OUR PUBLIC FUNDING PLAN

Long-term, we plan to build a game-changing, replicable school model that can be sustained on public funding. This is how we envision getting there.

Our long-term goal for The Primary School is to build a game-changing, replicable, and sustainable school model: one that can be shared either whole-cloth or piecemeal with different communities and lead to similarly positive outcomes for children most impacted by systemic poverty and racism. Core to this vision is the ability to create a model that can be sustained on public funding.

When we started designing our programs, we looked closely at what was possible under public school constraints, mapped public funding streams, and incorporated those factors into our model (1). In its ideal form, our model would rely primarily on public funds, though at this particular moment we are engaged in a balancing act between replicability and ongoing innovation. We intentionally launched our flagship school in East Palo Alto as a private school to have more freedom to design new programs and invest more heavily in areas that are too often casualties of the underfunded public education system; however, this meant sacrificing the ability to tap into many of the funding sources available to public schools.

In order to access this funding and learn what is possible in a model more embedded in public systems, we are committed to opening any additional sites as public schools. This process has already begun: in Fall 2021, our second site in the East Bay opened its doors to preschoolers under a California State Preschool Program contract.

Our Progress

In East Palo Alto, we have successfully leveraged public funding streams in two key areas: nutrition and early childhood education. Subsidies from the federal government (2) ensure that our students receive nutritious and balanced meals during the school day, and our contract with San Mateo County and the California State Preschool Program (CSPP) provides funding for a portion of our preschool. 

Public funding for our East Palo Alto site is inherently limited (3). In 2019-20, we were on pace pre-COVID to (a) maximize our nutrition funding and (b) subsidize a portion of our preschool programming through a part-day CSPP contract, which funded eligible students at a rate of about $5,300 each. It’s worth noting that a full-day CSPP contract in 19-20 would have funded eligible students at a rate of about $9,100/child, but logistical limitations at our East Palo Alto site have made such a contract inaccessible for the moment. In contrast, there is currently more opportunity at our second site to benefit from government funding: starting with the 2023-24 school year, we will be operating a full-day California State Preschool Program at The Primary School East Bay.

Cost Comparison

Elementary school funding for public schools is administered through the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF), alongside additional benefits from state lottery funds and nutrition programs (which will soon be universal in California as well). Public schools also receive several forms of support for special education (SPED) as well as federal funding through the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA); however, the intricacies of those sources lead to high variability and rougher estimates.

When we look at our cost model we are (as we would anticipate) spending more, on average, than most other public schools in the Bay Area. But similarly to The Primary School, estimated available state-distributed public funding isn’t fully meeting expenditures for the average Bay Area school — and from an equity perspective, we recognize that many early childhood programs and elementary schools serving children at a higher income level are supplementing state funding with local taxes as well as private tuition and/or family fundraising. 

Much of our extra costs stem from expenditures that we see as essential to high quality education, including workforce investment, staff development, and full-day programming. But our vision of schools as the critical hub of integrated services for a child also requires increased capacity and resources that are above and beyond what is currently funded, as well as flexibility in the funding mechanisms themselves. The design of three key elements of our model — our Early Family Foundations, parent coaching, and health programming — are intended to be, ultimately, low-cost and high-impact, but the ways in which we’re currently operating in order to drive towards that goal makes drawing down public funding dollars difficult. For example, we intentionally don’t provide some services directly: our early intervention supports involve training a child’s parent in best practices, limiting our ability to access IDEA Part C, and our partnership with neighboring medical homes for health services limits our own Medi-Cal billing opportunities. As state and national policymakers continue to prioritize innovation in early childhood and K-12 education, we hope they will also continue to rethink and reshape the scope of public funding in order to expand the availability of these sorts of critical investments.

Looking Ahead

As we push forward into an exciting future, we remain committed to learning the limitations of public funding, building a sustainable foundation, making strategic investments, and sharing our findings across sectors. Through public partnership, innovation, and advocacy, we are confident we can achieve sustainability and replicability — and push for systemic change — while maintaining the high standards and core values that define us.