Originally scheduled to end at midnight on Friday, Sept. 12, the Legislature waived the rules to allow it to continue deliberations into Sept. 13, not adjourning until mid-afternoon. This year featured a number of contentious education-related measures ranging from nonclassroom-based charter school reform to efforts to address incidences of antisemitism in public schools.
CSBA-sponsored legislation also featured significantly during the end of session. Of the four CSBA-sponsored measures that successfully passed out of the respective appropriations committees, all passed the Legislature with wide bipartisan support and are currently with Gov. Gavin Newsom. They include:
Assembly Bill 1021 (Wicks, D-Oakland and Muratsuchi, D-Torrance) – Education Workforce Housing
- This measure is a follow-up to CSBA co-sponsored AB 2295 to help streamline the process local educational agencies can follow to plan, fund and develop education workforce housing (EWH) by enhancing and expanding upon the provisions provided in AB 2295. These changes include ensuring that small and rural LEAs can pursue its benefits as well as exempting EWH projects from the California Environmental Quality Act, as proposed.
AB 1224 (Valencia, D-Anaheim) – 60-Day Substitute
- Co-sponsored with the Association of California School Administrators, the California County Superintendents, and the California Association of School Business Officials, this bill would expand the amount of time an authorized substitute teacher could serve in a single general, special or career technical education classroom from 30 days to 60 days.
AB 1390 (Solache, D-Lynwood) – School Board Member Compensation
- This bill would bring existing stipend rates into alignment with the impacts of inflation and provide that school district and county boards of education retain the authority to determine the amount of the stipend within the cap.
Senate Bill 374 (Archuleta, D-Pico Rivera) – SB 1315 Implementation
- This bill extends by one year the deadline for the California Department of Education to submit a report to the Legislature assessing the number and types of reports that LEAs are required to annually submit and which ones can be consolidated or eliminated. It also eliminates the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) Part-B Addendum for the Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP).
Charter school reform legislation
AB 84 (Muratsuchi) – Nonclassroom-based (NCB) charter schools
- This bill would have made the following changes to the oversight and operation of NCB charter schools:
- Increase audit requirements and authorizer responsibilities
- Impose restrictions on certain contracting practices
- Create the Office of the Education Inspector General under the State Board of Education (SBE) to investigate fraud and illegal practices, including those associated with entities that manage the operation of charter schools
- Create an authorizer mentor grant program
- Place new limits on the ability of small school districts to authorize NCB charter schools that serve student populations larger than their own.
- CSBA Position: Opposed due to lack of funding for charter authorizers
- Status: Placed on the Senate Inactive File and is now a two-year bill
SB 414 (Ashby) – NCB charter schools
- This bill would make changes to the oversight, auditing and funding systems for NCB charter schools, including:
- Rebrands NCB charter schools as “flex-based” charter schools
- Updates and expands audit procedures for all LEAs
- Creates a new Office of the Education Inspector General to investigate fraud and financial mismanagement
- Establishes statewide contracting requirements to prevent misuse of public funds, increases accountability for charter authorizers through technical assistance and oversight grants
- Extends the moratorium on new flex-based charter schools through June 30, 2026
- CSBA Position: Opposed due to lack of funding for charter authorizers and the ability for NCB charters to be permitted to operate outside of their authorizer’s jurisdiction
- Status: Passed the Legislature and is on the Governor’s desk
SB 494 (Cortese) – Moratorium on NCB charter schools
- Initially, this bill would have removed the authority of an LEA and their duly elected governing board to render personnel decisions concerning classified staff by placing it into the hands of an administrative law judge (ALJ) and making the decision of the ALJ final.
- It was gut-and-amended in the final days of the legislative session to extend the NCB charter school moratorium by a full school year to allow negotiations on AB 84 and SB 414 continue.
