BILL ANALYSIS
AB 317
Page 1
Date of Hearing: January 13, 2010
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION
Julia Brownley, Chair
AB 317 (Solorio) - As Amended: October 26, 2009
SUBJECT : School attendance
SUMMARY : Requires that pupil absences certified as related to
the H1N1 (2009) influenza virus not be deemed to be absences for
the purposes of calculating Average Daily Attendance (ADA) and
thus calculating the district's allocation under various funding
streams. Specifically, this bill :
1)Specifies that pupil absences related to the H1N1 (2009)
influenza virus in any public school where 50 or more pupils
have at least one day of such absence are eligible to be
waived.
2)Authorizes the governing board of a school district with a
public school, where 50 or more pupils have at least one day
of absence related to the H1N1 (2009) influenza virus, to
apply to the Superintendent of Public Instruction (SPI) for a
waiver of qualifying absences.
3)Requires the SPI to adopt, and inform school districts about,
guidelines and procedures to govern the processing of waiver
requests and the certification of absences as related to the
H1N1 (2009) influenza virus.
4)Defines pupil absences related to the H1N1 (2009) influenza
virus to include, but not necessarily be limited to absences
of pupils who have:
a) Tested positive for the H1N1 (2009) influenza virus,
also commonly known as "pandemic influenza" or "swine flu."
b) Not tested positive for the H1N1 (2009) influenza virus,
but whose absence occurs during an outbreak of that virus
that leads to complete or partial closure of the school, or
to their parents or guardians reasonably concluding that
school attendance would subject those pupils to a
heightened danger of being stricken with that virus.
EXISTING LAW :
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1)Provides funding for school districts that is, in part, based
on ADA, where ADA is calculated by dividing the number of days
of attendance for all pupils enrolled in the district by the
number of instructional days in the district's fiscal year,
and a day of attendance is generally defined as a minimum
number of instructional minutes (specific to grade level) in a
classroom setting under the supervision of a certificated
employee of the school district.
2)Authorizes the SPI, for the purposes of calculating funding
whenever ADA has been materially decreased as a result of an
emergency related to fire, flood, impassable roads, an
epidemic, an earthquake, a major safety hazard, a
transportation strike, or an order related to war or civil
disorder, to credit a local educational agency (LEA) with the
approximate ADA that would have been credited to the LEA had
the emergency not occurred.
3)Defines, in regulation, a material decrease in ADA for the
purposes of granting emergency credit to occur when at least
ten percent of the students who would normally attend a school
do not attend on any one day.
FISCAL EFFECT : Unknown
COMMENTS : Influenza A (H1N1) virus is the most common cause of
influenza (flu) in humans. Some strains of H1N1 are endemic in
humans and cause a small fraction of all influenza-like illness
and a small fraction of all seasonal influenza. H1N1 strains
caused a small percentage of all human flu infections in
2004-2005. Other strains of H1N1 are endemic in pigs (swine
influenza) and in birds (avian influenza). In June 2009, the
World Health Organization (WHO) declared that flu due to a new
strain of swine-origin H1N1 was responsible for the 2009 flu
pandemic. This pandemic H1N1 (2009) virus is often called swine
flu by the media.
According to an Oxford University study, reconstructing the
origins and timescale of the 2009 flu pandemic, the H1N1 "strain
has been circulating among pigs, possibly among multiple
continents, for many years prior to its transmission to humans."
The report also concluded that the H1N1 (2009) strain was
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"derived from several viruses circulating in swine," and that
the initial transmission to humans occurred several months
before recognition of the outbreak. According to the
researchers, movement of live pigs between Eurasia and North
America "seems to have facilitated the mixing of diverse swine
influenza viruses, leading to the multiple reassortment events
associated with the genesis of the (new H1N1) strain."
The virus is contagious and is believed to spread from human to
human in much the same way as seasonal flu, though H1N1 (2009)
is more contagious than seasonal flu and the contagious stage
lasts longer. The virulence of swine flu virus is actually mild
and the mortality rates are relatively low. In mid-2009 the US
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) noted that most
infections were mild, similar to seasonal flu, and that recovery
tended to be fairly quick. The number of deaths from the H1N1
(2009) virus remains a only fraction of the annual number of
deaths from seasonal flu. According to the WHO in November,
2009, "more than 207 countries and overseas territories or
communities have reported laboratory confirmed cases of pandemic
influenza H1N1 2009, including over 7,820 deaths"; WHO has also
tracked more than 622,482 laboratory-confirmed cases of H1N1.
The first case of H1N1 (2009) influenza was detected in
California on April 18, 2009.
