California School Fiscal Services
Providing comprehensive business office and consulting services to K-12 traditional schools and charters
Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) and
the Local Control Accountability Plan (LCAP)
Step I: The New LCAP Document
In November 2016, CDE approved a revised LCAP plan template. This new template must be used for the development of your LCAP.
Download a copy of the revised template here.
Step II: Add Goals to the Revised LCAP Plan
Remember, your LCAP plan must contain 3 years of goals. So, by July 1, 2018, your LCAP plan must have goals through 2020-21.
Step III: Report progress on 2017-18 goals including expenditures.
Districts and charters are required to provide an annual update of their LCAP plans. This means that prior year goals must be reviewed, including the identification of actuals expenditures made that relate to each goal. This will be part of your annual audit, so be sure that you have a solid action plan to retrieve this from your financial system.
Are you Ready for the
Your Annual Audit?
The annual audit requires that your auditors review your LCAP to determine if expenditures made were "consistent to the actions or services" outlined in your plan.
Pulling expenditures by LCAP goal will be no easy task. Be sure you've taken the time to consider the "how" before your auditors arrive. You may want to consider amending your chart of accounts to easily capture LCAP expense. This comes with the added side benefit of ensuring that program staff are familiar enough with program goals to properly link actual expense with LCAP goals.
WestEd provides a wealth of valuable information, Webinar classes, and resources related to LCFF. Be sure to visit their website and subscribe to them.