On May 16, both the Senate and Assembly Appropriations Committees held their respective suspense file hearings, determining which bills that require an appropriation of funds will continue to advance this year. CSBA co-sponsored bills passed by the Assembly Appropriations Committee and sent to the Assembly Floor include: Assembly Bill 39 (Muratsuchi, D-Torrance), which would increase the Local Control Funding Formula base grant targets equivalent to the national average in per-pupil funding; AB 751 (O’Donnell, D-Long Beach), the “Pathways to College Act,” allowing LEAs to administer an alternate assessment (i.e. SAT or ACT) during the school day in place of the Smarter Balanced Test; AB 428 (Medina et al), a special education funding measure would remedy several long-standing deficiencies by, among other things, equalizing base special education funding rates (pursuant to AB 602) to the 95th percentile, and; AB 1303 (O’Donnell), which would redirect the K-12 portion of funding for Career Technical Education from the California Community College Chancellor’s Office to the California Department of Education, in the effort to ensure that Career Technical Education remains a K-12-administered program.
Another CSBA sponsored bill, AB 760 (Cooper, D-Elk Grove) to add a cost-of-living adjustment to home-to-school transportation, not heard by the Assembly Education Committee in April and is unlikely to advance –the Committee declined to hear AB 760 and several other bills which would have collectively impacted LCFF funding.
The CSBA co-sponsored Senate Constitutional Amendment 5 (Hill & Allen), which proposes to reduce the required two-thirds voter approval threshold to 55 percent to pass school district parcel taxes, was also passed by the Senate Appropriations Committee and is now on the Senate Floor. AB 48 (O’Donnell), the Kindergarten-Community Colleges Public Education Facilities Bond Acts of 2020 and 2022, also cosponsored by CSBA, passed Assembly Appropriations and is on the Assembly Floor.
Charter school bills AB 1505 (O’Donnell) and AB 1506 (McCarty, D-Sacramento), are both on the Assembly Floor, while AB 1507 (Smith, D-Santa Clarita) has been passed by the Assembly and is in the Senate awaiting committee assignment.
AB 1506 — which may be heard on the floor as early as today, May 22 — was amended in the Assembly Appropriations Committee last week to remove the bill’s statewide cap on the total number of charter schools, but would still place a maximum cap on charter school enrollment and the total number of charter schools for school districts, county offices of education and the state board. The bill would allow a school district or COE to approve a new charter school — notwithstanding the local cap — if the average daily attendance for pupils attending charters in the boundaries of the district or COE is less than 10 percent, and approval wouldn’t result in exceeding that amount.
Read more about 2019 charter legislation in CSBA’s May newsletter.
Senate Bill 328 (Portantino, D-La Canada Flintridge), the CSBA-opposed school start time bill, is on the Senate Floor after passing the Senate Education Committee on April 24 and Senate Appropriations on May 16. If passed by the Senate, the bill would be sent to the Assembly and would likely be heard in the Assembly Education Committee in June or in early July.
Friday, May 31 marks the deadline for 2019 bills to be taken up on the floor of the house in which the bill was introduced and passed to the other house.
CSBA is also now accepting nominations for the 2019 Legislative Awards Program – click here for nomination info.
