On Thursday, September 14, 2023, the 2023 Legislative Session adjourned. It took legislators It took legislators until midnight to discuss and vote on eligible measures. The Senate and Assembly adjourned after taking more than 100 bills in each house on the very last day. In the end, the Legislature transmitted 1,325 legislative proposals to the Governor’s desk, and he has until Saturday, October 14, 2023, to act.
This legislative year started with over 3,000 measures being introduced. Thus far, 476 bills have been Chaptered, and 846 bills have been Enrolled after passing both houses. The remaining measures have either become two-year bills or stalled. Only three bills have been vetoed.
On the Governor’s Desk
AB 249 (Holden) Water: schoolsites: lead testing: conservation. This bill would require, on or before January 1, 2027, a community water system that serves a schoolsite receiving federal Title I funds to test for lead in each of the schoolsite’s potable water system outlets, and to report the results to the State Water Board and applicable schoolsite or Local Educational Agency (LEA) and requires LEAs or schoolsites, if lead levels exceed five parts per billion (ppb), to rectify and perform specified actions.
CASBO Position: Oppose unless Amended
Staff: Elizabeth Esquivel
AB 452 (Addis) Childhood sexual assault: statute of limitations. This bill would eliminate time limitations on when people may file civil lawsuits seeking damages for childhood sexual assault against specified defendants, including state and local agencies and public schools.
CASBO Position: Oppose
Staff: Elizabeth Esquivel
AB 483 (Muratsuchi) Local educational agency: Medi-Cal billing option. This bill will require the Department of Health Care Services to establish a revised audit process for claims submitted through the Local Education Agency Medi-Cal Billing Option Program (LEA BOP), a program that allows schools to claim reimbursement for a portion of the cost of delivering health services to Medi-Cal eligible students.
CASBO Position: Support
Staff: Mishaal Gill
AB 579 (Ting) Schoolbuses: zero-emission vehicles. This bill would require, commencing January 1, 2035, all newly purchased or contracted school buses of a LEA to be zero-emission vehicles.
CASBO Position: Oppose
Staff: Elizabeth Esquivel
AB 721 (Valencia) School districts: budgets: public hearings: notice. This bill would authorize school districts to post information about the proposed budget online (in addition to the required posting in newspapers), and eliminates the requirement to post in newspapers on January 1, 2027, and instead requires the posting of budget information on each school district’s website.
CASBO Position: Support
Staff: Elizabeth Esquivel
AB 897 (McCarty) Certificated school employees: probationary employees: service credit. This bill would require adult education teachers to earn permanent status after a two-year probationary period, and employees hired using “categorical” or restricted state funding to be given specified notifications related to their expected job tenure.
CASBO Position: Oppose
Staff: Mishaal Gill
AB 1637 (Irwin) Local government: internet websites and email addresses. This bill would, come January 1, 2027, require a local agency, that maintains an internet website for use by the public to ensure that the internet website utilizes a “.gov” top-level domain or a “.ca.gov” second-level domain and would require a local agency that maintains an internet website that is non-compliant with that requirement to redirect that internet website to a domain name that does utilize a “.gov” or “.ca.gov” domain. The same would apply to an email of the local agency employee.
CASBO Position: Neutral
Staff: Mishaal Gill
Note: This bill was amended to local agencies to mean: city, county, or city and county and removed LEAs from the original version the bill.
AB 1699 (McCarty): K–14 classified employees: part-time or full-time vacancies: public postings. This bill would require vacancies for part-time or full-time positions of an education employer to be open only to current regular and hourly employees, before the vacancy may be posted publicly for the general public to apply. The bill would require an interested part-time employee who does not meet the minimum qualifications for a vacancy to be offered paid on-the-job training for that vacancy. The bill would also require an education employer to accept a current part-time employee’s number of years of service with the education employer, regardless of the capacity in which they were earned when that part-time employee applies for an additional part-time assignment that requires a certain number of years of service.
Recent Amendments: The bill was amended on September 7th to exclude managerial and confidential vacancies from the bill, and remove the training references to minimum qualifications must be met before the start date.
CASBO Position: Oppose
Staff: Mishaal Gill
SB 10 (Cortese) Pupil health: opioid overdose prevention and treatment. This bill would expand statewide prevention and education efforts to combat overdoses and fentanyl-related deaths by requiring opioid overdose protocols to be in the safety plans for schools.
