Letter to the California Department of Education — Reasonable Level of Tolerance (February 3, 2023)

Summary

California Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond is told in a February 3, 2023 letter from Laura Jimenez that the Department finds reasonable the California Department of Education's tolerance plan for small LEAs under maintenance of equity. The plan covers LEAs receiving Necessary Small Schools funds and County Offices of Education, whose funding does not track attendance directly. It tolerates year-to-year per-pupil reductions of 55% for LEAs with a rounded average daily attendance of 25 or fewer, 20% for 100 or fewer and 15% for 500 or fewer.

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Issuer: Congressional materials
Document type: Department Of Education 2 3 2023 Used Response To Tolerance Proposal Fy22 Www Ed Gov 3Ac35
Case: Department Of Education 2 3 2023 Used Response To Tolerance Proposal Fy22 Www Ed Gov 3Ac359642D

Cite this document

“Letter to the California Department of Education — Reasonable Level of Tolerance (February 3, 2023).” Original at www.ed.gov. Archived at Pandemic Darlings, https://pandemicdarlings.com/source-documents/department-of-education-2-3-2023-used-response-to-tolerance-proposal-fy22-www-ed-gov-3ac359642d/, SHA-256 51dafe90e3f5d366d9fa727541b6bcb71de40c4bdc4f98972ffe1d0e24508546.

Full text

                         UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
                              OFFICE OF ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY EDUCATION




                                                  February 3, 2023

The Honorable Tony Thurmond
Superintendent of Public Instruction
California Department of Education
1430 N Street, Suite 5602
Sacramento, CA 95814-5901

Dear Superintendent Thurmond:

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 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
the students in LEAs with high concentrations of poverty who have been subject to longstanding
opportunity gaps in our education system and have also experienced the greatest impacts from
the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, the ARP Act State maintenance of equity 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-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
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 to maintain equity in funding. (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, rather than just ADA. The NSS
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   The Department of Education’s mission is to promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by
                               fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access
      alternative funding mechanism is intended to recognize that there are certain, minimum
      costs to operate a school that are not directly tied to ADA, which may confound per-pupil
      funding calculations used for determining maintenance of equity for those very small
      LEAs.
   2) County Offices of Education (COEs), which are legally constituted as LEAs, but have a
      unique funding profile that is primarily based not on the ADA for students directly served
      by the COE, but rather on the number of districts countywide and the ADAs of those
      districts.

CDE asserts that for both LEA types: 1) calculated staffing and per-pupil funding amounts are
significantly affected by small changes in student enrollment; and 2) resulting data are unreliable
indicators of whether the SEA has achieved the intent of maintaining equity in funding across
LEAs.

Accordingly, CDE proposes three tolerance levels based on ADA:
   1) For LEAs with a rounded ADA of 25 or fewer students, CDE proposes to tolerate a 55%
      reduction in per-pupil funding from year to year.
   2) For LEAs with a rounded ADA of 100 or fewer students, CDE proposes to tolerate a 20%
      reduction in per-pupil funding from year to year.
   3) For LEAs with a rounded ADA of 500 or fewer students, CDE proposes to tolerate a 15%
      reduction in per-pupil funding from year to year.

After reviewing CDE’s tolerance proposal, including the data submitted, the unique
circumstances in the State, and our further State-specific analysis, I have determined that the
proposed approach for these small LEAs includes reasonable levels of tolerance when
calculating whether California has met State maintenance of equity requirements.

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

                                                   Sincerely,
aura Jimenez
                                                   Laura Jimenez

                                                   Laura Jimenez
                                                   Director, Office of State and Grantee Relations
                                                   Office of Elementary and Secondary Education

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