Due to the virus' historical origins, including earlier
outbreaks of H1N1-type strains in the 1970s, the CDC has found
that children have no preexisting immunity to the H1N1 (2009)
strain but that adults, particularly those over 60, have some
degree of immunity. This has created disproportionate impacts
among public school students and has led to greater absences
than generally experienced during seasonal flu outbreaks.
The pandemic nature of the H1N1 (2009) outbreak, the difficulty
in making a symptom-based diagnosis that distinguishes between
H1N1 and seasonal flu, and the time and cost involved in using
laboratory tests to make that distinction led the medical
community in many cases to abandon laboratory testing for H1N1
(2009). In turn, state and county health officials, who are
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responsible for issuing proclamations in the event of epidemics,
across the state have reacted in various ways; in some counties
officials have declared a H1N1 (2009) epidemic after flu
symptoms have been noted in the county population, while in
other counties no epidemic has been declared because no
laboratory confirmation of H1N1 (2009) has been made. This
non-level playing field has the potential for creating
inequitable impacts on funding for public schools.
Much of the funding for California's public schools is based on
pupil attendance; as more pupils are absent, funding falls.
Current law allows the SPI, in the event of specified
emergencies or disasters, including epidemics, that lead to a
material decrease in ADA, to credit a LEA with the attendance
and funding that would have been received if the emergency had
not occurred. In the case of absences resulting from illness,
the SPI has relied on state and county health officials'
declarations of the existence of an epidemic to certify that the
absences resulted from an epidemic. Clearly the non-level
playing field created by different decisions with respect to
declaring an epidemic makes the application of current law to
the case of the H1N1 (2009) pandemic problematic. The author
notes that, "Existing state law is inadequate to preserve
funding to schools during this crisis."
In addition, current law and regulation define a material
decrease in ADA for the purposes of granting emergency ADA
credit to occur when at least ten percent of the students who
would normally attend a school do not attend on any one day.
The author explains that, "Thus, large schools can experience
250-400 students who are home ill with the swine flu, but those
schools cannot claim the ADA relief since they have not reached
the 10% threshold." It should be noted that this ten percent
threshold does not create a problem for the 2009-10 fiscal year;
on April 28, 2009 the Governor declared a state of emergency
with respect to the swine flu, thus allowing the SPI to treat
any decrease in attendance as material under current law. The
ten percent threshold issue will, however, be relevant in the
2010-11 fiscal year if H1N1 (2009) related absences continue.
This bill proposes to eliminate the problems with respect to
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absences related to the H1N1 (2009) virus by specifying that
such absences in schools with more than 50 pupils with at least
one day of such absence are eligible to be waived by the SPI, by
authorizing district governing boards to apply for a waiver of
such absences, and by requiring the SPI to provide guidelines
and procedures to govern this new process.
The problems in applying current law to the situation that has
arisen with the H1N1 (2009) virus are real, and this bill
provides a valid proposal for mediating those problems. The
proposal does this, however, by setting up a new process that is
in addition to the current process for providing LEAs with ADA
credit related to absences during emergencies. In addition,
some technical problems arise in the proposed new system that
would limit the ability for non-school district LEAs to take
advantage of the proposed provisions. It is possible to achieve
the same outcomes proposed in this bill by making simple
amendments, specific to the H1N1 (2009) outbreak in 2009-10 and
2010-11, to existing law and processes that have been in place
for more than thirty years. Doing so would achieve the author's
commendable intent, but eliminate the need to require the SPI to
develop new materials to explain a new process to LEAs, and
instead allow both the SPI and LEAs to resolve this issue using
a well-understood, long-used process.
The author has been authorized by the Assembly Rules Committee
to add an urgency clause to this bill.
Committee amendments : Committee staff recommends, and the
author has accepted amendments designed to achieve the goal of
this bill within the structure and processes that exist under
current law. The definitions established by the bill remain,
and other contents of the bill would be replaced by the
following:
1)Deem an epidemic to exist, for the purposes of granting
emergency credit for lost ADA or for meeting the 175-day
school year requirement, as a result of any pupil absence
related to the H1N1 (2009) influenza virus in any public
elementary or secondary school.
2)Specify that any decrease in ADA resulting from a pupil
absence related to the H1N1 (2009) influenza virus is a
material decrease for the purposes of granting emergency
credit for lost ADA or for meeting the 175-day school year
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requirement.
3)Add an urgency clause.
REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION :
Support
Small School Districts' Association
Opposition
None on file.
Analysis Prepared by : Gerald Shelton / ED. / (916) 319-2087