BILL ANALYSIS �
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Date of Hearing: April 23, 2013
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON HIGHER EDUCATION
Das Williams, Chair
AB 806 (Wilk) - As Amended: April 11, 2013
SUBJECT : Community colleges: salaries of classroom
instructors.
SUMMARY : Revises the "current expense of education" at the
California Community Colleges (CCC), for purposes of the 50%
law, to include academic salaries, as defined, including the
salaries of librarians, counselors, and department chairs,
commencing with the 2014-15 academic year. Specifically, this
bill :
1)Revises the following definitions to expand the faculty
salaries that count toward a district's current expense of
education:
i) "Academic salaries" means expenditures for salaries
of employees in academic positions that require minimum
qualifications established by the CCC Board of Governors
(BOG);
ii) "Educational administrators salaries and benefits"
means expenditures for salaries and health and welfare
benefits of administrators who are employed in an
academic position designated by the governing board of
the district as having direct responsibility for
supervising the operation of or formulating policy
regarding the instructional or student services program
of the college or district, including but not limited to,
chancellors, presidents, and other supervisory or
management employees designated by the governing board as
educational administrators; and,
iii) "Instructional aide salaries" means expenditures for
salaries of classified employees where any portion of
their duties required to be performed under the
supervision of an academic employee providing classroom
instruction.
2)Revises the definition of "salaries of classroom instructors"
that count toward a district's current expense of education to
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include all instructor activities and the health and welfare
benefits provided to instructional aides, as defined.
3)Authorizes the CCC BOG to establish a compliance committee as
follows:
a) To review the auditing procedures adopted pursuant to
existing law to develop ways to ensure compliance with the
50% law as revised by this bill.
b) To review local district auditing procedures and
recommend to the BOG any changes to the procedures
published in the California Community Colleges Budget and
Accounting Manual that may be necessary to achieve the
current expense of education requirements as revised by
this bill.
c) To be comprised of the following:
i) The CCC Chancellor;
ii) One certified public accountant, to be selected by
the board, who is licensed by the California Board of
Accountants and has prepared an annual audit, as
specified;
iii) One exclusive representative of classified employees
of a district, to be selected by the BOG; and,
iv) One district administrator, to be selected by the
BOG.
4)Make technical and clarifying changes.
5)Makes these provisions operative on July 1, 2014.
Existing law :
1)Requires each CCC district expend 50% of its current expense
of education, as defined, for payment of classroom
instructors, as defined. This is also known as "the 50% law."
(Education Code � 84362)
2)Requires each CCC district to contract for an independent
financial audit, which according to the CCC Chancellor's
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Office, must include an independent assessment of each
district's computation of compliance with the 50% law is a
required component of the audit. (EC � 840430)
FISCAL EFFECT : Unknown
COMMENTS : Background . Since 1961, existing law has required
that each CCC district expend 50% of its current expense of
education, as defined, for payment of classroom instructors.
According to the CCC Chancellor's office, "current expense of
education" generally includes the unrestricted general fund
expenditures of a CCC district and excludes things such as
student transportation, food services, community services,
leases for plant equipment, and other costs specified in law and
regulations, as well as amounts expended from State Lottery
proceeds.
"Salaries of classroom instructors" is defined as salaries paid
to instructors for the actual portion of the salary spent in the
classroom, salaries of instructional aides performing duties
under the supervision of an instructor, and the cost of all
health and welfare benefits provided to instructors.
Need for the bill . According to the author, the 50% law was
originally enacted to promote class size reduction when junior
colleges and K-12 were one system, by allocating more funding to
hire instructors to reduce the number of students in each
classroom. Since that time, there have been considerable
changes to CCC instruction, authorizing more responsibility for
faculty members. However, many of these activities, such as
counseling and librarian services, are not considered part of
"classroom instruction," thus falling on the "wrong" side of the
50% calculation.
This bill would count faculty who serve in roles related to
instruction but do not provide "classroom instruction" on the
same side of the 50% law as classroom instructors, including
counselors, librarians, faculty coordinators, department chairs,
and faculty directors of programs (such as Extended Opportunity
Programs and Services and Disabled Support Programs and
Services).
Reports and related efforts .
1)Auditor's report. The Bureau of State Audits issued a report
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in October 2000 that noted that CCC districts were not
accurately reporting the level of resources dedicated to
instructor salaries. The report cited poor oversight as the
underlying cause and noted that the Chancellor's office gives
little guidance or training to the districts on calculating
their compliance with the 50% law. It also noted that the
Chancellor's office relies primarily on district-hired CPAs to
verify whether the districts reports are accurate, but because
these CPAs use inadequate audit procedures developed by the
Chancellor's office, they fail to discover errors. The BSA
specifically recommended that the Chancellor's office:
Clarify its instructions;
Provide the districts with regular training on
compliance;
Discontinue its existing practice of excluding
non-instructional activities not enumerated in the 50% law
or seek an opinion from the Attorney General to support its
interpretation of the law as reflected in regulations;
Expand suggested audit procedures for district CPAs to
detect errors in risky areas, such as faculty reassignments
and exclusions from current educational expenses; and,
Perform routine, independent checks of the work CPAs do
for the districts.
