By Ted Lempert

California is about to embark on the most comprehensive reform to its school finance system in 40 years, putting local communities in the driver’s seat and making a historic investment of more than $10 billion in high-needs students. The compromise Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) to be voted on by the state Legislature by the June 15 deadline also fairly addresses the earlier “winners-losers” concern by increasing the base grant and ensuring that all districts receive additional funding.

By Ted Lempert and Linda Galliher

California’s students deserve a public school system that will provide them the tools they need to develop a solid foundation of academic achievement. The Legislature can start us on a path toward this goal by passing Gov. Jerry Brown’s Local Control Funding Formula. Under the formula, the existing complex and outdated bureaucratic structure would be replaced with a new local system that gives schools the flexibility to direct education dollars to school districts and students that need it most — and no district would lose funding. This would help to level the playing field and improve student readiness across the board.

By Dr. Anthony Iton

In too many California communities, our schools are failing our children. Where they live and their ZIP code determines the quality of their education. Even more tragically, poor education predicts poor health and ultimately increases the likelihood of dying early. These children didn’t make bad choices or do anything wrong. They were simply born in the wrong place and, because of it, will receive a substandard education. This is the ultimate injustice. We are not giving these children what they need to compete in the 21st-century economy. Their future is our future. Our fate is inextricably bound to theirs. We are in this together.

By Juliet Williams and Judy Lin

California schools will receive an infusion of more than $3.6 billion in extra money this year, much of it targeted to the neediest students as part of a redistribution plan pushed by Gov. Jerry Brown. The Democratic governor hopes that dramatically reshaping how state aid is handed out will correct decades of inequality between districts. He also wants to give local schools much of the responsibility to decide how the money is spent. Whether the additional money will actually help close the longstanding achievement gap between poor and minority students and their counterparts hinges almost entirely on how the money is spent.

By Heather Murtagh

One thing is sure this fall: California schools will get more money. Per pupil funding will increase, if the budget is approved as planned on Friday. That boost comes with a total overhaul of how education is funded. Ted Lempert, member of the San Mateo County Board of Education and president of Children Now, an Oakland-based nonprofit that focuses on children, called the new funding formula historic. “The finance structure will be based on the kids,” he said, rather than a complicated formula most do not understand.

By Sharon Noguchi and Mike Rosenberg

Seven months after his tax initiative refueled funding for California’s beleaguered public schools, Gov. Jerry Brown has orchestrated what’s being billed as a major overhaul of how the state funds K-12 education. The deal, scheduled for a vote Friday as part of the state’s 2013-14 budget plan, gives districts more control over their own spending and props up schools that teach the most disadvantaged kids.

Amid all the self-congratulations going on in Sacramento over what in two days will be the third consecutive state budget passed on time, Gov. Jerry Brown has notched a major victory — changing how schools are funded. Brown, whose leadership in his second go-around as governor is proving that an elder’s wisdom and experience can make a huge difference, worked out a compromise deal on his funding proposal that still keeps in place the most compelling aspects of the plan. Brown, working with key legislators, has produced a new formula that not only makes sense, but is eminently more equitable and freeing for local schools than the previous system, which was maddeningly complex and unfair and was leaving too many disadvantaged students behind.

Many factors are relevant in determining how much the state should spend to provide a child with an “adequate” public education, but this is not one of them: whether the child lives in an area that was largely agricultural during the early 1970s. Yet agricultural zoning is, to this day, a significant component in the stupefyingly complicated formula that determines California’s per-pupil funding. Everyone knows the formula is a mess, but for decades the Legislature did nothing to change it.

By Jim Miller

Virtually every Inland Southern California district would fare better under a school-funding compromise between Gov. Jerry Brown and legislative leaders compared to an earlier funding formula championed by the governor. The agreement, a major part of a budget package to be voted on by a Saturday deadline, is meant to simplify California’s convoluted school-funding system while targeting extra money at disadvantaged pupils.

By John Fensterwald

It was the morning after the evening of the last revision, and the father of the Local Control Funding Formula looked upon all that the governor and Legislature had made, and declared, “Hey, not bad.” Michael Kirst is relishing the all-but-certain passage later this week of the comprehensive school funding reform that he co-designed. That was five years ago, and, after many twists and iterations, the final version, negotiated over the weekend by Gov. Jerry Brown, Assembly Speaker John Pérez, D-Los Angeles, and Senate President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, ended up quite like the one published in April 2008.