By Alan Greenblatt, KQED News
As the school year begins, districts in cities such as Oakland, Fresno and Los Angeles have not gone on a hiring spree.
But they might soon.
California has revamped its school funding formula in ways that will send billions more dollars to districts that educate large numbers of children who are poor, disabled in some way or still learning to speak English.
It’s an approach that numerous other states, from New York to Hawaii, have looked into lately. But none has matched the scale of the change now under way in the nation’s largest state.
“The trend is toward more and more states providing additional assistance to students with special needs,” said Deborah Verstegen, a school finance expert at the University of Nevada, Reno. “California is moving into the forefront with this approach.”
Read the complete story at KQED News.
