In this first episode of our new season, we gain the perspective of someone who has had her finger on the pulse of school business and resource equity for a long time, both from a local and a statewide perspective –  Nina Boyd. 

Nina is a school business official, administrator and statewide leader who has seen a lot transpire during her nearly 40 years in public education – and she is still on the frontlines impacting change. 

Nina shares insight and perspectives related to:

• How she sees us having gone both forward and backward with regard to advancing equity, including recent pushback about what is taught in schools;
• The importance of educational administrators and leaders continuing to be authentic in the spaces they serve and using their voices to correct misinformation;  
•  The evolving role of Chief Business Officers in inviting more diverse perspectives into the dialogue about school issues; and more. 

Key questions addressed include:

• Is California doing a better job of directing resources that turn into opportunities and access for students? 
• Are major investments in new initiatives helping to move the needle for those furthest from opportunity? 
• How are schools navigating this current climate of rising civic divisiveness? 

About our guest

Nina Boyd currently serves as Deputy Superintendent for Operations, Government and Community Partnerships, for the Orange County Department of Education (OCDE),  which supports supports 28 Public School Districts and 23 board-approved Public Charter Schools. Orange County public schools serve nearly 200,000 students; about 80 percent of whom are students of color.

Nina began her career in education as a temporary account clerk in Santa Ana Unified School District. She had planned to become a school psychologist but instead went on to a distinguished career serving in multiple administrative leadership roles at the OCDE, including as Administrator, Purchasing Contracts & Operations;  Executive Director of Facilities and Operations;  Assistant Superintendent Human Resources and Support Services; and Associate Superintendent Alternative Education.

At the statewide level, Nina has been a key advocate and leader, including serving for many years on the CASBO Board of Directors and as CASBO President in 2017-18. She also served an eight-year term on the Coalition for Adequate School Housing (CASH) state board and held a variety of positions to support facility and maintenance issues primarily in the areas of regulatory, advocacy, and legislation. Nina has facilitated and provided trainings and workshops at both the local and state level, including a focus on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion when she was a leader at CASBO.  She also teaches in CASBO’s Business Executive Leadership program.

About our host

Jason Willis serves as  Director of Strategic Resource Planning and Implementation for WestEd, and he is a former chief business official in several California school districts

About our series

Budgeting for Educational Equity is presented by the California Association of School Business Official (CASBO) and WestEd. We are grateful to the Sobrato Family Foundation for additional support. Our series is written and produced by Paul Richman and Jason Willis. Original music, mixing and sound by Tommy Dunbar. Alyssa Perez at WestEd provides research and develops the written briefs that go along with each episode.

Host Jason Willis provides a quick update on our upcoming new season. Plus, we replay our initial episode featuring several guests as a way to re-establish the context for the new episodes and help you get your "resource equity bearings."

Guests on the replay include:

• Christopher Edley, Jr., J.D., interim dean, U.C. Berkeley Graduate School of Education; co-founder and president emeritus of The Opportunity Institute; professor and dean emeritus, U.C. Berkeley School of Law; former professor, Harvard Law School; and co-chair, National Commission on K-12 Excellence & Equity
• Maria Echaveste, J.D., president and CEO, The Opportunity Institute; and former White House deputy chief of staff
• Michael Kirst, Ph.D., professor emeritus, Graduate School of Education, Stanford University; and past president, California State Board of Education
• Jayne Christakos, former chief business officer, San Bernardino City Unified School District
• Marguerite Williams, Ed.D., chief business official, Inglewood Unified School District;; and former senior director of equity and diversity, Association of California School Administrators
• Adela Madrigal Jones, (retired) superintendent, Sanger Unified School District
• Jason Willis (host), director of strategic resource planning and implementation for WestEd and a former chief business official in several California school districts

Download the Interactive Companion Brief for this episode.

Budgeting for Educational Equity is presented by the California Association of School Business Official (CASBO) in partnership with WestEd.

