The education sector is often burdened with solving problems that impact students and families that are outside their control. As the COVID-19 pandemic was unfolding, it became clear that schools are tasked with addressing structural issues ranging from food and nutrition, housing insecurity, protecting undocumented students, fighting against the school to prison pipeline, to internet accessibility, and more. Of course, all of this is in addition to the main mission of schools -- to deliver America’s promise that every child has a fundamental right to an education and is prepared to be a contributing member of our society. 

While all schools interface with structural issues beyond their reach, particularly low-income and poorly funded schools are positioned the furthest away from being able to do what is necessary to chip away at the issues students and families face. Inequities in school financing are a long-standing issue all across the country, but with the incredibly high cost of living and high cost of operations in California, the needs are particularly acute. To take it a step further, policy analysis and research has shown that the inequities of school financing are rooted in multiple sources of structural racism-- racial segregation, redlining, and taxation based on property values. 

But if schools with high-needs students were to have a fighting chance at addressing the many structural issues that disproportionately impact them, they need more resources. While a big focus of school finance reform should be to overcome the structural racism embedded within it, many states including California are prohibited to utilize race as a criteria to disseminate resources. Even so, there is hope for what is possible when funding formulas, such as California’s Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF), account for high-needs students and allocate resources in a targeted manner. In fact, early findings from LCFF indicate that when school districts receive more resources, students’ academic performance improves, particularly for students from low-income families. 

An even more targeted approach could, however, enable LCFF to specifically address the issues that Black, Latinx, and low-income students face. LCFF currently focuses on school districts as the unit for funding distribution. However, based on what we know about racial segregation operating at the hyperlocal level, within districts, schools are segregated from one another. Wealthy and predominantly white families attend one school while the school five miles down the road has predominantly Black, Latinx, and other students of color. The school financing gap also often falls along the same racially segregated, within-district lines. As such, LCFF should take its targeted approach one step further and offer guidance on how districts should allocate the additional funds equitably to specific schools based on student needs. 

There is one budding bright spot in Los Angeles Unified School District, where they have adopted a methodology called the Student Equity Need Index (SENI), to rank-order LAUSD schools based on highest need students that best meet the criteria under LCFF. Alongside methodologies such as the SENI, more transparency around how LCFF funds are distributed down to school sites and more public oversight and accountability could help better target and equitably allocate the funds. Families from well-resourced schools need to embrace an anti-racist mindset and come to terms with how LCFF may distribute more state dollars to high-needs schools and that in some cases, their schools may receive zero additional dollars. This kind of public acknowledgement and sacrifice at the individual level, coupled with an institutionalized approach to equitable school financing, can help schools overcome the structural obstacles that stand in the way of high-needs students’ achievement. 

As we begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel that is the COVID-19 crisis, and we prepare for what schools will look like post-pandemic, we must emphasize equitable school financing to be implemented in a hyper-localized, targeted way. Many students have had disruptions to their education, many were not provided with any learning opportunities for many months. The “catch-up” gap and learning loss are anticipated to be one of the major obstacles educators will face when schools return to normal operations, and pose an alarming risk of further exacerbating existing inequities. Only with more targeted and equitably distributed funds, spotlighted by transparency and public oversight, can schools be set up to successfully deliver the quality education that high-needs students deserve. 

Catherine Uong is a proud daughter of Vietnam War refugees. She was raised in the suburbs of Houston, Texas, and graduated from the University of Southern California with a  B.S. in Business Administration (emphasis on Social Entrepreneurship) and B.A. in East Asian Languages and Cultures (Mandarin Chinese concentration). She completed the Asian Pacific American Leadership Institute Civic Leadership Program at De Anza Community College. She has been in the San Francisco Bay Area for the past six years. During this time, she has worked in various positions at the intersection of education, technology, and  entrepreneurship including running operations at Dev Bootcamp, investing in edtech startups at Y- Combinator, and building public-private partnerships between school districts and local businesses to offer high school students internships. Today, she is the Manager of Development and Partnerships at Summit Public Schools and brings more resources and partners to support their students, families, and teachers in California and Washington state. In solidarity with her communities, Cat has also expanded her policy interests to include labor, immigration, housing, and social safety nets.