BILL ANALYSIS Ó
Senate Appropriations Committee Fiscal Summary
Senator Christine Kehoe, Chair
AB 288 (Fong)
Hearing Date: 08/25/2011 Amended: 06/15/2011
Consultant: Jacqueline Wong-HernandezPolicy Vote: Education 10-0
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BILL SUMMARY: AB 288 requires a student enrolling in a
California community college (CCC) to disclose his/her prior
expulsion from another community college district and authorizes
the governing board of a community college district to deny
enrollment, permit enrollment, or permit conditional enrollment
to a student who has been expelled, or is being considered for
expulsion, from another district for specified offenses within
the preceding 5 years. This bill requires community college
districts to consider specified factors in their decisions to
deny enrollment, permit enrollment, or permit conditional
enrollment of specified students. This bill further requires
that if a CCC receives a request from another CCC for
information in determining whether an applicant poses danger to
the physical safety of others, the college must respond within
five working days.
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Fiscal Impact (in thousands)
Major Provisions 2011-12 2012-13 2013-14
Fund
Mandate: enrollment process Potentially significant
reimbursable mandate General
Mandate: information requests Potentially significant
reimbursable mandate General
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STAFF COMMENTS: SUSPENSE FILE. AS PROPOSED TO BE AMENDED.
Existing law requires CCCs to admit any California resident
possessing a high school diploma or equivalent, and permits the
admission of certain other students. Under existing law, CCCs
may only exclude "students of filthy or vicious habits, or
students suffering from contagious or infectious diseases" and
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"may exclude from attendance in regular classes students whose
physical or mental disability is such as to cause his or her
attendance to be inimical to the welfare of other students."
CCCs may expel students in certain circumstances, including when
the presence of the student causes a continuing danger to the
physical safety of the student or others. Students who are
expelled may enroll at CCCs in other districts, and information
about expelled students is generally not known to the new campus
of enrollment.
This bill is intended to authorize CCCs to deny or conditionally
enroll students (instead of automatically enrolling them) who
have been expelled from other community college districts in the
past 5 years, or are currently undergoing expulsion proceedings
for having: A) committed or attempted to commit murder; B)
caused, attempted to cause, or threatened to cause physical
injury to another person, including assault or battery, as
defined, except in self-defense; C) committed or attempted to
commit a sexual assault, as defined, or committed sexual
battery, as defined; D) committed or attempted to commit
kidnapping, or seized, confined, inveigled, enticed, decoyed,
abducted, concealed, kidnapped, or carried away another person
by any means with the intent to hold or detain that person for
ransom or reward; E) Committed or attempted to commit robbery;
F) committed stalking, as defined; or, D) possessed, sold, or
otherwise furnished a firearm, knife, explosive, or other
dangerous objects.
This bill seeks to establish new authority for CCCs to be able
to restrict admission in the interest of campus safety, and to
use a standard more specific than excluding students with
"filthy or vicious habits". In creating the elective authority,
however, this bill appears to create new reimbursable mandates
on CCCs.
First, this bill requires that any student who has been
previously expelled from a community college in the state for
any of the actions listed above to inform the CCC to which he or
she is seeking admission of the prior expulsion. It further
specifies that "failure to do so shall be considered by the
district in determining whether to grant admission, and a
written record of the fact shall be maintained by the district
with the applicant's file." These requirements would likely
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necessitate that CCC admissions staff have a procedure for
receiving this declaration, maintaining it (even if only to
prove that the expulsion was not reported), and reporting it to
the governing board so that the board may determine whether or
not to take action on the information. These requirements impose
additional duties on CCCs that are likely to be reimbursable.
Second, upon receiving expulsion information, certain procedures
are outlined for the governing board, and it is unclear whether
they are permitted or required. Specifically, subdivision (a)
states that before taking action to deny enrollment or permit
conditional enrollment the governing board shall hold a hearing,
as specified. Presumably, these requirements, and the subsequent
right for a student to appeal, would only apply to governing
boards which elect to consider restriction or denial of
enrollment. Thus, they would not constitute a mandate. However,
by specifying that a student's failure to disclose an expulsion
"shall be considered" by the district in determining admission,
it implies that if a CCC discovered that a student failed to
disclose his or her expulsion its governing board would be
required to consider that information in deciding the student's
admission (presumably, in a hearing that the bill requires for
any consideration of restricting or denying admission).
Subdivision (h) sets out blanket language that this section
should "not be construed to impose any duty on a community
college district to review applicants for admission or review
previously enrolled students, whether returning or continuing,
or to conduct a hearing in response to the receipt of any
information regarding a potential, former, or existing student."
The author may wish to consider clarifying language to reconcile
these provisions.
Third, this bill allows the CCC at which a student is seeking
admission to request information from another community college
district in determining whether the applicant continues to pose
a danger to the physical safety of others, and requires that the
community college district respond within 5 working days. This
bill does not specify the exact information that can be
requested, but presumably it would be expulsion and other
disciplinary information. This constitutes a new mandate on
CCCs. While the workload associated with responding to (what
will likely be few) information requests in a given year is
likely minor, there may be associated costs with establishing a
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policy for sharing sensitive student behavior information. It is
likely that individual districts would have to determine how
requests will be verified, who will handle the requests, and
what information will be shared. The cost of establishing new
procedures is unclear, but would likely be deemed reimbursable
(along with the request processing workload) if the CCCs file a
mandate claim.
AS PROPOSED TO BE AMENDED: Proposed amendments would clarify
that no hearing or investigation is required of the enrolling
CCC, only authorized.