We are grateful to the Sobrato Family Foundation for providing additional support. 

Education leaders, school business officials and practitioners continue to confront a full plate of difficult and time-sensitive decisions. How can we reflect on and improve practices and approaches for making those decisions to better serve students? In this episode, host Jason Willis and special guest Alex Jacobson from WestEd explore how good decisions in our school systems that lead to successful outcomes for all students are in part contingent on the ways in which people make those decisions. 

As part of this exploration, we’ll look through the frame of what’s known as System 1 and System 2 thinking – and discuss how education leaders can begin to apply some of what the research tells us to strengthen approaches to decision making, both individually and organizationally.

ABOUT OUR GUEST

Alex Jacobson is a Senior Research Associate with the Comprehensive School Assistance Program at WestEd. In this role, he serves on research projects related to education finance, strategic resource allocation, and cost modeling. Alex also provides collaborative, research-based capacity building to education practitioners, including direct organizational improvement assistance and facilitating stakeholder engagements. He also supports state education agencies across the U.S. through Regional Comprehensive Centers at WestEd. Prior to joining WestEd, Alex served as a researcher and technical assistance provider for the American Institutes for Research (AIR). He has a Masters of Public Policy from Georgetown University.

RESOURCES

Jason and Alex refer to some key studies in this episode:

• Estimating the Costs Associated with Reaching Student Achievement Expectations for Kansas Public Education Students: A Cost Function Approach: This adequacy cost study examines the structure of the Kansas school finance formula as well as estimates the potential costs associated with reaching student achievement expectations for K-12 students in Kansas.
• Individual differences in reasoning: Implications for the rationality debate? In a series of experiments involving most of the classic tasks in the heuristics and biases literature, authors Keith E. Stanovich and Richard F. West examine the implications of individual differences in performance and introduce the concepts of System 1 and System 2 processing.

ABOUT OUR HOST

Jason Willis serves as the Director of Strategic Resource Planning and Implementation for WestEd, where he oversees and guides the agency’s school finance, governance, and accountability efforts. Prior to WesEd, Jason served as a chief business official in several California school districts,

Budgeting for Educational Equity is presented in partnership between the California Association of School Business Official (CASBO), the premier resource for professional development and best practices for more than 24,000 California school business leaders, and WestEd, a national nonprofit research development and service agency that works to promote excellence and equity in education. We are grateful to the Sobrato Family Foundation for providing additional support. Our series is written and produced by Paul Richman and Jason Willis. Original music and editing by Tommy Dunbar. John Diaz at WestEd develops our companion written briefs. Follow us at @budget4edequity.

COVID-19 and other crises have put extreme operational pressures on public school systems. And these pressures, as Dr. Rosanna Mucetti, Superintendent of Napa Valley USD says, can break or make organizations. In this episode, Rosanna and Rabinder "Rob" Mangewala, NVUSD’s Assistant Superintendent and Chief Business Official, describe how their district actually leveraged challenges during the crisis to accelerate their focus on resource equity and school improvement. 

“All of a sudden, work that was probably going to take us three to five years to implement as articulated in our strategic plan was in overdrive and things got adopted in months because of the pressures of the pandemic,” Rosanna says. 

In addition, Rosanna and Rob share practical guidance and insights from their leadership experiences, including how their district:

• Opened campuses early in the pandemic and maintained strong collaboration among the board, management team and labor partners.
• Approached resource allocation equity through standardization and sustainability to guarantee a “base floor” of access for all students.
• Revamped the district’s system of technology and adopted a new assessment in the midst of the pandemic.
• Responded to severe fiscal challenges like declining enrollment.

About our guests

Rob and Rosanna’s professional partnership began more than two decades ago, when they were both clearing their teaching credentials. 