CASBO Position: Watch
Staff: Mishaal Gill
SB 88 (Skinner): Pupil transportation: driver qualifications. This bill would impose new requirements on drivers who provide transportation services to students, including background checks and requiring the drivers to be mandated reporters.
CASBO Position: Neutral
Staff: Elizabeth Esquivel
Note: After several amendments throughout the legislative process, and alongside other education organizations, CASBO went from Oppose to Neutral position.
SB 326 (Eggman): The Behavioral Health Services Act. This bill revises and recasts the Mental Health Services Act (MHSA) as the Behavioral Health Services Act (BHSA) if voters approve amendments to the MHSA at the March 5, 2024 statewide primary election. This bill clarifies that county behavioral health programs are permitted to use BHSA funds to treat primary substance use disorder conditions and makes conforming changes throughout the BHSA. This bill restructures current MHSA funding buckets. This bill enhances the current process for local planning of various services funded by the BHSA, and for oversight, accountability, and reporting of BHSA funds.
CASBO Position: Neutral
Staff: Mishaal Gill
SB 433 (Cortese): Classified school and community college employees: disciplinary hearings: impartial third-party hearing officers. This bill would allow a school or community college classified employee, facing discipline from the employer, to appeal that disciplinary action to an impartial third-party hearing officer, which would be paid by the employer.
CASBO Position: Oppose
Staff: Elizabeth Esquivel
SB 509 (Portantino) School employee and pupil training: youth mental and behavioral health: mental health education. This bill requires, by July 1, 2027, a local educational agency serving students in grades seven to 12 to certify to the California Department of Education that 40 percent of its classified employees and 100 percent of its certificated employees who have received youth behavioral health training identified by the CDE; and adds instruction in mental health to the course of study for grades one to six.
CASBO Position: Concern
Staff: Mishaal Gill
SB 765 (Portantino): Teachers: retired teachers: teacher preparation. This bill would, from July 1, 2024, to June 30, 2026, make temporary changes to the hiring of retired educators, including a temporary increase to the postretirement compensation earnings limit for a retired educator.
CASBO Position: Support
Staff: Elizabeth Esquivel
Two Year Bills/Bills That Stalled
AB 19 (Joe Patterson) Pupil health: opioid antagonists. This bill would have required each individual public school operated by an LEA to maintain at least two doses of naloxone hydrochloride or another opioid antagonist for purposes of those authorizations..
CASBO Position: Support
Staff: Mishaal Gill
Location: Senate Appropriations Committee
AB 247 (Muratsuchi) Education finance: school facilities: Transitional Kindergarten Through Community College Public Education Facilities Bond Act of 2024. This bill would have created the K-14 Act Bond as a state general obligation bond act that would provide an unspecified amount to construct and modernize education facilities. This bond would become operative only if approved by the voters at the 2024 election.
CASBO Position: Support
Staff: Elizabeth Esquivel
Location: Senate Appropriations Committee
AB 377 (Muratsuchi) Career technical education: California Career Technical Education Incentive Grant Program: Strong Workforce Program. This bill would have combined the California Career Technical Education Incentive Grant (CTEIG) Program and the K-12 Strong Workforce Program into the CTEIG program administered by the California Department of Education (CDE). This would provide $450 million in General Fund, beginning in the 2024–25 fiscal year, to be made available for this purpose.
CASBO Position: Support
Staff: Mishaal Gill
Location: Senate Appropriations Committee
AB 383 (Zbur) California Classified School Employee Teacher Credentialing Program: leave of absence for student teaching. This bill would have modified the California Classified School Employee Teacher Credentialing Program (CSETCP) to require a local educational agency (LEA) receiving grant funds from CSETCP to provide a classified employee participating in CSETCP with a leave of absence of up to 600 hours to complete a teacher training program, wage replacement for that leave of absence, and benefits during that absence. The bill also requires a classified employee participating in CSETCP to reimburse these costs to an LEA if the employee does not complete a teacher training program or honor a commitment to teach at the LEA after completing a teacher training program.
CASBO Position: Watch
Staff: Mishaal Gill
Location: Senate Floor – Inactive File
AB 533 (V. Fong) Charter schools: establishment of a charter school. This bill would have allowed a petition to establish a charter school application to be appealed to a county board of education when it is not otherwise approved nor denied by the governing board of the local school district within 90 or 120 days of receiving it.
CASBO Position: Concern
Staff: Mishaal Gill
Location: Assembly Education Committee
AB 938 (Muratsuchi): Education finance: local control funding formula: base grants: classified and certificated staff salaries. This bill would have established Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) funding target levels for the 2030-31 fiscal year with the purpose of increasing school site employee salaries by 50 percent.
