BILL ANALYSIS Ó
SENATE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
Senator Ricardo Lara, Chair
2015 - 2016 Regular Session
SB 884 (Beall) - Special education: procedural safeguards and
records
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|Version: April 13, 2016 |Policy Vote: ED. 9 - 0 |
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|Urgency: No |Mandate: Yes |
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|Hearing Date: May 9, 2016 |Consultant: Jillian Kissee |
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This bill meets the criteria for referral to the Suspense File.
Bill
Summary: This bill requires, among other things, local
educational agencies (LEAs) and special education local plan
areas (SELPAs) to collect and report specific information
regarding special education and related services; requires the
California Department of Education (CDE) to monitor and compare
specific information; and requires specific local and state
accounting and reporting of each special education and related
service.
Fiscal
Impact:
Mandate costs: This bill imposes several mandated activities
that would drive unknown but likely substantial costs to the
state, potentially in the mid to high tens of millions, if the
Commission on State Mandates determines these activities to be
reimbursable. If so, this could also result in pressure to
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increase the K-12 mandate block grant. See staff comments.
(Proposition 98)
Administrative costs: The CDE estimates one-time costs of
$300,000 and ongoing costs of $400,000 to implement this bill.
One-time activities include making changes to the school
accounting manual and software that collects financial data.
(General Fund)
Background: Existing federal and state law provide that every
individual with exceptional needs who is eligible to receive
special education instruction and related services shall receive
that instruction and those services through a free appropriate
public education in the least restrictive environment. (United
States Code, Title 20, § 1412; Code of Federal Regulations,
Title 34, § 300.101 and § 300.114; Education Code § 56040 and §
56040.1)
Existing federal and state law provide that the IEP is a written
statement for each individual with exceptional needs that is
developed, reviewed, and revised by the IEP team, as specified,
and must include certain components. Federal law only requires
schools to provide special education services to students with
diagnosed disabilities that interfere with their educational
attainment. Federal and state law also require the instruction
and related services detailed in an IEP to be provided
irrespective of the internal capacity of the school to provide
the instruction and services.
Schools use a variety of funds to provide required services in
an IEP. For mental health, schools use restricted mental health
funds, federal and state special education funds, and many also
use unrestricted general funds. Schools may also be reimbursed
for some costs through Medi-Cal (or even private insurance) for
providing some mental health services to eligible students.
According to the author, this bill is in response to the Bureau
of State Audits report, Student Mental Health Services: Some
Students' Services Were Affected by a New State Law, and the
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State Needs to Analyze Student Outcomes and Track Service Costs.
This bill seeks to address transparency and accountability
issues within LEAs delivering mental health services to K-12
students.
Proposed Law: This bill:
Expands the requirement for SELPAs to provide procedural
safeguards to parents.
Requires SELPAs to develop additional written policies
and procedures regarding specified informational materials
and make them available to LEAs.
Expands the required content of a student IEP.
Expands the instances in which a prior written notice is
required to be provided to the parents or guardians.
Expands the required contents of the notice to include a
link on the CDE's website that provides the contact
information for all family empowerment centers and parent
training and information centers in the SELPA or a printed
copy of that information upon request.
Requires an LEA to ensure a copy of each prior written
notice given is included in the student's records.
Requires specific local and state accounting and
reporting of each special education and related service.
Requires an LEA to annually report to the CDE outcomes
of special education services pertaining to several
indicators.
SB 884 (Beall) Page 3 of
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Requires the CDE to monitor special education related
services to identify and investigate any significant
declines in services and review for accuracy LEAs'
procedures for prior written notices.
Related Legislation: SB 1113 (Beall) authorizes LEAs to enter
into partnerships, as specified, with county mental health plans
for the provision of Early and Periodic Screening, Diagnosis,
and Treatment mental health services and to expand the allowable
uses of specified mental health funds. SB 1113 is scheduled to
be heard by this committee on May 9, 2016.
Staff Comments: This bill imposes several new mandates on LEAs
that go beyond federal special education law. Costs related to
state-mandated activities included in this bill are unknown and
will likely vary by LEA. Some of the costs are driven by
required activities applicable to each of the state's over
700,000 children receiving special education and other costs are
driven by requirements imposed on either the state's
approximately 130 SELPAs or 1,000 LEAs.
This bill requires LEAs to annually report to the CDE, the
actual frequency and duration of each related service provided
pursuant to a student's IEP. According to federal law, related
services means transportation, and developmental, corrective,
and other supportive services (including speech-language
pathology and audiology services, interpreting services,
psychological services, physical and occupational therapy,
recreation, including therapeutic recreation, social work
services, school nurse services, counseling services, including
rehabilitation counseling, orientation and mobility services,
and medical services, as specified) and includes early
identification and assessment of disabling conditions in
children.
LEAs are also not currently required to document the actual
services that have been provided in contrast to what is
delineated in the IEP. Presumably, to implement this
requirement, LEAs would have to create a tracking system in
which staff would record planned IEP services and actual
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services that were performed for each student and for each
service, compile the information, and report it to the CDE.
Other costs include: requiring the type of provider for each
related service to be included in IEPs; documenting and
reporting to the CDE all mental health and special education
services funding allocations and expenditures, for each service;
and reporting student outcome data to the CDE. If school staff
spent two hours to implement these requirements for each student
with an IEP in the state, costs would reach $70 million. The
requirements to provide parents procedural safeguards beyond the
existing requirement of once per year, and a prior written
notice upon a change in the type or level of service in an IEP,
could result in additional costs in the hundreds of thousands.
Finally this bill also imposes requirements on SELPAs that could
drive state costs of at least in the tens of thousands. These
include developing additional written policies and procedures
requiring LEAs to provide specified informational materials,
translating them into common languages, and updating written
notices to include required information.
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