• Rosanna Mucetti, Ed. D., has served as a bilingual teacher, English Learner program specialist, assistant principal, principal, manager of Curriculum and English Learner Services, Assistant Superintendent, and Deputy Superintendent. Before her appointment as Superintendent at NVUSD in 2018, she served as the Deputy Superintendent of Educational Services in San Leandro USD for five years, where she led instructional transformations, including integrating socio-emotional learning into the curriculum. She also revamped the district’s technology platforms. Her educational background includes a bachelor’s degree in Psychology from UC Berkeley and a master’s degree and a doctorate in Educational Leadership from CSU East Bay. She also completed the School Business Management program at USC and has a CASBO chief business official certificate.
• Rabinder “Rob” Mangewala joined NVUSD as the Assistant Superintendent, Business Services in 2019. He serves as the Chief Business Official for the organization, ensuring the district successfully addresses its financial challenges. He also oversees technology, data management and enrollment. Rob previously served with Rosanna in San Leandro USD, where he oversaw district-wide data management, enrollment, information technology and instructional materials. He began his career in education as an elementary school teacher in Hayward where he taught for 13 years while obtaining his administrative credential and masters degree at CSU East Bay. He also holds a certificate in School Business Management from the Rossier School of Education at the University of Southern California.

 Budgeting for Educational Equity is presented by the California Association of School Business Official (CASBO) and WestEd. Our series is written and produced by Paul Richman and Jason Willis, Director of Strategic Resource Planning and Implementation for WestEd. Music and editing is by Tommy Dunbar. John Diaz at WestEd develops our written briefs. Follow us at @Budget4EdEquity.

How has California's shift to the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) impacted equitable resource allocation? In part two of our focus on LCFF, host Jason Willis and special guests consider this and other vital questions, including:

• How do we best strike a balance between local autonomy, innovation, compliance and accountability?
• How effective are Local Control and Accountability Plans (LCAPs) that all districts must adopt with stakeholder input? 
• What role can school boards in particular play in the LCFF-LCAP process? 

Plus, we delve into the practical, hands-on experiences of a veteran chief school business official who has implemented LCFF in her small, rural school district. She shares valuable strategies that school district leaders and business officials can draw on when implementing LCFF.

Guests:

• Heather Naylor has served as CBO in Gridley USD in Butte County for 17 years. The district serves approximately 2,100 students, 75% who qualify in the “unduplicated" student count. Gridley USD was recognized in a 2019 Learning Policy Institute study as a "Positive Outlier" for its promising practices and outcomes in closing opportunity gaps for students of color and all students.
• Christopher Edley, Jr., J.D., serves as interim dean for the U.C. Berkeley Graduate School of Education, and as professor and dean emeritus at the U.C. Berkeley School of Law. 
• Maria Echaveste, J.D., serves as president and CEO of The Opportunity Institute. She previously served as White House deputy chief of staff.
• Mike Kirst is a former State Board of Education President and current Professor Emeritus at Stanford University. He was the chief architect of the LCFF under Gov. Jerry Brown.
• Xilonin Cruz-Gonzalez serves as a school board member in Azusa USD, and as Deputy Director for Californians Together, a statewide advocacy group. She is immediate past president of the California School Boards Association.

More resources

• "What's Next for the LCFF," report by PACE, Nov., 2021
• "Targeted K-12 Funding and Student Outcomes," PPIC Policy Brief, Oct., 2021
• "Why the LCFF? California's Landmark Move to an Equity-Based School Funding Formula," from the "Adventures in Ed Funding" podcast, March, 2020. 

Budgeting for Educational Equity is presented by the California Association of School Business Official (CASBO) and WestEd. We are grateful to the Sobrato Family Foundation for additional support. Our series is written and produced by Paul Richman and Jason Willis. Original music and editing by Tommy Dunbar. John Diaz at WestEd develops our companion written briefs.
Follow us at @Budget4EdEquity.

