By Jonathan Tran
Fountain Valley High School has recently qualified to become a Title 1 school.
The Title 1 school program is a federal program that provides financial funding and aid to all public schools in the United States in need.
Under Lydon B Johnson’s administration, he enacted the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 as a way to help lift communities out of poverty and support the educational system. The Title 1 school program was a part of this act and attempts to give financial assistance to schools with the most students who come from low-income families.
As a Title 1 school, FVHS receives one of the largest financial aid packages available to public schools in the United States.
“[For FVHS], we were at the area of $500,000,” Principal Paul Lopez said.
The financial packages available is divided up into four sections (with the requirements):
- Basic Grants – the number of formula children is over 2% of the school population
- Concentration Grants – the number of formula children is over 6,500 or 15% of the school population
- Targeted Grants – is based on the same concept as basic and concentration grants, but unspecified. Schools with a higher number or percentage of formula children will receive more funding
- Education Finance Incentive Grants – provides funds to try to equalize funding between schools of the same state and based on the current efforts of the specific state’s fundings
Each individual grant provides a certain degree of funding for the schools which are added on to each other.
The extra funding is a massive advantage for FVHS. This aid could be used to improve a variety of aspects of student life at FVHS.
Some of these improvements could include buying new textbooks, adding parks or benches, recruiting new teachers and improving or creating new infrastructure.
“[With the funding], we approved a lot of instructional materials and technology,” Lopez said. “That was probably what most of the money went to this time, but you could also hire staff with title 1 money. [However], we didn’t do it this time because we were getting into second semester. It’s hard to hire staff out of title 1 because if the money goes away, jobs goes away.”
Another prerequisite—40% of the student population of FVHS has to come from low-income families— is necessary to qualify for the financial aid package.
With FVHS qualifying for this funding, this means that this year, FVHS families experienced a drop in their income.
“I don’t have enough background right now to make a good comment on that,” Lopez said. “All I can say is maybe because of COVID that it has changed. People have lost jobs, people have not been able to find work and some people are not going back to work. So, there could be so many reasons why fountain valley could be a Title 1 school at this point. It’s hard to put my thumb on it. Maybe in the future I may tell why that happened or why it’s happening.”
Overall, the program is a huge benefit for the FVHS and the Fountain Valley community as students and teachers will see the extra funds being put to good use to improve the overall quality of the school.
