BILL ANALYSIS Ó Senate Appropriations Committee Fiscal Summary Senator Christine Kehoe, Chair AB 848 (Campos) Hearing Date: 08/25/2011 Amended: 05/11/2011 Consultant: Jacqueline Wong-HernandezPolicy Vote: Education 7-2 _________________________________________________________________ ____ BILL SUMMARY: AB 848 requires programs receiving state apprenticeship funding through the Department of Education (CDE) or the California Community Colleges (CCC) for building and trade programs to report specified outcome data annually. _________________________________________________________________ ____ Fiscal Impact (in thousands) Major Provisions 2011-12 2012-13 2013-14 Fund Program reporting Potentially significant costs / savings Local/General* CDE and CCC administration Minor and absorbable workload increase General *Counts toward meeting the Proposition 98 minimum funding guarantee. _________________________________________________________________ ____ STAFF COMMENTS: SUSPENSE FILE. Apprenticeship programs, overseen by the Division of Apprenticeship Standards (DAS) in the Department of Industrial Relations (DIR), offer on-the-job training and classroom related and supplemental instruction (RSI). According to the DAS, each program operates under apprenticeship training standards agreed to by labor and/or management in accordance with state and federal law. Local education agencies (LEAs) and CCCs partner with apprenticeship program sponsors in sharing the responsibility for RSI development and delivery. LEAs and CCCs receive funding based on the actual number of RSI coursework hours provided. Each LEA is capped on the number of hours of instruction it can claim for reimbursement. The 2010-11 AB 848 (Campos) Page 1 Budget Act allocated $15.7 million (Prop 98/General Fund) for CDE apprenticeship programs, and further required programs to be reimbursed $5.04 per instructional hour. According to the CDE, 35,000 of the 60,000 registered apprentices in California are enrolled in programs affiliated with the CDE or LEAs. Since 2009, this funding for CCCs has been part of categorical flexibility; CCCs are permitted to use these program funds for virtually any education purpose and are not subject to reporting requirements for use of that funding. This bill requires recipients of reimbursements for RSI provided to apprentices in the building and construction trades to report specified information prior to receiving reimbursement. Specifically, programs must report the number and percentage of apprentices who received postsecondary educational credit, the amount of credit, and the number and percentage of apprentice graduates who completed a postsecondary degree. This bill requires Superintendent of Public instruction or the CCC Chancellor to determine the format for collection and presentation of the required information and, upon request, provide the information to the DAR and DIR. Both the CDE and the CCC Chancellor's office have indicated that the activities required by this bill would be minor, and the workload absorbable within existing resources. The bill's requirements for collecting and reporting student and former student data are imposed on individual participating LEAs and CCCs, and those entities will bear the bulk of the expense and workload for compliance. Collecting data on former students (apprentice graduates) will be far more difficult than current student data, and programs will be forced to devote staffing resources to collecting and managing data. This bill would require every student be somehow tracked through postsecondary education, even if he or she completed the apprenticeship program in high school. Data collection and reporting could increase program costs at the local level, and divert staff resources. This bill does not impose a state mandate, because institutional participation in offering apprenticeship programs is voluntary. However, to the extent that the newly required data is difficult to collect, institutions may opt not to participate, reducing both program opportunities and state reimbursement expenditures. Moreover, if the reporting institutions participate in the AB 848 (Campos) Page 2 programs but do not adequately meet the reporting requirements, reimbursements cannot be issued and that money would revert back to the General Fund for other Proposition 98 purposes.