SB 141 — Education finance: education omnibus budget trailer bill.

Summary

(1) The Early Education Act, among other things, requires the Superintendent of Public Instruction to administer all California state preschool programs, including, but not limited to, part-day and full-day age and developmentally appropriate programs for 3- and 4-year-old children. The act requires, from July 1, 2022, to June 30, 2023, inclusive, at least 5% of funded enrollment to be reserved for children with exceptional needs, requires at least 7.5% of funded enrollment to be reserved for children with exceptional needs commencing July 1, 2025, to June 30, 2026, inclusive, and requires at least 10% of funded enrollment to be reserved for children with exceptional needs commencing July 1, 2026. On and after July 1, 2026, existing law provides that any agency that does not meet those requirements may be put on a conditional contract, as provided. This bill would reestablish the 5% requirement until June 30, 2025, and make any agency that does not meet that requirement eligible to be placed on a conditional contract as of July 1, 2026. For any agency that does not meet the 7.5% or 10% requirements, the bill would delay their eligibility to be placed on a conditional contract to July 1, 2027, and July 1, 2028, respectively. The act requires each state preschool program applicant or contracting agency to give priority for enrollment for part-day and full-day programs according to a specified priority ranking. Existing law requires the 3rd priority for services to be given to eligible 3- and 4-year old children who are not enrolled in a state-funded transitional kindergarten program. Within this priority, the act provides that if 2 or more families have the same income ranking according to the most recent schedule of income ceiling eligibility table, a child from a family in which the primary home language is a language other than English shall be enrolled first. This bill would revise the latter priority criteria to be based on whether those children are identified as dual language learners instead of whether they are from a family in which the primary home language is a language other than English. (2) Existing law establishes the California Prekindergarten Planning and Implementation Grant Program as a state early learning initiative with the goal of expanding access to classroom-based prekindergarten programs. Existing law appropriates $300,000,000 from the General Fund to the State Department of Education in both the 2021–22 fiscal year and the 2022–23 fiscal year for allocation to local educational agencies as base grants, enrollment grants, and supplemental grants, as specified. Existing law authorizes the department to allocate or prorate unexpended funds returned by or collected from a grant recipient for grants to local educational agencies for costs associated with the educational expenses of current and future California state preschool program, transitional kindergarten, and kindergarten professionals that support their attainment of required credentials, permits, or professional development in early childhood instruction or child development, including developing competencies in serving inclusive classrooms and dual language learners, as provided. This bill would extend the encumbrance period for those funds, as specified, thereby making an appropriation. The bill would require any remaining unexpended funds to revert to the General Fund on June 30, 2028. (3) Existing law creates the Learning Recovery Emergency Fund in the State Treasury for the purpose of receiving appropriations for school districts, county offices of education, charter schools, and community college districts related to the state of emergency declared by the Governor on March 4, 2020, relating to the COVID-19 pandemic. Former law initially appropriated $7,936,000,000 from the General Fund to the department for transfer to the Learning Recovery Emergency Fund. Existing law reduces that appropriation by $1,590,595,000 to instead be $6,345,405,000. Existing law requires the Superintendent to allocate these appropriated funds to school districts, county offices of education, and charter schools, as provided. This bill would authorize the department to collect, from a local educational agency's principal apportionment monthly payment, the difference in the local educational agency's allocation resulting from the reduction in that appropriation described above. The bill would require the department to report any uncollectible amounts to the Department of Finance by January 31, 2024. (4) Existing law sets forth the maximum ratios of administrative employees to each 100 teachers in the various types of school districts. Existing law requires the Superintendent to determine, for each current fiscal year, for each school district in the state, the total number of administrative employees except as provided, the total number of teachers except those serving in positions that are supported by federal funds or by categorical grants from any source and are in programs that require specific teacher/administrator ratios, the total maximum number of administrative employees that should be employed by the school district based upon the application of the appropriate ratio prescribed by law, and the number of administrative employees in excess of the number allowable without penalty, as provided. Existing law requires the Superintendent to determine the reduction in state support resulting from excess administrative employees, as specified, and requires the school district's 2nd principal apportionment for the current fiscal year to be reduced by that amount. This bill would exempt the Paradise Unified School District from that reduction in state support for the 2021–22 fiscal year to the 2023–24 fiscal year, inclusive. (5) Existing law authorizes the governing board of a community college district to enter into a College and Career Access Pathways (CCAP) partnership with the governing board