Friday, August 12, 2022, was the last day for fiscal committees to meet and report bills to the floor. This marks another deadline to determine which bills continue to move through the legislative process. The Legislature has until August 31, 2022, to vote on bills so they can head to the Governor. Below is a legislative update on the bills.
Budget/Finance
AB 1973 (McCarty): Education finance: base grants: adjustments: kindergarten: minimum schooldays. This bill would phase in, from the 2027-28 to the 2029-30 school year, a requirement for school districts and charter schools offering a kindergarten program to offer at least one full-day kindergarten class at each school site.
Position: Informational Only
Location: Senate Floor
Staff: Andrea Ball
AB 2774 (Weber): Education finance: local control funding formula: supplemental grants: lowest performing pupil subgroup(s). Commencing with the 2023-24 fiscal year, this bill would adjust the definition of “unduplicated pupils” to include pupils who are included in the lowest performing subgroup or subgroups based on the most recently available mathematics or language arts results on the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress. Recent amendments make this bill contingent upon a budget appropriation.
Position: Informational Only
Location: Senate Floor
Staff: Andrea Ball
Health
SB 1479 (Pan): COVID-19 testing in schools: testing plans. This bill would require each local educational agency, after consulting with its local health department, to create a COVID-19 testing plan or adopt the State Department of Public Health’s framework that is consistent with guidance from the department and publish the testing plan on its internet website. The bill would authorize each local educational agency to designate one staff member to report information on its COVID-19 testing program to the department.
Position: WATCH
Location: Assembly Floor
Staff: Elizabeth Esquivel
Labor
SB 931 (Leyva): Deterring union membership: violations. This bill would require the Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) to impose civil penalties on public sector employers if it finds they deterred or discouraged workers from exercising collective bargaining rights and require public sector employers to pay the union’s attorney’s fees and costs if the union prevails in a legal action to enforce those rights. The bill also includes, upon a finding by PERB that the public employer violated those provisions, the public employer would be subject to a civil penalty of up to $1,000 for each affected employee, not to exceed $100,000 in total, and subject to attorney’s fees and costs. It also adds criteria to validate violation such as the public agency’s budget, severity of the violation and prior violations.
Position: Oppose Unless Amended
Requested amendment: Reduce the violation to $10,000.
Location: Assembly Floor
Staff: Elizabeth Esquivel
Pension/Retirement
AB 1667 (Cooper): State Teachers’ Retirement System. This bill would ensure retired members are not held liable for prior overpayments, except in cases of fraud or intentional misrepresentation by the member, and establish a penalty, to be paid by the school district or California State Teachers’ Retirement System (whichever was at fault for the mistake), that partially replaces the retired member’s benefit reduction.
Position: Support
Location: Senate Floor
Staff: Elizabeth Esquivel
Privacy
AB 1711 (Seyarto): Privacy: breach. In instances of data breaches, this bill would require a public agency to post a notice on their agency’s website (if they have one), for a minimum of 30 days, even when the vendor maintaining the data was the source of the data breach.
Position: Oppose Unless Amended
Requested amendment: Remove the online posting requirement for the agency.
Location: Senate Floor
Staff: Elizabeth Esquivel
Transportation
SB 878 (Skinner): School transportation. As recently amended, the bill would require the California Department of Education to convene a workgroup comprising specified representatives to develop recommendations pertaining to safety standards for drivers of unaccompanied minors to school. The bill would also, on or before April 1, 2023, require the department to submit the workgroup’s recommendations to the appropriate budget and policy committees of the Legislature and repeal its provisions on January 1, 2024.
Position: Watch
Location: Assembly Floor
Staff: Elizabeth Esquivel
SB 1144 (Wiener): Water efficiency and quality assessment reports: state buildings and public school buildings. This bill would require state agencies and public schools to complete a water efficiency and quality assessment report on their facilities, including testing for lead, Legionella and other contaminants. If the report identifies noncompliant plumbing fixtures and appliances or contaminants, it requires remedying the problem at the earliest practical time, subject to available funding.
Position: Oppose
Location: Assembly Floor
Staff: Elizabeth Esquivel
Curriculum/Instruction
AB 1923 (Mathis): Partnership academies: science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). This bill would require the State Superintendent of Public Instruction (SPI) to prioritize proposals for new partnership academies in a manner that addresses the participation of pupils traditionally underrepresented in career technical education or STEM programs or professions. For purposes of this program, “pupils traditionally underrepresented” includes, but is not limited to, pupils from the following: rural communities; economically disadvantaged regions; regions with high “at-promise pupil” rates, as defined; and regions with a low to moderate numbers of existing academic partnerships.
