BILL ANALYSIS Ó
SENATE COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION
Senator Carol Liu, Chair
2015 - 2016 Regular
Bill No: AB 1014
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|Author: |Thurmond |
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|Version: |June 1, 2015 Hearing |
| |Date: July 8, 2015 |
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|Urgency: |No |Fiscal: |Yes |
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|Consultant:|Lenin Del Castillo |
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Subject: Pupils: truancy: Our Children's Success - The Early
Intervention Attendance Pilot Grant Program
SUMMARY
This bill establishes the Our Children's Success - The Early
Intervention Attendance Pilot Grant Program for the purpose of
helping public schools resolve attendance problems of pupils in
kindergarten or grades 1 to 3.
BACKGROUND
The Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act was approved by voters as
Proposition 47 in November 2014 and makes significant changes to
the state's criminal justice system. It reduces the penalties
for certain non-violent, non-serious drug and property crimes,
and requires that the resulting state savings be spent on 1)
mental health and substance use services; 2) truancy and dropout
prevention; and 3) victim services. Further, Proposition 47
requires that 25 percent of the Safe Neighborhoods School Fund
be allocated to the California Department of Education (CDE) to
administer a grant program to reduce truancy, high school
dropout, and student victimization rates.
ANALYSIS
This bill:
1)Makes various findings and declarations regarding the truancy
of students and its effects.
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2)Establishes Our Children's Success - The Early Intervention
Attendance Pilot Grant Program under the administration of the
CDE.
3)Provides that the program shall be implemented upon the
appropriation of sufficient funding.
4)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 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.
d) Establishment of an outreach worker position or
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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 track both longitudinal,
pupil level and pupil attendance and aggregate data on
tardiness and attendance throughout the school year to
determine whether improvement has been made.
h) 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.
i) Submission of deidentified, 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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5)Requires an applicant to include an estimate for the amount of
the grant needed in the application and provide 20 percent
matching funds for any amount requested, as specified.
6)Specifies that the program established by this section shall
not be construed as a replacement of or a substitution for the
SARB.
7)Requires the California Department of Education (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.
8)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 grants.
9)Requires an applicant that receives a grant to submit a report
to the CDE at the conclusion of the grant. Requires the
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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.
10)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.
11)Sunsets and repeals on January 1, 2022, unless a later
enacted statute, that is enacted before January 1, 2022,
deletes or extends that date.
12)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.
STAFF COMMENTS
1)Need for the bill. According to the author's office, this bill
attempts to improve student attendance while generating needed
revenue for schools, and creating brighter, long term outcomes
for California's youth. 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 Average Daily Attendance (ADA)
the following year. The author indicates that "the school
district successfully brought the students back into the
classroom, while at the same time helping their families
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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."
2)Truancy in schools. 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 have 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 school attendance review board (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 California Department of Education (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.
3)Proposition 47. The Legislative Analyst's Office (LAO) released
a report on the Implementation of Proposition 47 in February
2015. In the report, the LAO indicates that while the state
savings that will result from Proposition 47 is subject to
significant uncertainty, annual savings will likely range from
$100 million to $200 million beginning in 2016-17. The LAO
also notes that although Proposition 47 states that these
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savings shall be deposited into a new state fund, the new Safe
Neighborhood and Schools Fund (SNSF), and be allocated for
grant programs administered by specific departments, the
Legislature has the opportunity to provide direction on how
the funds are spent. Specifically, the Legislature could
weigh in on 1) how the individual departments should
distribute the funds and 2) how much state oversight to
provide to ensure that the funds are being spent effectively.
Proposition 47 requires that 25 percent of the SNSF be
allocated to the CDE to administer a grant program to reduce
truancy, high school dropouts, and student victimization
rates. The LAO estimates that the amount available for this
grant program will likely total between $25 million and $50
million annually beginning in 2016-17. The LAO recommended in
its report that the Legislature allocate the grants for
truancy, high school dropout prevention, and student
victimization rates to
school districts that have notably high concentrations of
English learners, low-income, or foster youth, as these
students are at higher risk for these concerning outcomes.
In light of the impending implementation of Proposition 47 and
most notably, the grant program to be administered by the
California Department of Education (CDE) to reduce truancy,
high school dropouts, and student victimization rates, the
Committee may wish to consider whether this bill is necessary
as it seeks to accomplish substantially similar objectives and
would appear to be duplicative.
4)Attorney General's office report. In 2013, the Attorney
General's (AG's) office released a report 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.
5)Fiscal impact. According to the Assembly Appropriations
Committee, this bill would impost General Fund (GF)
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administrative costs to the CDE of 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. The CDE
anticipates additional staff resources if individual school
sites submit applications. There would be 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 General Fund costs would not exceed $5 million
dollars, contingent upon an appropriation for the purpose of
establishing the grant program.
SUPPORT
American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees
Attorney General (sponsor)
California Alliance of Child and Family Services
California Council of Community Mental Health Agencies
California Dental Association
California State PTA
Children Now
National Association of Social Workers, California Chapter
OPPOSITION
None received.
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