BILL ANALYSIS
Senate Appropriations Committee Fiscal Summary
Senator Christine Kehoe, Chair
548 (Chesbro)
Hearing Date: 07/15/2010 Amended: 03/01/2010
Consultant: Dan Troy Policy Vote: ED 7-0
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BILL SUMMARY: AB 548, an urgency measure, would allow local
education agencies to receive K-3 Class Size Reduction (CSR)
funding for the 2008-09 fiscal year under the rules existing
prior to the adoption ABx4 2 of the Statutes of 2009 (AB 2).
This bill would also allow the Riverside Unified School District
to claim CSR funding for the 2009-10 school year under the rules
existing prior to the adoption AB 2.
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Fiscal Impact (in thousands)
Major Provisions 2010-11 2011-12 2012-13 Fund
Additional CSR claims Approximately $62,000 for
2008-09 General*
Riverside USD $2,900 for 2009-10
General*
*Counts toward meeting the Proposition 98 minimum funding
guarantee
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STAFF COMMENTS: This bill meets the criteria for referral to the
Suspense File.
Current law establishes the K-3 CSR program for the purposes of
incentivizing smaller classroom in the early grades by providing
incentive funding for K-3 classes that have 20 pupils or less
per certificated teacher. Districts are offered two funding
options: 1) Option 1 provides $1,071 (for the 2009-10 fiscal
year) per each pupil enrolled in a K-3 class having 20 or fewer
pupils for the whole school day; 2) Option 2 provides $535 per
K-3 pupil enrolled in a class with fewer than 20 pupils for at
least one-half of the day.
ABx4 2 of the Statutes of 2009 (AB 2) altered the process by
which districts could claim CSR funding for the 2008-09 through
20011-12 fiscal years. For these school years, districts are
only eligible to claim funding for classes it had applied for as
of January 31, 2009 (partway through the 2008-09 fiscal year).
Generally, funding processes of the Department of Education have
required districts to submit initial estimates of the number of
classes for which it wishes to claim CSR finding about halfway
into the year, limited to the lesser of the prior year actual or
the current year estimate. Districts submit a final report at
the end of the year detailing the actual number of fundable
classes. By using estimates provided part way through the
2008-09 fiscal year, AB 2 locked districts into the number of
classrooms districts could claim for the 2008-09 through 2011-12
fiscal years at the number estimated at that point in time.
This bill would allow districts the option to receive CSR
funding for the 2008-09 fiscal year by either the amount
estimated by January of 2009 (the AB 2 requirement) or by the
actual number of classrooms that would otherwise have been
eligible for that year
Page 2
AB 548 (Chesbro)
prior to the passage of AB 2. This would have the effect of
increasing program CSR costs in two ways: 1) Allowing districts
to claim funding for enrollment growth over the 2007-08 fiscal
year, and 2) Allow districts to update the number of
CSR-eligible classrooms that were underreported as a 2008-09
estimate.
The exact costs of the bill are unknown as it would require
additional reporting by the districts to calculate, but, by
using district enrollment reports, the Department of Education
estimates that districts may have had enough K-3 enrollment
growth in 2008-09 to claim approximately $41 million more than
what was claimed by January of 2009. Also, the Department
indicates that there would be at least $21.1 million in
additional costs owing to districts underreporting eligible
classrooms at the time of their estimate. It is safe to say
that this bill would result in tens of millions in costs not
anticipated in the budget.
Further, this bill allows the Riverside Unified School District
to claim CSR funding for the 2009-10 fiscal year for classrooms
meeting CSR eligibility in 2009-10 that did not meet the
requirements in 2008-09, the Department estimates this bill
would result in additional costs of $2.9 million. To the extent
other districts also added K-3 CSR-qualifying in 2009-10, there
could be pressure to also fund their additional classes, as
well.