SCHOOL FUNDING—UNEQUAL AND UNFAIR

Under an unfair hodgepodge of funding programs for California schools, the rich just get richer, according to a study by a UC Davis education finance expert.

Almost a third of all state spending on public schools—nearly $13 billion—is allocated through 124 “categorical aid programs.” Though originally aimed at closing achievement gaps in the 1970s, much of that funding now goes to wealthier school districts, said study Thomas Timar, associate professor of education.

“These well-intentioned programs were originally targeted at kids who need extra resources,” said Timar. “Now this $13 billion quiver of arrows is shot in various directions, rarely hitting the bull’s-eye, and spent with no apparent effect.”

Timar’s two-year study of the arcane world of school finance uncovered what some had suspected but never detailed: The state’s 30-year effort to equalize funding, by sending new dollars to programs for low-performing students, is often co-opted by a variety of interest groups.

This $13 billion chunk of school funding is “most likely out of compliance with the California Supreme Court’s 1974 decision that requires the Legislature and governor to equalize funding across districts,” said Timar, a faculty affiliate for the Policy Analysis for California Education center, a cooperative venture of UC Berkeley, Stanford University and UC Davis.

The study found that allocations from major programs are rarely correlated to any measure of local need.

Under one program—the Targeted Instructional Improvement initiative that aims to help districts teach minority and low-income children—average per-pupil funding was $136 in 2001–02. The Sausalito/Marin City Unified School District received $1,893 per pupil. This wealthy district had $18,245 in total revenues per pupil that year, more than $11,000 over the statewide average for elementary school districts.

In contrast, Kern County’s Semitropic Elementary District, with much higher percentages of minority students and free-lunch recipients, received only $6,596 in total revenues per pupil and no funds from the Targeted Instructional Improvement program, despite having greater need, according to the study.

The number of categorical programs has ballooned over a 20-year period, from 17 in 1980 to 124 in 2001–02. From 13 percent of per-pupil funding for K–12 education in 1980, they grew to account for nearly 30 percent in 2001–02. Most programs are rarely evaluated to see whether they help close achievement gaps locally.

As local schools struggle to balance their budgets, the growth in categorical programs means they have less discretionary monies available than they did a generation ago.

A state law passed in 2004 consolidates a number of categorical funds into six block grants. However, Timar said only about $2 billion of the $13 billion total will be consolidated and the measure does not address inequities in current allocation formulas.

“Marginal changes around the edges are not going to fix the problems,” he said. “What’s needed is a complete overhaul.”

He proposes funding reform that would provide local schools and districts with a greater proportion of discretionary dollars in return for stronger accountability.

The complete study can be found on the UC Davis School of Education’s Web site at education.ucdavis.edu/research/pace.html.

— Julia Ann Easley

QUAKE FORECASTS WITHOUT FAULT

This map forecasts the likely locations of earthquakes in California from 2001 to 2010 (orange/red blobs). Actual earthquakes since 2001 are marked with blue circles. Green triangles show earthquakes between 1989 and 1999.

NAMESAKES: EVERSON HALL

Fewer Americans were overweight then, but Gladys Everson raised alarms in the 1950s and ’60s that many people were exercising too little and eating too much of the wrong foods. And, the nutrition expert warned, fad diets could hurt more than help.

Teenage girls who skipped meals as a way to slim down were the poorest-fed age group in the nation, followed closely by their mothers, said Everson.

Everson, a biochemist who researched the linkages between dietary deficiencies in expectant mothers and birth defects, was a UC Davis faculty member from 1953 to 1969. Scientific articles today still cite research that Everson conducted on nutrients in eggs and the role of manganese and copper in fetal development. She also served five years as founding chair of a home economics department that had moved from the Berkeley campus and would lead to current UC Davis programs including nutrition, child development, design and textiles.

A biographical sketch published in the Journal of Nutrition in 1979, a decade after her death, described Everson as a soft-spoken but authoritative and devoted scientist and teacher who sometimes used her own money to help her department and students. “She also loved Siamese cats, classical music, paperback mysteries and gourmet food,” according to the article written by one of her former staff researchers, Ruth Shrader, and nutrition Professor Emeritus Fran Zeman.

If Everson was in a hurry to get back to an experiment, “she would occasionally relieve the library of a long-awaited new book without the formality of signing it out,” according to the article. But she returned the books later.

Shortly after her death in 1969 at age 60, students and faculty members at UC Davis proposed renaming the home economics building after her.“She would have been pretty proud about that,” said Larry Burdick, a retired animal technician hired by Everson to care for her guinea pigs. “She was an awfully nice person.”

— Kathleen Holder

O TANNENBAUM, BE GONE

Anyone who put up a tree for the holidays should recycle it quickly and correctly to protect yard trees and wild forests from a deadly disease, says a UC Davis scientist.

The disease, pitch canker, has been found in Christmas tree lots, landscape plantings and native coastal forests in 19 California counties and in one location in the El Dorado National Forest in El Dorado County. Infected Monterey pine Christmas trees have been found at choose-and-cut tree lots in San Mateo, Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties.

An infected tree may look healthy. But if one is left outdoors for very long, insects could spread the canker near and far, said plant pathologist Tom Gordon. Gordon and colleagues have determined that many trees in the state’s forests are susceptible to the disease, including gray pine, coulter pine, Torrey pine, ponderosa pine, shore pine and Douglas fir. Gordon is particularly concerned about introductions that would spread the canker in the Sierra Nevada, so recommends that no pine parts —firewood, logs, chips or cones—be transported east across the Interstate 5 line.

Gordon urges people to send their Christmas trees promptly to community recycling programs. It’s also OK to chip trees and put the chips in compost piles or spread them in the landscape as a thin mulch.

Pitch canker, caused by the fungus Fusarium circinatum, was first discovered in the pine plantations of the Southeastern United States 60 years ago. The disease was not known before that anywhere in the world. In 1986, foresters found pitch canker in California.

— Sylvia Wright