BILL ANALYSIS Ó SENATE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS Senator Ricardo Lara, Chair 2015 - 2016 Regular Session AB 2246 (O'Donnell) - Pupil suicide prevention policies ----------------------------------------------------------------- | | | | | | ----------------------------------------------------------------- |--------------------------------+--------------------------------| | | | |Version: June 9, 2016 |Policy Vote: ED. 9 - 0 | | | | |--------------------------------+--------------------------------| | | | |Urgency: No |Mandate: Yes | | | | |--------------------------------+--------------------------------| | | | |Hearing Date: August 1, 2016 |Consultant: Jillian Kissee | | | | ----------------------------------------------------------------- This bill meets the criteria for referral to the Suspense File. Bill Summary: This bill requires local educational agencies (LEAs) that serve students in grades 7 to 12 to adopt policies on the prevention of student suicides and also require the California Department of Education (CDE) to develop and maintain a model suicide prevention policy. Fiscal Impact: This bill imposes a likely significant reimbursable state mandate on LEAs to create suicide prevention plans, as specified. Costs will vary by LEA but could be in the mid to high hundreds of thousands statewide, one-time, to develop the plan. See staff comments. (Proposition 98) The CDE estimates one-time costs of $55,000 to develop and maintain a model policy to serve as a guide for LEAs. (General Fund) AB 2246 (O'Donnell) Page 1 of ? Background: Existing law requires the Superintendent of Public Instruction to send a notice to each middle school, junior high school, and high school that encourages each school to provide suicide prevention training to each school counselor at least one time while employed as a counselor, provides information on the availability of the suicide prevention training curriculum developed by the CDE, informs schools about the suicide prevention training provided by the CDE and describes how a school might retain those services. (Education Code Section 49604) The CDE has posted on its website a listing of resources to assist school districts with the concerns about youth suicide prevention, intervention, and postvention, including a youth suicide prevention school-based guide. Proposed Law: This bill requires the governing board of an LEA operating grades 7 through 12 to adopt, before the 2017-18 academic school year at a regularly scheduled meeting, a policy on student suicide prevention. The CDE is also required to develop and maintain a model policy to serve as a guide for LEAs in developing policies for student suicide prevention. The policy must be developed in consultation with various entities and must, at a minimum address procedures relating to suicide prevention, intervention, and postvention. The policy must address the needs of high-risk groups, including youth bereaved by suicide, youth with disabilities, mental illness, or substance use disorders; youth experiencing homelessness or in out-of-home settings; lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or questioning youth. It must also address any training to be provided to teachers of students in grades 7 through 12 on suicide awareness and prevention. Staff Comments: This bill defines LEA as county offices of education, school districts, state special schools, and charter schools. Under this definition, there are approximately 1,100 LEAs affected by this bill. Though charter schools are mandated by this bill to develop a policy, the Commission on State Mandates AB 2246 (O'Donnell) Page 2 of ? has determined charter schools to be ineligible to claim reimbursements for state mandates. Therefore under this bill, the state would be liable to reimburse about 480 LEAs for costs related to the development of the suicide prevention policy. If it took 20 to 40 hours of staff time to develop the policy in consultation with school and community stakeholders, school-employed mental health professionals, and suicide prevention experts as specified by this bill, one-costs would range between about $480,000 and $960,000. Though some LEAs may already have a suicide prevention policy in place, they may be required to amend their policy to bring it into conformity with the requirements of this bill. In these circumstances, costs to those LEAs would likely be less than LEAs without a policy in place. To the extent LEAs use existing available resources, such as those posted on the CDE's website, less staff time would be needed, and less costs would be incurred in developing a policy. Actual costs would depend upon how LEAs go about developing the policy. Staff notes that with the funding enacted in the 2016-17 Budget Act to pay down owed mandate claims the estimated outstanding debt is estimated to be $1.6 billion by the end of the current budget year. -- END --