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Californians have reason to celebrate a budget that leverages a historic surplus toward significant investments in public education, from early learning and care to K-12 to higher education. But most remarkable isn’t this budget’s sheer size; it is its potential to finally address long-standing systemic equity issues that have long shut out too many students of color and students from low-income communities from opportunity. The Education Trust–West applauds a commitment to ensuring students with the highest needs are embedded in many of the budget’s boldest policies, including two particularly historic wins.

One of the most significant is a policy that ensures every high school senior completes a financial aid application, enacted after years of advocacy from students, families, and educators. If implemented properly, no California student entitled to financial aid will set their college dreams aside under the assumption they would have to pay for it on their own; an experience that today is far too common.

Another win is the further development of California’s Cradle-to-Career data system, which will revolutionize our understanding of programs across the educational spectrum—including each of those included in this year’s ambitious budget. We are thrilled to see the data system receive funding for Phase I of its development, which will help illuminate students’ educational journeys in ways currently inaccessible to researchers, policymakers, and community members.

Additional equitable investments in early childhood education will offer our state’s youngest learners a strong start and give relief to parents under pressure, especially those with the least access to child care. From universal transitional kindergarten to additional subsidized child care slots, greater access to child care options will make a world of difference to today’s youngest learners—and have a lasting positive impact on our state. Early learning and care providers can finally look forward to reimbursement rates from the state that recognize the true cost of providing child care—no matter where in California they live. It’s a step that will go a long way toward helping the hard-hit early learning and care industry bounce back while advancing pay equity for its workforce of primarily women of color.

K-12 school districts can look forward to powerful tools that will enable education leaders to rebuild and reimagine how schools can meet the needs of students and parents. Those tools include funding for expanded learning, community schools, teacher workforce development, and for the highest-need schools, an increase in the Local Control Funding Formula concentration grant with which to increase staffing.

Increased funding for all higher education segments, from assistance for basic needs to housing, will be crucial to ensuring students reach their educational goals. While we appreciate the removal of inequitable restrictions to Cal Grant eligibility based on age and years out of high school, we believe that more improvements are needed to make college affordable for all, including a modernized Cal Grant program and investments in our financial aid system.

The potential of bold measures like these to improve the lives of students and families will require faithful implementation from regional and local leaders. The COVID-19 pandemic laid bare a long-standing reality: that California is a land of abundance and possibilities—but only for some. But if resources continue to be allocated where they are needed most and policies are executed with the spirit of equity with which they were enacted, California will not only succeed in rebuilding from a devastating pandemic, but reimagine schools for the better.

P.S. As of the release of this statement, AB 132, the Higher Education Trailer Bill, has not been signed. If any major provisions are changed after the release of this statement, our analysis of the issue will be reflected in The Education Trust–West’s State Budget At-A-Glance, which will be posted on our website.