- CSBA Position: Support
- Status: Placed on the Assembly Inactive File and is now a two-year bill
Curriculum, instruction and instructional materials
AB 715 (Zbur/Addis) – Antisemitism
- Would put in place significant restrictions on instruction and instructional materials to prevent antisemitism and discrimination, including the following:
- Creates a statewide Office of Civil Rights (OCR) under the non-education based Government Operations Agency
- Creates an Antisemitisim Coordinator within the OCR who may provide professional development and corrective actions to LEAs found to be in violation of anti-discrimination laws involving antisemitism
- Prohibits the use of instructional or professional development materials found to violate anti-discrimination laws involving antisemitism
- Requires instruction and instructional materials to be factually accurate, align with the adopted curriculum and existing standards for instructional materials, and be consistent with accepted standards of professional responsibility
- Authorizes the California Department of Education to require LEAs to take unspecified corrective action if found to have violated existing law.
- Requires corrective action be taken by organizations contracted to provide instructional or professional development materials if those materials are found to be antisemitic.
- CSBA Position: Opposed because, while addressing prejudice and discrimination is critical to providing a safe and supporting learning environment, which includes addressing incidences of antisemitism, concerns remain that AB 715 could result in a curtailing of academic freedom and have a chilling effect on how schools can talk about and address incidences of antisemitism, as well as other forms of prejudice.
- Status: Passed the Legislature and is on the Governor’s desk
AB 1454 (Rivas) – Literacy acquisition
- This bill would implement evidence-based reading instruction and professional development requirements. A compromise between two competing measures, AB 1121 (Rubio) and AB 1194 (Muratsuchi), AB 1454 is the product of the larger conversations around the science of reading.
- CSBA Position: Neutral
- Status: Passed the Legislature and is on the Governor’s desk.
SB 48 (Gonzalez/Weber-Pierson/Fong/Ward) – Discrimination prevention coordinators
- Originally a bill that established prohibitions on school site access and the sharing of related information with immigration officials, SB 48 was gut-and-amended in the last days of session as a companion measure to AB 715.
- Contingent upon the enactment of AB 715, this bill would create four additional coordinator positions within the Office of Civil Rights that would be housed at the Government Operations Agency pursuant to AB 715. A Religious Discrimination Coordinator, a Race and Ethnicity Discrimination Coordinator, a Gender Discrimination Coordinator and an LGBTQ Discrimination Prevention Coordinator would each be appointed by the Governor and confirmed by the Senate.
- CSBA Position: Tracking
- Status: Passed the Legislature and is on the Governor’s desk
Governance
AB 640 (Muratsuchi) – School and county board member training
- This bill would require all LEA board members to receive training in public education school finance laws. Although it addresses many of CSBA’s concerns, language remains that could allow partisan-based and biased organizations provide school board member trainings.
- CSBA Position: Oppose Unless Amended
- Status: Passed the Legislature and is on the Governor’s desk
SB 707 (Durazo) – Brown Act
- Makes a number of revisions to the Brown Act, including:
- Extending the sunset date to Jan. 1, 2030, on teleconferencing flexibility provisions allowing remote participation of an individual legislative body member based on “just cause” and “emergency circumstances,” and expands “just cause” to include specified military service.
- Clarifying existing authority to remove or limit participation by persons who disrupt, disturb, impede or render infeasible the orderly conduct of a meeting applies to members of the public participating in a meeting via a two-way telephonic service or a two-way audiovisual platform.
- Providing that teleconferencing requirements do not apply when a disabled member of the elected body is participating remotely.
- Clarifying the circumstances under which an agenda must provide an opportunity for members of the public to address the body on an item that has already been considered by a committee.
- CSBA Position: Tracking
- Status: Passed the Legislature and is on the Governor’s desk
Immigration enforcement
AB 49 (Muratsuchi) – Immigration enforcement
- This bill would prohibit LEAs from allowing immigration enforcement officers to enter nonpublic areas of a school site without providing a valid judicial warrant, judicial subpoena or court order.
- CSBA Position: Support if Amended — funding is needed to help implement this measure to ensure that school staff have the requisite training and resources to know what they should and should not do when an immigration enforcement occurs on a school campus.
- Status: Passed the Legislature and is on the Governor’s desk
AB 495 (C. Rodriguez) – Family Preparedness Act of 2025
- This bill updates the existing Caregiver’s Authorization Affidavit to allow a trusted adult to care for a child when their parent or guardian is detained or deported by federal immigration authorities.
- It would also require the California Attorney General to, no later than July 1, 2026, publish model policies on how LEAs must limit assistance with federal immigration enforcements and requires LEAs to align their policies with the model policies.