of a school district or a county office of education, or the governing body of a charter school, for the purpose of offering or expanding dual enrollment opportunities for pupils who may not already be college bound or who are underrepresented in higher education, with the goal of developing seamless pathways from high school to community college for career technical education or preparation for transfer, improving high school graduation rates, or helping high school pupils achieve college and career readiness. Existing law requires each middle college high school to be structured as a broad-based, comprehensive instructional program focusing on college preparatory and school-to-work curricula, among other things. Under existing law, pupils in early college high schools begin taking college courses as soon as they demonstrate readiness, and the college credit earned may be applied toward completing an associate or bachelor's degree, transfer to a 4-year university, or obtaining a skills certificate. Existing law appropriates $200,000,000 from the General Fund to the State Department of Education for the department, in consultation with the office of the Chancellor of the California Community Colleges, by January 1, 2023, to administer a competitive grant program to, among other things, enable local educational agencies with existing middle college or early college high schools or College and Career Access Pathways partnerships to couple robust pupil advising and success supports with dual enrollment opportunities and establish outreach campaigns to promote dual enrollment for new or existing middle college or early college high schools or College and Career Access Pathways partnerships, and authorizes local educational agencies to apply for, among other things, one-time grants of up to $250,000 to support the costs to plan for, and start up, a middle college or early college high school that is located on the campus of a local educational agency, a partnering community college, or other location determined by the local partnership, as provided. Existing law requires the department, on or before June 30, 2024, and on or before June 30, 2027, to prepare a summary of how the funds were disbursed and used to further the program's goals and to submit the summary to the Department of Finance, the Joint Legislative Budget Committee, the Senate Committee on Education, the Assembly Committee on Higher Education, and the Assembly Committee on Education, as specified. This bill would include local educational agencies with existing middle college and early college programs in those specific provisions. To the extent the bill expands the uses of an existing appropriation, the bill would make an appropriation. The bill would also make conforming changes to the reporting requirement. (6) Existing law, commencing with the 2023–24 fiscal year, appropriates $300,000,000 each fiscal year from the General Fund to the Superintendent for allocation for the Local Control Funding Formula Equity Multiplier apportionment, as provided. Existing law requires the funding to be allocated to eligible local educational agencies on a per-unit basis of a schoolsite's total prior year adjusted cumulative enrollment, as specified. Existing law excludes a charter school classified as a nonclassroom-based charter school from the definition of an eligible local educational agency for these purposes. This bill would revise the definition of eligible local educational agency to instead exclude a charter school classified as a nonclassroom-based charter school as of the prior fiscal year's principal apportionment certification. (7) Existing law establishes the Expanded Learning Opportunities Program. Existing law authorizes a local educational agency that elects to operate an expanded learning opportunity program to operate a before school component of a program, an after school component of a program, or both, and requires the local educational agency to comply with specified requirements, including, among others, that on schooldays, in-person before or after school expanded learning opportunities, when added to daily instructional minutes, recess, and meals, are no less than 9 hours of combined instructional time, recess, meals, and expanded learning opportunities per instructional day, and for at least 30 nonschooldays, inclusive of extended school year days, no less than 9 hours of in-person expanded learning opportunities are offered per day. Existing law, commencing with the 2023–24 fiscal year, if a school district or charter school fails to maintain the required number of days or hours, requires the Superintendent to withhold a specified amount from the school district's or charter school's Expanded Learning Opportunities Program apportionment. This bill would exempt a local educational agency that is temporarily prevented from operating its expanded learning opportunity program because of a school or program site closure due to emergency conditions from that withholding if certain conditions are met, as specified. Existing law requires the Superintendent, by February 1, 2024, and in consultation with the State Department of Social Services, to submit a report to the relevant fiscal and policy committees of the Legislature that includes specified information relating to, among other things, the number of expanded learning providers who are serving pupils enrolled in transitional kindergarten and kindergarten on a nonlocal educational agency site during the school year and during the summer, and how many pupils are served in those programs. This bill would revise that reporting requirement by requiring the Superintendent to instead provide information on, among other things, the number of expanded learning providers who are operating an expanded learning opportunity program for pupils enrolled in transitional kindergarten and kindergarten on a nonlocal educational agency site during the fiscal year and during nonschooldays, and how many pupils are provided access