The Local Control Funding Formula, or LCFF, ushered in a new era of school funding in California when it was adopted in 2013. It's regarded by many as the most significant resource equity reform the state has ever enacted. But how has the LCFF worked? Has it accomplished what it was intended to? And how are inherent tensions between local and state decision making authority, oversight and accountability being navigated?

In this episode, host Jason Willis and special guests explore key elements of the LCFF.

Xilonin Cruz-Gonzalez provides a review of the law, based on her unique perspective both as a locally elected school board member in Azusa USD and as Deputy Director for Californians Together, a statewide group that advocates on behalf of English Learner students.  Xilonin also serves as immediate past president of the California School Boards Association.

Richard De Nava, Assistant Superintendent, Business Services at San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools, shares insights about the policy and practical implications of the LCFF. Richard also serves as president of CASBO.

And Mike Kirst, former State Board of Education President, Professor Emeritus at Stanford University, and chief architect of the LCFF under Gov. Jerry Brown, offers a remarkable glimpse into the development of the formula, including some of the difficult choices, innovative thinking and pragmatic considerations that went into creating the new law.

Additional Background

As part of the LCFF, all Local Education Agencies receive a per-student funding allocation known as a base grant, plus targeted additional funding depending on the needs of certain students (known as supplemental and concentration grants). Districts must also engage stakeholders before adopting a Local Control and Accountability Plan. While the new law has shifted more discretion for budgetary decisions to local school districts, it has also brought to the surface inherent tensions between local and state decision making authority. 

More resources

• NEW: "What's Next for the LCFF," report by Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE), November 2021
• NEW: "Targeted K-12 Funding and Student Outcomes," PPIC Policy Brief, October 2021
• "Why the LCFF? California's Landmark Move to an Equity-Based School Funding Formula," from the Adventures in Ed Funding CASBO podcast, March, 2020. 
• "The LCFF After Four Years: What Do We Know?" brief summarizing four Getting Down To Facts II technical reports related to LCFF implementation.

About our series

Budgeting for Educational Equity is presented by the California Association of School Business Official (CASBO) and WestEd. We are grateful to the Sobrato Family Foundation for additional support. Our series is written and produced by Paul Richman and Jason Willis. Original music, mixing and sound by Tommy Dunbar. John Diaz at WestEd  develops the written briefs that go along with each episode.

Follow us on Twitter at @Budget4EdEquity to keep up to date on the series and share your thoughts, ideas, questions and feedback. 

We hope you've been enjoying the series so far and taking away a lot of useful information. This is a quick update to let you know  we are busy working on several new episodes that will start posting in a few weeks.  We also wanted to make you aware of  the companion briefs that are now available online.

To describe these more, host Jason Willis introduces John Diaz, a financial analyst at WestEd, who has been leading the work in developing the companion briefs. The briefs serve as a helpful, interactive tool for listeners, building on strategies or practices articulated by our guests, and offering additional research on topics related to budgeting for educational equity.

Available Companion Briefs include:

• Download the companion brief to Episode 1: Defining an Approach to Equity
• Download the companion brief to Episode 2: Using Data to Advance Equity
• Download the companion brief to Episode 3: Planning for Change
• Download the companion brief to Episode 4: Meeting the Moment

More About the Series and the Briefs

Budgeting for Educational Equity is a podcast series that explores how education resources can be allocated to better meet the needs of all students. The companion briefs have been developed to provide opportunities for listeners to engage in tangible, practical application of the lessons derived from each episode. The brief can be used as a launching point for discus- sions about equity within communities and school district administrative offices. It can also be used to support existing ongoing work such as the Local Control Accountability Plan or district budget development. Episodes can be found online in the Show Notes and on the WestEd Budgeting for Educational Equity Podcast Series webpage.

*

Budgeting for Educational Equity is presented by the California Association of School Business Official (CASBO), the premier resource for professional development and best practices for more than 24,000 California school business leaders, in partnership with WestEd, a national nonprofit research development and service agency that works to promote excellence and equity in education. We are grateful to the Sobrato Family Foundation for providing additional support.

