BILL ANALYSIS �
AB 814
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Date of Hearing: April 16, 2013
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON HUMAN SERVICES
Mark Stone, Chair
AB 814 (Bradford) - As Amended: April 10, 2013
SUBJECT : CalWORKs eligibility: truancy
SUMMARY : Eliminates the double penalty assessed against
CalWORKs recipients for truancy
Specifically, this bill :
1)Requires school attendance for any child in a CalWORKs
assistance unit who is 16 years of age or older and subject to
compulsory school attendance requirement, unless he or she is
eligible for Cal-Learn, and eliminates the school attendance
requirement, solely for CalWORKs eligibility purposes, for
children in the assistance unit under 16 years of age.
2)Requires counties to inform CalWORKs applicants and recipients
of the school attendance requirement for children in the
assistance unit who are 16 years of age or older.
3)Requires a CalWORKs recipient to provide the county with
documentation containing school attendance information for all
children in the assistance unit who are required to attend
school, as specified, when the county determines it is
necessary to determine CalWORKs eligibility.
4)Deletes the requirement that a recipient parent lose aid due
to a child in the assistance unit under age 16 not meeting the
school attendance requirement within CalWORKs eligibility
criteria.
5)Requires counties to document that a child over 16 years of
age has been offered a meaningful opportunity to be engaged in
the creation of his or her welfare-to-work plan, including an
age-appropriate assessment, prior to reducing a family's aid
due to that child not meeting the school attendance
requirement for CalWORKs eligibility.
6)Provides that children not regularly attending school either
because they have graduated, or because they have dropped out,
shall be encouraged to return to school or to pursue a
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welfare-to-work plan that includes obtaining a high school
degree or a certificate, completing an apprenticeship program,
or enrolling in an institution of higher education.
7)Authorizes counties to establish a program, apart from the
Cal-Learn program, that provides an incentive to teenagers and
young adults who receive benefits, or who are members of an
assistance unit that receives benefits, to earn a high school
diploma or its equivalent.
8)Requires counties to consider a recipient's obligation to
compel a child or children to attend school pursuant to
California Education Code requirements, including the related
fiscal and penal consequences for failure to comply with that
obligation, when doing any of the following:
a) Developing a CalWORKs recipient's welfare-to-work plan;
b) Evaluating a recipient's need for exemptions from
welfare-to-work requirements; and
c) Determining which supportive services a recipient needs
in order to comply with a signed welfare-to-work plan.
EXISTING LAW
CalWORKs
1)Establishes under federal law the Temporary Assistance for
Needy Families (TANF) program to provide welfare-to-work
services to eligible families. In California, TANF funds for
welfare-to-work services are administered through the
California Work Opportunity and Responsibility to Kids
(CalWORKs) program.
2)Exempts children receiving CalWORKs aid who are under 16 years
of age, or over 16 years of age and attending school full
time, from welfare-to-work requirements.
3)Requires all children in a CalWORKs assistance unit to attend
school, provided they are subject to the state compulsory
education requirement and are not eligible for Cal-Learn.
4)Requires counties to inform CalWORKs applicants and recipients
of the school attendance requirement for eligibility purposes,
and requires the information to be included in a recipient's
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welfare-to-work plan.
5)Requires a CalWORKs recipient to cooperate in providing a
county with documentation of regular school attendance of all
applicable children in the assistance unit when the county
determines it is appropriate.
6)Prohibits an aid payment for any adult in the assistance unit
if it is determined by the county that any eligible child in
the family under age 16 is not regularly attending school, as
required, unless the county determines that good cause exists.
7)Prohibits an aid payment for any child in the assistance unit
who is 16 years of age or older and not meeting the school
attendance requirement, unless the county determines that good
cause exists.
Education
8)Requires each person between the ages of 6 and 18 years, not
otherwise exempted, to be subject to compulsory full-time
education and attend a public full-time day school or
continuation school or classes, and that each parent, guardian
or other person having control or charge of the pupil ensure
that pupil's enrollment and attendance.
9)Defines a "truant" as any pupil subject to compulsory
full-time education or to compulsory continuation education
who is absent from school without a valid excuse three full
days in one school year or tardy or absent for more than a
30-minute period during the school day without a valid excuse
on three occasions in one school year, or any combination
thereof.
10)Defines "chronic truant" as any pupil subject to compulsory
full-time education or to compulsory continuation education
who is absent from school without a valid excuse for 10
percent or more of the schooldays in one school year, as
specified.