to those programs. (8) Existing law authorizes a school district or charter school to maintain a transitional kindergarten program. Existing law requires a school district or a charter school, as a condition of receipt of apportionment for pupils in a transitional kindergarten program, to ensure that, among other things, a child who will have their 5th birthday between September 2 and specified dates, depending on the school year, be admitted to a transitional kindergarten program, as provided. Existing law authorizes, in any school year, a school district or charter school to, at any time during a school year, admit a child to a transitional kindergarten program who will have their 5th birthday after the applicable cutoff date but during that same school year, as provided. Notwithstanding that provision, existing law authorizes a school district or charter school to enroll an early enrollment child in a transitional kindergarten program if specified conditions are met, including that each transitional kindergarten classroom that includes an early enrollment child maintains at least one adult for every 10 pupils. Existing law defines early enrollment child for these purposes to mean a child whose 4th birthday will be between June 2 and September 1 preceding the school year during which they are enrolled in a transitional kindergarten classroom. This bill would, among other things, revise how the 10-to-1 adult-to-pupil ratio is calculated and revise the definition of early enrollment child to instead mean a child whose 4th birthday will be between June 3 and September 1, inclusive, preceding the school year during which they are enrolled in a transitional kindergarten classroom. The bill would require the Controller to incorporate verification of compliance with certain requirements related to early enrollment children into the Guide for Annual Audits of K–12 Local Education Agencies and State Compliance Reporting for the 2023–24 and 2024–25 fiscal years. (9) Existing law requires county boards of education to provide for the administration and operation of juvenile court schools by the county superintendent of schools or by contract with the respective governing boards of the elementary, high school, or unified school district in which the juvenile court school is located, as provided. Existing law requires the State Department of Education to annually report specified information relating to pupils in juvenile court schools on its internet website. This bill would delay that annual reporting requirement to instead commence with the 2024–25 fiscal year. (10) Existing law requires the State Board of Education to, on or before October 1, 2016, adopt evaluation rubrics for certain purposes, including, among others, to assist a school district, county office of education, or charter school in evaluating its strengths, weaknesses, and areas that require improvement. Existing law requires the single multiple measures public school accountability system, as authorized by those provisions, to measure the overall performance of numerically significant pupil subgroups in schools, including charter schools, school districts, and county offices of education, as provided. Existing law includes within these numerically significant pupil subgroups, among others, English learners and long-term English learners. Existing law defines long-term English learns for these purposes to mean a pupil who has not attained English language proficiency within 5 years of initial classification as an English learner, consistent with specified federal law. This bill would revise the definition of long-term English learner to instead mean a pupil who has not attained English language proficiency within 7 years of initial classification as an English learner. To the extent this would create new duties for local educational agencies, the bill would constitute a state-mandated local program. (11) Existing law establishes the Bilingual Teacher Professional Development Program, administered by the department in consultation with the Commission on Teacher Credentialing, for teachers seeking to provide instruction in bilingual and multilingual settings, as provided. For the 2023–24 fiscal year, existing law appropriates $20,000,000 from the General Fund to the Superintendent for purposes of the program, to be available for grants totaling $4,000,000 each fiscal year, from the 2023–24 fiscal year to the 2027–28 fiscal year, inclusive, and requires grant recipients of those funds to provide, by July 1, 2026, a preliminary report, and, by January 1, 2029, a final report, of specified information to the department, as provided. This bill would extend the deadline for the final report by one year to January 1, 2030. (12) Existing law appropriates $15,000,000 from the General Fund to the Superintendent for the department and the California Collaborative for Educational Excellence, with approval from the executive director of the state board, to designate a county office of education to identify and curate a repository of high-quality open educational resources for use by local educational agencies. Existing law requires the collaborative, on or before October 1, 2025, and in consultation with the department, to evaluate and make recommendations to the Department of Finance, the executive director of the state board, and the appropriate fiscal and policy committees of the Legislature regarding the effectiveness of the online repository and resources. Existing law authorizes the collaborative to enter into a contract with a nonprofit entity to conduct the evaluation and to withhold no more than 3% of that appropriation. This bill would increase that authorized withholding to instead be no more than 4%. By authorizing the use of appropriated funds for new purposes, the bill would make an appropriation. (13) Existing law appropriates $2,402,000 from the General Fund to the Superintendent to support the creation of an online training on schoolsite and community resources focused on