BILL ANALYSIS Ó
SB 884
Page 1
SENATE THIRD READING
SB
884 (Beall)
As Amended August 1, 2016
Majority vote
SENATE VOTE: 39-0
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|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
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| | | | |
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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
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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.
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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.
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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:
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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
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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