BILL ANALYSIS                                                                                                                                                                                                    Ó



                                                                  AB 339
                                                                  Page  1

          Date of Hearing:   May 4, 2011

                        ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
                                Felipe Fuentes, Chair

                    AB 339 (Bonilla) - As Amended:  April 6, 2011 

          Policy Committee:                              Education 
          Vote:7-2

          Urgency:     No                   State Mandated Local Program: 
          No     Reimbursable:              No

           SUMMARY  

          This bill requires the State Board of Education (SBE) to adopt 
          regulations to govern the social content reviews conducted at 
          the request of a publisher or manufacturer of instructional 
          materials (IM) outside the primary IM adoption process.  
          Specifically, this bill:  

          1)Requires social content reviews of IM to be conducted by the 
            State Department of Education (SDE) or its agents for IM 
            pursuant to existing statute and the guidelines for social 
            content adopted by the SBE.  This measure also authorizes SDE 
            to contract with agents to conduct these reviews.  

          2)Requires SDE to assess a fee on a publisher or manufacturer in 
            an amount that does not exceed the reasonable costs to the SDE 
            to conduct a social content review.  

           FISCAL EFFECT  

          GF costs of approximately $100,000 to $200,000 to the SDE to 
          conduct social content reviews.  According to SDE, they 
          contracted out to county offices of education to conduct 
          approximately 100 reviews in the 2009-10 fiscal year.  This bill 
          authorizes the SDE to assess a fee to cover all costs for these 
          reviews.  Likewise, the measure also requires the revenue 
          generated from these fees to be budgeted as a reimbursement and 
          subject to review through the annual budget process.  

           COMMENTS  

           1)Purpose  .  Current law requires IM to accurately and equitably 








                                                                  AB 339
                                                                  Page  2

            portray the cultural and racial diversity of American society, 
            the male and female roles, and the contributions of minority 
            groups and males and females to the development of California 
            and the United States.  Statute also prohibits IM from 
            containing inappropriate references to commercial brand names 
            or companies.    

            Prior to January 1, 2011, statute required the SBE to adopt 
            regulations to govern the social content reviews conducted at 
            the request of an IM publisher outside the primary and 
            follow-up IM adoption processes.  This bill, sponsored by the 
            Superintendent of Public Instruction (SPI), reinstates this 
            requirement.  The SPI argues this bill is necessary to ensure 
            supplemental IM (IM not adopted by the SBE) used in California 
            classrooms accurately portray cultural diversity, demonstrate 
            the contribution of minority groups, and do not contain 
            inappropriate references to commercial brand names, products, 
            and corporate logos. 

           2)IM flexibility and adoption process  .  AB 2 X4 (Evans), Chapter 
            2, Statutes of 2009, specified that local education agencies 
            (LEAs) are not required to purchase IM through the 2012-13 
            fiscal year.  Consistent with the non-purchasing requirement, 
            Chapter 2 also suspended the requirement for SBE to adopt IM 
            or conduct other procedures associated with adoption (i.e., 
            adopting curriculum frameworks) until the 2013-14 fiscal year 
            (FY).  SB 70 (Committee on Budget and Fiscal Review), Chapter 
            7, Statutes of 2011, extended this flexibility by two years, 
            until 2014-15.     

          Prior to the enactment of AB 2 X4 (Evans), Chapter 2, Statutes 
            of 2009, statute required the SBE to adopt basic IM in the 
            core academic content areas (ELA, mathematics, history/social 
            science, and science) every six years for use in grades K-8. 
            It also established a schedule for the adoption of IM in other 
            subjects.  Statute also required the SBE to adopt statewide 
            academically rigorous content standards in the core curriculum 
            areas. These content standards are implemented through the 
            curriculum frameworks, as adopted by SBE. The adopted IM must 
            be consistent with the criteria and standards of quality 
            prescribed in the adopted curriculum frameworks. The 
            development of curriculum frameworks is a multi-year process.  
            Also, the governing board of each school district maintaining 
            one or more high schools is authorized to adopt IM for use in 
            the high schools (grades 9-12) under its control.    








                                                                  AB 339
                                                                  Page  3


           3)Related legislation  .  

             a)   AB 250 (Brownley), pending in the Assembly Education 
               Committee, attempts to revise the IM adoption process, 
               including the role of the CDSMC.  

             b)   SB 140 (Lowenthal), pending in the Senate Appropriations 
               Committee, establishes a streamlined process for the 
               state-level adoption of instructional materials that are 
               aligned with the Common Core Academic Content standards, 
               and expands the authority of local school boards to adopt 
               instructional materials to include K-8 schools. 

               

           Analysis Prepared by  :    Kimberly Rodriguez / APPR. / (916) 
          319-2081