Staffing shortage delays ambitious program to extend school
One of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s and the Legislature’s most ambitious and expensive education programs — the extension of the school day and of the school year for elementary school students — won’t happen this year, at least in most districts.
And that’s now OK with the Legislature and the Newsom administration, which had funded it to start right away.
School districts and charter schools say they are struggling to find enough teachers, substitute teachers, bus drivers and COVID-19 contact tracers to fill existing and new pandemic-related jobs, so adding before- and after-school positions is unfeasible, they say.
“There isn’t a superintendent that I have spoken to in the last three months that is not dealing with severe staffing shortages,” said Sara Noguchi, superintendent of Modesto City Schools, the lead district for the California Association of Suburban School Districts. “So while all of the programs are up and running, most are not running at full capacity,” including before- and afterschool providers.
superintendents say juggling the challenges of reopening amid COVID-19 is all-consuming. Combine that with new regulations, documentation and planning that come with recordlevel state and federal funding and the result is initiative fatigue.
Such pressures provided a reality check for the Legislature. In response, lawmakers agreed in legislation they passed this month to push back the deadline to next year for spending $1.75 billion in funding in this year’s budget.
“Districts have so much on their plates. Legislators recognized that it will take time to build new systems, and we want them to do it well, starting with a safe reopening of schools,” said Erin Gabel, a consultant for the Assembly Budget Committee.
Newsom and the Legislature view the $1.75 billion as the first installment, growing over several years to $5 billion, of a permanently funded full school day and full school year for all kindergartners to sixth graders who choose to take advantage of it. Called the Expanded Learning Opportunities Program, it includes three extra hours of beforeor after-school programming, creating a nine-hour day, and 30 additional days during the summer.
Newsom and legislators had hoped to launch the program this year, which they saw as critical to meet the extra emotional needs of students, particularly lowincome, foster and homeless children, after 16-plus months of isolation and, for many, of trauma during the pandemic. That’s also what the existing state-funded after-school programs, called After School Education and Safety programs, are designed to do through tutoring, project-based learning, social and emotional supports, and physical activity.
The intent is to blend the two programs by hiring additional district staffers and employees of communitybased organizations that run existing after-school programs.
School districts with the resources can proceed this year and certainly plan for 30-day summer programming next summer. They can carry over whatever they don’t spend to expand the program next year.
But many districts are having trouble staffing their existing after-school programs
Bay Area Community Resources, a 40-year-old nonprofit multiservice agency that runs 100 after-school programs in Northern California, is at 70% staffing levels when normally it would be 90%; in programs in Antioch and Pittsburg, half of the positions remain unfilled, with no one applying for jobs, said Mariana Lopez Quintanilla, the program director in Marin County for the organization.
Noncompetitive pay
Pay is the issue, she said. Fast-food restaurants are paying better, and yet after-school staffers “have to be emotionally ready every day and willing to work with unvaccinated kids,” she said. The pay rate begins at $15 per hour for an instructional assistant and, depending on the position, rises to $23 per hour, she said.
Legislators raised the daily reimbursement rate by $1.30, from $8.88 per child per day to $10.18 per day. But that pay rate is not competitive, even with a 7.5% state unemployment rate. Some after-school employees who were let go last year when schools shut down may have pursued other jobs.
Programs cannot raise class sizes, which are capped at 20 students per staff member, and so waiting lists are growing, Quintanilla said.
Instead of staying after school, kids are going to an empty home because parents have to go back to work, she said.
Those districts that can expand programs can use state funding for planning for next year, and that is just as well because the funding formula for the Expanding Learning Opportunities Program is complicated, said Bob Blattner, principal of Blattner and Associates, a school consultancy firm.
Funding for districts will be based on their enrollment of English learners and lowincome, foster and homeless children.
The revised statute requires that school districts to target their funding to schools with the most lowincome students and English learners.
The challenge is that $1,170 is less than half of the $2,500 per child that the Legislature estimates the extended day and year will cost. Districts are expected to tap other funding sources to bridge the difference: the $13.5 billion districts are getting from the federal American Rescue Plan; existing state-funded after-school programs; and, for students who don’t qualify for extra funding, fees that can be charged to their families.
Districts also can use the $4.6 billion in one-time funding that the Legislature approved in March.
“An emphasis on serving the needs of the whole child and the working family is an underlying theme of this budget,” Assemblyman Phil Ting, D-San Francisco, said Phil Ting said in a statement. “Not only is it sound policy, but at a time of declining enrollment statewide, the Legislature views an extended day and year as an asset for public schools competing for students with private and non-classroom-based charter schools.”