Dear CUSD Families,
We need your help!
As you may know, the Capistrano Unified School District, in partnership with District stakeholders, has been leading a statewide effort to increase the minimum per-student funding received by California public schools (called “base” funding). With over 200 public school Superintendents, our goal has been to work with state legislators to increase student funding without increasing state or local taxes.
Although some of the base funding legislation in Sacramento has been paused, leaders in the California State Assembly are working to identify alternatives to increase per-student funding across the state. While it is great to have the very significant support of the entire Assembly leadership on this issue so early in the budget process, we are going to need support from the State Senate and the Governor. The budget process still has two months to go and a lot of time for advocacy to continue.
These increases to per-student funding would not require an increase to our state or local taxes. For District like ours, an increase in per-student funding would mean continuing the investments we’ve made with state and federal covid dollars, including:
- Class size reduction in elementary and middle schools
- Increased sections for secondary schools
- Additional Paraeducators for combination classrooms in elementary
- Additional Paraeducators for Transitional Kinder classrooms
- Professional learning for teachers in multiple areas
- Multi-Tiered System of Support specialists at every elementary school to support site intervention systems and programs
- Elementary Physical Education (PE) program to provide an improved PE curriculum and to support increased teacher collaboration to effectively establish intervention systems
- Technology equipment (projectors, sound systems, software)
- Summer and after-school programs
For families who wish to share their support, please follow the instructions below:
- Visit www.raisethebase.com and fill in the required information. Once that is complete, scroll to the bottom of the page and click submit.
- Visit the California Legislative Information page and either login or Register.
- Once you are logged in, visit this page for Assembly Bill 1948
- Click on the gray tab labeled “Comments to Author”
- Comments submitted from this page can be short and simple
- All comments will go to the author of the Bill, Assembly Member Ting
Thank you for your continued partnership and collaboration in the work we do to support our 44,000 students. We will continue to do whatever we can to increase funding to support all of our young people.
Sincerely,
Kirsten Vital Brulte
Superintendent