BILL ANALYSIS Ó
SENATE COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION
Senator Carol Liu, Chair
2015 - 2016 Regular
Bill No: AB 2815
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|Author: |O'Donnell |
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|Version: |May 19, 2016 Hearing |
| |Date: June 15, 2016 |
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|Urgency: |No |Fiscal: |No |
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|Consultant:|Lenin DelCastillo |
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Subject: Pupil attendance: supervisors of attendance
NOTE: This bill has been referred to the Committees on
Education and Appropriations. A "do pass" motion should include
referral to the Committee on Appropriations.
SUMMARY
This bill adds legislative intent language specifying that a
supervisor of attendance shall promote a culture of attendance
and establish a system to accurately track pupil attendance in
order to, among other things, raise awareness of chronic
absenteeism and identify and address factors contributing to
chronic absenteeism and habitual truancy.
BACKGROUND
Existing law:
1) Requires the governing board of a school district and
county to appoint a supervisor of attendance and such
supervisors of attendance as necessary to supervise the
attendance of students in the district or county. Requires
that the duties of the supervisor be prescribed to include,
among other duties, those specific duties related to
compulsory full-time education, truancy, work permits,
compulsory continuation education, and opportunity schools,
classes, and programs. (Education Code § 48240)
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2) Provides that any pupil subject to compulsory full-time
education or to compulsory continuation education who is
absent from school without a valid excuse on any day or is
tardy for more than 30 minutes, or any combination thereof,
for three days in a school year shall be classified as
"truant."
3) Provides that a valid excuse may include other reasons
that are within the discretion of school administrators and
based on the facts of the pupil's circumstances.
(Education Code § 48260)
4) Establishes the Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act which
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.
5) 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) Expresses the intent of the Legislature that in performing
his or her duties, a supervisor of attendance shall promote
a culture of attendance and establish a system to
accurately track pupil attendance in order to achieve all
of the following:
a) Raise the awareness of the effects of
chronic absenteeism and truancy and other challenges
associated with poor attendance, as specified.
b) Identify and respond to grade level or
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pupil subgroup patterns of chronic absenteeism or
truancy.
c) Identify and address factors
contributing to chronic absenteeism and habitual
truancy, including suspension and expulsion.
d) Ensure that pupils with attendance
problems are identified as early as possible in order
to provide applicable support services and
interventions.
e) Evaluate the effectiveness of
strategies implemented to reduce chronic absenteeism
rates and truancy rates.
2) Authorizes a supervisor of attendance to provide support
services and interventions, which may include, but not
limited to, any or all of the following:
a) A conference between school personnel,
the pupil's parent or guardian, and the pupil.
b) Promoting cocurricular and
extracurricular activities that increase pupil
connectedness to school, such as tutoring, mentoring,
the arts, service learning, or athletics.
c) Recognizing pupils who achieve
excellent attendance or demonstrate significant
improvement in attendance.
d) Referral a pupil to a school nurse,
school counselor, school psychologist, school social
worker, and other pupil support personnel for case
management and counseling.
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e) Collaboration with child welfare
services, law enforcement, courts, public health care
agencies, or government agencies, or medical, mental
health, and oral health care providers to receive
necessary services.
f) Collaborating with school study teams,
guidance teams, school attendance review teams, or
other intervention-related teams to assess the
attendance or behavior problem in partnership with the
pupil and his or her parents, guardians, or
caregivers.
g) Identify barriers to attendance that
may require schoolwide strategies rather than case
management in schools with significantly higher rates
of chronic absenteeism.
h) Referral for a comprehensive
psychosocial or psychoeducational assessment,
including for purposes of creating an individualized
education program for an individual with exceptional
needs, or plan adopted for a qualified handicapped
person as that term is defined in regulations
promulgated by the United States Department of
Education pursuant to federal Rehabilitation Act of
1973 Section 504. (29, United States Code § 794)
i) Referral a pupil to a school attendance
review board (SARB) established by the county or by a
school district or to the probation department.
j) Referral a pupil to a truancy mediation
program operated by the county's district attorney or
probation officer.
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3) Clarifies that county means a county superintendent of
schools.
4) Replaces a reference to "board of school trustees of any
district of a county" with the "governing board of a school
district."
STAFF COMMENTS
1) Need for the bill. According to the author's office, the
purpose of this bill is to update the duties of attendance
supervisors which were established in 1976. "Over the last
several years, much attention has been placed on pupil
attendance; specifically, how to reduce truancy and chronic
absenteeism, and establishing alternatives to out-of-school
suspensions. The attendance supervisors play an important
role in reducing truancy, including using attendance data
to provide early identification of high-risk students for
early intervention and facilitating access to appropriate
school and community services. It is time to update the
role and duties of attendance supervisors as facilitators
of pupil attendance rather than simply enforcement
officials."
2) School attendance review board (SARB). According to
information provided by the author, the strategies proposed
by this bill were developed by the state SARB, established
to encourage the cooperation, coordination and development
of strategies to support county SARBs in carrying out their
responsibilities to establish district SARBs. District and
county SARBs, comprised of representatives from schools,
local services agencies, and local law enforcement
agencies, meet with referred pupils and their parents/legal
guardians to assess their personal and family situations
that may cause pupils to be tardy or absent from school on
a regular basis and identify community/public resources
that may help pupils improve their attendance in school, or
refer pupils to law enforcement agencies, if necessary.
3) 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
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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 California Department of Education
(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, 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.
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) Related legislation. AB 1014 (Thurmond, 2015). 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.This bill is on the
inactive file on the Senate Floor.
SUPPORT
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Association of California School Administrators
Attorney General
California Association of Supervisors of Child Welfare and
Attendance
Children Now
Superintendent of Public Instruction
OPPOSITION
None received.
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