BILL ANALYSIS
SB 312
Page 1
Date of Hearing: July 1, 2009
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION
Julia Brownley, Chair
SB 312 (Romero) - As Amended: May 26, 2009
SENATE VOTE : 35-0
SUBJECT : Public meetings and hearings
SUMMARY : Requires the State Board of Education (SBE) and the
State Allocation Board (SAB) to provide for the live audio-video
(AV) transmission of all open meetings and hearings.
Specifically, this bill :
1)Requires the SBE and SAB to provide live AV transmission of
all open meetings through a technology that is accessible to
as large a segment of the public as possible.
2)Specifies that the transmission technology include, but not be
limited to, the use of cable television, web cast, or the K-12
High Speed Network.
3)Requires the SBE and SAB to each consult with the State Chief
Information Officer (CIO) for the purposes of implementing
these provisions and with respect to the coordinating and
strategic planning responsibilities of the CIO.
EXISTING LAW :
1)Establishes the SBE as a policy-making body with
responsibilities in the areas of educational standards,
instructional materials, assessment, and accountability.
2)Establishes the SAB as a policy body with the responsibility
for determining the allocation of state resources (proceeds
from General Obligation Bond Issues and other designated State
funds) used for the new construction and modernization of
local public school facilities; the SAB is also responsible
for the administration of the School Facility Program, the
State Relocatable Classroom Program, and the Deferred
Maintenance Program.
3)Requires, under the Bagley-Keene Open Meeting Act of 1967 (as
amended by subsequent legislation), all state boards and
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commissions to publicly notice their meetings, prepare
agendas, accept public testimony and conduct their meetings in
public, unless specifically authorized by statute to meet in
closed session.
4)Establishes the office of the CIO as a cabinet-level position
responsible for coordination and strategic planning in the
area of information technology (IT).
FISCAL EFFECT : According to the Senate Appropriations
Committee, $5,000 one-time for the SBE and likely less than
$10,000 annually for the SAB to meet the primary objectives of
the bill.
COMMENTS : According to the author, the SBE and SAB "are state
agencies with primary responsibility for K-12 education policy
and for allocating state bond funds for school construction.
The boards hold public meetings in Sacramento, but their
decisions impact public schools statewide." This bill proposes
to increase public access to the meetings, discussions and
decisions of the SBE and SAB via electronic media. Since the
impacts of these decisions are statewide, broader access to the
testimony and discussions that lead to those decisions will
increase transparency with respect to board actions and increase
the amount of information about the public education policy
issues under consideration. The benefits of this proposal were
summarized by Thomas Jefferson over two hundred years ago when
he stated that, "Information is the currency of democracy."
The SBE and the SAB . The SBE, established by the Constitution
and statute, consists of 11 members, including one student
member, who are appointed by the Governor. The SBE is required
to meet at least six times a year and may meet more often at the
call of the Board President or any four members. Administrative
support is provided to the SBE by the California Department of
Education (CDE). The SAB consists of the Superintendent of
Public Instruction, the Director of Finance, the Director of
General Services, an individual appointed by Governor, three
Members of the Senate appointed by the Senate Rules Committee
and three Members of the Assembly appointed by the Speaker. The
SAB receives staff assistance from the Office of Public School
Construction in the Department of General Services. Both the
SBE and the SAB are required to conduct meetings in public
pursuant to the Bagley-Keene Open Meeting Act, though each board
is allowed to meet in closed session in order to consider such
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things as pending litigation or personnel matters. The State
Board of Education may also meet in closed session specifically
to review and discuss the test content in assessment
instruments.
Web casting meetings . The CDE reports that experiments with SBE
meeting web casts have been conducted, where the CDE uses an
internal television signal originating in the board room that is
digitized and transmitted to the Imperial County Office of
Education (ICOE). The ICOE then makes the video stream
accessible to Internet users through an ICOE server. This
informal arrangement would effectively meet the requirements of
this bill, though CDE might need to make one-time technical
changes in hardware and software, and formalize the relationship
between CDE and ICOE for the purposes of ongoing web casts.
According to SAB meeting minutes dated April 22, 2009, "The
March 25, 2009 meeting of the SAB was the first web cast
meeting. There were approximately 125 viewers." Comments from
viewers, included in those minutes, showed a positive response.
This web cast, if continued, would meet the requirements of this
bill.