11)Establishes a process for notifying a pupil's parent of the
pupil's truancy and provides that, upon the fourth truancy
report, a pupil shall be within the jurisdiction of the
juvenile court, which may adjudge the pupil to be a ward of
the court.
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12)Provides that a parent or guardian of a pupil of six years of
age or older and in Kindergarten or any of Grades 1 through 8,
whose child is a chronic truant, and who has failed to
reasonably supervise and encourage the pupil's school
attendance, is guilty of a misdemeanor punishable by a fine
not exceeding $2,000, or by imprisonment in the county jail
not exceeding one year, or by both that fine and imprisonment.
FISCAL EFFECT : Unknown
BACKGROUND
The California Work Opportunity and Responsibility to Kids
(CalWORKs) program provides monthly income assistance and
employment-related services aimed at moving children out of
poverty and helping families meet basic needs. Federal funding
for CalWORKs comes from the Temporary Assistance for Needy
Families (TANF) block grant. The average monthly cash grant for
a family of three (one parent and two children) on CalWORKs is
$465. CalWORKs grants are used to pay rent, buy clothing, pay
utilities bills, and pay for other basic needs to ensure
children can be cared for at home and remain safely with their
families. According to January 2013 data from the California
Department of Social Services, 564,041 families rely on
CalWORKs, including over one million children. Nearly half of
the children on CalWORKs are under age six.
According to the California Center for Research on Women and
Families (CCRWF), 92% of heads of households in CalWORKs
recipient families are women. Two-thirds of the heads of
household are single parents and have never married. While
nearly one-third of CalWORKs heads of household have a high
school diploma or equivalent, half have 11th grade or less
education. Educational achievement for many parents receiving
CalWORKs benefits has been stifled by learning disabilities
(estimated to affect 10 to 28 percent), mental or emotional
health problems (estimated to affect 19 to 33 percent), domestic
abuse they've experienced during their lifetimes (reported by 80
percent), and other detrimental life experiences.
CalLearn
The Cal-Learn program helps pregnant and parenting teens who
under age 19 and receiving CalWORKs attend and graduate high
school, or its equivalent, through coordinated services.
Through the program, teens receive intensive case management
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services, payments necessary for child care, transportation, and
educational expenses that enable teens in the program to attend
school. Cal-Learn also includes bonuses and sanctions
(financial incentives and disincentives) to encourage school
attendance and good grades. School attendance requirements for
the purpose of establishing CalWORKs eligibility does not
directly apply to teens in a recipient household who are
eligible for Cal-Learn because of the more rigorous school
attendance, participation, and grade reporting requirements they
are already subject to in the Cal-Learn program.
COMMENTS
School attendance barriers and impacts for low-income students
California Department of Education data for 2010-11 reported a
truancy rate of 29.74%; 1.837 million students out of a total
enrollment of 6.2 million (not including non-public schools)
were considered truants.
In 2012, the Los Angeles County School Attendance Task Force
released a report that links school attendance to long-term
outcomes for students. The report cites the following facts for
younger low-income students:
The negative impact of absences on literacy is 75% larger for
low-income children, whose families often lack the resources
to make up for lost time on task.
Poor children are four times more likely to be chronically
absent in kindergarten than their highest-income peers.
Chronic absence in kindergarten predicts unsatisfactory
fifth-grade outcomes for poor children.
The report also outlines the barriers to school attendance that
many poor students face, as well as the disproportionate
application of punitive measures to mitigate truancy in
low-income neighborhoods. According to the report, children in
poverty are more likely to have poor school attendance due to
the lack of basic health and safety supports. They often
experience unstable housing, limited access to health care,
limited and poor transportation options, inadequate food and
clothing, neighborhood violence that obstructs safe paths to
school, and chaotic school environments that fuel poor-quality
educational programs. The Task Force found that the daytime
curfew ordinance in the City of Los Angeles (which often results
in tickets and fines for students that aren't in the classroom
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during the school day) disproportionately impacts low-income
communities and families who are least able to pay the fines.
