BILL ANALYSIS Ó SENATE COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION Senator Carol Liu, Chair 2015 - 2016 Regular Bill No: AB 2815 ----------------------------------------------------------------- |Author: |O'Donnell | |-----------+-----------------------------------------------------| |Version: |May 19, 2016 Hearing | | |Date: June 15, 2016 | ----------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------- |Urgency: |No |Fiscal: |No | ----------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------- |Consultant:|Lenin DelCastillo | | | | ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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) AB 2815 (O'Donnell) Page 2 of ? 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 AB 2815 (O'Donnell) Page 3 of ? 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. AB 2815 (O'Donnell) Page 4 of ? 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. AB 2815 (O'Donnell) Page 5 of ? 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 AB 2815 (O'Donnell) Page 6 of ? 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 AB 2815 (O'Donnell) Page 7 of ? 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. -- END --