BILL ANALYSIS Ó
SB 884
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Date of Hearing: June 22, 2016
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION
Patrick O'Donnell, Chair
SB
884 (Beall) - As Amended May 31, 2016
SENATE VOTE: 39-0
SUBJECT: Special education: procedural safeguards and records:
mental health services
SUMMARY: Requires local educational agencies (LEAs) and special
education local plan areas (SELPAs) to collect and report
specific information relative to mental health services,
requires the California Department of Education (CDE) to monitor
and compare specific information relative to mental health
services, and requires LEAs to provide specified informational
materials to parents. Specifically, this bill:
1)Requires each SELPA to require each LEA to provide parents
with informational materials, including procedural safeguards,
information regarding family empowerment centers, and parent
training and information centers in their community.
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2)Requires that this information be provided in the three most
common languages used by parents locally, and be made
available for LEAs to provide to parents in their annual
parent notification.
3)Requires LEAs to ensure that a copy of each prior written
notice is included in the pupil's records.
4)Requires each LEA to annually report to the CDE the actual
frequency and duration of each mental health service provided
to each student as required by their IEP.
5)Requires SELPAs to document and report to the CDE all mental
health and special education services funding allocations and
expenditures and specify the dollar amount for each service.
6)Requires the CDE to post this information on its website.
7)Requires the CDE to align accounting code systems to allow the
department and school districts or SELPAs to accurately
document the amount of funds expended for the provision of
mental health and special education services from each funding
source.
8)Requires each LEA to annually provide to the CDE data needed
to document specified outcomes for each student receiving
mental health services through their IEPs:
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a) graduation rate
b) dropout rate
c) statewide assessment results
d) suspension and expulsion rates
e) participation in general education classes
f) postschool outcomes
1)Requires the CDE to monitor the number and frequency of mental
health services reported annually by LEAs and compare
year-to-year changes for each LEA. Requires that if
year-to-year services decline significantly, the CDE
investigate the cause for the decline in service provision.
2)Requires, as part of its monitoring activities, the CDE to
review each LEA's procedures and documents used to meet the
prior written notice requirements and requires that CDE
require corrections to those procedures and documents if the
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department finds that the procedures or documents do not
fulfill statutory requirements.
EXISTING LAW:
1)Federal and state law requires that every individual with
exceptional needs who is eligible to receive special education
instruction and related services receive that instruction and
those services through a free appropriate public education in
the least restrictive environment.
2)Federal law provides that 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 designed to enable a child with a disability to
receive a free appropriate public education as described in
the individualized education program (IEP) of the child,
counseling services, including rehabilitation counseling,
orientation and mobility services, and medical services.
3)Requires the Superintendent of Public Instruction (SPI) to
ensure that student and program performance results are
monitored at the state and local levels by evaluating student
performance against key performance indicators.
4)Requires the SPI, as part of state monitoring and enforcement,
to use quantifiable indicators, and qualitative indicators as
needed, to adequately measure performance in the indicators
established by the United States Secretary of Education in the
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priority areas, as described.
5)Requires each SELPA to submit to the SPI at least annually
information in order for the SPI to carry out the evaluation
responsibilities described above.
FISCAL EFFECT:
According to the Senate Appropriations Committee:
Mandate costs: This bill imposes several mandated
activities that would drive unknown but likely significant
costs to the state, potentially in the millions to low tens
of millions, if the Commission on State Mandates determines
these activities to be reimbursable. If so, this could
also result in pressure to increase the K-12 mandate block
grant. (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)
COMMENTS:
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Recent state audit. AB 114 (Chapter 43, Statutes of 2011),
which took effect in July 2011, transferred funding and
responsibility for providing mental health services for students
with IEPs from county mental health departments to LEAs.
In January, 2016, the Bureau of State Audits released a report,
requested by the author and other members of the Legislature, on
the effect of AB 114 on mental health services for students.
The report, titled Student Mental Health Services: Some
Students' Services Were Affected by a New State Law, and the
State Needs to Analyze Student Outcomes and Track Service Costs,
found that:
The most commonly offered types of mental health
services and the providers of those services generally did
not change.
The number of students who received these mental health
services remained steady or grew.
The provider of the most common mental health services
generally had already been, and continued to be, the LEA.
The majority of changes to services were unrelated to AB
114.
The audit also found that for individual student records
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reviewed:
Although the most common types of mental health services
offered and the service providers generally did not change,
LEAs removed mental health services from student IEPs in
the two years after AB 114 took effect.
