Keeping Students at the Heart – Student Engagement in Year 1 of LCFF.
This report focuses primarily on lessons, best practices, and challenges based on Californians for Justice’s experiences engaging youth in LCFF in four school districts: East Side Union High School District, Fresno Unified, Long Beach Unified, and Oakland Unified. Our findings echo and extend the lessons highlighted by Education Trust-West, Association of California School Administrators and others. One key theme from CFJ’s work in year one is that investing in institutional structures to support meaningful engagement of students is an ideal model to bring students into the LCFF process as partners. Research by Education Trust-West also confirms this finding. When districts have a history of partnering with community-based activism, they are better equipped to expand outreach, increase practices that improve accessibility for engagement opportunities, and adopt participatory models that facilitate deeper community engagement.