Letter to the California Department of Education — Reasonable Level of Tolerance (January 25, 2024)

Summary

This is a letter dated January 25, 2024 from the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education at the United States Department of Education to Tony Thurmond, Superintendent of Public Instruction, and Linda Darling-Hammond, State Board President, of California. The letter states that the Department received the California Department of Education's (CDE) written plan for a reasonable level of tolerance when calculating whether California met State maintenance of equity requirements in fiscal year (FY) 2023 for a subset of its local educational agencies. It describes CDE's proposal of tolerance levels for LEAs that receive Necessary Small Schools funds and for County Offices of Education, including a 55 percent reduction in per-pupil funding for LEAs with an ADA of 25 or fewer. It states that the Department determined the approach includes a reasonable level of tolerance for FY 2023.

Summary drafted by a model from the document's text below and checked by script against that text before publication. It is a navigation aid, not a reading of what the document proves. Where AI is used

Full text

                       UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
                           OFFICE OF ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY EDUCATION



                                          January 25, 2024

The Honorable Tony Thurmond
Superintendent of Public Instruction
California Department of Education
1430 N Street, Suite 5602
Sacramento, CA 95814

The Honorable Linda Darling-Hammond
State Board President
California State Board of Education
1430 N Street, Room 5111
Sacramento, CA 95814

Dear Superintendent Thurmond and President Darling-Hammond:

The U.S. Department of Education (Department) received your written plan for a reasonable level of
tolerance when calculating whether the California Department of Education (CDE)
has met State maintenance of equity requirements in fiscal year (FY) 2023 under the American
Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARP Act). This written plan applies only to a subset of California’s local
educational agencies (LEAs).

The ARP Act State maintenance of equity requirements help ensure that State funding supports
LEAs with high concentrations of poverty and the students who have been subject to longstanding
opportunity gaps in our education system and experienced the greatest impact from the COVID-19
pandemic. These requirements are vital for ensuring that States maintain funding to address the
impact of the pandemic on students’ education, and for protecting students in high-need and highest-
poverty LEAs from disproportionate cuts if reductions in State effort do occur.

The Department determined that it is consistent with the State maintenance of equity requirements to
allow a State educational agency (SEA) to calculate whether it has maintained funding equity with
respect to its very small high-need and highest-poverty LEAs within a reasonable “tolerance level.”
The Department’s determination is based on the possibility of significant volatility in the calculated
per-pupil funding amounts for very small LEAs caused by small changes in student enrollment,
which may be unrelated to whether an SEA has achieved the intent of the requirements. (See
Frequently Asked Questions, American Rescue Plan Elementary and Secondary School Emergency
Relief Program, Maintenance of Equity Requirements, July 26, 2022, Question 21(a).)

CDE cites two types of LEAs that would be captured by its small LEA tolerance proposal:
  1) LEAs that receive the State’s Necessary Small Schools (NSS) funds. These LEAs are funded
       in bands based on a combination of average daily attendance (ADA) and the number of full-
       time teachers or certificated employees, whichever provides the lesser amount, rather than
       just ADA. NSS funding is intended to recognize that there are certain, fixed costs to operate a
       school that are not directly tied to ADA.
  2) County Offices of Education (COEs), which are legally constituted as LEAs, but have a
       unique funding profile that is primarily based on the number of districts countywide and the
       ADAs of those districts, rather than the ADA for students directly served by the COE.
CDE asserts that calculated annual per-pupil funding amounts for both LEA types are significantly
affected by small changes in student enrollment, which makes these data imperfect indicators of
whether the SEA has achieved the intent of maintaining equity in funding across LEAs.

Accordingly, CDE proposes:

•   Two tolerance levels for LEAs that receive NSS funds:
      1) For LEAs with an ADA of 25 or fewer, CDE proposes to tolerate a 55 percent reduction
           in per-pupil funding from year to year. This would impact eight small LEAs identified by
           the State as meeting the definition of high-need or highest-poverty in FY 2023 that served
           0.002 percent of California’s students.
      2) For COEs with an ADA between 25 and 100, CDE proposes to tolerate a 20 percent
           reduction in per-pupil funding from year to year. This would impact five small LEAs
           identified by the State as meeting the definition of high-need or highest-poverty in
           FY 2023 that served 0.02 percent of California’s students.

•   Three tolerance levels for COEs:
       1) For COEs with an ADA of 50 or fewer, CDE proposes to tolerate a 55 percent reduction
            in per-pupil funding from year to year. This would impact 15 small LEAs identified by
            the State as meeting the definition of high-need or highest-poverty in FY 2023 that served
            0.04 percent of California’s students.
       2) For COEs with an ADA between 50 and 750, CDE proposes to tolerate a 20 percent
            reduction in per-pupil funding from year to year. This would impact 10 small LEAs
            identified by the State as meeting the definition of high-need or highest-poverty in
            FY 2023 that served 0.2 percent of California’s students.
       3) For COEs with an ADA between 750 and 1000, CDE proposes to tolerate a 15 percent
            reduction in per-pupil funding from year to year. This would impact three small LEAs
            identified by the State as meeting the definition of high-need or highest-poverty in
            FY 2023 that served 0.09 percent of California’s students.

After reviewing CDE’s tolerance proposal and accompanying data, the unique circumstances in the
State, and our further State-specific analysis, we have determined that this approach includes a
reasonable level of tolerance when calculating whether California has maintained equity for COEs
and LEAs that received NSS funds in FY 2023.

We appreciate your diligence in developing this proposal. If you have any questions, please contact
your program officer at: California.OESE@ed.gov.

                                               Sincerely, Jimenez

                                               Laura Jimenez

                                               Laura Jimenez
                                               Director, Office of State and Grantee Relations


File and source

File

department-of-education-1-25-2024-used-response-to-tolerance-proposal-fy23-www-ed-gov-721c43389f.pdf

Size

171,567 bytes

SHA-256

8bcbf9ded5214b3ff48b8e05f762aa7bd931a94a03a845a354fcb026f16ae90f

Our copy

department-of-education-1-25-2024-used-response-to-tolerance-proposal-fy23-www-ed-gov-721c43389f.pdf

Original

www.ed.gov