CASBO Position: Support if Amended
Staff: Elizabeth Esquivel
Location: Senate Floor – Inactive File
AB 1555 (Quirk-Siva) Transitional kindergarten: teacher assignments: qualification requirements. This bill would have extended the requirement, for credentialed teachers assigned to transitional kindergarten (TK) classrooms to meet specified early childhood education (ECE) requirements from August 1, 2023, to August 1, 2025.
CASBO Position: Support
Staff: Mishaal Gill
Location: Senate Desk
Note: This bill information was incorporated into the 2023 Budget Act.
SB 28 (Glazer) Education finance: school facilities: PK–12, and College Health and Safety Bond Act of 2024. This bill would have placed a $15.5 billion bond on the 2024 ballot for facilities at public preschools, K-14 and University of California (UC) campuses, and California State University (CSU) campuses. Schools can use the bond monies to construct, reconstruct, and remodel existing or new facilities.
CASBO Position: Watch
Staff: Elizabeth Esquivel
Location: Assembly Suspense Committee
SB 98 (Portantino) Education finance: additional education funding. This bill would have defined “average daily membership” as the measure of the total enrollment days for all pupils in an LEA from TK-12, divided by the total number of instructional days for the LEA in an academic year. This bill would require an LEA’s average daily membership to be calculated using data from the same fiscal year or years that the LEA used to calculate its ADA. The bill also requires at least 30 percent of the funds be used to address chronic absenteeism.
CASBO Position: Oppose
Staffer: Elizabeth Esquivel
Location: Senate Appropriations Committee
SB 499 (Menjivar): School facilities: School Extreme Heat Action Plan Act of 2023. This bill would have created the School Extreme Heat Action Plan Act of 2023, which would require all schoolsites, the next time outdoor surfaces are resurfaced or replaced, to replace low specific heat surfaces, such as cement, asphalt, brick, pebbles, rubber amongst others, with high specific heat surfaces such as cool pavement technologies, natural grass, shrubs, and trees. This bill would require on or before January 1, 2025, all schoolsites, to develop an extreme heat action plan, and, by January 1, 2027, to begin implementation of their extreme heat action plan.
CASBO Position: Oppose
Staff: Elizabeth Esquivel
Location: Assembly Suspense Committee
SB 532 (Wiener): Ballot measures: local taxes. This bill would enable local jurisdictions to provide enhanced information in the voter information guide rather than on the 75-word ballot label, which does not provide enough space for appropriate context and explanation, ultimately causing confusion among voters.
CASBO Position: Support
Staff: Mishaal Gill
*Note: This bill was gutted and amended on June 7th, 2023. The current version of the bill authorizes San Francisco Bay area toll bridges: tolls: transit operating expenses and has stalled.
SB 691 (Portantino) Dyslexia risk screening. This bill would have required LEAs serving students in kindergarten to grade 2 to annually screen all students for risk of dyslexia using state-approved instruments, unless objected to in writing by a student’s parent or guardian, beginning in the 2024-25 school year.
CASBO Position: Oppose
Staff: Elizabeth Esquivel
Location: Senate Suspense Committee
Note: Part of this information was incorporated into the 2023 Budget Act.
SB 739 (Alvarado- Gil) School accountability: charter schools: term of operation. This bill would have required all charter schools whose term expires between January 1, 2024, and June 30, 2027 to have their term extended by an additional year and indefinitely allow charter schools to submit verified data as part of the charter renewal process.
CASBO Position: Oppose
Staff: Mishaal Gill
Location: Assembly Education Committee
Note: Part of this information was incorporated into the 2023 Budget Act.
SB 811 (Jones) Teacher credentialing: Interstate Teacher Mobility Compact. This bill would have entered California into the Interstate Teacher Mobility Compact (ITMC), requiring member states to grant licenses to teachers with licenses from other member states without having to meet additional requirements, except for a criminal background check.
CASBO Position: Support
Staff: Mishaal Gill
Location: Assembly Education Committee
Note: Part of this information was incorporated into the 2023 Budget Act.
SB 868 (Wilk) Pupil safety: trauma kits. This bill would have required LEAs to equip each classroom with a trauma kit and to offer training to employees on the use of such kits. Employees who render emergency care with such kits are granted qualified immunity from civil damages.
CASBO Position: Support
Staff: Mishaal Gill
Location: Assembly Suspense Committee