Engage with us!
Follow us on Twitter at @Budget4EdEquity to keep up to date on the series and share your thoughts, ideas, questions and feedback.

Budgeting for Educational Equity is written and produced by Paul Richman and Jason Willis. Original music, mixing and sound by Tommy Dunbar. John Diaz at WestEd serves as an advisor and develops the written materials that go along with each episode.

Each person’s equity journey is unique, including the one taken by Marguerite Williams, Ed.D. After serving as a teacher, principal and assistant superintendent for academic services, she became increasingly interested in the business side of schools and completed the CASBO CBO Certification program. That helped lead to her recent appointment as assistant superintendent/CBO for a charter management organization in Vallejo that operates four schools and serves approximately 1,400 students.

In this episode, Marguerite shares valuable insights about resource allocation and equity from her unique perspective as an instructional leader and a new CBO. She describes key challenges, what motivated her on her journey, and how her own understanding of school business has evolved -- plus, practical strategies she’s used to keep equity at the forefront throughout her career.

Quotable:

“On the business side, I can do great things for students. I can support the instructional program with resource allocation. I can make sure our students have the best facilities to learn. I can make sure there's a clean and safe environment.”

More about our guest

Marguerite Williams, Ed.D., serves as assistant superintendent/CBO for Griffin Technology Academies in Vallejo. Previously, she served as assistant superintendent of academic services for Adelanto Elementary School District, and as senior director of equity and diversity for the Association of California School Administrators. Dr. Williams began her career in education as a teacher, and has also served as an assistant principal and principal in the San Bernardino City School District, and as a district-wide instructional director in Los Angeles USD. She obtained her doctorate in educational leadership with an emphasis in higher education by examining the levels of site and district leadership support which teachers and team members received in implementing the Response to Tiered Intervention Model in San Bernardino. She holds a Master’s Degree in Multicultural Education.

Download the episode 5 companion brief here.

About our series

Budgeting for Educational Equity is presented by the California Association of School Business Official (CASBO), the premier resource for professional development and best practices for more than 24,000 California school business leaders, in partnership with WestEd, a national nonprofit research development and service agency that works to promote excellence and equity in education. We are grateful to the Sobrato Family Foundation for providing additional support. 

Our series is written and produced by Paul Richman and Jason Willis. Original music, mixing and sound by Tommy Dunbar. John Diaz at WestEd serves as an advisor and develops the written materials that go along with each episode.

Engage With Us!

Follow us on Twitter at @Budget4EdEquity to keep up to date on the series; find additional resource recommendations; and share your thoughts, ideas, questions and feedback. 

School districts face extreme urgency to safely return students to in-person environments and help them recover from a pandemic that has not yet ended. At the same time, leaders and practitioners are pressing to expeditiously but thoughtfully allocate a windfall of new state and federal dollars – all the while trying to leverage the unique opportunity created by these circumstances to bring about transformative changes to our public school systems.

How can school communities make the most of this moment to innovate towards a greater equality of outcomes for all students? That's the question we explore in this episode. Education reform experts Michael Fullan and Joanne Quinn share powerful ideas and insights from their work. Both have advised school systems in California and throughout the world. They’ve co-authored many books and papers, including their latest, “Right Drivers for Whole System Success.”

Fullan and Quinn help us to look through the lens of equity and learning, emphasizing that education leaders should prioritize engaging all of their students.

The possibilities for investing this influx of new, one-time funding to address inequities is truly exciting. But not so simple. School business officials especially may find themselves caught in a tension, on the one hand focused on fulfilling their important, traditional role of ensuring fiscal health and responsible accounting (including spending down Covid-recovery funds within prescribed timelines) while also being presented an opportunity to help their districts think and act in new ways that can be sustained over time.

