BILL ANALYSIS Ó
AB 1014
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ASSEMBLY THIRD READING
AB
1014 (Thurmond)
As Amended June 1, 2015
Majority vote
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|Committee |Votes |Ayes |Noes |
| | | | |
| | | | |
|----------------+------+---------------------+---------------------|
|Education |6-0 |O'Donnell, Chávez, | |
| | |McCarty, Santiago, | |
| | |Thurmond, Weber | |
| | | | |
|----------------+------+---------------------+---------------------|
|Appropriations |12-4 |Gomez, Bonta, |Bigelow, Gallagher, |
| | |Calderon, Daly, |Jones, Wagner |
| | |Eggman, | |
| | | | |
| | | | |
| | |Eduardo Garcia, | |
| | |Gordon, Holden, | |
| | |Quirk, Rendon, | |
| | |Weber, Wood | |
| | | | |
| | | | |
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SUMMARY: Establishes the Our Children's Success - The Early
Intervention Attendance Pilot Grant Program for the purpose of
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helping public schools resolve the attendance problems of pupils
in kindergarten through grade 3. Specifically, this bill:
1)Specifies that the grant program shall be implemented upon the
appropriation of sufficient funding.
2)Provides that a public school, school district or county office
of education (COE) maintaining any of grades kindergarten
through grade 3 seeking to participate in the grant program may
apply to the California Department of Education (CDE) for a
grant. Requires an application submitted by a public school,
school district or COE to reflect a plan that may include, but
is not necessarily limited to, all of the following:
a) Establishment of a training program for key school
officials and attendance staff to identify pupils with
chronic attendance problems upon their second occurrence of
tardiness or absence in a school year, and the mailing of
attendance letters to the pupil's home in a timely manner.
b) Establishment of a phone call outreach program, including
a minimum of two calls from a school official, not limited to
a recording, to follow up on those pupils whose attendance
problems continue during that school year after the
attendance letters are mailed.
c) Establishment of a parent advocate position or positions,
designated for ongoing follow-up with the pupil and the
parent throughout the school year to ensure the pupil's
continued consistent school attendance. The number of these
parent advocate positions may vary according to the
applicant's needs, resources, and the parent advocate's
ability to manage the workload.
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d) Establishment of an outreach worker position or positions
whose primary job is assisting families with a child or
children who have ongoing chronic attendance problems. The
duties of an outreach worker include sending letters, making
phone calls and home visits, and helping to connect the
family to the appropriate local, state, or federal programs
in order to resolve issues that are creating impediments to
the child's consistent attendance in school. The number of
these outreach worker positions can vary according to the
school's needs, resources, and the outreach worker's ability
to manage the workload.
e) Determination that the applicant's plan is instituted, to
the best of the applicant's ability, before a pupil enters
the school attendance review board (SARB) process.
f) Establishment of a plan for teacher follow-up with pupils
with chronic attendance problems to make up for lost
instructional time.
g) Establishment of a plan to assess trends in attendance and
chronic absence rates among pupils who are English learners,
eligible for a free or reduced-price meal, or are foster
youth, and target resources towards those groups of pupils
who are most at risk for ongoing attendance problems.
h) Submission of deindentified, aggregate data on chronic
absence and attendance rates to the Bureau of Children's
Justice within the Department of Justice for inclusion in the
report "in School + On Track" prepared by the Office of the
Attorney General. Defines "deidentified" as information that
cannot be used to identify an individual student.
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i) Establishment of a plan to track both longitudinal, pupil
level pupil attendance and aggregate data on tardiness and
attendance throughout the school year to determine whether
improvement has been made.
3)Specifies that the grant program established by this section
shall not be construed as a replacement of, or a substitution
for, the SARB.
4)Requires the CDE to give priority for awarding grants to those
applicants who demonstrate financial need for the grant and with
the highest truancy rates in each of the following areas:
a) Urban areas.
b) Rural areas.
c) Suburban areas.
5)Specifies the following regarding the grants:
a) The grants shall be awarded for three years and be used to
address the attendance problems of pupils in kindergarten and
in grades 1 to 3, inclusive, pursuant to the plans submitted
by the applicant.
b) Each grant shall be for no more than $500,000.
c) Requires the CDE to provide no less than 10 grants and
award no more than $5 million in total grant moneys.
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6)Requires an applicant that receives a grant to submit a report
to the CDE at the conclusion of the grant. Requires the report
to specify how the grant funds were used and the strategies
employed to address pupil attendance problems. Requires the
report to include pupil attendance data measured both before and
after the implementation of the grant.
7)Requires the CDE to, on or before January 1, 2021, submit a
report to the respective Appropriations Committees and Education
Committees of the Assembly and the Senate. Requires the report
to evaluate the strategies and the attendance data of the
applicants that received funds from the grant program
established by this bill. Requires the report to include, but
not necessarily be limited to, a recommendation on whether the
grant program should continue.
8)Sunsets and repeals on January 1, 2022, unless a later enacted
statute, that is enacted before January 1, 2022, deletes or
extends that date.
