BILL ANALYSIS Ó AB 2621 Page 1 ASSEMBLY THIRD READING AB 2621 (Gomez and Bloom) As Amended May 12, 2016 Majority vote ------------------------------------------------------------------- |Committee |Votes|Ayes |Noes | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |----------------+-----+----------------------+---------------------| |Education |7-0 |O'Donnell, Olsen, | | | | |Kim, McCarty, | | | | |Santiago, Thurmond, | | | | |Weber | | | | | | | | | | | | ------------------------------------------------------------------- SUMMARY: Requires schools to distribute and post on their websites their employee code of conduct, if they have one. Specifically, this bill: 1)Requires local educational agencies (LEAs) or a person, firm, association, partnership, or corporation offering or conducting private school instruction on the elementary or high school level that maintains an employee code of conduct with students to provide a written copy of that document to the parents or guardians of every pupil enrolled in a school AB 2621 Page 2 of the local educational agency or provider of private school instruction at the beginning of each school year and to post it on each school's Internet Web site in a manner that is accessible to the public without a password. 2)Defines "local educational agency" (LEA) to mean a school district, county office of education, or charter school. 3)Provides that LEAs may satisfy this requirement by including the code of conduct in the notification they are already required to send to parents and guardians at the beginning of each school year. 4)Clarifies that these provisions do not require an LEA or school to create an Internet Web site if it does not have one. EXISTING LAW: Establishes a permissive Education Code, under which LEAs have blanket authorization to provide any program or offer any service that is not otherwise prohibited by law. COMMENTS: According to information provided by the author's office, this bill arises from an incident at a private school in which a teacher "had a series of incidents where he was slowly going beyond an understood but undocumented code of conduct with students" and that ultimately ended in a sexual relationship between the teacher and students. Schools do not need statutory authority to either distribute their codes of conduct or post them on their websites, but the author's staff argues that requiring them to do so may reduce the incidents of inappropriate or criminal behavior. AB 2621 Page 3 Analysis Prepared by: Richard Pratt / ED. / (916) 319-2087 FN: 0002917