(The Center Square) – Free transitional kindergarten, community schools and literacy coaches at schools across the state are just a few of the taxpayer-funded programs students will see in California’s public schools this year.
“It wasn’t just about making investments,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said at a press conference in August in Hayward, a city in the San Francisco Bay Area. “It wasn’t just about getting back on top in terms of making per-pupil investments. It wasn’t just about spending money. We had a plan.”
The higher expenditures on education in California are going toward paying for community schools, transitional kindergarten, reading and literacy coaches to bolster literacy rates and special education programs, Newsom said.
Community schools, or public schools that serve as neighborhood hubs, were a major part of the state’s increase in education expenditures, Newsom added.
“This is not about stacking services. This is a cultural change,” Newsom said. “They were building a sense of culture with community. They were making the schools part of the community, next level working with the parents, designing these schools together, reimagining these schools.”
According to the final version of the California State budget Newsom signed into law this summer, $151.4 billion will pay for the Golden State’s public schools for transition kindergarten through 12th grade. Approximately $91.1 billion will come from California's general fund - essentially the state’s main checking account - and $60.3 billion will come from other state-managed funds.
An increase of $2.4 billion will go toward special education programs, an increase of 43% in special education funding over the state budget approved in 2025. That’s an increase of $1,340 per student, according to the final budget approved this year.
To increase funding to community schools, the state also allocated $1 billion from the state’s Proposition 98 fund, a K-12 and community college fund approved by voters in 1988. Of that money, $50 million will pay for redesigning existing junior high and high schools as community schools. And $15 million, as a separate budget allocation within the $50 million, will be spent to transform existing schools into community schools at all grade levels. In addition, $20 million will go to help county offices of education manage community schools.
Despite the increased spending on some of the state’s youngest and most vulnerable students, one analyst from Pacific Research Institute, a Pasadena-based think tank, said that there might not be long-term benefits that result from more taxpayer money being spent.
“So unless there is some kind of built-in research to show you’re going to get long-term benefits, California may be pouring a lot of money into a program which won’t get a lot of bang for the buck,” Lance Izumi, senior director for the Center for Education at Pacific Research Institute, said of the increased spending on transitional kindergarten.
Izumi also said that increased spending on reading and literacy coaches is a good investment of taxpayer dollars, although some states are spending less money on education and getting better results.
“The fact that the state is pouring in a lot of money into literacy coaches can be a good thing, assuming those approaches are using proven methods such as the Science of Reading, which is one of those things that includes phonics and has been shown to be effective,” Izumi told The Center Square. “What’s important to understand though is that states like Mississippi have been able to really improve their reading scores by simply changing the way teachers teach reading. So the fact that California is having to spend this extra money on top of what they’re already spending on classroom instruction is something we need to take a look at.”
The California Department of Education did not comment for this story before publication time on Tuesday.
Several school districts throughout the state also did not reply to The Center Square by Tuesday afternoon.