CASBO CEO and executive director Tatia Davenport also re-joins Jason to put some of Michael and Joanne’s ideas through a school business “reality check.” Tatia describes why focusing on increasing the long-term yield of our public school investments is so critical, plus she highlights why district leaders need more time and space to plan, so they can develop a cohesive strategy with their communities for effectively spending their funds and improving outcomes.

Download the Episode 4 Companion Brief here.


Guests

Joanne Quinn is an international consultant and author on system change, leadership, and learning. As co-founder and Global Director of New Pedagogies for Deep Learning, she leads partnership work across eight countries focused on transforming learning. Joanne has provided leadership at all levels of education as a superintendent, implementation advisor to the Ontario Ministry of Education, and Director of Continuing Education at the University of Toronto. 

Michael Fullan, O.C., is the Global Leadership Director of New Pedagogies for Deep Learning and a worldwide authority on educational reform with a mandate of helping to achieve the moral purpose of all children learning. A former Dean of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) of the University of Toronto, Michael advises policymakers and local leaders around the world to provide leadership in education.

*

Budgeting for Educational Equity is presented by the California Association of School Business Officials (CASBO), in partnership with WestEd. Our series is written and produced by Paul Richman and Jason Willis. Original music, mixing and sound by Tommy Dunbar. John Diaz at WestEd  develops our related written materials. We are grateful to the Sobrato Family Foundation for providing additional support. 
@Budget4edequity

In this episode, Sanger Unified School District Superintendent Adela Madrigal Jones highlights approaches and actions her district has taken to advance equity. It’s chock-full of practical guidance, real-life experiences and candid reflections from a lifelong educator who has helped lead successful work in this Central Valley district.

One of the key strategies Sanger USD utilizes are “Principal Summits.” These summits engage school site leaders in reviewing data, collectively exploring how dollars are invested (including LCFF-LCAP funds), developing plans and actions to meet the needs of all students, and regularly monitoring those plans. 

Superintendent Madrigal Jones shares further insights into the mechanics of budgeting for equity, including describing how some recent allocation models called for distributing dollars equally, and some equitably. In addition, she takes us inside some of her district’s recent discussions about how best to utilize newly available one-time state and federal dollars to accelerate recovery from the pandemic.

Later in this episode, Sanger USD Chief Business Official Marsha Alfving joins Adela to discuss the key importance of superintendents and chief business officials working together and with their teams to support resource equity. CBO Alfving describes several ways that school business officials can deepen their engagement in their district's conversations around equity and Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS) to best meet the needs of all students.

Finally, Superintendent Madrigal Jones looks back on a key success in her district that improved early literacy. Plus, she recommends a few things that all educational leaders should consider bringing along as they prepare to embark on their own resource equity and "cultural shift" journeys.

Guests

Adela Madrigal Jones has served as superintendent of Sanger USD since July 2018. Prior to that, she served as associate superintendent, as a principal and a teacher, all in the district. She has also worked extensively with English Learners. In total, she has spent more than 37 years in public education.

Marsha Alfving has served in Sanger USD for more than a decade, including as Chief Financial Officer since 2013. She’s also a Certified Public Accountant and prior to joining Sanger, served for several years in public accounting.

Sanger USD is located in California’s Central Valley. The district serves about 11,000 students, nearly 70% who qualify for free and reduced price meals and 15% who are English Learners. The district has been recognized in research literature, such as the 2019 Learning Policy Institute brief, for its promising practices and outcomes, especially for students of color.

Download the Interactive Companion Brief for this episode.

*

Budgeting for Educational Equity is presented by the California Association of School Business Official (CASBO), in partnership with WestEd. We are grateful to the Sobrato Family Foundation for providing additional support.

Engage with us on Twitter at @Budget4EdEquity

Budgeting for Educational Equity is written and produced by Paul Richman and Jason Willis. Original music, mixing and sound by Tommy Dunbar. John Diaz at WestEd  develops our related written materials.