Legislative Update: Policy Committee Deadline
Friday, April 28, 2023, was the statutory deadline for legislative proposals with a fiscal implication to be heard and moved out of the respective policy committees. This report provides the status of the key legislative proposals CASBO is actively working on through the legislative process and bills that collective efforts have stalled.
June 2, 2023, is the last day for bills to pass out of the house of origin. We will continue to provide updates on critical policy issues impacting public education.
Bills That Advanced by Topic
Budget/Finance
AB 721 School districts: budgets: public hearings: notice. This bill would modernize the statutory requirement for county superintendents to publish district budget meeting notices to either their website, newspaper, or both.
CASBO Position: Support
Staffer: Elizabeth Esquivel
Bill Location: Assembly Floor
AB 938 (Muratsuchi): Education finance: local control funding formula: base grants: classified and certificated staff salaries. This bill would establish Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) funding target levels for the 2030-31 fiscal year with the purpose of increasing school site employee salaries.
CASBO Position: Support if Amended with a recommendation to move to support once the bill is amended as reflected on page 11 and 12 on the committee analysis here.
Staffer: Elizabeth Esquivel
Bill Location: Assembly Appropriations Committee
AB 938 Letter of Support if Amended
Note: This bill was amended right before the release of this newsbreak. You can find the amended language here.
SB 98 (Portantino) Education finance: additional education funding. This bill would define “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
Bill Location: Senate Appropriations Committee
Career Technical Education
AB 377 (Muratsuchi) Career technical education: California Career Technical Education Incentive Grant Program: Strong Workforce Program. This bill combines 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
Staffer: Mishaal Gill
Bill Location: Assembly Appropriations Committee
Curriculum/Instruction/Assessment
AB 1555 (Quirk-Siva) Transitional kindergarten: teacher assignments: qualification requirements. This bill would extend 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, 2028.
CASBO Position: Support
Staff: Mishaal Gill
Bill Location: Senate Rules Committee
Facilities/Contracting
AB 247 (Muratsuchi) Education finance: school facilities: Kindergarten Through Community College Public Education Facilities Bond Act of 2024. This bill would create 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
Staffer: Elizabeth Esquivel
Bill Location: Assembly Appropriations Committee
AB 249 (Holden) Water: schoolsites: lead testing: conservation. This bill would aim to remove all lead from school drinking water and requires water utilities to test all potable water faucets and fixtures in TK-12 schools for lead by 2027. Lead concentrations must be reduced to below five parts per billion (5 ppb) via filters and/or faucet replacements. This is the exceedance standard adopted by the Department of Social Services for the lead testing of water in licensed child care centers directives, pursuant to AB 2370. This bill would require the State Water Resources Control Board to allocate $10 million each fiscal year from the federal Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) to pay for sampling and remediation in schools. The bill would require a community water system to prepare a sampling plan for each schoolsite where lead sampling is required.
CASBO Position: Oppose unless Amended
Staffer: Elizabeth Esquivel
Bill Location: Assembly Appropriations Committee
AB 249 Oppose Unless Amended Letter
SB 28 (Glazer) Education finance: school facilities: PK–12, and College Health and Safety Bond Act of 2024. This bill would place 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
Staffer: Elizabeth Esquivel
Bill Location: Senate Appropriation Committee
SB 532 (Wiener): Ballot measures: local taxes. This bill would improve financial disclosures for local bonds and create new disclosures for tiered tax rates in the voter information guide, helping voters better understand the potential financial impacts of a proposed tax measure. This change 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
Bill Location: Senate Appropriation Committee
Health and Safety
CASBO Position: Support
Staff: Mishaal Gill
Bill Location: Assembly Appropriations Committee – Suspense
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 that have plagued youth statewide.
CASBO Position: Watch
Staff: Mishaal Gill
Bill Location: Senate Appropriations Committee – Suspense
SB 868 (Wilk) Pupil safety: trauma kits. This bill would require 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, as provided.
CASBO Position: Support
Staffer: Mishaal Gill
Bill Location: Senate Appropriations Committee
Human Resources
AB 383 (Zbur) California Classified School Employee Teacher Credentialing Program: leave of absence for student teaching. This bill would modify 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
Staffer: Elizabeth Esquive
Bill Location: Assembly Appropriations Committee
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
Staffer: Elizabeth Esquivel
Bill Location: Assembly Appropriations Committee
Note: CASBO along with other organizations, worked with the author and was successful in adding amendemnts to specify that the change in time limits would apply only to causes of action arising on or after January 1, 2024.
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; requires certificated employees working at least 60% of a full time position and who have served for at least 75% of the number of days of their assignment to be considered to have served a complete school year for purposes of attaining permanent status; and, requires employees hired using “categorical” or restricted state funding to be notified of the following at the time of hire: the expected end date of employment, the source of funding, and the nature of the categorically funded program or project.
CASBO Position: Oppose
Staff: Mishaal Gill
Bill Location: Assembly Appropriations Committee
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, as defined, to be open only to current regular and hourly employees, as provided, 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.
CASBO Position: Oppose
Staff: Mishaal Gill
Bill Location: Assembly Appropriations Committee
SB 765 (Portantino): Teachers: retired teachers: teacher preparation. This bill would, until December 31, 2026, exempt a classroom teacher or administrator, who has returned to work after retirement to fulfill a critical need in a classroom teaching position due to the teacher shortage, from the 180-day break in service requirement and the postretirement compensation limitation.
CASBO Position: Support
Staff: Elizabeth Esquivel
Bill Location: Senate Appropriations Committee
Transportation
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
Staffer: Elizabeth Esquivel
Bill Location: Assembly Appropriations Committee
Gut and Amends
AB 95 (Hoover) Intradistrict and interdistrict transfer of pupils. This bill would have required a school district of residence to also approve an intradistrict transfer request for a pupil of that school district if the school of attendance is in the red or orange performance band in 2 or more of the state measures for 3 consecutive years on the California School Dashboard.
CASBO Position: Concern
Staff: Elizabeth Esquivel
Note: The bill was gutted and amended on April 17, 2023. Current version of the bill authorizes a school to sell the entrée portion from a federally reimbursable school meal to a pupil, after the pupil receives a federally reimbursable school meal.
Bills That Stalled in Committee
The following bill stalled in the policy committees and did not meet their statutory deadline to continue moving forward this year and therefore, has become a 2-year bill. In 2024, this bill will get a second opportunity to be heard.
AB 533 (V. Fong) Charter schools: establishment of a charter school. This bill would allow 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
Bill Location: 2-year bill