BILL ANALYSIS �
AB 814
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Date of Hearing: May 1, 2013
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
Mike Gatto, Chair
AB 814 (Bradford) - As Amended: April 10, 2013
Policy Committee: Human
ServicesVote:5 - 2
Urgency: No State Mandated Local Program:
Yes Reimbursable: Yes
SUMMARY
This bill eliminates the penalty assessed against CalWORKs
recipients for their children's truancy, if those children are
less than 16 years old. 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
a compulsory school attendance requirement.
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 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.
4)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.
FISCAL EFFECT
1)Data suggests that approximately 65% of the over 1 million
CalWORKs children are between the ages of 6 and 15. Recent
Department of Education data suggests that approximately 30%
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of school age children are considered truant. If one quarter
of CalWORKs parents with truant children are being assessed a
3-month penalty, removing that penalty could cost the state
approximately $20 million per year in increased CalWORKs grant
costs (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families
[TANF]/Maintenance of Effort [MOE]).
2)Cost pressure in excess of $10 million (TANF/MOE) per year to
the extent counties actually develop a Cal-Learn style program
to provide incentives to truant students between the ages of
16 and 18.
COMMENTS
1)Purpose . This bill is intended to eliminate what the author
refers to as a double penalty for CalWORKs parents with truant
children. The author argues that parents of truant children
already face penalties under the law and that it is unfair to
penalize CalWORKs parents twice, by reducing the CalWORKs
grant in addition to assessing other penalties. In order to
accomplish this, the bill removes the attendance requirement
as a condition to receiving CalWORKs benefits for parents with
children under 16, and cross-references the truancy penalties
created by recent legislation. In doing so, the author hopes
this bill will provide stability for poor school children and
their families.
2)School Truancy . 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.
3)Recent Truancy Laws . 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.
Analysis Prepared by : Julie Salley-Gray / APPR. / (916)
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