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