What is ‘meaningful’
stakeholder engagement
and how can we facilitate it?
While the Local Control
Funding Formula and
Local Control and
Accountability Plans
require ‘meaningful
engagement’ of
stakeholders, a three-
year study finds few
districts engaging
a wide range of
individuals and groups
in the process.
12
Leadership
The Local Control Funding For-
mula (LCFF) ushered in a new era of ac-
countability in California in 2013. In ad-
dition to redistributing funding in new and
more f lexible ways, the policy called for
“meaningful engagement” of stakeholders in
developing Local Control and Accountabil-
ity Plans (LCAP) and in the school district
budgeting process.
The law and its regulations require dis-
tricts to solicit input from representative
groups and advisory committees. It recom-
mends involvement from parents, students,
teachers, administrators and other school
personnel, including those representing
the needs of target groups such as foster
youth, English language learners and low-
income students.
Implicit in this policy is an understanding
that local voices are critical for informing
district goal-setting and resource allocation
decisions and that greater transparency and
involvement can support equity and better
outcomes for students. All over the state,
principals and superintendents are wrestling
with the LCFF, asking: “What does mean-
ingful engagement look like?”
In an effort to address this question, and
many others reported elsewhere, our research
team – the LCFF Research Collaborative
– set out to understand how local districts
implemented this stakeholder engagement
mandate. From 2014 to 2016, we visited more
than 24 districts, which were selected to rep-
resent state variation in size, geographic loca-
tion and student demographics.
We interviewed more than 350 central
office administrators, school board mem-
bers, union representatives, parents, teach-
ers, principals and civic leaders. We believe
the insights gleaned from our research are
useful to educators as they consider how to
engage stakeholders. We first provide some
high-level findings and conclude with a set
of ref lective questions to guide leaders in
furthering community engagement efforts.
What have we found in our
research?
Overall, we found that few districts en-
gaged stakeholders broadly and deeply, that
three conditions help explain richer com-
munity engagement, and that improvements
are occurring.
1. Few districts engaged stakeholders
By Julie A. Marsh and Kate E.
Kennedy