The California State Assembly Education Committee approved a Sunshine bill (SB 687) that would require schools to annually report actual expenditures in key areas, including teacher salaries. PICO California is leading an effort to establish this new requirement to ensure that parents know where tax dollars are really being spent and eliminate disparities in spending within districts.

Currently, such critical figures as teacher salaries are reported as district-wide averages, masking the disparities in expenditures among schools within a single district. In many districts, the more affluent schools have the most experienced teaching staffs, earning considerably higher pay than their less experienced colleagues in a district's poorer schools. The result is that hundreds of thousands more dollars are allocated to the affluent schools in the form of teacher salaries than are allocated to poorer neighborhoods.

Educators view the Sunshine legislation as an important first step in equalizing the distribution of resources within school districts and enabling greater local discretion in how funds are spent. In the small school reform efforts being led by PICO federations in Oakland and San Jose more equitable funding mechanisms and school site discretion over budgets has ensured that staffing and services match the specific needs of each school community. For more information visit www.picocalifornia.org.