With the first major legislative hurdle now in the rear view mirror, the dust is settling on which major education proposals will be moving forward following the April 28 deadline to pass out of policy committees. For most of these proposals, the next challenge will be the respective appropriations committees and the suspense process, in which bills with a price tag of over $150,000 are considered in bulk in order to consider their fiscal impact as a whole. Their collective fate will be decided on May 19.
Five CSBA-sponsored bills moving forward
Five CSBA-sponsored measures passed the policy committee deadline. Together, these bills will help boards appoint student members, increase funding for student health, provide school districts with a greater ability to address the teacher shortage and increase support for districts facing cyberattacks.
- Assembly Bill 417 (Bennett, D-Ventura): Would increase county boards of education’s authority to appoint a student school board member by addressing a loophole in current law — in cases where a county board of education does not receive a student petition to create a student board member, the board may only select a student enrolled at a local district high school, not a student enrolled in a high school under the jurisdiction of the county board. AB 417 would allow students in high schools maintained by the county board of education an equal opportunity to serve on their governing board.
Passed the Assembly on March 30 and awaiting committee assignments in the Senate.
- AB 483 (Muratsuchi, D-Torrance): Would increase funding for and expand access to school-based health and mental health services by improving and streamlining the Medi-Cal Local Education Agency Medi-Cal Billing Option Program (LEA BOP).
Awaiting consideration in the Assembly Appropriations Committee.
- AB 1023 (Papan, D-San Mateo): Would require the California Cybersecurity Integration Center (Cal-CSIC), whose mission it is to help state and local agencies prevent and prepare for cyber security attacks to also provide that support and guidance to LEAs and the California Department of Education (CDE). By specifically including LEAs as an academic institution under Cal-CSIC, it will ensure that LEAs receive information and guidance to address issues of cybersecurity and protecting student data and privacy.
Awaiting consideration in the Assembly Appropriations Committee.
- Senate Bill 765 (Portantino, D-Glendale): Would waive the 180-day mandatory waiting period LEAs must observe before hiring a recently retired teacher and increase the maximum grant award for the Teacher Residency Grant Program from $25,000 to $40,000 per teaching candidate. Awaiting consideration in the Senate Appropriations Committee.
- SB 551 (Portantino, D-Glendale): Would enhance the collaboration between county mental health agencies and school districts by requiring at least 20 percent of a county mental health board’s membership to be employed by a local educational agency (LEA) and at least 20 percent to be an individual who is 25 years of age or younger, with scaled requirements based on county size.
Awaiting consideration in the Senate Appropriations Committee.
Other major education proposals moving forward
- AB 247 (Muratsuchi, D-Torrance) and SB 28 (Glazer, D-Orinda): Two bills that would each place bonds on the ballot in 2024 to fund education facilities construction and modernization.
CSBA Position: Support
Awaiting consideration by the Appropriations Committee in their respective houses.
- AB 383 (Zbur, D-West Hollywood): Would expand the California Classified School Employee Teacher Credentialing Program to entitle a classified employee to wage replacement while they take a leave of absence to complete their student teaching credential. As written, the bill raises significant fiscal challenges for LEAs if a classified staff person receives wage replacement while also receiving compensation for serving as the teacher of record of a classroom to fulfill their in-classroom teaching requirements.
CSBA Position: Oppose unless amended
Awaiting consideration by the Assembly Appropriations Committee.
- AB 659 (Aguiar-Curry, D-Winters): Would specify that it is the public policy of this state that: 1) pupils are expected to be fully immunized against HPV before admission or advancement to the eighth-grade level of any private or public elementary or secondary school; and 2) students who are 26 years of age or younger are expected to be fully immunized against HPV before first-time enrollment at an institution of the California State University, the University of California, or the California Community Colleges. An earlier version of the bill would have added the HPV vaccine to the list of mandatory immunizations that students are required to have before attending eighth grade.
CSBA Position: None taken at the time of this writing
Awaiting consideration by the Assembly Appropriations Committee.
- AB 897 (McCarty, D-Sacramento): Would reduce the threshold for a part-time probationary employee to be deemed to have served a complete school year if the employee has served 75 percent of a 60-percent short-term position.
CSBA Position: Oppose
Awaiting consideration by the Assembly Appropriations Committee.
- AB 938 (Muratsuchi, D-Torrance): Would establish Local Control Funding Formula funding target levels for the 2030–31 fiscal year with the purpose of increasing school site employee salaries by 50 percent by that year.
CSBA Position: Tracking
Awaiting consideration by the Assembly Appropriations Committee.
- AB 1192 (McCarty, D-Sacramento): Would eliminate the budget contingency language associated with the 1:10 teacher to student ratio requirement for transitional kindergarten, thereby mandating all LEAs to institute the ratio in the 2025–26 school year despite a lack of additional funding and an ongoing staffing shortage. Would also require TK teacher aides to meet elevated requirements; require LEAs to provide administrators, teachers and teacher aides with professional development training; and permit LEAs to enroll a child to a TK program who will have their fifth birthday after the applicable cutoff date but during that same school year.