The Chancellor's office reports that, with the assistance of
the Association of Chief Business Officers, they have taken
action to respond to all recommendations made by the BSA.
1)Institute for Higher Education Leadership & Policy (IHELP)
report. In February 2007, IHELP released Rules of the Game:
How State Policy Creates Barriers to Degree Completion and
Impedes Student Success in the California Community Colleges,
raising concerns about the low rates of completion in the CCC
and citing state and system policies as a major cause.
Among the specific policy barriers identified in the report
was the 50% law. The report noted, "Most significant is the
law that each college must spend at least 50% of its budget on
direct classroom instruction - on the salaries and benefits of
faculty for their classroom teaching. This means that
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colleges face strict limits on what they can spend on staff
who provide support services that are essential to so many of
today's CCC students, such as academic advisors, financial aid
advisors, information technology consultants, health care
staff, and orientation leaders. Also on the "wrong" side of
the 50% is the time that faculty spend working with students
outside of the classroom, such as advising, working with
student organizations, or updating curricula." The report
notes that, in combination with other such laws, the result is
the hiring of a mix of faculty and staff that may not be
optimal to ensure student success, spending of funds on lower
priorities than those that could promote greater student
success, and spending scarce time and money documenting and
justifying inputs instead of outcomes.
2)Legislative Analyst's Office (LAO) report. In its June 2008
report, Back to Basics: Improving College Readiness of
Community College Students, the LAO recommended, among other
things, that giving colleges' fiscal flexibility to provide
students with the appropriate mix of classroom instruction and
counseling services would assist colleges to identify, place,
and advise basic skills students. The LAO also noted that
orientation and counseling are constrained by the current 50%
law and must compete for a limited portion of a district's
funding, in some cases, resulting in funding these services at
a level lower than what a campus would otherwise desire. The
LAO specifically recommended that the 50% law be amended to
include counseling staff in order to better serve students'
interests.
3)Student Success Task Force. Numerous recent studies have
noted that a significant percentage of students who are able
to enroll in CCC courses do not complete in a timely fashion.
These poor student success rates led to the enactment of SB
1143 of 2010, requiring the CCC BOG to convene a task force of
stakeholders to make recommendations to the Legislature to
improve CCC student success. This effort resulted in 22
specific recommendations, adopted unanimously by the CCC BOG
in January 2012.
Central to these recommendations was the need to improve how
CCCs assists students, early in their academic careers, to
identify an educational goal and develop an education plan to
achieve that goal. These recommendations have been
implemented through regulatory changes, system-wide
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administrative policies, local best practices, and legislation
(SB 1456, Lowenthal, Chapter 624, Statutes of 2012) that
created the Student Success Act of 2012. Under SB 1456,
students who identify an educational goal and develop an
education plan receive improved support through counseling,
advisement, orientation, assessment, and education planning.
Arguments in support . The Association of California Community
College Administrators states that this bill would make some
small but needed adjustments to keep the 50% rule in place but
to modernize the definition of true costs directly associated to
instruction and include them in the right side of the equation.
College of the Canyons states that many services that enhance
student success fall outside the allowable 50% law expenditures,
particularly counselors, and while the Legislature recognized
the importance of counseling activities by passing SB 1456, it
will be very difficult to implement under the funding
constraints created by the 50% law.
Arguments in opposition . The California Teachers Association
argues this bill will dilute the funding spent on classroom
instruction, thereby providing a net gain to the amount of
monies spent outside the classroom on administration and other
purposes. The Faculty Association of California Community
Colleges (FACCC) states, "Additionally, passage of this measure
could actually limit the hiring of this corps and/or decrease
the percentage of full-time faculty in a district. This is
because unless a counselor or librarian is teaching a class,
they do not produce Full-Time Equivalent Students, a calculation
used by the state to determine funding levels per student."
FACCC suggests that instead of altering the 50% law, the
Legislature increase funding for counselors and librarians, both
of which are integral to student success.
Prior legislation . AB 906 (Eng) of 2007, which died in the
Senate Education Committee, would have increased the 50%
threshold to 53% and included the salaries of counselors and
librarians.
REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION :
Support
Association of California Community College Administrators
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College of the Canyons
Opposition
California Federation of Teachers
California Teachers Association
Faculty Association of California Community Colleges
Analysis Prepared by : Sandra Fried / HIGHER ED. / (916)
319-3960