BILL ANALYSIS Ó
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|SENATE RULES COMMITTEE | AB 2382|
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THIRD READING
Bill No: AB 2382
Author: Bradford (D)
Amended: 8/19/14 in Senate
Vote: 21
SENATE HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE : 3-1, 6/24/14
AYES: Beall, DeSaulnier, Liu
NOES: Wyland
NO VOTE RECORDED: Berryhill
SENATE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE : 5-0, 8/14/14
AYES: De León, Hill, Lara, Padilla, Steinberg
NO VOTE RECORDED: Walters, Gaines
ASSEMBLY FLOOR : 66-2, 5/27/14 - See last page for vote
SUBJECT : CalWORKs: eligibility: truancy
SOURCE : 9to5 California, National Association of Working
Women Childrens Defense Fund, California
Western Center on Law and Poverty
DIGEST : This bill revises CalWORKS requirements by deleting
the requirement that the aid grant of a family be reduced if the
county determines that an eligible child under 16 years of age
is not regularly attending school and authorizes, if the county
determines that a child is not attending school, it must inform
the family of how to enroll the child in an appropriate school
and screen the family to determine its eligibility for family
stabilization services and requires the county, if applicable,
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to document that the family was given this information and was
screened for those services. This bill allows the county to
consider the needs of a child in the assistance unit who is 16
years of age or older in computing the grant to the family 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 attend school if at least one of several circumstances is
present. This bill provides that a child whose needs are
excluded from computing the family grant remains eligible for
services that may lead to school attendance.
ANALYSIS :
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.
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.
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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. Requires counties to inform CalWORKs applicants and
recipients of the school attendance requirement for
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eligibility purposes, as specified. Requires a CalWORKs
recipient provide a county with documentation of regular
school attendance of all applicable children when
appropriate, as defined.
7. 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, or payment for an eligible child who is
16 years or older who is not meeting the attendance
requirements, as specified, unless the county determines good
cause exists.
8. Requires each person between the ages of six and 18 years to
be subject to compulsory full-time education, as specified,
and attend a public full-time day school or continuation
school, and that each parent, or guardian, as specified
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, as specified, on three occasions in one school year,
and a "chronic truant" as a pupil who is absent for 10% or
more of the school days in one year, as specified.
10.Establishes a process for notifying a pupil's parent of
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.
11.Establishes that a parent or guardian of a pupil of aged six
or older and in Kindergarten through 8th grade, 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.
This bill:
1. Revises CalWORKS requirements by deleting the requirement
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that the aid grant of a family be reduced if the county
determines that an eligible child under 16 years of age is
not regularly attending school.
2. Authorizes, if the county determines that a child is not
attending school, that it must inform the family of how to
enroll the child in an appropriate school and screen the
family to determine its eligibility for family stabilization
services.
3. Requires the county, if applicable, to document that the
family was given this information and was screened for those
services.
4. Allows the county to consider the needs of a child in the
assistance unit who is 16 years of age or older in computing
the grant to the family 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 attend school if at least
one of several circumstances is present.
5. Provides that a child whose needs are excluded from
computing the family grant remains eligible for services that
may lead to school attendance.
Comments
According to the author's office, existing law requires that a
financial penalty be exacted from families who rely on a basic
needs grant through the CalWORKs program when their children are
not regularly attending school. This financial penalty is
duplicative of the financial and Penal Code penalties applied to
all school children through the newly implemented School
Attendance Review Board process which applies to all students.
The author's office states that this double penalty may actually
contribute to increased absences because it makes poor children
even poorer and less able to overcome barriers causing failure
to participate in school in the first place. While retaining
the requirement that children attend school, this bill ends the
truancy double penalty for poor school children and their
families and standardize the definition of attendance to align
with Education Code definitions, the author's office writes.
The author's office further states that while there is no
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evidence that financially penalizing poor families is a
successful strategy to reducing truancy rates, there is evidence
to the contrary, that poverty is the leading cause of truancy
and that deepening poverty does not resolve these problems.
Truancy . According to a May 2013 article in the Journal of
Poverty and Public Policy, the many nuances of poverty's impact
on education underscore the reasons that low-income children
should not be financially sanctioned for not attending school.