Position: Watch
Location: Signed by the Governor on July 19, 2022: (AB 1923, Chapter 114, Statutes of 2022)
Staff: Andrea Ball
Bills Stalled
The following bills stalled, meaning they will not continue through the legislative process:
SB 924 (Glazer): Local educational agencies: financial transactions: annual compensation: reporting. This bill would have clarified that school districts are not exempt from reporting information on annual compensation of their employees to the California State Controller (SCO) for annual publishing on the SCO’s internet website. It would have also added county offices of education (COEs), charter schools and an entity managing a charter school to abide by these requirements.
Position: Watch
Location Stalled: Assembly Appropriations Committee
Staff: Elizabeth Esquivel
AB 2573 (McCarty): Certificated school employees: probationary employees. The bill would have required the following groups to attain permanent employee status after completing a probationary period: adult education teachers, school district regional occupation center/program (ROC/P) instructors, certificated employees at school districts with an average daily attendance (ADA) of 250 or less, and certificated employees in a teaching position at COEs with an ADA of 250 or less. The bill would also make changes to code sections that differentiate employment practices for school districts with less than 250 ADA and employees who were in their probationary period prior to the 1983-84 fiscal year.
Position: Oppose
Location Stalled: Senate Appropriations Committee
Staff: Elizabeth Esquivel
SB 1308 (Caballero): Purchase of nondomestic agricultural food products. This bill requires, as of January 1, 2024, local educational agencies (LEAs) that solicit bids for the purchase of an agricultural product to accept a bid or price for that agricultural product when it is grown in California before accepting a bid or price for a product that is grown outside of California unless the bid or price of the California-grown agricultural product exceeds the lowest bid or price of the domestic agricultural product produced outside the state by 25%.
Position: Oppose
Location Stalled: Assembly Education Committee
Staff: Elizabeth Esquivel
AB 2731 (Ting): Schoolbuses: zero-emission vehicles. This bill would have required that, commencing January 1, 2035, all newly purchased or contracted schoolbuses of a local educational agency (LEA) be zero-emission vehicles.
Position: Oppose
Location Stalled: Senate Appropriations Committee
Staff: Elizabeth Esquivel
AB 1607 (Muratsuchi): Education finance: local control funding formula. Starting with the 2022-23 school year, this bill would have calculated the ADA for school districts based on a three-year average for the current fiscal year and each of the previous two fiscal years. The Governor’s January proposal would authorize either a three-year average on ADA or prior or current year; whichever is highest.
Position: Watch
Location Stalled: Assembly Education Committee
Staff: Andrea Ball
AB 1609 (Muratsuchi): Education finance: local control funding formula. This bill would have provided a legislative solution to the current year’s ADA decline.
Position: Support
Location Stalled: Assembly Education Committee
Staff: Andrea Ball
AB 1614 (Muratsuchi): Education finance: local control funding formula: base grants: aspirational funding level: reports. This bill would have added $4.2 billion into the current base grant funding, using the existing LCFF, for the 2022-23 budget year, with intent language that the Legislature strive to reach the top 10 states in the country in K-12 per-pupil spending. Commencing with the 2022-23 fiscal year, a base grant of:
- $9,989 for ADA in grades K-3
- $9,184 for ADA in grades 4-6
- $9,457 for ADA in grades 7 and 8
- $11,245 for ADA in grades 9-12
Position: Support
Location Stalled: Assembly Education Committee
Staff: Andrea Ball
AB 1877 (Fong): State teachers’ retirement: retirees. This bill would have removed the compensation limit on the state teachers’ defined benefit program by eliminating the compensation limit for state special education teachers to expand the pool of eligible educators to return to the classroom. The bill would also require an LEA exercising this exemption to submit specified documentation, certified under penalty of perjury, to substantiate a retired member’s eligibility.
Position: Watch
Location Stalled: Assembly Committee on Public Employment and Retirement
Staff: Elizabeth Esquivel
AB 1895 (E. Garcia): School employees: Substitute Teacher Support Grant Program. For the 2022-23 fiscal year, this bill would have appropriated $100 million from the General Fund to the State Department of Education to establish and administer the Substitute Teacher Support Grant Program, which would provide one-time competitive grants to LEAs to develop and implement new, or expand existing, locally identified solutions that address local substitute teacher shortages or needs for professional development for substitute teachers. Of the $100 million in grant funds, it would have awarded funds for school districts to ensure proportional grant amounts across LEAs as follows:
- $22 million to districts with 250 or fewer ADA;
- $55 million to districts with ADA of more than 250 but less than 5,000; and
- $23 million to districts with ADA of 5,000.
