June 6 was the official state legislative deadline for bills to pass out of their house of origin, which marks the halfway point in this year’s legislative calendar. It is the point at which bills introduced in their house, i.e. house of origin, must be passed by the full floor of each house.
All legislation that met the deadline now moves to the opposing house. In effect, Assembly bills will now be considered by the Senate and Senate bills considered by the Assembly. Typically, the two houses apply greater policy and fiscal scrutiny on the opposing house’s legislation.
All six of CSBA’s sponsored bills passed out of their house of origin:
Assembly Bill 1021 (Wicks, D-Oakland and Muratsuchi, D-Torrance) — Education workforce housing
- This measure is a follow-up to AB 2295, which CSBA co-sponsored to help streamline the process local educational agencies can follow to plan, fund and develop education workforce housing by ensuring that small and rural LEAs can pursue its benefits as well as exempting educational workforce housing projects from the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).
AB 1111 (Soria, D-Fresno) — Electric school buses
- This measure will address the impacts of AB 579 from 2023 — which requires all future school bus acquisitions be zero-emission, i.e. electric buses — by providing a five-year extension to the purchasing requirement to LEAs unable to meet the charging infrastructure and maintenance and repair obligations.
- This includes addressing the “scrapping” requirement, which mandates LEAs to dispose of a diesel bus when they purchase a zero-emission bus.
AB 1224 (Valencia, D-Anaheim) — 60-day substitute
- 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.
- This bill is co-sponsored with the Association of California School Administrators, the California County Superintendents, and the California Association of School Business Officials.
AB 1381 (Muratsuchi) — Education workforce housing predevelopment budget proposal
- AB 1381 would establish a state revolving loan fund to provide zero-interest loans to LEAs to help with feasibility studies and predevelopment work for housing projects. Loan amounts would be up to $200,000 per LEA based upon enrollment.
AB 1390 (Solache, D-Lynwood) — School board member compensation
- This bill would modernize the existing compensation stipends afforded to school board members based upon LEA size by bringing existing stipend rates into alignment with the impacts of inflation and provide that 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 would implement recommendations developed pursuant to CSBA’s co-sponsored bill SB 1315 from last year. SB 1315 required the California Department of Education (CDE) to assess the number and types of reports that LEAs are required to annually submit. It also required the report to include, among other things, the purpose of each report and recommendations for which reports can be consolidated, eliminated or truncated.
Other notable legislation that passed out of its house of origin:
Charter school accountability and oversight
AB 84 (Muratsuchi) — School accountability: Office of the Education Inspector General: school financial and performance audits: charter school authorization, oversight, operations, and contracting: data systems.
- AB 84 would establish new requirements for nonclassroom-based (NCB) charter schools in the areas of auditing and accounting standards, the funding determination process, contracting process, authorization of NCB charters by small districts, and the authorizer oversight process.
- CSBA position: Support
SB 414 (Ashby) – School accountability: school financial and performance audits: chartering authorities: tort liability: educational enrichment activities: flex-based instruction
- SB 414 would add new auditing standards and training requirements for certified public accountants (CPAs), expands charter authorizer oversight duties, and requires charter school governing boards to publicly review annual audit findings. It would also establishes vendor contracting rules, directs the State Board of Education (SBE) to revise its funding determination process for charter schools, replaces references to NCB charter schools with “flex-based” charter schools throughout the Education Code and defines charter schools as public entities under the Government Claims Act.
- CSBA position: Tracking
AB 715 (Zbur/Addis) — Educational equity: discrimination.
- AB 715 would prohibit an LEA governing board or body from allowing the use of any instructional materials or curriculum if its use would subject a pupil to unlawful discrimination, and permits uniform complaints to be filed directly with the State Superintendent of Public Instruction. It would also expand the definition of nationality to include a person’s actual or perceived shared ancestry or ethnic characteristics, or residency in a country with a dominant religion or distinct religious identity, and clarifies that discrimination on the basis of religion includes, including antisemitism or Islamophobia.
- CSBA position: Opposed
AB 887 (Berman) — Pupil instruction: high schools: computer science courses: implementation guide.
- AB 887 mandates that by Jan. 1, 2027, each school district and charter school serving grades 9 to 12 must create and publicly share a plan to offer at least one computer science course in every high school.
- CSBA position: Opposed
AB 1454 (Rivas) — Pupil literacy: administrative services credential program standards and professional development: instructional materials.
- AB 1454 would require the state to adopt revised instructional materials for English language arts and development for kindergarten through eighth grade by June 30, 2027. It would also provide increased support and resources to implement effective literacy instruction using a program identified by the State Board of Education (SBE) or another program aligned with proposed standards. Also adds new reporting and adoption requirements for LEAs, especially when adopting materials that are not approved by the State Board of Education (SBE).
- CSBA position: Oppose Unless Amended
Governance and elections
AB 640 (Muratsuchi) — School board governance training.
- Requires any member of the governing board of a school district or of a county office of education, and any member of the governing body of a charter school or of an entity managing a charter school, to receive training in public education school finance and accountability laws.
- CSBA position: Oppose Unless Amended
AB 927 (Sharp-Collins) — County superintendent of schools: inspection of public schools.
