RE: Question 1: Who's in charge?

Senator Alpert's support for unifying responsibility with authority at the state level makes good sense. The reality is that the executive branch drives educational policymaking in our state and the master plan recommendations on state level governance reform are appropriate. 

It is critical, however, that a strong state role in education (necessitated by the need to ensure equity and high standards for all children) is balanced with local control of school district policy development and implementation. It is essential that local communities take ownership for the ultimate direction and success of their schools.

Governance is the allocation of decision-making authority and responsibility.  In the area of public education, governance must balance the state's need for an overall strategy for life long learning that will stimulate and expand economic opportunity and the necessity for schools to respond to the needs of students, parents, staff and communities at the local level.

California has a thousand school districts for several reasons: history, geography and popular choice.  Schools touch the lives of the state's residents more often and more closely than do any other institutions of government.  More people know their children's teachers than their town's police officers and firefighters.  No other enterprise of government so directly affects the daily and yearly calendars of families.  And nothing else government does is remembered and relied upon as often and for as long as education.

There appears to be no question that local control of public education is necessary to its success and essential to its survival.  Education is a people-intensive and personal enterprise.  The point of delivery is local and so are the relationships that parents and students form with teachers, teachers with administrators and administrators with elected board members.  If greater resources are to be found to restore the high ranking of California's schools nationwide, they will have to be developed locally from taxpayers who have a voice in how their dollars are being spent.

Lawsuits and initiatives in the last three decades have obscured the importance of local communities developing and implementing education policy.  What they should have produced was a rigorous curriculum, a valid and comprehensive assessment system, and a commitment to resource allocation aimed at making California at least better than average, rather than far worse.  Instead, they have given us divided leadership at the state level: an elected Superintendent of Public Instruction with an uncertain relationship with an appointed State Board of Education and an appointed Secretary of Education without cabinet status or a clear portfolio.  Even though the people amended the Constitution to provide for a "permissive" Education Code, the legislature continues to enact amendments at a rapid pace, imposing mandates without funding and new theories of instruction without research.  Mandated costs are "reimbursed" only by reallocation of scarce dollars limited by successive interpretations of Proposition 98, leaving the casualties of each new initiative to be sorted out by local school officials.

Any change in governance for public education needs to do three things: First, it must restructure leadership at the state level so that broad education policy derives from a single, consistent source.  That policy should be tied to assured and continuing sources of funding.  And new mandates should be delayed until funding is in place and districts have had adequate warning and opportunity to prepare for implementation.  Second, governance needs to restore flexibility for local school districts to raise and control funding and to make meaningful choices about the implementation of statewide initiatives when funding is inadequate.  Third, any effective governance structure must recognize that the distances of time, space and perspective are too great between the state government and local communities to implement policy and account for results without an intermediate level of assistance and oversight.

For 150 years, California has had an intermediate level of governance that lies between the broad policymaking of the state and the implementation and accountability of local districts.   

Preserving and strengthening this intermediate level is critical to the success of any governance model for California's future.  At the county office level, districts receive immediate, real-time fiscal oversight, administrative guidance and support with curriculum implementation and staff development.  At the county level, districts are able to express local needs and concerns to people who are familiar with their communities and circumstances.  County offices are the nucleus of regional efforts designed to save time and money (such as the joint purchase or provision of goods and services).  They allow for flexible responses based on local needs while insuring that statewide policy initiatives are implemented correctly and effectively.

In recent years, the state has strengthened the role of county offices in fiscal oversight, with the adoption of AB 1200 (1991) which gives county superintendents the ability to disapprove local budgets and require audits of local district financial and management practices.