The bill would have also expanded the program to include classified instructional substitutes such as paraeducators and add a reporting requirement and an evaluation of the program.
Position: Watch
Location Stalled: Assembly Appropriations Committee
Staff: Elizabeth Esquivel
AB 1948 (Ting): Education finance: local control funding formula: low-income pupils: pupils experiencing homelessness. Commencing with the 2022-23 school year, this bill would have:
- Increased the adjusted base grant for a school district or charter school from 10% to 15%.
- Increased the number of low-income pupils who generate supplemental and concentration grant funding by raising the household income eligibility threshold from 185% of the federal poverty level to 250% of the federal poverty level and required schools to use a specified data collection form to acquire household income data.
- Allowed, for apportionment purposes, a school district to use the average of the three most recent years’ ADA.
- Added, for apportionment purposes, “a pupil experiencing homelessness” to the definition of “unduplicated pupil.”
Position: Watch
Location Stalled: Senate Education Committee
Staff: Andrea Ball
AB 2924 (O’Donnell): Education finance: base grants: adjustments: reduced class size. Commencing with the 2022-23 fiscal year, this bill would have required the above 10.4% adjustment to be applied to the kindergarten and grades 1 to 3, inclusive, base grant; the grades 4 to 6, inclusive, base grant; and the grades 7 and 8 base grant for a school district or charter school that maintains an average class enrollment of not more than 24 pupils for each school site, unless a collectively bargained alternative ratio is agreed to by the school district or charter school; and would make conforming changes.
Position: Informational Only
Location Stalled: Assembly Education Committee
Staff: Elizabeth Esquivel
SB 3 (Caballero): Education finance: local control funding formula accountability plan portal. This bill would have required the California Department of Education, on or before July 1, 2023, to develop a local control and accountability plan (LCAP) portal that contains a database connected to a data entry tool that allows comprehensive analysis of LCAPs adopted by LEAs.
Fiscal Impact: The Senate Appropriations Committee estimates costs could potentially have been in the low hundreds of thousands in Proposition 98 General Fund each year.
Position: Oppose
Location Stalled: Assembly Education Committee
Staff: Andrea Ball
SB 579 (Allen): Education finance: local control funding formula. For the 2022-23 fiscal year, this bill would have required apportionments to LEAs under the LCFF to be calculated based on the greater of each LEA’s 2019-20, 2021-22 or 2022-23 ADA.
Position: Watch
Location Stalled: Assembly Education Committee
Staff: Andrea Ball
SB 830 (Portantino): Education finance: supplemental education funding. Commencing with the 2022-23 fiscal year, this bill would have required that LEAs receive supplemental education funding, in addition to their LCFF entitlement, in an amount equal to the difference between what the LEA would have received under the LCFF if it were based on average daily membership instead of ADA, and what the LEA received under the LCFF based on ADA for that fiscal year. The bill defines “average daily membership” as the quotient of the aggregate enrollment days for all pupils in an LEA, from transitional kindergarten to grade 12, inclusive, as applicable, divided by the total number of instructional days for the LEA in an academic year.
Position: Oppose
Location Stalled: Assembly Education Committee
Staff: Elizabeth Esquivel
AB 2933 (O’Donnell): School transportation services. Commencing with the 2022-23 fiscal year, this bill would have required, subject to an appropriation for this purpose, the SPI to apportion to each school district, COE, entity providing services under a school transportation joint powers agreement or ROC/P that provides pupil transportation services, either 100% of its school transportation apportionment for the 2020-21 fiscal year or 100% of its reported HTST costs.
Position: Support
Location Stalled: Senate Education Committee
Staff: Elizabeth Esquivel
AB 2034 (O’Donnell): Local education agency: Medi-Cal billing option. This bill would have expanded access to school-based health and mental health services by encouraging more schools to participate in the Local Education Agency Medi-Cal Billing Option Program (LEA BOP) and to bill for more eligible services, thereby increasing funding available to support student services. The bill would also have required the Department of Health Care Services to reform the process by which it audits claims from the LEA BOP in various ways, including ensuring that schools are reimbursed for all eligible services that are not precluded by federal law.
Position: Support
Location Stalled: Senate Education Committee
Staff: Elizabeth Esquivel
Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
On Thursday August 11, 2022, the federal CDC issued updated guidance on COVID-19. Reported changes related to schools include no longer recommending cohorting or test-to-stay strategies for students and a de-emphasis on social distancing. At this writing, the California Department of Public Health Safe Schools for All Team has NOT issued updates/commentary on the CDC guidance.