Although most service reductions were not related to AB
114, such as those prompted by a student graduating, IEP
teams did not always record in the IEP document their
rationale of why a service was removed.
.
For 40 percent of the students who had a change to their
mental health services or their educational placement
within two years of AB 114's implementation, the IEP teams
did not document the rationale for the changes.
For 13 of the 44 students reviewed who had a mental
health service removed from their IEPs, either the LEAs
could not satisfactorily explain why the services were
removed or the removal was related to AB 114. In three
cases, the LEA had no assurance that removing services
would not adversely affect access to education.
Audit recommendations regarding data collection and monitoring.
The audit made several recommendations related to data
collection and monitoring of student mental health services:
Require LEAs to use six performance indicators to
perform analysis annually on the subset of students
receiving mental health services.
Require CDE to analyze and report on the outcomes for
students receiving mental health services, including
outcomes across six performance indicators, in order to
demonstrate whether those services are effective.
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Require CDE to collect information about the frequency
of the provision of each service contained in all students'
IEPs.
Require CDE to annually review the frequency of mental
health services and follow up with SELPAs when it observes
a significant reduction in the frequency of services.
Require CDE to develop, and require all LEAs to follow,
an accounting methodology to track and report expenditures
related to special education mental health services.
This bill includes some, but not all, of the recommendations in
the audit, and also includes requirements that were not
recommended by the audit.
How schools provide mental health services? Most of the mental
health services provided by schools are related to services
required by a student's IEP. Schools may employ staff directly
as well as contract with county mental health agencies or
private providers.
Schools also have the discretion to provide counseling and
mental health services, or refer to outside providers, to
students who do not have an IEP. These services may be provided
by a school counselor, psychologist or social worker, or other
qualified personnel employed by an outside entity.
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LEAs may use multiple sources of funding to meet the mental
health needs of their students, including AB 114 funds, state or
federal special education funds, Local Control Funding Formula
revenue, local tax revenue, Medi-Cal funds through the Medi-Cal
LEA billing option program, Early and Periodic Screening
Diagnostic and Treatment (EPSDT) program funds through
partnership with county mental health agencies, and private
insurance. The state audit referenced above found that LEAs do
indeed combine multiple funding sources to provide these
services.
How do the requirements of this bill compare to current
practice? This bill establishes a number of requirements on LEAs
and CDE. Some of these activities are already conducted, or are
conducted in a different manner, by those agencies, and some of
them constitute new activities. Below is a comparison between
key provisions of this bill and current requirements:
Reporting on mental health services. This bill requires
each LEA to annually report to the CDE the actual frequency
and duration of each mental health service provided to each
student as required by their IEP. LEAs are currently
required by federal law to report services offered.
According to the SELPA Administrators Association, this
provision could mean that LEAs would be required to create
service logs to track the required information. This would
require significant time and financial resources.
Reporting on expenditures for mental health for all
students . This bill requires SELPAs to document and report
to the CDE all mental health and special education services
funding allocations and expenditures and specify the dollar
amount for each service. LEAs are currently required to
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report on their expenditures of AB 114 funds to the CDE.
Reporting on student outcomes. This bill requires each
LEA to annually provide to the CDE data needed to document
specified outcomes for each student receiving mental health
services, including data on graduation rates, dropout
rates, statewide assessment results, suspension and
expulsion rates, participation in general education
classes, and post-school outcomes. According to the CDE,
this data is already reported to the state and maintained
in either the CASEMIS or CALPADS data systems.
State monitoring of mental health services . This bill
requires the CDE to monitor the number and frequency of
mental health services reported annually by LEAs and
compare year-to-year changes for each LEA. Requires that
if year-to-year services decline significantly, then the
CDE investigate the cause for the decline in service
provision. The CDE does not conduct verification reviews
(to monitor whether services planned in IEPs are being
provided) in all school districts, but does conduct them in
approximately 30-50 targeted districts per year, chosen
based on indications of compliance problems. Expanding
verification reviews to all students with mental health
services indicated in their IEPs would be a significant
expansion of the department's monitoring role. Opponents
of this bill also note that a year-to-year decline in
services can have many causes (such as natural enrollment
trends or early intervention programming which reduces
enrollment in special education). It is unclear what is
envisioned by the requirement that CDE "investigate" such a
decline in services, but if this were interpreted to extend
beyond current monitoring practices it too would likely
significantly expand the state's monitoring function.