CSBA Position: Oppose unless amended
Awaiting consideration by the Assembly Appropriations Committee.
- AB 1699 (McCarty, D-Sacramento): Would require LEAs to offer open classified staff positions to existing staff first, including a requirement to provide on-the-job training to an interested existing classified staff person if they are unqualified for the position, before making the position open to the general public.
CSBA Position: Oppose
Awaiting consideration by the Assembly Appropriations Committee.
- SB 88 (Skinner, D-Berkeley): Would, among other mandates, require any person, including teachers and staff transporting students to sporting and academic events in regular passenger vehicles, including school owned vans, to meet many of the training requirements that commercial bus drivers are required to meet, including 12 hours of training and a medical exam.
CSBA Position: Oppose
Awaiting consideration by the Senate Appropriations Committee.
- SB 98 (Portantino, D-Burbank): Beginning in 2023–24, would authorize LEAs to apply to the Superintendent of Public Instruction for supplemental funding equal to the difference of LCFF base funding between their average daily attendance and their enrollment, as defined in the bill. At least 30 percent of the supplemental funding is required to be spent to address chronic absenteeism and habitual truancy to improve attendance. The supplemental funding is also subject to an ongoing maintenance of effort (spending floor) equal to the expenditures on staff in 2019–20 for efforts to address chronic absenteeism and habitual truancy, which is subject to audit, penalty and loss of funding.
CSBA Position: Oppose unless amended
Awaiting consideration by the Senate Appropriations Committee.
- SB 234 (Portantino, D-Burbank): Would require schools to maintain unexpired doses of naloxone hydrochloride or another opioid antagonist onsite.
CSBA Position: Support
Awaiting consideration by the Senate Appropriations Committee.
- SB 274 (Skinner, D-Berkeley): Would prohibit the suspension or expulsion of any student in grades K-12 for disrupting school activities or for willful defiance of school personnel and prohibit the suspension or expulsion of a student due to being absent from school activities. Would preserve the ability of a teacher to suspend any pupil from class for the day of the suspension and the following day for willful defiance and disrupting school activities.
CSBA Position: Support if amended
Awaiting consideration on the Senate floor.
- SB 433 (Cortese, D-San Jose): Would delete a school district’s authority to make the ultimate disciplinary action against a classified staff person by placing it into the hands of an impartial third-party hearing officer and require districts to fund the associated costs of obtaining that ruling.
CSBA Position: Oppose
Awaiting consideration by the Senate Appropriations Committee.
- SB 767 (Rubio, D-Baldwin Park): Beginning with the 2024–25 school year, would require a child to have completed one year of public or private kindergarten program before that child may be admitted to the first grade.
CSBA Position: Disapprove
Awaiting consideration by the Senate Appropriations Committee.
Additional bills held back
Two additional CSBA-sponsored proposals supporting small school districts and county office of education-operated juvenile court schools and community schools unfortunately will not be moving forward. Each of these bills have been made “two-year bills,” meaning that they may return in 2024 for the second year of the 2023–24 legislative session:
- SB 645 (Ochoa-Bogh, R-Yucaipa): Would allow small school districts to hire the appropriate number of administrators based upon school size and help small districts better meet the needs of their students, teachers, staff and the greater school community.
- AB 906 (Gipson, D-Carson): Would invest in COE-operated juvenile court schools and community schools and the students they serve by providing them with sufficient and predictable resources by including funding for juvenile court and county community schools in a COE’s base grant.
High-profile bills that failed and will not be moving forward
- Senate Constitutional Amendment 5 & SB 292 (Grove, R-Bakersfield): Would have established a system of school vouchers in California by creating a fund that initially makes $17,000 available per student annually in Education Savings Accounts (ESA) for private school tuition and would change how the minimum education funding guarantee is calculated by changing the definition of “average daily attendance” to include all children enrolled in public schools and all children who are eligible to enroll in public schools but have chosen to fund their kindergarten, elementary or secondary education with an ESA.
CSBA Position: Oppose
Failed in the Senate Education Committee. - Assembly Constitutional Amendment 9 (McCarty, D-Sacramento): Would have made the Superintendent of Public Instruction a Gubernatorially appointed office as opposed to a popularly elected statewide officer, and subject to confirmation by the Assembly and the Senate, and to serve at the pleasure of the Governor.
CSBA Position: Oppose
Not heard in the Assembly Education Committee.
As the legislative session continues, CSBA will continue to provide updates on these and other education proposals as well as opportunities for advocacy.
Editor’s Note: This blog has been updated to correct information in AB 1023 and SB 765.
