When California lawmakers enacted the state’s Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) in 2013, they took ambitious steps towards advancing educational equity. After more than a decade of implementation, it is time for the legislature to fine tune this policy, building on the state’s progress. Advancing the equity commitments of LCFF has become even more important given the recent erosion of federal support for public education.

Grounded in recommendations from a group of knowledgeable and civically engaged Californians—education leaders, advocates, and community leaders—this report describes the changes that are necessary to strengthen the state’s approach to equity and accountability in public education. Through their recommendations, these participants called attention to the continued need to address the educational impacts of persistent opportunity gaps both inside and outside schools.

A Decade of Progress and a Call for Renewal

LCFF has helped California make measurable progress in connecting school funding to student needs. The policy expanded local autonomy by consolidating dozens of categorical grants into a single funding mechanism (LCFF) and adding community-based accountability through Local Control Accountability Plans (LCAPs). Research confirms these changes boosted achievement, graduation rates, and equitable funding distribution. Yet stakeholders consulted in this study argued that the state has more work to do, in order to ensure that high-needs students directly benefit and that the social and economic inequities that impede learning are addressed. The consensus that emerged from these experts is not to replace LCFF/LCAP but to enrich it.

Shared Public Priorities

The community voices represented in this report affirmed broad concerns that echo across California’s civic landscape: Education funding remains inadequate, inequities in public resources persist, and systems of accountability must become more participatory and transparent. The report’s four overarching recommendations reflect these shared priorities:

1. Increase education funding and improve transparency.
2. Strengthen LCFF’s equity framework through refined funding measures.
3. Build reciprocal and participatory accountability structures.
4. Align education policy with broader social systems that affect children’s lives, such as housing, healthcare, nutrition, child welfare, and behavioral health and developmental services.

For each priority, our report’s participants addressed long-standing challenges with actionable policy ideas that draw from their expertise and lived understanding of California communities.

Recommendation 1: Increase Education Funding

This report’s participants were emphatic that California’s existing funding is insufficient to meet its equity and quality goals. They called for higher base grants and stronger supplemental and concentration grants for high-needs students, along with reforming property tax policies. Participants pointed in particular to Proposition 13, which constrains local revenue generation and thereby places a great strain on the state budget, and to the upcoming expiration of the tax rate increases created by Propositions 30 and 55. They also noted the need to explore more progressive revenue options such as taxing stock trades.

The participants also called for increasing financial transparency with clearer public communication about how funds are spent, how students’ needs shape allocations, and how investments impact outcomes. They tied this recommendation to a culture shift in public discourse, urging educators and policymakers to emphasize success stories, not only deficits, to strengthen trust in public education and galvanize civic support for further investment.

Recommendation 2: Center Equity Through Better Measures and Distribution

Participants proposed replacing outdated poverty metrics with more nuanced indicators that reflect California’s complexity, such as direct certification from state or federal aid programs, regional cost-of-living adjustments, and composite indices such as the Los Angeles Unified School District’s Student Equity Need Index, which more accurately reflect the needs of students and their communities.

They also urged counting students with multiple intersecting needs more than once, so that, e.g., a foster youth who is both a low-income student and an English language learner (ELL) generates funding commensurate with that student’s compounded challenges. Additionally, participants advocated for expanding LCFF’s categories to include unhoused students and Native American tribal members, while cautioning that equity adjustments must not dilute resources for the schools serving students with the greatest needs.

Recommendation 3: Advance Participatory and Reciprocal Accountability

Our participants called for a deepened democracy within the education system. The LCAP process, although innovative, has often become a hollow bureaucratic exercise instead of a genuine platform for shared problem-solving. Participants envisioned a system where parents, students, and community partners can easily see LEA goals, track progress through accessible dashboards, and witness their feedback reflected in decisions. This higher standard would mean that LCAP teams must be required to include this broader group of participants in setting and measuring the impact of LCFF investments.

Structural improvements that our participants felt were needed include improved LCAP templates and measures for LEAs to use, improved tracking of school-level spending, and comprehensive training for LEA and community leaders trying to engage community members. They suggest that expanding the state’s Community Engagement Initiative could help more LEAs build broader, sustained participation in the LCAP process. Above all, participants emphasized that genuine accountability must flow both ways—up to the state’s leadership as well as down to LEAs and schools. They proposed legislatively defining both participatory and reciprocal accountability and even “trigger laws” to enforce state accountability if fiscal obligations are unmet.

Recommendation 4: Align Education with Broader Systems of Care

The final recommendation echoes a view now widely shared across California that education cannot be siloed from the social conditions of students’ lives. The report urges state leaders to incentivize education systems to collaborate with partners from other public sectors like housing, public health, behavioral health, nutrition, transportation, child welfare, and developmental services with the aim of creating a singular system of care that serves young people. By combining efforts and coordinating across systems, California can better close opportunity gaps that originate beyond the classroom. Our participants pointed to programs like the Community Schools Partnership Program, the Children and Youth Behavioral Initiative, BH-CONNECT, Comprehensive Prevention Planning under FFPSA Part 1, and Medi-Cal reimbursements for health supports as examples of existing state programs to build on.

Participants also urged the state to take a leadership role in integrating data, aligning local and federal funding streams, and creating county-level liaisons to coordinate cross-sector collaboration. This systemic approach, they noted, would not only stabilize funding but serve the whole child more effectively.

The Broader Message: Listening to Informed Californians

This report arose from a commitment to deeply engage with Californians who know the system best, including community organizers, longtime advocates, educational leaders, and researchers. Their insights reaffirm much of what California’s education and equity movements have long maintained—that addressing inequality requires sustained public investment, policy coordination across government levels, and genuine democratic participation in decision-making.

These participants have articulated a forward-looking vision rooted in their experiences. They insist that the state must recommit to equity as a moral and practical imperative, ensuring that fiscal policy, community engagement, and accountability are aligned around shared responsibility for student success.

This report and others mark a new chapter in LCFF and LCAP, transitioning from first-generation reform to a dynamic, participatory, and transparent system capable of meeting 21st-century realities. The knowledgeable and engaged Californians who speak through this report call on the state to act now—to reinforce the LCFF system of equitable funding, to revitalize community voice, and to knit education policy into a broader social fabric that sustains opportunity. Their message is clear: The groundwork for fairness has been laid, and the next decade must transform progress achieved thus far into lasting, inclusive advancement for all California students.