- CSBA Position: Tracking
- Status: Passed the Legislature and is on the Governor’s desk
AB 1348 (Bains) – Immigration enforcement activities
- This bill would expand the existing J-13A process, which LEAs may use when there is a material decrease in average daily attendance (ADA) due to an emergency such as a fire or flood, to also include ADA decreases that result due to immigration enforcement activities. LEAs seeking to use this provision would be required to have certain plans in place to provide instructional continuity.
- CSBA Position: Support.
- Status: Passed the Legislature and is on the Governor’s desk
SB 98 (Renée Pérez) – Immigration enforcement actions at schools
- Would require all LEAs to notify all students, parents, faculty, staff and school community members of immigration enforcement activities on campus. Amendments were taken to address CSBA concerns to permit the LEA to determine how and when to issue the notification.
- CSBA Position: Neutral
- Status: Passed the Legislature and is on the Governor’s desk
Labor relations and employee misconduct
AB 1331 (Elhawary) – Workplace surveillance
- Would impose significant costs on LEAs, unintentionally undermine existing school safety protocols and inadvertently increase public safety risks for LEAs by restricting the use of public safety protocols and tools to provide for a safe learning environment. Far reaching in its scope, it would interfere with an LEA’s ability to implement its school safety plan and how it can respond to a public safety emergency on a school campus.
- CSBA Position: Opposed
- Status: Placed on the inactive file on the Assembly Floor and is now a two-year bill
SB 577 (Laird) – AB 218 reforms
- Revises several provisions of existing law related to the civil procedures governing claims for childhood sexual assault claims against public entities and modifies the procedures for local agencies that issue public debt obligations.
- CSBA Position: Oppose Unless Amended
- Status: Negotiations broke down at the last minute and the bill was turned into a two-year bill
SB 848 (Perez) – School employee misconduct
- This bill would establish new requirements to improve pupil safety by addressing school employee misconduct, clarifying professional boundaries, enhancing comprehensive school safety plans, expanding child abuse prevention training requirements, requiring instructional programming on abuse prevention, and creating a statewide system for tracking employee misconduct investigations. It also adds administrators to the list of mandated reporters.
- CSBA Position: Support if Amended.
- Status: Passed the Legislature and is on the Governor’s desk
School facilities and school meals
AB 503 (M. Gonzalez) – School facilities share of maintenance costs
- Would restore a provision of law that allows LEAs, when making their facilities available for use by outside entities, to charge a fee representative of the share of maintenance costs.
- CSBA Position: Support.
- Status: Passed the Legislature and is on the Governor’s desk
AB 1264 (Gabriel) – Ultra-processed school foods
- This bill would require the state to define ultra-processed foods and would prohibit LEAs from serving school meals that includes ultra-processed foods beginning July 1, 2035.
- It would additionally task the California Department of Public Health with developing regulations to determine “potentially harmful” ultra-processed foods.
- CSBA Position: Oppose Unless Amended
- Status: Passed the Legislature and is on the Governor’s desk
Social media and internet use
AB 772 (Lowenthal) – Off-campus bullying and cyberbullying
- Would require LEAs to modify existing policies or adopt new policies on addressing cyberbullying that occurs during non-school hours and off-campus. It also requires the CDE to adopt a model policy LEAs may adopt.
- CSBA Position: Oppose Unless Amended
- Status: Passed the Legislature and is on the Governor’s desk
AB 1043 (Wicks) – Digital Age Assurance Act
- Establishes the Digital Age Assurance Act, which requires social media companies to verify the approximate age of a child when online to comply with existing law requiring age verification.
- CSBA Position: Tracking
- Status: Passed the Legislature and is on the Governor’s desk
What’s next?
The Legislature will return to Sacramento to begin the second year of the two-year 2025–26 legislative session on Jan. 5, 2026.
Gov. Newsom has until Oct. 12 — 30 days from the end of the legislative session — to act upon any bill that was passed by the Legislature in the last two weeks of session. CSBA Governmental Relations staff will be advocating for bills to be signed or vetoed and will keep inform members of advocacy opportunities in the coming weeks.
