BILL ANALYSIS �
AB 1362
Page 1
Date of Hearing: April 13, 2011
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION
Julia Brownley, Chair
AB 1362 (Nestande) - As Introduced: February 18, 2011
SUBJECT : Pupil attendance: electronic attendance accounting
systems
SUMMARY : Clarifies authorities and requirements related to the
use of electronic attendance accounting (EAA) systems.
Specifically, this bill :
1)Clarifies that attendance records from more than one
attendance accounting system, including manual and electronic
systems, may be combined to satisfy the requirement that
absences and attendance for each pupil be kept in a state
school register or central file.
2)Clarifies that local educational agencies are authorized to
use EAA systems approved by the California Department of
Education (CDE) to demonstrate that pupils have met minimum
instructional time requirements and to compute average daily
attendance (ADA) for funding purposes.
3)Requires EAA systems, for purposes of these provisions, to
track the original date and time of each data entry and to
uniquely identify the data recorder.
EXISTING LAW :
1)Requires pupil attendance in all schools and classes to be
recorded and kept according to statute and regulations.
2)Requires a state school register to be kept by every public
elementary school teacher except where:
a) The state school register is kept on behalf of the
teacher by a central office employee of the district.
b) The teacher's school keeps a central file of pupil
enrollment, absence and attendance on forms prescribed by
the CDE and where periodic reports are provided to the
district central office.
3)Requires the absence and attendance of each enrolled pupil to
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be kept in a state school register by the teacher or according
to the exceptions noted above.
4)Requires high school and junior high school attendance to be
kept on forms approved by the CDE.
5)Provides for the allocation of billions of dollars in
education funding on the basis of pupil attendance.
FISCAL EFFECT : Unknown
COMMENTS : The immediate supervision of pupils by a
certificated employee of the school district (i.e., a teacher)
not only lies at the heart of the state's mechanism for
delivering educational services, but is also the foundation of
the state's current attendance accounting and revenue limit
funding system. The bulk of funding for K-12 education in
California is provided on the basis of attendance, specifically
ADA. As a student attends class (within specified daily
minimums and maximums) more frequently, the district receives
greater credit toward ADA, and the district is provided a higher
level of funding. Attendance in class is implicitly equated to
'time on task', so that districts are funded on the basis of
students being in class and, thus, on task. With the allocation
of more than $30 billion in public school funding depending on
attendance, the durability, accuracy and security of the systems
used to collect and report pupil attendance information is
clearly important.
Historically, a teacher would log daily attendance of each
student in an attendance register or on forms which the CDE
approved; the teacher would then certify the information by
dating and signing the attendance register or form, providing
contemporaneous proof as to the accuracy and factual nature of
the attendance record. This proof was and is important in that
attendance and the records of attendance that local educational
agencies (LEAs) keep are heavily audited as part of the annual
independent financial and compliance audit that school districts
and county offices of education are required to conduct. For
those auditing purposes, the district must retain these signed
attendance forms for three years; any missing, misdated or
unsigned attendance form could be the basis of an audit finding
resulting in the reported attendance being disallowed.
Disallowed attendance means that the LEA was initially funded on
the basis of ADA that is now found to be over-reported, thus
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funding for the LEA is recalculated and the LEA may then be
required to repay funds to the state. Each year a number of
audits yield findings whereby attendance disallowed upon audit;
some findings amount to millions of dollars in lost funding to
local educational agencies.
More typically, current teachers record student attendance each
day electronically by computer, though many still record
attendance manually on a paper attendance roster. At the end of
the week, the teacher prints the attendance forms, reviews them
for accuracy, and certifies the attendance records by signing
and dating the forms. Thus an EAA system may still rely on a
manual signature or certification, thus creating a
contemporaneous paper record for audit purposes. Warehouses
full of stored paper attendance records are testament to the
fact that the full potential of electronic attendance accounting
is not being tapped in this type of EAA system.
In February 2008, the CDE notified all county and district
superintendents of the intent of the CDE to allow such local
educational agencies (LEAs) to replace manual teacher signatures
with digital signatures or other electronic certification
processes. CDE's authority for making this change comes from
the statutory requirement that the CDE approve all forms used in
attendance accounting systems, and thus the requirements of the
systems themselves; this statutory authority has been
historically interpreted to mean that the CDE may approve
attendance accounting systems of any design, as long as those
systems keep attendance and absence information in a manner that
satisfies audit requirements and is consistent with statutory
requirements in other areas such as pupil privacy . In an EAA
system with digital signatures or electronic certification, a
teacher uses a secure computerized system to enter a pupil's
attendance or absence, and then uses some form of secure
identification, such as a password, to certify the information
entered as correct. This online certification, or digital
signature, creates the contemporaneous record of the pupil's
attendance. In this type of system there is be no need to print
attendance forms or require a manual signature from the teacher
for auditing purposes. Auditors can draw audit samples from the
electronically certified attendance data, and LEAs are not
required to fill warehouses with stored paper attendance forms.
This approach may also reduce the risk of misplaced or unsigned
attendance forms that would lead to audit findings and lost
funding.
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In 2009 the CDE began approving EAA systems with digital
signatures and electronic certification; in order to implement
such a system, a local educational agency must seek approval
from the CDE and implement a system that minimally contains all
the following characteristics:
1)A current system based on manual signatures had to have been
previously approved for the local educational agency by the
CDE.
2)The EAA system has a procedure to track and verify that
initial attendance is entered on the same calendar day for
which the attendance is being recorded. Under certain
circumstances, such as wide-spread power outages or system
interruptions teachers may be allowed to electronically submit
and certify attendance on a subsequent day, but they must
retain the paper documentation on which attendance was
contemporaneously recorded.
3)The EAA system includes a report that lists the dates on which
data was entered or modified, and the employee identification
of the person or persons recording the attendance information.
4)The report in #3 above is readily accessible to teachers and
administrators for review.
5)There are adequate safeguards to ensure that any passwords or
secure employee identifiers are accessible only to the
employee for whom the password or identifier is created.
6)Submission of the EAA for CDE approval includes a letter from
the local educational agency's independent auditor, indicating
that the attendance accounting system has been reviewed by the
auditor and that the system's level of integrity is acceptable
to the auditor.
Even with CDE approval of an EAA system with digital signatures
and electronic certification, the local educational agency
remains responsible for the integrity of the attendance
information for the purposes of audit.
According to the author, this bill proposes to "Update
attendance accounting rules to allow for aggregate cumulative
minutes accounting using both manual "and" electronic reporting,
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if approved by the California Department of Education (CDE).
This change will help schools accelerate the move to already
authorized electronic attendance accounting and digital
signature reporting, which will help schools streamline
attendance accounting and achieve significant cost-savings."
Though this type of system, if proposed by a local educational
agency, would be within the authority of the CDE to approve, the
clarification that this bill provides is useful.
Committee amendments: Committee staff recommends the following
amendments:
1)Clarify pursuant to Section 44809 and existing Title 5
regulations that the EAA systems referenced in this bill are
approved by the CDE.
2)Clarify that a teacher or other employee uses the EEA system
to record attendance, rather than attendance being recorded by
a device.
3)In order to reinforce the state and federal protections on
pupil privacy that are already in place, clarify that nothing
in this bill authorizes the use of any technology that either
implements or creates the potential for electronic tracking of
students, or the collection or dissemination of pupil data
beyond attendance and absences.
REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION :
Support
California Charter Schools Association
EdVoice
Opposition
None on file
Analysis Prepared by : Gerald Shelton / ED. / (916) 319-2087