cheque out our graphic explainer on the upkeep.

With a deadline looming, Gov. Jerry Dark-brown and legislative leaders take cut a bargain for the 2014-15 state budget that, at the governor'south insistence, keeps his revenue projections merely still makes room for additional money for the Local Command Funding Formula, early on childhood programs, career education partnerships and implementation of the Common Cadre Land Standards.

The governor and peak Democrats reached a compromise after Dark-brown agreed to make room for more spending by deferring on "deferrals" – postponing for now repaying almost $900 one thousand thousand in late payments to school districts. If state revenues do come in higher next yr, as many, including the Legislative Analyst'south Office, are predicting, the outset merits on the money would wipe out the delayed payments that take created financial headaches for many districts. Chocolate-brown had made eliminating deferrals, function of what he calls "the wall of debt," a priority.

The compromise budget will be in print later Thursday; the Assembly and Senate are scheduled to vote on it Lord's day, the constitutional deadline of June xv for sending a budget to the governor.

Brown'due south budget, as he proposed in May, already included increasing funding through the Local Control Funding Formula  past $4.v billion. That would heighten per-educatee funding from $7,933 in 2013–14 to $8,717 in 2014–fifteen, nearly 10 percent, according to the Legislative Analyst'south Office. But it didn't include more for 2 programs that the Legislature had identified as priorities: an expansion of transitional kindergarten – a program for children who turn 5 in the first few months of the school twelvemonth – and career education.

Although transitional kindergarten is not getting additional funding, other state-funded early on education programs would see a significant heave, for a total new investment of $264 one thousand thousand in 2014–fifteen. A piffling more than half of that coin, $155 million, would come up from Proposition 98 to increase the number of slots in California'south Land Preschool program, which provides preschool for children from low-income families; enhance the rates paid to centers providing land preschool; and amend the facilities and quality of existing programs.

If Brown approves this increase, an additional eleven,500 children from depression-income homes with working parents would be able to attend California's State Preschool program. The agreement also repeals the fee for role-24-hour interval state preschool programs.

The $250 1000000 for California Career Pathways Trust, a competitive grants program, volition double this year'south $250 million for what is believed to be the nation's largest investment to augment programs giving students hands-on work experience on their path to graduation. The first 39 grants were announced last month.

Brown included $1.25 billion in the current budget for districts to purchase engineering science and textbooks and to train teachers in the new Common Cadre standards in English language arts and math. But, coming after years of budget cuts, districts said  they needed more money rapidly, with the first standardized tests in Mutual Core scheduled for adjacent spring. Dark-brown has agreed to add together $450 million more in 2014–xv – only indirectly. The extra money technically will reimburse onetime obligations – programs the state mandated over many years but never paid for. The upkeep will state that districts should employ this money for Common Core purposes. Whether they exercise volition be upwardly to them. Update: Districts can also apply the funding to implement the Side by side Generation Science Standards and the new English language Language Evolution standards.

The extra $250 meg that Brown has added to the Local Control Funding Formula will slightly more than cover districts' actress costs, starting July 1, for teacher and administrator pensions. Districts' boosted annual pension contributions for the side by side thirty years will start off at $175 million and rise gradually to $3.7 billion more per year in vii years. The extra money is needed because the pension program run by the California State Teachers Retirement Arrangement, or CalSTRS, remains $74 billion short of full funding after it lost 40 percent of its assets in the stock marketplace turn down in 2008. Teachers and the country will as well increase their contributions to CalSTRS to fill up in the funding gap, but districts, every bit the employer, will be responsible for the lion's share.

"Given that nosotros conceded the governor'south lower acquirement forecasts, the Associates and Senate were persuasive that the Local Control Funding Formula and paying off mandates had a higher priority" than paying off deferrals, said Rick Simpson, deputy chief of staff for Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins.

No compromise on accountability programme

The governor refused to bend on one of the non-budgetary problems that legislators had inserted in the trailer bill, the technical language that accompanies the budget itself. Legislators, at the urging of civil rights and children's advocates, had proposed requiring that districts explicitly designate money they received under the Local Command Funding Formula for children learning English, low-income children and foster youths. They are the three categories of students that receive supplemental money under the new funding formula. For state auditing purposes, districts currently do not take to item how they plan to spend that money.

Advocacy groups said requiring districts to exist specific would be the showtime step toward eventually enabling the public to rail and compare how districts spend money for high-needs students. But the Department of Finance rejected the thought on the grounds that spending decisions are a local affair – and up to districts to decide how to study them.

Still, the trailer neb will require the Country Lath of Teaching to update the Legislature by next February on the implementation of the funding formula and the accountability spending plans, called Local Control and Accountability Plans, that districts are in the process of completing. So the outcome may come up again next yr.

John Fensterwald covers education policy. Contact him  and follow him on Twitter @jfenster . Sign up here  for a no-price online subscription to EdSource Today for reports from the largest instruction reporting team in California. Lillian Mongeau contributed to this commodity.

To get more reports like this one, click here to sign upward for EdSource's no-cost daily electronic mail on latest developments in teaching.