Editor,
A while back, I commented on a proposed parcel tax that the Belmont-Redwood Shores Elementary School District intends to levy following pending voter approval in the upcoming elections. The school district ranks almost last in funding in San Mateo County and I questioned the reason.
I did my own research and corresponded with the district, which was gracious enough to explain the funding method employed by the state’s Department of Education. There is little correlation between our local property tax burden and the level of state funding. The Department of Education has been involved in an incredulous social engineering effort that causes a wide variation of funding for San Mateo County districts. Does anyone wonder why per student state funding of a wealthy district, such as Portola Valley, is twice that of Belmont-Redwood Shores?
If anyone needs a sleeping pill or has a desire to go mad, refer to the so-called “Local Control Funding Formula” (LCFF) that has been concocted by our state’s Department of Education. Local? Little did I know that districts with a large number of English learners and starving students (who get free or subsidized meals) get significantly increased funding at the expense of districts such as in Belmont, but also in Burlingame, Pacifica and Millbrae. Clearly, the LCFF proponents know that the taxpayers in our towns will continue to vote for locally initiated incremental school funding. That will perversely lead to less disbursements from Sacramento in favor of those districts that have accommodated many students for whom our education system was probably not designed. Why are the school districts compelled to essentially fund welfare programs? Shouldn’t that burden be the responsibility of another state entity? The school LCFF demands to be changed as the status quo of local district school funding is not sustainable.
Dirk A. van Ulden
Belmont
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(3) comments
Thank you Dick for explaining the discrepancy. It finally makes sense, so anyone running for Country school board should be aware of this and how it affects our BRSSD school district. .
Proposition 55 (Extension of Proposition 30, additional state income tax on income over $250K) should be repealed since we do not benefit from it. Why give Sacramento money when they do not care about us? When we ask for help with traffic or schools, their response is too bad you are wealthy county go fix it yourself. Money and power should always be kept at local level. LCFF has huge conflict of interest, since it encourages school district not to teach English to Englsh Learners, because if they did they would loose funding for student being English Learner. All students should be given same funding, otherwise it encourages people of all races born here to go to private schools since they are allocated less money, causing schools to struggle and ask parents or community to ask for what should be funded.
We should all be enjoying the successful passing of prop 187 and the fact that we should not have to pay for the education of children in our country illegally. Then we would not have as many kids to educate on taxpayer dollars and we would not have as many English learners that we are also expected to feed. Blame the teachers union and the department of education, they have no idea what they are doing with money.
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