BILL ANALYSIS Ó
AB 2382
Page 1
Date of Hearing: April 29, 2014
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON HUMAN SERVICES
Mark Stone, Chair
AB 2382 (Bradford) - As Introduced: February 21, 2014
SUBJECT : CalWORKs: eligibility: truancy
SUMMARY : Eliminates the overlapping penalty for truancy
assessed against CalWORKs recipient families.
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 the purpose of determining CalWORKs
eligibility, 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 when the county determines it
is necessary to determine CalWORKs eligibility, unless there
is good cause for the inability to secure such documentation.
4)Requires the county, upon determining that any child in the
assistance unit who is age 16 or older is not attending school
as required, to inform a recipient family of how to enroll the
child in a continuation school and to screen the family to
determine eligibility for family stabilization services.
Requires the county to document that the family has been
provided such information and has been screened for such
services.
5)Deletes the requirement that any adults in an assistance unit
lose aid due to a child in the assistance unit under age 16
not meeting the school attendance requirement within CalWORKs
eligibility criteria.
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6)Excludes a child who is age 16 or older from being considered
in the family's grant calculation for any month in which the
county is informed by a school district or a county school
attendance review board that the child did not meet school
attendance requirements, as specified.
7)Requires that a child whose needs are not considered in the
family's grant computation due to not meeting school
attendance requirements remain eligible for services that may
lead to attendance in school.
8)Provides that a child shall be presumed to be attending school
unless he or she has been deemed a chronic truant pursuant to
Section 48263.6 of the Education Code.
EXISTING LAW
1)Establishes under federal law the Temporary Assistance for
Needy Families (TANF) program to provide aid and
welfare-to-work services to eligible families and, in
California, provides that TANF funds for welfare-to-work
services are administered through the CalWORKs program. (42
U.S.C. 601 et seq., WIC 11200 et seq.)
2)Establishes income, asset and real property limits used to
determine eligibility for the program, including net income
below the Maximum Aid Payment (MAP), based on family size and
county of residence, which is approximately 40% of the Federal
Poverty Level. (WIC 11450, 11150 et seq.)
3)Establishes a 48-month lifetime limit of CalWORKs benefits for
eligible adults, including 24 months during which a recipient
must meet federal work requirements in order to retain
eligibility. (WIC 11454, 11322.85)
4)Requires all individuals over 16 years of age, unless they are
otherwise exempt, to participate in welfare-to-work activities
as a condition of eligibility for CalWORKs. (WIC 11320.3,
11322.6)
5)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.
(WIC 11253.5 (a))
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6)Exempts children under 16 years of age and any children
attending an elementary, secondary, vocational or technical
school on a full-time basis from participation in CalWORKs
welfare-to-work activities. (WIC 11320.3 (b))
7)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
welfare-to-work plan. 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. (WIC
11253.5 (b), (c))
8)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.
(WIC 11235.5 (d))
9)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. (WIC 11253.5 (e))
10)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. (EDC 48200)
11)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,
as specified, on three occasions in one school year, or any
combination thereof. (EDC 48260)
12)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. (EDC 48263.6)
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13)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. (EDC 48260.5, 48264.5)
14)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.
(PC 270.1)
FISCAL EFFECT : Unknown
COMMENTS : Under current law, children receiving CalWORKs aid
must comply with both state compulsory education laws and
CalWORKs eligibility requirements related to school attendance.
This bill seeks to align the county- and state-level definitions
of truancy and reduce the double penalty for poor school
attendance among children in needy families.
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 on CalWORKs (one parent and two children) is
$463. According to recent data from the California Department
of Social Services, 554,292 families rely on CalWORKs, including
over one million children. Just over 21% of children in
CalWORKs families are age 13 or older.
Average grants of $463 per month for a family of three means
$15.43 per day, per family, or $5.14 per family member, per day
to meet basic needs, including rent, clothing, utility bills,
food, and anything else a family needs to ensure children can be
cared for at home and safely remain with their families. This
grant amount puts the annual household income at $5,556 per
year. Federal Poverty Guidelines show that 100% of poverty for
a family of three is over three and a half times that at $19,790
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per year.
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%), mental or emotional health
problems (estimated to affect 19 to 33%), domestic abuse they've
experienced during their lifetimes (reported by 80%), and other
detrimental life experiences.
Welfare-to-Work requirements : Welfare-to-work activities within
the CalWORKs program include public or private sector subsidized
or unsubsidized employment; on-the-job training; community
service; secondary school, adult basic education and vocational
education and training when the education is needed for the
recipient to become employed; specific mental health, substance
abuse, or domestic violence services if they are necessary to
obtain or retain employment; and a number of other activities
necessary to assist a recipient in obtaining unsubsidized
employment.
Cal-Learn : The Cal-Learn program helps pregnant and parenting
teens who are 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 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.
School attendance barriers and impacts for low-income students :
California Department of Education data for 2012-13 reported a
truancy rate of 29.28%; 1.9 million students out of a total
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enrollment of just over 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; and
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 outlined 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
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
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penalty would affect parents and children in CalWORKs
households.
