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Vacaville Unified leaders on Thursday will consider approving what’s called a “federal addendum” to the school district’s Local Control and Accountability Plan, outlining how federal dollars will be used to support specific groups of students, among them low-income, English learners and foster youth.
The addendum is required to ensure alignment with federal funding requirements under the Every Student Succeeds Act, or ESSA. It details how the district uses federal funds to support Title I, II, III, and IV programs, so that strategies and actions boost student achievement, promote educator equity, and address the needs of disadvantaged students, according to agenda documents.
Ali Eeds, director of secondary education, will make the presentation, then the governing board will be asked to consider approving the addendum.
The presentation will come nearly a week after President Donald Trump signed an executive order that, in his words, will “begin eliminating the Department of Education,” although that will require congressional action. While federal student loans for college and post-secondary students are among its biggest expenditures, it also sends dollars for K-12 schools that serve 50 million students in nearly 100,000 public schools and 32,000 private schools.
That funding includes more than $15 billion for thousands of Title I schools, schools that receive federal dollars to help low-income families. In VUSD, Markham and Fairmont Charter elementary schools, Vaca Pena Middle School and Will C. Wood High School are among the district’s Title I schools.
Eeds will explain the purpose and summary of uses for each Title designation, from support for high-need students to resources directed to underserved students to public accountability.
Wording in the agenda document indicates that the state Department of Education “emphasizes that the LCAP Federal Addendum should not drive LCAP development,” and that school districts are “encouraged to integrate their ESSA funds into their LCAP development as much as possible to promote strategic planning of all resources; however, this is not a requirement.”
The ESSA State Plan shifts the state’s approach to the use of federal dollars to support of underserved student groups, and the federal addendum “provides school districts with the opportunity to document their approach to maximizing the impact of federal investments in support of underserved students,” the agenda indicated.
ESSA offers an opportunity for school districts to innovate with their federally-funded programs and “align them with the priority goals they are realizing under the state’s Local Control Funding Formula,” which determines school funding and directs resources to the state’s highest-need students.
LCFF provides school districts with flexibility to design programs and provide services that meet the needs of students in order to achieve readiness for college, career, and lifelong learning, according to wording in the agenda documents.
District trustees meet in open session at 6:30 p.m. in the Educational Services Center, 401 Nut Tree Road.
During the meeting, the Vacaville Library Board, an adjunct to the district governing board, will convene at 6:15 in open session. Suzanne Olawski, the Solano County director of Library Services, and Tim Reynolds, the senior Capital Project coordinator, will provide an update of the Vacaville Cultural Center Library Project.
For more information, visit vacavilleusd.org.