Children in low-income families that struggle with housing,
food, and clothing should not be thrust into a truancy system
that does not account for these circumstances, which are
beyond the student's control. Substandard housing conditions
often contribute to a student's health problems. Evictions
disrupt a family's razor-thin equilibrium, making school
attendance a lower priority. Although continued schooling is
governed by provisions of the McKinney-Vento Act, homelessness
similarly disrupts a family's very existence. The same holds
true for food insecurity and the lack of clean and
well-fitting
clothing, especially in school systems that require school
uniforms.
Proponents of this bill argue that levying a double-penalty on
poor families undermines the ability of children to recover
educationally from deep poverty.
SB 1317 (Leno, Chapter 647, Statutes of 2010) establishes 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. The bill defines a
chronic truant as a pupil who is required to attend school
full-time and is absent from school without a valid excuse for
10% or more days within the school year.
FISCAL EFFECT : Appropriation: No Fiscal Com.: Yes
Local: Yes
According to the Senate Appropriations Committee:
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Major ongoing costs of approximately $4 million (General Fund)
annually in additional CalWORKs grant costs that otherwise
would have been withheld for cases with a child reported
truant from school. This assumes 4,700 cases will receive aid
as a result of removing the penalty for specified cases.
One-time costs (General Fund) for automation changes to the
Statewide Automated Welfare Systems for reprogramming based on
revised sanction criteria.
Minor impact to average daily attendance costs (General Fund*)
to the extent the removal of the penalty for truancy of
children ages six to 15 years results in fewer children
attending school.
*Proposition 98 (General Fund)
SUPPORT : (Verified 8/18/14)
9to5 California, National Association of Working Women
(co-source)
Children's Defense Fund, California (co-source)
Western Center on Law and Poverty (co-source)
Attorney General, Kamala Harris
Advancement Project
AFSCME
American Civil Liberties Union of California
Black Parallel School Board
Brotherhood Crusade
California Alliance of Child and Family Services
California Association of School Social Workers
California Pan-Ethic Health Network
California Partnership
California School-Based Health Alliance
California State PTA
Californians United for a Responsible Budget
Center for Law and Social Policy
Centro CHA Inc.
Coalition of California Welfare Rights Organizations, Inc.
Community Asset Development Redefining Education
County Welfare Directors Association of California
East Bay Community Law Center
Edwin and Dorothy Baker Foundation
Greenlining Institute
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Hunger Action Los Angeles
JERICO
Labor/Community Strategy Center
Legal Services for Children
Legal Services for Prisoners with Children
National Association of Social Workers, California Chapter
Our Family Coalition
PolicyLink
Public Counsel
Violence Prevention Coalition of Greater Los Angeles
Youth Law Center
ASSEMBLY FLOOR : 66-2, 5/27/14
AYES: Achadjian, Alejo, Ammiano, Bloom, Bocanegra, Bonilla,
Bonta, Bradford, Brown, Buchanan, Ian Calderon, Campos, Chau,
Chesbro, Cooley, Dababneh, Daly, Dickinson, Eggman, Fong,
Frazier, Garcia, Gatto, Gomez, Gonzalez, Gordon, Gorell, Gray,
Grove, Hagman, Hall, Harkey, Roger Hernández, Holden, Jones,
Jones-Sawyer, Levine, Linder, Logue, Lowenthal, Maienschein,
Medina, Mullin, Muratsuchi, Nazarian, Nestande, Olsen, Pan,
Perea, John A. Pérez, V. Manuel Pérez, Quirk, Rendon,
Ridley-Thomas, Rodriguez, Salas, Skinner, Stone, Ting,
Waldron, Weber, Wieckowski, Wilk, Williams, Yamada,
Atkins
NOES: Allen, Fox
NO VOTE RECORDED: Bigelow, Chávez, Conway, Dahle, Donnelly,
Beth Gaines, Mansoor, Melendez, Patterson, Quirk-Silva,
Wagner, Vacancy
JL/AL:k 8/19/14 Senate Floor Analyses
SUPPORT/OPPOSITION: SEE ABOVE
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