Richard Barrera and Sonja Shaw agreed on one thing during a debate this month: California should stop basing school funding on daily attendance and start using enrollment instead. The two candidates for Superintendent of Public Instruction clashed on nearly everything else, but on this question they landed on the same side.
The timing matters because the race for Superintendent of Public Instruction has turned unusually political and heated, even though the job has been stripped of much of its power in a recent deal between the governor and legislature. The governor California elects in November will appoint a commissioner to run the department of education, which has only sharpened attention on what the candidates are saying now.
Barrera argued that an enrollment-based formula would give districts a more predictable base for multiyear planning. Shaw took a different but overlapping approach, saying districts are expected to be ready every day whether children show up or not. Behind that exchange is a simple policy question with big consequences: California is one of only six states that still includes daily student attendance in the formula for base district funding, and it has not changed that system yet.
The funding structure itself helps explain why the issue is so hard to move. California adopted Prop. 98 in 1988, creating a minimum guarantee model that uses a complex formula to decide funding for schools and community colleges. That money comes from state revenue and property taxes, with education getting a guaranteed cut of about 40 percent each year. The rest is spread across dozens of programs, including special education, art, music and community schools.
That is why a switch from attendance to enrollment would not automatically mean a windfall. Carrie Hahnel said the change would not make that much difference because the funding commitment is already locked in. In her view, the gains are not going to be there in the way people think, because the same amount of revenue would still be distributed at the end of the day and money from other sources such as categorical grants would have to shrink. She put the broader problem plainly: whether schools count students by enrollment or attendance, there are fewer of them, so the system needs a wider fix.
That mismatch between political agreement and practical limits is what makes the debate notable. Barrera and Shaw spent most of the discussion attacking each other over school board performance, parental rights, Title IX and college readiness. Barrera also accused Shaw of taking a page right out of Donald Trump’s playbook when she backed her district’s legal challenge to California’s 2024 law preventing districts from notifying parents when a student changes pronouns at school. Yet on school funding, both candidates endorsed the same reform.
The question now is whether that rare consensus amounts to anything beyond debate-stage alignment. The Legislature has not moved to replace attendance-based funding, and Hahnel’s warning points to the obstacle: even supporters of a change have to show that the squeeze is worth the juice if the overall pot of money stays much the same.