Disproportionate impact of the double penalty
SB 1317 (Leno) Chapter 647, Statutes of 2010, defined a chronic
truant as a pupil subject to compulsory full-time education who
is absent from school without a valid excuse for 10% or more
days within the school year. Additionally, the bill established
that a parent who fails to reasonably supervise and encourage a
pupil's required school attendance, after being offered
language-accessible services to address the pupil's truancy, is
guilty of a misdemeanor punishable by a fine not exceeding
$2,000, or by imprisonment in the county jail not exceeding one
year, or by both that fine and imprisonment. While the primary
objective of this legislation was to reduce truancy through
penalizing parents, there was no consideration of how the new
penalty would affect parents in CalWORKs households, which are
already subject to a monetary penalty (through grant reduction)
for children in the household that don't meet compulsory school
attendance requirements.
School attendance requirement for aid eligibility in other
states
Whereas all 50 states in the US implement policies to address
truancy, the National Conference on State Legislatures (NCSL)
reports that 42 states' truancy laws establish penalties for
truancy that include monetary fines, jail time, legal
proceedings involving the parent(s), or some combination of
these penalties. Data from the Urban Institute reveals that, as
of 2011, 36 states require school attendance for children in a
TANF assistance unit when determining a family's eligibility for
aid.
In states like California, in which an aided family faces a
double penalty for children in the household who are deemed to
be truant, application of truancy laws treat families in poverty
worse than families who don't receive assistance, and the
compounding consequences, including elevated stress levels in
the home and a thrust into deeper poverty, can be far greater.
Without facing a double penalty for truancy, a family that does
not receive public assistance-and therefore doesn't necessarily
have their monthly income tied to school attendance-often has a
greater ability to actively participate in improving their
child's school attendance, in addition to being more likely to
have the resources needed to pay any fines associated with the
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truancy penalty. However, aided families with already limited
resources, and often inflexible work schedules that don't allow
them to ensure their children attend school, face fines they
cannot afford to pay, in addition to the loss of some or all of
their minimal monthly assistance.
Linking school attendance and welfare-to-work plans
While current law requires CalWORKs applicants and recipients to
be informed of the school attendance requirement for eligibility
and requires the information to be noted in a parent's
welfare-to-work plan, there is no requirement for counties to
factor in a family's needs in order to ensure adequate school
attendance into the plan. In other words, a parent's
welfare-to-work plan may include work placement with an early
start to the work day or late work hours at a job that is
located far from the family's home or far from a child's school.
This can easily result in children taking mass transit alone,
walking themselves to school, and returning home alone, all of
which contribute to safety concerns, limit opportunities for
parental involvement in ensuring school attendance, and increase
the likelihood of poor school attendance.
Need for the bill
By aligning truancy penalties for families on CalWORKs with
penalties imposed on all other families, this bill will remove
the double truancy penalty for families that already live in
poverty and face barriers to employment, education, and
achieving self-sufficiency.
According to the Author:
"AB 814 would protect the poorest, most vulnerable
Californians by eliminating a double-penalty in truancy
law? The double-penalties are hurting the people who can
least afford it. AB 814 would remove the attendance
requirement as a condition to receiving CalWORKs benefits,
and cross-reference the truancy penalties created by SB
1317. In doing so, this bill will provide stability for
poor school children and their families that will
ultimately benefit the state."
In support, 9 to 5 California states:
"While there is no data concerning the impact of truancy
laws and penalties on low-income children [in California],
data from other states confirm that these policies can have
a negative impact on poor and very poor families. This is
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not only because families who live with incomes below the
federal poverty level (FPL) struggle to maintain regular
school attendance for their children, but also because
financial penalties ?can be further destabilizing to the
family."
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PRIOR LEGISLATION
AB 2616 (Carter) Chapter 432, Statutes of 2012, sought to make
truancy laws less punitive by redefining "valid excuse" and
amending other provisions related to procedures following
truancy reports.
SB 1317 (Leno) Chapter 647, Statutes of 2010, created a new
misdemeanor for parents who fail to supervise and encourage a
pupil's school attendance.
REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION :
Support
Western Center on Law and Poverty - Sponsor
9to5 California, National Association of Working Women
Asian Law Alliance
California Catholic Conference of Bishops
California Pan-Ethnic Health Network (CPEHN)
California School Health Centers Association
California School health Centers Association
California United for a Responsible Budget
California Women's Law Center (CWLC)
Children's Defense Fund-California (CDF-CA)
Coalition of California Welfare Rights Organizations, Inc.
Gay-Straight Alliance Network
Gay-Straight Alliance Network
Greenlining Institute
Justice Now
Sacramento Housing Alliance
Opposition
None on file
Analysis Prepared by : Myesha Jackson / HUM. S. / (916)
319-2089