strategies to support LGBTQ+ pupils, as specified. This bill would provide that those funds shall be available for encumbrance through June 30, 2025, thereby making an appropriation. (14) Existing law requires the Superintendent to allocate certain funding to the Commission on Teacher Credentialing to establish the Diverse Education Leaders Pipeline Initiative program for the purpose of providing grants to local educational agencies, as defined, to train, place, and retain diverse and culturally responsive administrators in transitional kindergarten, kindergarten, and grades 1 to 12, inclusive, to improve pupil outcomes and meet the needs of California's education workforce, as provided. The Budget Act of 2023 appropriates $10,000,000 to the Superintendent for that purpose. Existing law requires the commission to award grants to local educational agencies of up to $30,000 per administrator candidate, and requires an administrator candidate for whom a grant is awarded to agree in writing to serve in a public school in California for a period of at least 2 school years. The bill would require the commission to submit a report on the program to the Department of Finance and the appropriate policy and fiscal committees of both houses of the Legislature on or before June 30, 2027, as specified. This bill would revise and add to the list of goals for the initiative. The bill would add regional occupational centers or programs operated by a joint powers authority or a county office of education to the definition of local educational agency for purposes of the initiative. The bill would prohibit grant recipients from using more than 5% of a grant award for administrative costs and from charging a sponsored candidate a fee for participating in the initiative, and would provide that upon receiving a preliminary administrator credential, the administrator has 4 years to complete their 2-year service requirement. The bill would include paying for the costs of an administrative services credential clear induction program to the list of allowable uses of funding. By expanding the pool of eligible local educational agencies and the allowable uses of funding, the bill would make an appropriation. (15) Existing law appropriates $250,000,000 from the General Fund to the Superintendent for allocation to local educational agencies meeting certain criteria for the Literacy Coaches and Reading Specialists Grant Program in order to employ and train literacy coaches and reading and literacy specialists to develop school literacy programs, mentor teachers, and develop and implement interventions for pupils in need of targeted literacy support, as provided. Existing law appropriates an additional $250,000,000 from the General Fund to the Superintendent to augment the Literacy Coaches and Reading Specialists Grant Program to allocate moneys to eligible schoolsites, as defined, that did not receive moneys under the initial program to develop school literacy programs, employ and train literacy coaches and reading and literacy specialists, and develop and implement interventions for pupils in need of targeted literacy support. This bill would prohibit funds from the latter appropriation from being used to support the salaries of existing literacy coaches and reading specialists. (16) Existing law, for the 2023–24 fiscal year, appropriates $1,000,000 from the General Fund to the Superintendent for the State Board of Education to appoint an independent panel of experts for the purpose of creating an approved list of screening instruments to assess pupils for risk of reading difficulties, as specified. This bill would authorize those funds to be allocated, in whole or in part, to the State Department of Education, upon the approval of the executive director of the state board, and would provide that those funds shall be available for encumbrance or expenditure through June 30, 2025, thereby making an appropriation. (17) Existing law requires the Commission on Teacher Credentialing to establish standards and procedures for the issuance and renewal of credentials, certificates, and permits. Existing law, until July 1, 2023, authorized any holder of a credential or permit issued by the commission that authorizes the holder to substitute teach in a general, special, or career technical education assignment to serve in a substitute teaching assignment aligned with their authorization, including for staff vacancies, for up to 60 cumulative days for any one assignment. This bill would reestablish that authorization until July 1, 2024, as provided. (18) This bill would, for the 2023–24 fiscal year, appropriate $1,500,000 from the General Fund to the Superintendent for allocation to the California Teachers Collaborative for Holocaust and Genocide Education to continue its work to develop and provide curriculum resources related to genocide and Holocaust education and to provide professional development, including educator trainings, on genocide and Holocaust education. (19) This bill also would update references and make other technical changes. (20) This bill would make legislative findings and declarations as to the necessity of a special statute for the Paradise Unified School District. (21) The California Constitution requires the state to reimburse local agencies and school districts for certain costs mandated by the state. Statutory provisions establish procedures for making that reimbursement. This bill would provide that, if the Commission on State Mandates determines that the bill contains costs mandated by the state, reimbursement for those costs shall be made pursuant to the statutory provisions noted above. (22) Certain funds appropriated by this bill would be applied toward the minimum funding requirements for school districts and community college districts imposed by Section 8 of Article XVI of the California Constitution. (23) This bill would declare that it is to take effect immediately as a bill providing for appropriations related to the Budget Bill.

