BILL ANALYSIS Ó SB 884 Page 1 SENATE THIRD READING SB 884 (Beall) As Amended August 1, 2016 Majority vote SENATE VOTE: 39-0 ------------------------------------------------------------------ |Committee |Votes|Ayes |Noes | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |----------------+-----+----------------------+--------------------| |Education |7-0 |O'Donnell, Olsen, | | | | |Kim, McCarty, | | | | |Santiago, Thurmond, | | | | |Weber | | | | | | | |----------------+-----+----------------------+--------------------| |Appropriations |20-0 |Gonzalez, Bigelow, | | | | |Bloom, Bonilla, | | | | |Bonta, Calderon, | | | | |Chang, Daly, Eggman, | | | | |Gallagher, Eduardo | | | | |Garcia, Holden, | | | | |Jones, Obernolte, | | | | |Quirk, Santiago, | | | | |Wagner, Weber, Wood, | | | | |Chau | | | | | | | SB 884 Page 2 | | | | | ------------------------------------------------------------------ SUMMARY: Requires that funding for mental health services for students with individualized education programs (IEPs) be subject to local audit in the 2016-17 fiscal year, requires the California Department of Education (CDE) to create a report on its compliance findings and corrective action plans related to the provision of mental health services for students with IEPs, requires the CDE to create a report on pupil outcomes for students receiving mental health services pursuant to their IEPs, and requires the CDE to include a link to information on family empowerment centers on its sample procedural safeguards. 1)Requires that funding for mental health services for students with disabilities be subject to existing state and federal audit requirements, and that audit procedures be included in the audit guide to review whether this funding was used for its intended purposes in the 2016-17 fiscal year. 2)Requires that these audit procedures be included in future fiscal years if the addition of these procedures is recommended by the State Controller. 3)Requires that if any audit findings are generated through this process, the Superintendent of Public Instruction ensure that the local educational agency (LEA) has either corrected them or has developed a plan of correction. 4)Requires the CDE to create a report on its compliance findings SB 884 Page 3 and corrective action plans related to the provision of mental health services for students with IEPs using data the department collects through its verification and comprehensive reviews, including those targeted and any randomly chosen for review. Requires the CDE to provide this report to the appropriate fiscal and policy committees of the Legislature by June 30, 2017. 5)Requires the CDE to create a report on pupil outcomes for students receiving mental health services through an IEP using data already maintained by the department. Requires the outcomes to include all of the following: graduation rates, dropout rates, statewide assessment results, suspension and expulsion rates, participation in general education classes, and postschool outcomes. Requires the CDE to provide this report to the appropriate fiscal and policy committees of the Legislature by June 30, 2017. 6)Requires the CDE to include a link on the sample procedural safeguards form maintained on its Web site to the page on its Web site that lists family empowerment centers, and to include this link on all sample procedural safeguard forms for which it maintains translations. FISCAL EFFECT: According to the Assembly Appropriations Committee: 1)Minor/absorbable costs to the Controller's Office to add an additional item to the annual K-12 audit guide. SB 884 Page 4 2)Minor General Fund administrative costs to CDE of approximately $10,000 to $20,000 to report on compliance findings and corrective action plans and to report on pupil outcomes, as specified, since reports are based on existing data. COMMENTS: Recent state audit. AB 114 (Committee on Budget), 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: 1)The most commonly offered types of mental health services and the providers of those services generally did not change. 2)The number of students who received these mental health services remained steady or grew. 3)The provider of the most common mental health services generally had already been, and continued to be, the LEA. SB 884 Page 5 4)The majority of changes to services were unrelated to AB 114. The audit also found that for individual student records reviewed: 1)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. 2)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. 3)For 40% 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. 4)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: SB 884 Page 6 1)Require LEAs to use six performance indicators to perform analysis annually on the subset of students receiving mental health services. 2)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. 3)Require CDE to collect information about the frequency of the provision of each service contained in all students' IEPs. 4)Require CDE to annually review the frequency of mental health services and follow up with Special Education Local Plan Areas (SELPAs) when it observes a significant reduction in the frequency of services. 5)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. K-12 Audit Guide process. Existing law requires the State Controller's Office, the Department of Finance, the CDE, and certain education stakeholders to propose the content of the K-12 audit guide for annual financial and compliance audits of school districts, county offices of education, and other local education agencies. This bill would deviate from the existing process and require specific procedures to be included in the guide for the 2016-17 fiscal year only. Procedures for the SB 884 Page 7 review of mental health expenditures, as specified, could be included in future years but only upon the recommendation of the Controller. Analysis Prepared by: Tanya Lieberman / ED. / (916) 319-2087 FN: 0004064