Legislative Update – Policy Committees Passing Almost Everything…

April 17, 2019

Over the past two weeks, the Legislature’s policy committees held long hearings to consider a nearly overwhelming number of bills of potential interest. Below, sorted by subject, is a summary of the bills that passed out of committee during the last two weeks.

Remarkably, the only bill to fail passage (of those we’re tracking) was AB 750 (Chen, R-Yorba Linda), which would have required school districts and charter schools to have at least one school resource officer present at each school during regular school hours and any other time when students are on campus. Despite support from the Democrat Chair and Republican Vice-Chair, the bill couldn’t get a fourth vote needed to pass out of the Assembly Education Committee. The bill failed passage 3-0-3 and was not granted reconsideration.

Why so many bills? In 2016, the California State Assembly increased the bill limit (the maximum number of bills a legislator can carry in a given session) from 40 to 50 bills. While a ten-bill increase may sound small, multiply ten by 80 members of the State Assembly and you have 800 more bills. Remarkably, neither the Assembly, nor the Senate, increased the number of personal staff (for legislators), or committee staff, to fully accommodate the increase in legislation.

And why won’t some die, already? While the increased bill limit means more legislation, it is accompanied by a reluctance on the part of many legislators to kill their colleagues’ bills. This is often referred to as a “courtesy vote.” Why kill your colleagues’ bill when the other house will do it? We’re seeing more courtesy votes early in the legislative session with new legislators – when many haven’t fully formed their personal/professional alliances and relationships.

So far this year, we’ve watched multiple committee votes where it is clearly a courtesy vote situation – either because a legislator is helping their colleagues, or because the committee members are falling-in-line with the committee chair for political circumstances. For these reasons, we don’t expect to see many more bills die until they move to the second house.

What’s Next? This week is Spring Break for the Legislature, but they return next week for what will be another wild week because the next Friday (April 26) is the deadline for bills with costs to pass out of policy committees. Fiscal bills that fail to pass out of the policy committee by next Friday will be dead for 2019 and considered two-year bills (absent a rule waiver). We will provide an update on those upcoming actions.

Some Key Issues

A number of notable issue advanced over the past two weeks, but we want to highlight some a few here:

Charter School Reform

Easily the most contentious issue from the past few weeks, the Assembly Education Committee considered three bills (AB 1505, AB 1506, and AB 1507– detailed below). The bill package drew more than four hours of testimony, mostly due to long lines of union members, charter school operators, homeschool supporters, and parents voicing their positions at the microphones.

It wasn’t a surprise these three bills advanced, as a majority of the committee members were either authors or coauthors of all three bills. The three bills passed with the same vote count, 4-1-1.

This issue was extensively covered by the press:

CTE Funding

Assembly Education Committee Chair Patrick O’Donnell (D-Long Beach) is carrying AB 1303, which would consolidate funding for the CA Career Technical Education Incentive Grant (CTEIG) Program within the K-12 system by moving $150 million away from Community College control. It would also augment the annual appropriation by $150 million, bringing the total funding for the program to $450 million.

The bill is a proxy for a budget negotiation between the State Assembly, State Senate, and the Governor’s Administration. There is considerable bi-partisan support for a proposal like this and it is on the top of many budget-watchers’ lists of potential negotiation items between the Governor and Legislature. AB 1303 passed out of the Assembly Education with a unanimous, bipartisan vote of 6-0-0.

Special Education Funding

One of two bills dealing with Special Education funding advanced out of the Senate Education Committee last week.

SB 217 (Portantino, D-Pasadena) would create the Early Intervention Grant Program, which would be designed to increase inclusive access to early education programs for children with exceptional needs and expand eligibility for transitional kindergarten to include children with exceptional needs turning five years old at any time during the school year.

SB 217 is the Senate’s vision for spending additional funds in the area of special education. Governor Newsom raised the prospect of new spending in this area in his January Budget proposal. The Assembly also has a proposal, AB 428 (Medina, D-Riverside), which would equalize special education funding rates to the 95th percentile, among other things. AB 428 is currently pending on the Assembly Appropriations Committee suspense file. However, don’t expect either of these bills to end up on the Governor’s desk. This issue will likely be worked out in the context of the state budget, sometime before June 15. If April revenues miss projections, there may be little room in the budget for either approach. Stay tuned…

CCAP Reform and Extension

A bill to expand dual enrollment opportunities, AB 30 by Assembly Member Holden (D – Pasadena), advanced in the Assembly. The bill streamlines the process for developing College and Career Access Pathways (CCAP) partnerships, in part by:

  • Changing the conditions of how CCAP partnership agreements may be adopted;
  • Authorizing high school pupils to complete only one community college application for the duration of their attendance;
  • Changing the due date the California Community Colleges (CCC) Chancellor submits the CCAP partnership summary report; and,
  • Extending the sunset of the CCAP partnership program.

