BILL ANALYSIS Ó
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|SENATE RULES COMMITTEE | AB 2815|
|Office of Senate Floor Analyses | |
|(916) 651-1520 Fax: (916) | |
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THIRD READING
Bill No: AB 2815
Author: O'Donnell (D)
Amended: 8/1/16 in Senate
Vote: 21
SENATE EDUCATION COMMITTEE: 9-0, 6/15/16
AYES: Liu, Block, Hancock, Huff, Leyva, Mendoza, Monning, Pan,
Vidak
ASSEMBLY FLOOR: 74-1, 5/23/16 - See last page for vote
SUBJECT: Pupil attendance: supervisors of attendance
SOURCE: Author
DIGEST: 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.
ANALYSIS:
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
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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)
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.
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.
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b) Identify and respond to grade level or 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.
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.
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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.
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."
Comments
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."
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School attendance review board. 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.
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 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 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 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 CDE, 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.
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
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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.
FISCAL EFFECT: Appropriation: No Fiscal
Com.:NoLocal: No
SUPPORT: (Verified8/2/16)
Attorney General
Superintendent of Public Instruction
Association of California School Administrators
California Association of Supervisors of Child Welfare and
Attendance
Children Now
OPPOSITION: (Verified8/2/16)
None received
ASSEMBLY FLOOR: 74-1, 5/23/16
AYES: Achadjian, Alejo, Atkins, Baker, Bigelow, Bloom, Bonilla,
Bonta, Brough, Brown, Burke, Calderon, Campos, Chang, Chau,
Chávez, Chiu, Chu, Cooley, Cooper, Dababneh, Daly, Dodd,
Frazier, Beth Gaines, Gallagher, Cristina Garcia, Eduardo
Garcia, Gatto, Gipson, Gomez, Gonzalez, Gordon, Gray, Grove,
Hadley, Roger Hernández, Holden, Irwin, Jones, Jones-Sawyer,
Kim, Lackey, Levine, Linder, Lopez, Low, Maienschein, Mathis,
Mayes, McCarty, Medina, Melendez, Mullin, Nazarian, Obernolte,
O'Donnell, Olsen, Quirk, Ridley-Thomas, Rodriguez, Salas,
Santiago, Steinorth, Mark Stone, Thurmond, Ting, Wagner,
Waldron, Weber, Wilk, Williams, Wood, Rendon
NOES: Travis Allen
NO VOTE RECORDED: Arambula, Dahle, Eggman, Harper, Patterson
Prepared by:Lenin DelCastillo / ED. / (916) 651-4105
AB 2815
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