SUPERINTENDENT RESPONSE TO LOCAL CONTROL
ACCOUNTABILITY PLAN SURVEY
As you probably know, the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) is California’s most significant change in many decades for how public school districts receive funds to educate students. The LCFF requires a Local Control Accountability Plan (LCAP) from each school district, and the LCAP must be developed through community input. To elicit this input the Bonsall Unified School District has been having meetings and sending out surveys. Thank you to all those who participated; your thoughtful participation is very much appreciated.
The survey results came back in two batches; one with approximately 39 responses and one with 177 responses. In general they are similar, and the data from this survey has been very important in developing our LCAP. Both multiple choice and open-ended responses have been included. The open-ended responses particularly helped in deciding to adjust our LCAP to have more of a focus on providing music, arts and physical education, including in after school programs. Safety, especially during drop off and pick up of students was brought up. Part of the LCAP is to increase communication to increase safety, and video surveillance will be increased. Survey responders related to improving communication will be happy to know the Bonsall Unified School District app will be available this fall to increase communication to texting of mobile phones.
There were some comments concerning a desire to not participate in the Common Core State Standards; please be aware that these Standards were adopted in California back in 2010, and are already being assessed in our Measurement of Academic Progress (MAP) testing, and also this spring’s preview of the Smarter Balanced Assessment. Data and experiences with these assessments have shown that Bonsall schools will not be set back by the Common Core. The instructional materials for the Common Core standards haven’t been vetted yet; the Smarter Balanced Assessment is still being fine-tuned. Bonsall schools operate on the maxim that assessment drives instruction; we will prudently wait to use funds for the instructional materials to provide our students and teachers with what has been shown to provide the most student learning.
The movement to reject these standards is more political than educational; shifting curriculum and assessments is never easy, especially when higher expectations of student learning moves from being mostly dependent on memorization to emphasizing problem solving. Bonsall schools have been moving in this direction for years, so the negative impact for us won’t be as considerable as districts that haven’t been using computer-adaptive testing as we have for the last six years.
There were many responses related to GATE students and Special Education students. Our award-winning Integrated Learning Environment (ILE), which personalizes instruction, is being improved even more with several hundred computers and increased connectivity. Our students’ ability to go from direct instruction to blended learning and gaming is increasing every year. Class sizes have risen during the years of budget cut and those who provided the survey comments related to class size will be happy to know we are being held accountable over the next few years by LCFF to reduce class size in grades K-3 below 24 students.
A small percentage of the survey responses came from Vivian Banks Charter School, but they are developing their own LCAP, so those responses will be directed toward that effort.
The link below will take you to the survey results that help develop our LCAP.