Earlier today we published a story about Del Mar Union. Over the past decade, the number of kids with disabilities has been skyrocketing pretty much everywhere. Not so at Del Mar.
The number of kids with disabilities there has been nearly cut in half. It’s the largest decline of any California school district with at least 100 students with disabilities. But Del Mar wasn’t the only local district to see declines.
Some of the regions other wealthiest districts, like Cardiff Elementary, Encinitas Union, San Dieguito Union and Solana Beach Elementary, have seen either modest declines or small increases in the count of students with disabilities. For the record, none come anywhere close to Del Mar’s decline.
Interestingly, almost all of the local districts that have seen declines or stunted growth are what are called basic aid districts. These are districts that are funded almost exclusively by local property taxes rather than the state’s Local Control Funding Formula. (They do get a small amount of money from the state, but not nearly as much as other districts.) Because they produce more revenue than they would have received through LCFF – often because of high local property values – they fund themselves.
In other words, these are usually very rich areas. When it comes to the number of kids with disabilities, the trend is hard to miss.
Overall, the number of kids with disabilities rose by about 29 percent at the county’s LCFF-funded districts over the past decade. At the region’s basic aid districts, the number of kids with disabilities only grew by about five percent.
That’s a big difference. It’s also a confounding one. Then, I noticed that this wasn’t just a local trend, which made it all the more fascinating.
Statewide, the disparities were less stark, but still present. The rise in the number of students with disabilities was about 50 percent smaller in basic aid districts. Similarly, basic aid districts were more than twice as likely to have seen decreases in students with disabilities than non-basic aid districts.
Exactly what’s going on here isn’t entirely clear, but it wasn’t just me that found this trend fascinating.
“That’s totally fascinating,” Carrie Hahnel told me. (See?)
Hahnel is a senior policy and research fellow with Policy Analysis for California Education who co-authored a report on basic aid districts that is fascinating in its own right. The report found that the funding gap between those districts and LCFF-funded ones is widening. The report referred to basic aid districts that received significantly more funding than LCFF-funded ones as excess advantage districts.
“California’s school finance system has been designed with equity in mind, but the resource disparities created by excess advantage districts risk undermining that principle,” the report reads.
In the 2023-24 school year, basic aid districts on average received nearly $5,000 dollars per pupil more than the state’s traditionally-funded districts. Some of the districts that got the most money ended up with $20,000 to $30,000 more per pupil than LCFF-funded districts would have received. The local district that received the most was Rancho Santa Fe, which received $11,340 more per-pupil than they would have gotten had they been funded by the LCFF.
But when it came to my students with disabilities conundrum, Hahnel was similarly puzzled.
“It sounds like there could be a correlation but it’s hard to know exactly why,” she said.
She did throw out a couple of rough hypotheses, though. Maybe parents at basic aid districts are more likely to send their kids to private schools? Or maybe basic aid districts are sending lots of kids to non-public schools?
One finding in Hahnel’s report did catch my eye though, because it’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while – the static nature of basic aid districts’ funding. That’s important, because as overall enrollment decline has swept over districts across the nation, basic aid districts are insulated from the funding hit. While LCFF-funded districts lose money for every student lost, basic aid districts don’t.
That means that as enrollment declines, basic aids may end up with more money per student. It’s a pretty backwards reality that, as the report points out, creates some pretty backwards incentives.
“The funding model creates disincentives for basic aid districts to accept new students. This includes both out-of-district students and, more recently, students at the TK grade level,” it reads.
None of this is proof that basic aid districts are doing anything nefarious. After all, there are about 150 of them across the state. It would be hard to get them all marching in the same direction. But it raises some fascinating questions, like are basic aid districts less likely to deny interdistrict transfers to kids with disabilities?
There are clear financial incentives. As I’ve reported, the rising number of students with disabilities has created an increasingly heavy fiscal burden for districts locally. And since state and federal officials only provide a small portion of the funding needed to pay for students’ often-costly services, districts have had to increasingly dip into their general funds to cover the ballooning price tag of their special education programs.
All of this is ultimately hypothesizing. Reporting is not a math equation, an algorithm that produces one set answer. It doesn’t always leave you able to tie every loose end. In fact, you’re often left with even more questions.
That’s kind of where I’m at here. The trend is a compelling one, but ultimately, it’s just a trend. You can bet I’m going to keep digging though.
San Diego Unified Calls for Street Safety Fixes
Officials at San Diego Unified are asking city officials to commit to more than 100 safety upgrades to infrastructure near district schools. The upgrades, outlined in a 35-page-report, include requests for new crosswalks, street signage, speed readers and more near schools in all nine council districts.
The report was inspired by the death of a 12-year-old-boy, who was killed by a driver while crossing a busy street near Pershing Middle, in October.
“The concerns raised by our principals are not theoretical, they reflect the daily realities our students and families face as they walk, bike or drive to school. We appreciate the conversations that have taken place with city leaders, but conversations alone are not enough. We must work together to take meaningful action before another tragedy occurs,” Superintendent Fabiola Bagula wrote in a press release.
Some councilmembers have leapt on the report, pledging to work with district officials on the fixes. City staff have also already begun to assess the requests.
Is UCSD’s Med School Anti-White and Asian?
The Department of Justice has accused UC San Diego’s medical school of discriminating against white and Asian applicants in its admission system.
The eight-page letter zeroes in on a question that asks applicants to share what “hardships” they’d overcome in life. This question, which department officials allege was meant as a “subterfuge to use race in admissions,” was added after the Supreme Court outlawed affirmative action in 2023.
But as Inside Higher Ed points out, Justice John Roberts’ ruling seems to allow consideration of such hardships in admissions.
“Chief Justice John Roberts explicitly wrote that the ruling didn’t prohibit ‘universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise,’” Inside Higher Ed wrote.
While the university and the DOJ are in settlement talks, the department could sue should those talks fail.
