BILL ANALYSIS
Senate Appropriations Committee Fiscal Summary
Senator Christine Kehoe, Chair
185 (Buchanan)
Hearing Date: 08/30/2010 Amended: 08/27/2010
Consultant: Dan Troy Policy Vote: NA
_________________________________________________________________
____
BILL SUMMARY: AB 185 would appropriate federal School
Improvement Grants (SIG) to K-12 local education agencies for
the purposes of funding local improvement plans for low
performing schools, as specified.
AB 185 would also appropriate federal stabilization funds (SFSF)
to the K-12 local education agencies, the California Community
Colleges, the California State University, and to University of
California for the purposes of mitigating state funding
reductions.
_________________________________________________________________
____
Fiscal Impact (in thousands)
Major Provisions 2010-11 2011-12 2012-13 Fund
K-12 SFSF $271,000 Federal
CCC SFSF $5,000 Federal
CSU SFSF $106,000 Federal
UC SFSF $106,000 Federal
K-12 SIG $415,845 Federal
_________________________________________________________________
____
STAFF COMMENTS: This bill meets the criteria for referral to the
Suspense File.
School Improvement Grants
Per the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, schools, and
local education agencies (LEAS) must meet four sets of
requirements to make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), the federal
calculation utilized to determine if schools and LEAS are
meeting performance targets for all students. The requirements
include: (1) student participation rate on statewide tests, (2)
percentage of students scoring at the proficient level or above
in English-language arts and mathematics on statewide tests, (3)
API score, and (4) graduation rate (if high school students are
enrolled). Numerically significant groups of students at a
school or school district also must meet the four requirements.
LEAs that receive federal Title I funds and do not meet AYP
targets for two consecutive years, are identified for Program
Improvement (PI). Title I schools also enter PI after failing to
meet AYP for two consecutive years. The state decides
appropriate corrective actions for LEAs in PI while the LEA
makes the decision for schools in PI. The state is
Page 2
AB 185 (Buchanan)
required to provide technical assistance to LEAs and schools in
PI. Schools and LEAs exit PI if they achieve AYP for two
consecutive years.
The federal government provides two streams of funding to states
to be used directly to improve student achievement in Title I
schools identified for improvement, corrective action, or
restructuring so as to enable those schools to make adequate
yearly progress (AYP) and exit PI status. These funding sources
are Title I Set-Aside (NCLB requires states to set aside four
percent of their total Title I grant to help schools and
districts improve their performance) and the School Improvement
Grant (SIG). SIG was established by the federal government in
2008 to provide technical assistance for Title I schools in PI.
In 2009, the federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act
(ARRA) also provided one-time funding to California under the
Title I Set-Aside and the SIG program on top of the base funding
provided to California.
The U.S. Department of Education issued new guidelines earlier
this year that modified the allocation priorities and uses of
SIG funding. States are now required to use SIG resources to
turn around the bottom five percent of schools in PI (i.e.,
persistently low performing schools). Per federal rules,
schools can receive a minimum of $50,000 and maximum of $2
million per year for three years.
As a condition of receiving funds, schools must implement one of
four intensive intervention models:
1. Close the school.
2. Convert the school into a charter school.
3. Release at least 50 percent of instructional staff and
provide certain flexibility related to staffing and
instructional time.
4. Give schools considerable flexibility, including control
over personnel decisions, budgeting, and length of the
school day/year.
The new federal rules also establish priority for intervention
among schools:
First priority is for schools receiving Title I funds that
either are in the bottom five percent of Program Improvement
schools, as measured by standardized test scores in math and
Language Arts, or high schools with a graduation rate below 60
percent for several consecutive years (Tier 1).
Second priority is for high schools that would have been in
the bottom five percent but do not receive Title I funds (Tier
2).
Third priority is for additional schools receiving Title I
funds that the state identifies at its discretion (Tier 3).
This bill would appropriate $415,845,000 in SIG funding ($351.8
million in one-time ARRA plus $64.1 million in base funding) for
supporting three-year school improvement grants to local
education agencies, to be provided over a three-year period. The
bill provides that the funds will allocated on the basis of
school size per the action of the
Page 3
AB 185 (Buchanan)
State Board of Education (SBE) during their August 24, 2010
meeting. At that meeting, the SBE agreed to pursue a federal
waiver that would allow for allocation of the entire grant
(federal otherwise require 25 percent of the funds to be held in
reserve for future use if not all schools meeting Tier 1 and
Tier 2 criteria are funded in the allocation plan). This action
allows for the funding of a greater number of schools across the
state than what had been initially proposed by the California
Department of Education (CDE). The appropriation of the funds
in this bill would be contingent upon the federal waiver
approval. The U.S. Department of Education has indicated support
of the waiver in concept, but has requested that the CDE first
confirm that schools could implement their approved plans with
the funds provided under the school size allocation (while
schools may receive differing amounts based on other factors,
school size funding would approximate the following: $4 million
for small schools (less than 400 pupils), $5 million for medium
(between 400 and 1,000), and $6 million for large schools (more
than 1,000).
Federal Stabilization Funding
The federal State Fiscal Stabilization Fund (SFSF) program
provides one-time formula grants to states under the American
Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) for the purpose
stabilizing state and local government budgets in order to
minimize and avoid reductions in education and other essential
public services.
The SFSF grant is issued to states in two phases. California
received $2.9 billion for K-12 education in Phase I. The state
further received nearly $1.5 billion for the higher education
($716.5 million each for UC and CSU and $30 million for CCC).
This bill would appropriate Phase II of the SFSF grants, as
follows:
$271 million to K-12 local education agencies to
mitigate reductions made to revenue limits and
corresponding reductions made to basic aid districts.
$106 million each (a total of $212 million) to the
University of California and to the California State
University to mitigate budget finding reductions.
$5 million to Board of Governors of the California
Community Colleges to mitigate funding reductions.