Aligning your LCAP, SPSA, and Community School Plans: The why, how, and when

At the school and district level, state and federal law require that educators and district and school leaders work with interest holders to create comprehensive plans for student success.

In California, the Local Control and Accountability Plan, or LCAP, is one of these formal plans–put in place as part of the state’s approach to weighted funding and inclusive decision-making, and defined by the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF). The law requires that Local Education Agencies (LEAs or school districts) work with their communities to review and revise plans every three years that detail their goals for improving student achievement and outcomes, and how they plan to use their resources in pursuit of those goals.

Similarly, federal education law (the Every Student Succeeds Act, or ESSA) requires that all schools receiving Title I funding–or those schools that have been identified as needing “improvement”– create school-level plans. As part of their “improvement” journeys, these schools – differentiated into tiers according to student performance (e.g., Comprehensive Support and Improvement (CSI), Targeted Support and Improvement (TSI), or Additional Targeted Support and Improvement (ATSI) develop) – must develop annual School Plans for Student Achievement, or SPSAs.

According to the instructions from the California Department of Education, School Plans for Student Achievement (SPSA) are required to have:

• Analysis of verifiable state data (from the state Dashboard, for example), consistent with state priorities, including state-determined long-term goals (in other words, what does the data tell you about your schools, and how do you connect your priorities to state goals?);

• An identification of the process for evaluating and monitoring implementation of the School Plan and progress towards accomplishing the goal (or, how will you know you’re on track to achieve your goals? How will you know when you get there?);

• Educational partner involvement (engage teachers, students, families and the community in developing your plans);

• Goals to improve student outcomes, including addressing the needs of student groups;

• Evidence-based strategies, actions, and services (i.e., what does success look like?), and;

• A proposed budget (i.e., how will you use your funding to accomplish your goals?).

In theory, while LEAs and schools are required to do them, LCAPs and SPSAs are not intended to just be compliance tools. On the contrary, they are meant to be tools and evidence of a district’s equity strategy and to ensure that intended funding, strategies, and activities reach the students and schools who have struggled to meet specific measures of success.

It’s important to keep these intentions in mind when developing plans, and to remember that these processes are opportunities to talk to your community, include them in your efforts to understand root causes, and identify priorities and create plans together.

Your Community School Implementation Plan likely includes many of the same categories as both your district’s LCAP and your school’s SPSA: goals for student achievement, growth and development; a plan for measuring progress towards those goals, including clear benchmarks; a budget outlining how resources will be allocated; and finally, timelines for meeting goals and revisiting data and priorities.

The end goal for all of these plans is for school communities to identify and address areas of need while improving student outcomes at both the LEA and school-level. All three ask schools to work in partnership with diverse interest holders to paint an accurate picture of how, what, and why programs, activities, strategies, services were selected, and how each will meet identified needs and help achieve stated goals.

Ideally, each plan follows a very similar sequence of development, with similar components.

• Engagement with a broad range of interest holders and reflecting their voices in the plan;

• Gathering data and engaging in analysis and meaning making, and showing this work and what you learned from the process;

• Identifying needs (and citing your data evidence);

• Prioritizing and right-sizing goals, including how you’ll assess progress towards achieving these goals;

• Mapping budgets/ resources, actions, strategies and supports to goals so as to demonstrate how you’ll get from Point A to Point B and what you need to do that work;

• Naming outcomes and milestones; and,

• Building in ongoing progress monitoring and course correction as needed.

Beyond having the same general categories, the actual goals and strategies outlined in the LCAP, SPSA and your Community School Implementation Plan should connect to and be in alignment with one another. That’s not to say the goals should be identical, but the goals in the SPSA should reflect the larger, LEA-level goals in the LCAP, and the Community School Implementation Plan should reflect school goals and articulate activities that will help achieve those goals. Strategies, too, should be connected–not working at cross-purposes.

Goals, Alignment and Connections

So, how to do it? There are several strategies community school practitioners can use to ensure alignment among LCAP, SPSA and CS plans.

First, think about the roles that Community School Coordinators (CSCs) can play. CSCs work in partnership with principals, often functioning as a “co-principal,” to align school goals and priorities with those of other interest holders. In order to effectively do so, to quote a famous historical figure and star of stage and screen, CSCs need to be in the room where it happens. This includes connecting CSCs into both the LCAP and SPSA development processes.

The benefits of having your Community School Coordinator (CSC) involved in these processes are as follows.

1. The CSC can help ensure that goals and strategies are aligned at all levels when they have eyes on all the plans;

2. CSCs are able to bring the diverse voices of different interest holders, ensure that a broader range of people are at the table and that the work is truly representative of your community’s needs and perspectives;

3. CSCs lead needs and asset assessment processes, and can bring valuable data – including street data! – to these tables. They can help teams use data to develop indicators of progress and to ask questions of the data.

Second, someone (or more than one person!) should be involved in the development of all three plans–the LCAP and SPSA plans, and the Community School Implementation Plan. This can help ensure consistency, ensure that each plan is informing the others, and ensure that you continue to move towards greater alignment at the LEA and site levels.

Last, all of these processes should be heavy on interest holder involvement. They should be co-created with interest holders, not shared with interest holders as a finished product “for their information.”

The bottom line? Your LCAP, SPSA and Community School Implementation Plans should all be nested together, working in harmony with one another. Think of each plan like cogs in a wheel – the wheel moves more efficiently and effectively when all of the cogs are connected and moving in the same direction.

Now is a great time to take an integrated planning approach and aligning the timing of the SPSA and Community School plan development (or reflection-and-refresh) to the timing of the LCAP. It’s also a great opportunity to get all the right people at the table, with all the data they need, at the same time, so you can create plans that actually reflect the priorities of your community.

Have questions? Get in touch.

by Melissa Mitchell

Melissa Mitchell is Director of Resource Development at the Community Schools Learning Exchange (CSLX). She brings over 15 years of experience supporting community school development, from providing coaching and direct technical assistance to schools, districts, practitioners and community partners, to working with legislators and policymakers to develop supportive-state level policies that advanced community school development across Illinois. Get in touch with Melissa via email at melissa@cslx.org.