- An urgency measure, which would take effect immediately if adopted into law, AB 927 would extend the time by which a county superintendent must perform an inspection for the 2024–25 fiscal year list of schools eligible for monitoring pursuant to the settlement of Williams v. State of California from the first four weeks of the school year to the first eight weeks of the school year.
- CSBA position: Tracking
SB 249 (Umberg) — County boards of education: elections: consolidation.
- SB 249 would require any election for the elected members of a county board of education to instead be consolidated with the statewide general election beginning in 2026.
- CSBA position: Disapprove
Labor relations and benefits
AB 65 (Aguiar-Curry) — School and community college employees: paid disability and parental leave.
- AB 65 would require LEAs and community colleges to provide up to 14 weeks of full pay for pregnancy-related leaves of absence taken by certificated, academic and classified staff in addition to other forms of leaves of absence.
- CSBA position: Opposed
AB 340 (Ahrens) and AB 1109 (Kalra) — Employer-employee relations: confidential communications.
- AB 340 and AB 1109 would prohibit a public employer from questioning an employee or employee representative regarding representation-related communications made in confidence between the employee and employee representative. It would also prohibit a public employer from compelling disclosure of such communications to a third party, unless the investigation involves a criminal matter.
- CSBA position: Opposed
AB 917 (Avila-Farias) — County offices of education: school districts: average daily attendance of less than 250 pupils: permanent status.
- AB 917 would remove long-standing flexibilities that super small districts, county offices of education (COEs) and regional occupational centers and programs (ROC/Ps) have relied on for decades to effectively serve their students by deleting statutes that differentiate employment practices for school districts and COEs with less than 250 average daily attendance and for ROC/Ps.
- CSBA position: Opposed
AB 1331 (Elhawary) — Workplace surveillance.
- Prohibits an employer from using a workplace surveillance tool to monitor workers in off-duty areas, including their personal residence and vehicle, with an exception for worker safety purposes, and provides a civil penalty for each employee per violation.
- CSBA position: Tracking
SB 494 (Cortese) — Classified school and community college employees: disciplinary hearings: appeals: contracted administrative law judges.
- SB 494 is a reintroduction of SB 433 from 2023, which was vetoed by Gov. Newsom. It would remove 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 make the decision of the ALJ final.
- CSBA position: Opposed
School finance and Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF)
AB 477 (Muratsuchi) — LCFF: base grants: funding targets.
- AB 477 would establish higher LCFF target levels for the 2036–37 fiscal year and states the intent of the Legislature to increase wages by 50 percent with the increased LCFF funding.
- CSBA Position: Opposed
SB 743 (Cortese) — Education finance: Education Equalization Act: Equalization Reserve Account.
- SB 743 would exclude revenues from counting towards the Proposition 98 Minimum Funding Guarantee and create the Equalization Reserve Account to increase funding for non-basic aid school districts.
- CSBA position: Opposed
Special education
AB 560 (Addis) — Special education: resource specialists: special classes.
- AB 560 would require LEAs to take all reasonable steps to distribute the workload associated with initial assessments across all resource specialists employed by the LEA in an equal manner.
- CSBA position: Support if Amended
Student safety and discipline
AB 772 (Lowenthal) — Cyberbullying: off-campus acts: model policy.
- AB 772 would require the California Department of Education (CDE), on or before June 30, 2026, to develop, post on its website, and distribute to each LEA, a model policy for how to address cyberbullying acts occurring outside of school hours. It would also require every LEA, on or before July 1, 2027, to adopt and post on its website a policy on the matter using the CDE’s model policy or a locally developed policy.
- CSBA Position: Opposed unless amended
AB 1230 (Bonta) — Pupil discipline: expulsions: procedures.
- AB 1230 would substantially expand the requirements on LEAs when developing and implementing a rehabilitation plan for an expelled student, including requiring school boards to assist expelled students with identifying accessible opportunities to meet their rehabilitation plan requirements, prohibiting students or their parents from paying for any costs associated with the rehabilitation plan, and precludes the school board from denying readmission for students who faced barriers in meeting their rehabilitation plan due to financial or transportation barriers.
- CSBA position: Oppose Unless Amended
SB 848 (Pérez) — Pupil safety: school employee misconduct: child abuse prevention.
- SB 848 would establish various requirements that are intended to improve student safety by addressing school employee misconduct, clarifying professional boundaries, enhancing comprehensive school safety plans, expanding child abuse prevention training requirements, and requiring instructional programming on abuse prevention. It would also create a statewide system for tracking employee misconduct investigations.
- CSBA position: Tracking
Teacher credentialing
AB 959 (Hadwick) — Teacher credentialing: administrative services credential: internship program.
- AB 959 would permit an LEA or a regionally accredited institution of higher education to offer a one-year internship program approved by the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC) for candidates seeking to obtain a preliminary administrative credential.
- CSBA position: Support
AB 1119 (Patel) — Teacher credentialing: dual credentialing: workgroup.
- AB 1119 would require the CTC to convene a workgroup, on or before July 1, 2026, to recommend measures to develop and establish efficient routes for teacher candidates and existing teachers to obtain a dual credential with an education specialist credential.
- CSBA position: Support