Below are all of the bills that advanced out of Assembly and Senate Education Committees over the past two weeks.

Assessment and Accountability

  • AB 398 (Chu) – School accountability: local control and accountability plans: visual and performing arts.
    Requires the California Department of Education (CDE) to incorporate elementary enrollment and completion data for visual and performing arts (VAPA) into the California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System (CALPADS). Requires school districts to submit VAPA data via CALPADS for grades kindergarten through sixth, and requires school districts to include VAPA data in their Local Control and Accountability Plans (LCAPs).
    Action: Passed with amendments 6-0-0; Consent
  • AB 1087 (Cunningham) – Pupil instruction: California Financial Literacy Initiative.
    Requires that the one semester course in economics required for high school graduation include specified content in financial literacy.
    Action: Passed with amendments 6-0-0; Consent
  • AB 1240 (Weber) – School accountability: local control and accountability plans: state priorities: pupil achievement.
    Requires school districts to include the percentage of pupils who have successfully completed courses that satisfy the requirements for entrance to the University of California (UC) and the California State University (CSU) as a measure of pupil achievement in their LCAPs, the percentage of pupils who have successfully completed courses that satisfy the requirements of career technical education (CTE) sequences, or both.
    Action: Passed 6-0-0; Consent
  • AB 1466 (Irwin) – State longitudinal education data system.
    Establishes a statewide student longitudinal database taskforce which must create a document setting forth the guidelines for a forthcoming database.
    Action: Passed with amendments 6-0-0
  • AB 1624 (Rivas, Robert ) – School climate: surveys: report.
    Requires CDE, the Department of Health Care Services (DHCS), and the Department of Public Health (DPH) to provide a report to the Legislature no later than March 1, 2020, on how to monitor certain measures of pupil behaviors, available school supports, and school climate and engagement, using a survey tool. Also requires that the report identify ongoing funding sources and recommendations for schools to conduct annual surveys and requires that data collected from such surveys be used to support local school and community agency planning efforts.
    Action: Passed with amendments 6-0-0
  • SB 2 (Glazer) – Statewide Longitudinal Student Database.
    This bill requires the California Postsecondary Education Commission (CPEC) to convene a review committee to advise CPEC regarding the creation of a statewide longitudinal student database. This bill requires CPEC to develop and implement the database on or before July 1, 2022.
    Action: Passed with amendments 7-0-0

Charter Schools

Curriculum and Instruction

Early Childhood Education

Facilities

Governance/Operations

Human Resources

School Finance

School Safety

  • AB 34 (Ramos) – Pupils: bullying and harassment prevention information.
    Requires local education agencies to prepare a Bullying and Harassment Prevention Handbook, including specified content, and to distribute copies and post the content on their websites.
    Action: Passed with amendments 6-0-0
  • SB 541 (Bates) – School safety: lockdown drills.
    This bill requires every public school, including charter schools, and every private school that has an enrollment of 50 or more pupils or more than one classroom, that provides educational services to pupils in kindergarten or in any of grades 1 to 12, inclusive, to conduct a lockdown drill at least twice per school year.
    Action: Passed with amendments 6-0-1