Executive branch IT initiatives . This bill is also consistent
with Executive Order S-23-06, issued by the Governor in 2006,
that called for expanded use of broadband networks and advanced
communication services to enhance government operations through
such methods as distance learning. In the order, the Governor
also directed that "the Department of General Services and the
Department of Technology Services facilitate State use of
streaming video technologies to broadcast public meetings over
the Internet." In addition, the CIO's Information Technology
Strategic Plan calls for the use of technology that makes
government transparent, available, and intuitive. To make
government more transparent, the plan calls for the state to
"deploy available technologies to allow Californians to offer
suggestions as part of the policy development and deliberative
process."
The current state of technology management in the executive
branch, as redesigned in 2007 and again in 2009, authorizes the
CIO as a cabinet-level agency, responsible for establishing and
enforcing IT strategic plans, policies, standards and enterprise
architecture, and the IT project review, approval, and oversight
program. It also integrates under the administration of the
CIO, the Office of Information Security and Privacy Protection -
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responsible for the promotion and protection of consumer
privacy, and the creation, issuance and maintenance of
information security and privacy policies, standards and
procedures directing state agencies to effectively manage
security and risk; the Department of Technology Services -
charged with maintaining the state's network and
telecommunications solutions, electronic messaging, and
information technology training, as well as administering a
number of large- scale data systems that are designed as
centralized, state level data bases such as those supporting
drivers' licensing and vehicle registration, California
government payroll, and the state's parolee database; and what
was formerly the Department of General Services,
Telecommunications Division.
This bill also calls for the use of the California K-12 High
Speed Network (K-12HSN), which is a state funded program
administered by the California Department of Education that
provides the California K-12 community with access to a reliable
high speed network. This network is designed to provide the
capacity to deliver high quality online resources to support
teaching and learning and promote academic achievement. The
K-12HSN does not create or originate AV transmissions, as a web
cast would, but can be used by Internet users on the network to
access those transmissions.
Committee amendments: Committee staff recommends the following
amendments to the bill:
1)Expand the type of television broadcast that could be used to
meet the requirements of the bill from only including "cable
television" to also include satellite, over-the-air, and any
other type of television broadcast. Cable television is only
one means of transmitting AV signals that can be viewed on a
television; since the intent of the bill is to make these
transmissions as widely accessible as possible, the media
allowed under this bill should be expanded to include all
forms of televised broadcasts that could be used to reach as
wide an audience as possible. This expansion also will act to
mediate any issues related to limited access to cable
television that might exist in low income or rural areas of
the state.
2)Clarify that the K-12HSN can be used to access the AV
transmission that originates as a web cast, rather than being
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used to create or originate the transmission. In other words,
the AV transmission will be created or originated as a
television broadcast or web cast, and then could be accessed
by anyone in the education community via the K-12HSN.
In addition, Committee staff has the following concerns about
this proposal, and recommends that the Committee and the author
track these concerns to determine whether clean-up legislation
will be necessary in the future.
1)Neither the SBE nor the SAB meet in the same location for
every meeting. The SBE generally meets in the board room of
the CDE building, and the SAB generally meets in the State
Capitol or the CDE board room. Live AV transmission from
these locations is possible and has already been implemented;
however, both boards periodically meet in alternate locations
that are sometimes not even in the city of Sacramento.
Broadcasting or web casting live video from those alternate
locations may not be possible, or may be very difficult and
costly. It may be necessary to consider in the future either
an exemption to these requirements or additional funding if
issues related to alternate meeting locations arise.
2)Television media and programming are not under the control of
the SBE or SAB. Thus if one of the boards is unable to web
cast for technical reasons and must meet the requirements of
this bill via telecast, that board may be in an adverse
bargaining position with a private vendor such as a cable or
satellite television company. This issue could result in the
imposition of higher costs on that board, such that additional
policy adjustments might be necessary.
3)Both boards have piloted or implemented a small scale web cast
that would meet the requirements of this bill; the SAB efforts
yielded slightly more than one hundred web cast viewers; if
the viewership becomes much larger, then greater bandwidth
capacity will be required to handle viewer access to the web
cast. This could create technical problems and cost issues
for any board that meets the requirements with a web cast.
Additional policy or budget actions may be necessary to
address these issues.
REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION :
Support
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AT&T
California School Boards Association
Los Angeles Unified School District
Riverside County Schools Advocacy Association
Small School Districts' Association
Opposition
None on file
Analysis Prepared by : Gerald Shelton / ED. / (916) 319-2087