Families receiving CalWORKs aid must meet state compulsory
education requirements and CalWORKs school attendance
requirements; both of which result in penalties for
noncompliance. Children under age 16 receiving CalWORKs
benefits are not required to participate in welfare-to-work
activities; however they are still required to attend school,
whereas education is the welfare-to-work activity emphasized for
children who are age 16 and older. In addition to the fines,
misdemeanor charges, and potential imprisonment a truant child's
parent might face, there are monetary penalties for families
with truant children receiving CalWORKs assistance. If a child
in a CalWORKs family under age 16 does not meet school
attendance requirements, the grant of any aided adult in the
household is eliminated unless the county determines good cause
exists. If a child age 16 or older doesn't meet school
attendance requirements, his or her grant amount is eliminated.
In both cases, the family's minimal CalWORKs grant amount is
reduced in addition to the imposition of civil penalties against
the parent. This double penalty for truancy doesn't exist for
any other group of children.
Need for this bill : 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 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. Data from the Urban Institute reveals that, as of
2012, 36 states require school attendance for children in a TANF
assistance unit when determining a family's eligibility for aid.
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Furthermore, current school attendance policies for CalWORKs
eligibility purposes vary throughout the state, creating even
more inequity for some CalWORKs families. In elaborating on the
need for this bill to balance practices across counties, the
Western Center on Law and Poverty (WCLP) states:
"The current CalWORKs attendance policy allows each county to
determine what is considered to be "regular attendance". Some
counties even allow each school district to set the regular
attendance level, thereby creating even more discrepancies in
the level of attendance allowed. After surveying the largest
counties in California, we found great variation in the number
of absences allowed before a penalty is imposed. For example,
in Sacramento County, a student may only have six or fewer
unexcused absences or tardies before their family faces a
possible sanction in basic needs, whereas in Oakland Unified
School District a student may have 17 absences. In San
Francisco, though it isn't clear where they get the authority to
do so, the county has established a policy which allows for a
child's grade point average to be considered, in addition to his
or her attendance. These differences in policies have a great
effect on the number of penalties imposed?A family should not be
penalized more or less, simply based on the county or school
district in which they reside. By removing the double penalty
for children 16 and younger and setting the standard of
"chronically truant" for children 16 and over, [this bill] will
make the program more equitable, as all families would be held
to the same standards regardless of where they live."
Also in support, the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP)
states:
"These sanctions are counterproductive to our shared goal of
ensuring that children succeed in school. It's hard to do well
in school when you're hungry, or when you're sleeping on the
couch in the living room with too many other people. And
parents who are stressed about the heat being turned off or
where they're going to sleep next week are less likely to be
able to read to their children or help with homework. A recent
California Office of the Attorney General report cited poverty
as a significant cause of poor school attendance. This finding
is supported by research that shows that increased income from a
government program had a direct and positive impact on
children's reading and math scores - and that impact was larger
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for the most disadvantaged families."
PROPOSED AMENDMENTS
1)Because this bill only considers school attendance
requirements for a child age 16 or older for purposes of
determining CalWORKs eligibility, the requirement for a parent
to submit available attendance information for a child should
also only apply to children in the family who are age 16 and
older. Committee staff recommends the following amendment to
clarify this requirement:
On page 3, line 18, after "unit" insert:
described in subdivision (a)
2)In order to clarify that the "family stabilization services"
that families are to be screened for when a county determines
that a child age 16 or older isn't meeting school attendance
requirements are those provided for in current law, committee
staff recommends the following technical amendment:
On page 3, line 33, after "services" insert:
pursuant to Section 11325.24 and in accordance with county
policy and procedures
PRIOR LEGISLATION
AB 814 (Bradford) 2013, was substantially similar to this bill,
with alternative requirements for considering the educational
needs of the child not regularly attending school and potential
modifications to a parent's welfare-to-work plan prior to
reducing a family's CalWORKs grant. It died on the Assembly
Appropriations Suspense File.
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 :
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Support
9to5 National Association of Working Women
Advancement Project
American Civil Liberties Union of CA
American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees
(AFSCME)
Black Parallel School Board
California Alliance of Child and Family Services
California Association of School Social Workers
California Pan-Ethic Health Network (CPEHN)
California Partnership
California School-Based Health Alliance
Californians United for a Responsible Budget (CURB)
Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP)
Centro CHA Inc.
Children's Defense Fund-California (CDF-CA) -sponsor
Coalition of California Welfare Rights Organizations, Inc.
Community Asset Development Redefining Education (CADRE)
County Welfare Directors Association of CA (CWDA)
East Bay Community Law Center
Edwin and Dorothy Baker Foundation
Greenlining Institute
Hunger Action Los Angeles
JERICO
Labor/Community Strategy Center
Legal Services for Children
Legal Services for Prisoners with Children (LSPC)
National Association of Social Workers, CA Chapter (NASW-CA)
Our Family Coalition
PolicyLink
Public Counsel
Violence Prevention Coalition of greater Los Angeles
Western Center on Law and Poverty
Youth Law Center
3 Individual
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Opposition
None on file.
Analysis Prepared by : Myesha Jackson / HUM. S. / (916)
319-2089