Bill Text

• Chaptered 09/13/23 - Chaptered Current pdf September 13, 2023
• Enrolled 09/13/23 - Enrolled pdf September 13, 2023
• Amended 08/31/23 - Amended Assembly pdf August 31, 2023
• Amended 08/28/23 - Amended Assembly pdf August 28, 2023
• Introduced 01/18/23 - Introduced pdf January 18, 2023
• SB141 View text html

Action History

1. September 13, 2023

   Chaptered by Secretary of State. Chapter 194, Statutes of 2023.

2. September 13, 2023

   Approved by the Governor.

3. September 12, 2023

   Enrolled and presented to the Governor at 11:30 a.m.

4. September 11, 2023

   Assembly amendments concurred in. (Ayes 39. Noes 0. Page 2571.) Ordered to engrossing and enrolling.

5. September 08, 2023

   In Senate. Concurrence in Assembly amendments pending.

6. September 08, 2023

   Read third time. Passed. (Ayes 76. Noes 0. Page 3106.) Ordered to the Senate.

7. September 07, 2023

   Read second time. Ordered to third reading.

8. September 06, 2023

   Ordered to second reading.

9. September 06, 2023

   Withdrawn from committee. (Ayes 61. Noes 17. Page 2953.)

10. September 06, 2023

    Assembly Rule 96 suspended.

11. August 31, 2023

    From committee with author's amendments. Read second time and amended. Re-referred to Com. on BUDGET.

12. August 28, 2023

    From committee with author's amendments. Read second time and amended. Re-referred to Com. on BUDGET.

13. March 30, 2023

    Referred to Com. on BUDGET.

14. March 27, 2023

    In Assembly. Read first time. Held at Desk.

15. March 27, 2023

    Read third time. Passed. (Ayes 29. Noes 8. Page 499.) Ordered to the Assembly.

16. March 20, 2023

    Read second time. Ordered to third reading.

17. March 16, 2023

    Ordered to second reading.

18. March 16, 2023

    Withdrawn from committee. (Ayes 28. Noes 8. Page 357.)

19. January 25, 2023

    Referred to Com. on B. & F.R.

20. January 19, 2023

    From printer. May be acted upon on or after February 18.

21. January 18, 2023

    Introduced. Read first time. To Com. on RLS. for assignment. To print.

Sponsors

• Committee on Budget and Fiscal Review · Primary

Votes

Subjects