9)Appropriates an unspecified amount to the CDE for purposes of
implementing the Our Children's Success - The Early Intervention
Attendance Grant Program. Expresses the intent of the
Legislature that the funds appropriated pursuant to this bill be
drawn from sources that may include, but are not necessarily
limited to, the General Fund, the Safe Neighborhoods and Schools
Fund established by Proposition 47 on the November 2014
statewide general election ballot, federal and local government
funds, and contributions from nonprofit organizations and other
private entities.
FISCAL EFFECT: According to the Assembly Appropriations
Committee, General Fund (GF) administrative costs to the CDE of
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approximately $600,000 to create and review the application,
assist with implementation of the grant and provide technical
assistance. These costs assume applications flow from the
district. CDE anticipates additional staff resources if
individual school sites submit applications. Additional costs in
the range of $150,000 to $200,000 to complete the report at the
end of the pilot, most likely through a contract. Proposition 98
(1988)/GF costs not to exceed $5 million dollars, contingent upon
an appropriation for the purpose of establishing the grant
program.
COMMENTS: Truancy. California's compulsory education law
requires all students between the ages of six and 18 to attend
school full-time and their parents and legal guardians to be
responsible for ensuring that children attend school. A student
who is absent from school without a valid excuse for more than 30
minutes on three days in a school year is considered a truant.
Parents or legal guardians are notified when their children has
been classified as a truant and are reminded of their obligation
to compel the attendance of pupils at school. Upon a pupil's
third truancy in a school year and following a district's
conscientious effort to hold a conference with the parent or legal
guardian of the pupil and the pupil, a pupil is classified as a
habitual truant and may be referred to a SARB or to the local
probation officer. Upon a fourth truancy, students and/or their
parents or legal guardians may be fined. In 2012-13, the CDE
reported a truancy rate of 29.28%, with 1.9 million students out
of a total enrollment of 6.2 million considered truants.
According to the CDE, students who are chronically absent in lower
grades are much less likely to be proficient readers and have
higher levels of suspensions. Chronic absence in the sixth grade
is the most predictive indicator that a student will not graduate
from high school.
In 2013, the Attorney General's (AG's) office released a report
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titled "In School and On Track" on truancy of elementary school
kids. Calling it a crisis, the AG argues that truancy at the
elementary level has negative impacts on the students, who are
more likely to drop out of high school; on public safety, when
students become more likely to become involved with gangs,
substance abuse, and incarceration; on school districts, who lose
attendance dollars; and on the economy, due to lost economic
productivity and revenues.
Purpose of the bill. According to the author, this bill attempts
to improve student attendance while generating needed revenue for
schools, and creating brighter, long term outcomes for
California's youth. Schools receive their funding based on
average daily attendance (ADA). According to the AG's report,
school districts lost approximately $1.4 billion in the 2010-11
school year due to absences. The author believes that early
intervention will not only improve student attendance, it will be
a good investment in increasing a school's ADA.
This bill appropriates an unspecified amount of funds to establish
the Our Children's Success - The Early Intervention Attendance
Pilot Grant Program. However, the bill also specifies that the
CDE shall not award more than $5 million. The grant program is
intended to provide outreach to pupils from kindergarten through
grade 3. A school, school district or COE interested in receiving
a grant must submit an application to the CDE. The application
must include a plan that includes specified components.
Some of the components of the plan are already required in current
law, including notification to parents by mail or phone call,
which takes place upon an initial classification as a truant
(tardy 30 minutes or absent without a valid excuse three times).
Grant funds will be used for an outreach worker, whose job isn't
just to send letters or make phone calls, but also to make home
visits and help connect families with social services that may be
the cause(s) of attendance problems. This is similar to the role
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of SARBs, which are established by a county superintendent of
schools or a school district comprised of representatives of
school districts, social services agencies, and law enforcement
agencies to evaluate and address a student's attendance problems.
Students are typically referred to SARBs after the third
classification as a truant (nine tardies or absences). The
outreach worker established by this bill would start the
intervention earlier.
It is not clear what the difference is between the outreach worker
and the parent advocate. It is also unclear whether the parent
advocate is a parent or a paid staff position. If the intent is
to provide a paid staff position, the author may wish to
incorporate the parent advocate duties with the outreach workers'
duties. If the intent is to recruit parents for this role, the
author may wish to consider confidentiality issues and providing
training to parents.
According to the author, this bill is modeled after an attendance
program established by the Berkeley Unified School District
(BUSD), which spent $100,000 in the first year and saw an increase
of $500,000 in ADA the following year. The author states, "The
school district successfully brought the students back into the
classroom, while at the same time helping their families address
the challenges that lead to the students' attendance problems.
Attendance levels at BUSD have remained high due to the school
district's focus on holistic solutions to the complex set of
problems that cause children to miss school regularly. Schools
and school districts across the country are demonstrating the
value of addressing student attendance prior to the point of
delinquency. Early intervention and a broad set of tools is the
best way to get children back into the classroom consistently."
Analysis Prepared by:
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Sophia Kwong Kim / ED. / (916) 319-2087 FN:
0000798