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Family empowerment centers information. This bill
requires each SELPA to require each LEA to provide parents
with informational materials, including procedural
safeguards, information regarding family empowerment
centers, and parent training and information centers in
their community. The bill also requires this information to
be provided in the three most common languages used by
parents locally, and be made available for LEAs to provide
to parents in their annual parent notification. The CDE
maintains translated versions of the procedural safeguards
on its website in four languages, and LEAs are currently
required to provide copies of procedural safeguards to
parents at times specified in the law.
Arguments in support. The California Council of Community
Behavioral Health Agencies writes that since the enactment of AB
114 it is now "impossible to determine if the shift in services
has actually benefitted students," and that "SB 884 would
institute stringent standards for accountability, transparency,
and monitoring of services and spending, so the state can
accurately assess whether students' needs are being met. The
bill also strengthens students' and parents' rights by requiring
schools to give them written notification of impending changes
to IEPs and to provide informational materials regarding their
rights."
The Western Center on Law and Poverty writes, "There is simply
too little data to determine whether the LEAs are meeting their
responsibility to provide necessary mental health services to
school children in special education," and supports SB 884
because it would strengthen requirements for accountability,
transparency, and monitoring of services and spending.
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Arguments in opposition. The Coalition for Adequate Funding for
Special Education writes, "The Coalition believes this bill will
result in significant new unfunded state mandates to LEAs by
requiring greater levels of administrative reporting by teachers
and administrators that will take critical time away from the
classroom and our most vulnerable at-risk children.
Additionally, new unfunded special education service
requirements will place additional fiscal pressures on an LEA's
local budget and result in the diversion of Local Control
Funding Formula funding to backfill the cost of these new
mandates."
The California Teachers Association writes, "CTA believes
implementation of this bill would divert funding from
Proposition 98 and limited special education funding,
unnecessarily burden service providers which would impact the
quality and delivery of individual instruction, inappropriately
increase the workload for special education teachers regarding
duplicative data reporting, and impact the local priorities in
each LEA's Local Control and Accountability Plan, which is
developed with community stakeholders and teachers to meet the
educational needs of all students, including pupils with
disabilities."
Recommended amendments. To addressing the author's interest in
improved fiscal and programmatic accountability for student
mental health services, while also addressing the above concerns
about mandated costs, duplicative requirements, and the
diversion of resources away from instruction and delivery of
services, staff recommends the following amendments:
Delete the current contents of the bill and replace with the
following:
1)Require that the K-12 education audit guide include an audit
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procedure that reviews whether the funding received by an LEA
for educationally related mental health services required by
an IEP (AB 114 funds) was used for its intended purpose.
2)Require that the CDE create a report to the Legislature on its
compliance findings and corrective action plans related to the
provision of mental health services for students with IEPs,
based on the data they currently collect through their
verification reviews of a subset of districts.
3)Require CDE create a report to the Legislature on the student
outcomes for which data is currently available for students
receiving mental health services through their IEPs.
4)Require the CDE to include a link to the page on its website
which lists family empowerment centers on its sample
procedural safeguards, in all languages for which it maintains
a translation.
Related legislation. SB 1113 (Beall) of this Session authorizes
LEAs to enter into partnerships, as specified, with county
mental health plans for the provision of EPSDT mental health
services. That bill was approved by this Committee on April
15th and is pending in the Assembly Health Committee.
AB 2091 (Lopez) of this Session requires LEAs to provide parents
with a translated copy of an IEP and other specified documents,
upon request, and requires that the IEP and related documents be
translated by a qualified translator. This bill is pending in
the Senate Appropriations Committee.
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REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION:
Support
California Council of Community Behavioral Health Agencies
(sponsor)
California State PTA
California Youth Empowerment Network
Community Health Partnership
National Alliance on Mental Illness, California
Steinberg Institute
Western Center on Law and Poverty
One individual
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Opposition
Alta Loma School District
Association of California School Administrators
California Association of School Business Officials
California Teachers Association
Clovis Unified School District
Coalinga-Huron Unified School District
Coalition for Adequate Funding for Special Education
Dinuba Unified School District
Glendora Unified School District
Kern County Superintendent of Schools
Sacramento City Unified School District
Special Education Local Plan Area Administrators
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Analysis Prepared by:Tanya Lieberman / ED. / (916)
319-2087