The Turlock Unified School District Board of Trustees approved the 2016-17 through 2018-19 Local Control Accountability Plan for the District and eCademy at their June 21 meeting, deciding where and how the school district plans to spend state funds over the next three years.

The LCAP is mandated by the Local Control Funding Formula, which places more spending control in the hands of the local districts and is based on specific considerations, such as increasing resources for students with greater need, specifically low-income students, English learners and foster youth – a combined demographic that comprises 66.6 percent of the District’s student population. The LCAP is a three-year plan that declares districts’ strategies on how to address state priority areas for students and identifies specific actions districts will take to achieve those goals.

Created with input from across the school community, the LCAP prioritizes projects and programs that will help the district meet its established goals. The LCAP Steering Committee grew from 36 members last fall to 47 this year, 24 of which who serve as the LCAP Cohort. A total of three drafts were completed between March and May  through the work of the Steering Leads, Committee members and the LCAP Cohort, which met a total of five times between November and May to review input and data and make suggestions for moving specific actions forward on the 2016-17 LCAP.

“The eight-month process went extremely well because of its collaborative nature and stakeholder engagement and input,” said TUSD Superintendent Dana Trevethan. “TUSD’s LCAP Cohort and LCAP Steering Committee provided an inordinate amount of feedback and time to expand the concept of ‘opening doors for more’ on behalf of opportunities made available to students and staff.”

Stakeholder input and feedback plays a major part in deciding where funds are allocated, and this year a total of 1,365 responses were collected. According to the feedback, responders placed the greatest emphasis and need on student engagement, interventions and enrichment, student achievement, safety, increased technology, expansion of career and technology education and professional development.

The document is revised and updated annually, and this year TUSD’s previous nine goals were merged into six in order to best reflect the District’s vision and the state’s eight priorities.

“In an effort to make TUSD’s LCAP user-friendly and more focused, both the LCAP Cohort and LCAP Steering Committees recommended the consolidation of the nine goals to six to increase clarity and eliminate redundancy of actions and expenditures,” said Trevethan. “However, the six goals continue to capture the essence of TUSD’s previous nine goals but in a manner that is more relevant and strategic.”

The six goals include providing a guaranteed and viable curriculum, providing and maintaining facilities that are safe, secure and in good repair, meeting and/or exceeding academic standards across all curricular and co-curricular areas, maintaining safe and supportive campuses that promote a productive learning environment, expanding opportunities to increase parental involvement, collaboration and partnerships with families and supporting student’s academic and social success to increase promotion and graduation rates.

In addition to cutting the District’s goals down from nine to six, other changes to this year’s plan include increased behavioral, social and medical services to accommodate eligible students and increased interventions and enrichments at the district and site levels, which both came based on feedback from staff, parents and the community.

The LCAP Cohort also took steps to further provide for the District’s English Learners, who make up approximately 26.6 percent of the student population, evaluating data on English Learners’ progress and related programs to support their learning. This led to the repurposing of TUSD’s Instructional Coach model to target early literacy, English Language Department/English Language Arts, Math, Next Generation Science Standards and health/fitness with an emphasis on student achievement.

“Our English learners truly have the greatest needs, and our LCAP works to expand their access to both curricular and co-curricular programs, including programs and services to accommodate their families,” said Trevethan. “Recognizing inherent and potential obstacles our English Learners may face, specific LCAP goals and actions work to lessen such so that our English Learners increase achievement while thriving in an educational setting that supports their academic, social, and emotional needs.”

To review the TUSD LCAP final draft, visit www.turlock.k12.ca.us/lcap.