BILL ANALYSIS Ó
SENATE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
Senator Ricardo Lara, Chair
2015 - 2016 Regular Session
SB 369 (Block) - California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data
System: pupils of military families
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|Version: February 24, 2015 |Policy Vote: ED. 8 - 0 |
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|Urgency: No |Mandate: Yes |
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|Hearing Date: April 20, 2015 |Consultant: Mark McKenzie |
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This bill meets the criteria for referral to the Suspense File.
Bill
Summary: SB 369 adds an indicator to the California
Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System (CALPADS) to identify
pupils of military families, and requires local educational
agencies (LEAs) to report enrollment of pupils of military
families, as specified.
Fiscal
Impact:
CALPADS - Minor General Fund costs to the California
Department of Education (CDE) to create a new indicator in
CALPADS to identify pupils of military families, and
communicate the new requirements to LEAs.
SB 369 (Block) Page 1 of
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LEAs - Unknown, but potentially significant one-time mandated
costs on LEAs, reimbursable from the General Fund, for
approximately 1,000 schools districts to develop and implement
a local process for identifying and tracking pupils of
military families, and inputting that information into
CALPADS. Likely minor, but potentially significant ongoing
mandated costs on LEAs for additional data entry to update
CALPADS. (see staff comments)
Background: Existing law provides for the development and implementation
of CALPADS to provide for the retention and analysis of
longitudinal pupil achievement data. CALPADS was created to
enable CDE and LEAs to meet federal requirements established by
the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001, which increases
accountability for student achievement. The system was
developed and implemented using federal funds, and has been
operational since 2009. CALPADS is accessible by CDE and LEAs
and contains student-level longitudinal information on
demographics, program participation, grade level, enrollment,
course enrollment and completion, discipline, statewide
assessments, and other data.
Proposed Law:
SB 369 requires the Superintendent of Public Instruction to
add a reporting process within CALPADS requiring LEAs to report
the enrollment of pupils of military families by July 1, 2016.
The bill requires CDE to include pupils of military families as
an indicator for purposes of collecting and reporting attendance
data, and prohibits data collected on pupils of military
families to be used to compile reports required under the NCLB
Act, including dropout and graduation rates. SB 369 defines
"pupils of military families" to mean pupils whose parent or
legal guardian is an active duty member of the Armed Forces of
the United States.
Related
Legislation: AB 2341 (Quirk-Silva), which was held on this
Committee's Suspense File in 2014, is nearly identical to this
bill.
SB 369 (Block) Page 2 of
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Staff
Comments: This bill enacts new state and local data collection
requirements. At the state level, CDE expects to incur minor
costs of approximately $10,000 to modify CALPADS to allow for
the collection of data identifying pupils of military families.
Costs to exclude this data from federal NCLB Act reports would
be minor and absorbable.
This bill also imposes a state mandate on LEAs which is likely
to be deemed by the Commission on State Mandates to be
reimbursable. Schools districts will have to establish
procedures, collect information on whether or not pupils have a
parent or legal guardian who is an active duty member of the
military, and enter the data into CALPADS. This information
will likely need to be collected annually to account for
enrollment changes and to determine whether a pupil's status as
a military family member changes based on his or her parent's
service status. LEAs will likely be eligible for reimbursement
for staff time spent on training, data collection, and data
entry. Reimbursable costs for mandated activities would be
subject to a determination by the Commission on State Mandates.
Staff estimates that reimbursements could be in the hundreds of
thousands of dollars initially, with lower ongoing costs once
procedures are in place. Actual costs are unknown, but for
illustrative purposes, if an employee at each of California's
approximately 10,000 schools spent 1-2 hours per school year
collecting and entering this data, at an average staff time cost
of $50 per hour including benefits, annual costs would be in the
range of $500,000 to $1 million, reimbursable from the General
Fund.
Staff notes that provisional language has been included in the
Budget Act in recent years to prohibit CDE, as a condition of
receiving specified federal funds, from adding new data elements
to CALPADS, requiring LEAs to use data collected through CALPADS
for any purpose, or otherwise expanding or enhancing the system
beyond current data elements and functionalities. This language
is intended to limit the expansion of CALPADS beyond existing
federal and state requirements, and to minimize costs. While
the 2015 Budget Act will not be approved until later in the
legislative session, SB 369 anticipates the inclusion of similar
provisional language in the Budget Act, and explicitly exempts
CDE from the penalty as a result of implementing the new data
SB 369 (Block) Page 3 of
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collection requirement specified in the bill.
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