Student Services

  • AB 413 (Jones-Sawyer) – Education: at-promise youth.|
    Replaces the terms “at-risk” to describe youth with “at-promise” within the Education Code and the Penal Code.
    Action: Passed 5-1-0
  • AB 624 (Gabriel) – Pupil and student health: identification cards: sexual assault and domestic violence hotline telephone numbers.
    Requires that public and private schools serving students in grades 7 through 12 print the telephone numbers of sexual assault and domestic violence hotlines on student identification cards.
    Action: Passed with amendments 5-1-0
  • AB 666 (Gabriel) – Pupil mental health: model referral protocols.
    Requires CDE to develop model referral protocols for voluntary use by schools to address the appropriate and timely referral by school staff of students with mental health concerns.
    Action: Passed with amendments 6-0-0
  • AB 743 (Garcia, Eduardo) – Pupil health: self-administration of prescribed asthma medication.
    Requires a school district to accept the written statement from a physician or surgeon, who is contracted with a binational health plan which is licensed in California, for the purposes of authorizing a pupil to be assisted by a school nurse or other designated school personnel, or to carry and self-administer inhaled asthma medication that the pupil is required to administer during the regular schoolday.
    Action: Passed with amendments 6-0-0
  • AB 1126 (O’Donnell) – Mental Health Services Oversight and Accountability Commission.
    Requires the Mental Health Oversight and Accountability Commission to take specific measures to increase the transparency and accountability of mental health expenditures, and to support and share innovative practices in the delivery of mental health services, with a focus on youth mental health.
    Action: Passed 6-0-0
  • AB 1319 (Bonta) – Migrant education: pupil residency.
    Requires LEAs to allow migrant students to continue their education in the school of origin, regardless of any change of residence during that school year, and requires that a migrant student be immediately enrolled in a new school.
    Action: Passed 6-0-0; Consent
  • AB 1729 (Smith) – Pupils: attendance at community college.
    Extends inoperative dates for the prohibition of certain community course enrollments from being counted toward the 5 percent limitation of K-12 pupils per grade level allowed to be recommended for community college summer attendance.
    Action: Passed 6-0-0; Consent
  • SB 265 (Hertzberg) – Pupil meals: Child Hunger Prevention and Fair Treatment Act of 2017.
    This bill, an urgency measure, amends the Child Hunger Prevention and Fair Treatment Act of 2017 to require applicable LEAs to ensure that a pupil whose parent or guardian has unpaid school meal fees is not shamed, treated differently, or served a meal that differs from what a pupil paying for a meal would receive, without regard to the LEA’s federally-mandated meal charge policy, thus ensuring that all students receive the same meal.
    Action: Passed with amendments 7-0-0
  • SB 346 (Jackson) – After school programs: Distinguished After School Health Recognition Program.
    This bill re-establishes the Distinguished After School Health (DASH) Recognition program, to be administered by CDE.
    Action: Passed 7-0-0; Consent
  • SB 428 (Pan) – Pupil health: school employee training: youth mental health first aid.
    This bill would add completion of a course in youth mental health first aid to the list of requirements for obtaining a clear multiple or single subject teaching credential.
    Action: Passed with amendments 7-0-0
  • SB 499 (McGuire) – School meals: California-Grown for Healthy Kids Program.
    This bill establishes the California-Grown for Healthy Kids Program to increase the provision of universally free school meals with California-grown fruits and vegetables, which would include supplemental funds of $0.10 per breakfast served to eligible school food authorities.
    Action: Passed with amendments 7-0-0
  • SB 563 (Roth) – Community colleges: College and Career Access Pathways Grant Program.
    This bill would establish a CCAP Pilot Program, administered by the Chancellor of the California Community Colleges, with the goal of improving the existing CCAP program.
    Action: Passed with amendments 7-0-0
  • SB 582 (Beall) – Youth mental health and substance use disorder services.
    This bill authorizes county mental health services providers and LEAs, to enter into partnerships that provide mental health and substance use disorder services to youth. This bill provides that these partnerships provide prevention, early intervention, and other related mental wellness services. This bill requires the Mental Health Services Oversight and Accountability Commission (MHSOAC) to allocate at least 50 percent of the monies in the Mental Health Wellness Act (MHWA) competitive grant program to fund these partnerships. In the event that there are an insufficient number of these partnerships between LEAs and county providers among the grant applicants, this bill requires the Commission to meet the mandated 50 percent allocation by competitively awarding remaining funds to youth oriented programs.
    Action: Passed 7-0-0
  • SB 586 (Roth) – College and Career Access Pathways partnerships.
    This bill requires the governing board of a school and community college district, as part of a career technical education CCAP partnership, to consult with the appropriate local workforce development board to determine the extent to which the pathway is aligned with regional and statewide employment needs.
    Action: Passed 7-0-0; Consent
  • SB 686 (Allen) – California Promise Neighborhoods Act of 2019.
    This bill establishes the California Promise Neighborhood Grant Program, to be administered by CDE, for the purpose of awarding 20 grants of up to $5,000,000 each, on a competitive basis, to eligible entities to implement a comprehensive, integrated continuum of cradle-to-college-to-career solutions, including academic, health, and social programs, and family and community supports.
    Action: Passed 6-0-1

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