BILL ANALYSIS
AB 1988
Page 1
Date of Hearing: March 24, 2010
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION
Julia Brownley, Chair
AB 1988 (Hagman) - As Introduced: February 17, 2010
SUBJECT : Chino Valley Unified School District: minimum
schoolday
SUMMARY : Creates an urgency statute that deems Chino Valley
Unified School District (CVUSD) to have complied with the
requirements for Longer Year Incentive Funding for the 2008-09
school year, if the school district:
1)Operates grades 4 through 6 in the Dickson Elementary School
and the Rolling Ridge Elementary School for 10 additional
schooldays between June 15, 2009 and July 1, 2011, where each
school day contains at least 240 instructional minutes for
each grade level.
2)Reaches an agreement on employee compensation for the 10
additional days of operation with each local bargaining unit
representing certificated or classified district employees.
3)Provides a quality educational program during each of the ten
additional days of operation, including standards-aligned
instruction by highly qualified teachers, class sizes that are
approximately the same as those during the rest of the 2008-09
school year and support services that are equivalent to those
provided during the rest of the 2008-09 school year.
EXISTING LAW :
1)Establishes a minimum school year of 175 days to be offered
within a single school year running from July 1 through June
30, inclusive, and provides financial incentives under the
Longer Year Incentive program to school districts that offer
their students 180 days or more of instruction during a school
year
2)Imposes penalties for noncompliance with the Longer Year
program equal to an offset of the district's revenue limit
apportionment (based on average daily attendance or ADA) for
each affected grade level; the penalty equals 0.0056 (i.e.,
1/180) multiplied by that apportionment for each day less than
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180 offered by the district.
3)Establishes the length of a minimum school day for grades four
through eight to be 240 minutes; also authorizes a school
district to use an alternative method to meet the minimum day
minutes requirement for grades four through eight as long as
the average number of minutes of attendance in any 10
consecutive school days in the school year is 240 or greater,
and no school day has less than 180 minutes of attendance.
4)Authorizes the State Board of Education (SBE) to waive
specified provisions of the Education Code, including waiver
of instructional time penalties and the definition of the
standard school year.
5)Establishes the Education Audit Appeals Panel (EAAP) in order
to allow local education agencies to appeal apportionment
significant audit findings to a quasi-judicial panel; also
establishes a process and deadlines that govern the panel's
actions and provide due process to appellants.
FISCAL EFFECT : According to the Assembly Appropriations
Committee analysis of a substantially similar bill in 2009,
there is a potential loss of Proposition 98 General Fund savings
to the state, of approximately $7.6 million.
COMMENTS : The Longer Day / Longer Year Incentive program was
enacted in 1983 as part of SB 813 (Hart), Chapter 498, Statutes
of 1983, the Hughes-Hart Educational Reform Act. Under that act,
the state separately provides financial incentives to school
districts that offer a certain minimum number of instructional
minutes over the course of a school year - this is the Longer
Day Incentive program. The Legislature initially provided an
incentive of $20 per unit of ADA for kindergarten and grades 1
to 8 for each school district that certified that it offered at
least a specified number of instructional minutes each fiscal
year. The penalty for reducing the instructional time offered
below the minimum minutes specified is an offset equal to the
district's apportionment for ADA for each affected grade level
multiplied by the percentage of the minimum offered minutes at
that grade level that the district failed to offer."
The state provides separate financial incentives under the
Longer Year Incentive program to school districts that offer a
specified minimum number of instructional days over the course
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of a school year. The Legislature initially provided an
incentive of $35 per unit of ADA for each school district that
certified that it offered 180 days or more of instruction per
school year. The penalty for offering fewer than the required
180 days is an offset of the district's apportionment for ADA
for each affected grade level equal 0.0056 (i.e., 1/180)
multiplied by that apportionment for each day less than 180
offered by the district.
Taken together, the requirements of the Longer Day / Longer Year
Incentive program include that a district offer 180 days or more
of instruction each year, with each of those days being at least
the minimum number of minutes of 240 or that established by the
alternative averaging method. Since 1985-86, the incentive
amounts for the Longer Day / Longer Year Incentive program have
been included in each district's base revenue limit, and thus
have grown.
For the fiscal years from 1985-86 to 2000-01, no penalty was
imposed for a shortfall of days in the Longer Year program
unless there was also a shortfall in the number of instructional
minutes required for the Longer Day program. In other words, if
the 180-day requirement was not met, but the minimum
instructional minutes required in the Longer Day were provided,
there was no penalty for the Longer Year program. This, in
fact, describes the situation in which CVUSD currently finds
itself. However, if a school district failed to offer 180 days
and fell short of the minimum instructional minutes requirement,
a penalty was imposed for the Longer Year shortfall and another
penalty for the Longer Day shortfall.
SB 178 (Costa), Chapter 573, Statutes of 2001, changed the
instructional time penalty for falling short of the 180-day
Longer Year requirement without regard to the whether the school
district is in compliance with the Longer Day requirements; this
separate penalty establishes clear legislative intent. When a
school district accepts incentive funding for both the Longer
Day and Longer Year, the state expects the district to comply
with both programs: a school district cannot demonstrate
compliance with one program by demonstrating compliance with the
other. The instructional minutes provided by the District
beyond the minimum requirements for Longer Day can not be used
to satisfy the requirements for Longer Year. The Longer Day and
the Longer Year requirements and penalties are established in
law independent of each other; thus establishing the
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Legislature's clear intent that they be met separately. These
penalties are important in that they provide strong
disincentives against districts that might take the Longer Day /
Longer Year Incentive funding, but then fail to meet the
requirements of the program and thus fail to provide the
intended educational benefit to its pupils.
In an internal review of the 2008-09 school year, CVUSD fell
short of the minimum day requirement in grades 4 through 6 at
two school sites; those schools offered between 170 and 175
instructional minutes on 34 separate days, thereby failing to
meet the minimum day requirement of 240 minutes and the
alternative 180 minute minimum day allowed under the averaging
method. Though the district met the instructional minutes
requirement, they failed to provide at least 180 (minimum) days
as required for Longer Year funding. This failure has resulted
in an audit finding reported in the district's 2008-09 annual
audit report, which was certified by the State Controller on
March 11, 2010. For this infraction, CVUSD will be assessed a
penalty in an amount equal to 0.0056 (i.e., 1/180) times the
revenue limit apportionment provided for each of the three
affected grade levels for each of the 34 days not offered by the
district; that penalty is in excess of $7.5 million. CVUSD had
an annual budget in 2008-09 of $257 million. The district also
had material audit findings in its previous two annual (2006-07
and 2007-08) audits amounting to approximately $2.27 million,
including a $2.2 million finding associated with the
Instructional Materials program.
Since the district has other alternatives for seeking relief
from the instructional time penalty that will be imposed on it,
this bill, seeking legislative relief, may be premature. The
district has and/or had a number of options, some of which are
provided by statute, that could be or could have been followed
instead of seeking legislative relief, however, the district
appears to have been unable or unwilling to move forward with a
plan to implement a resolution to this instructional time
shortfall.
1)The district could have made up the days by providing
additional days of instruction that meet the minimum day
requirements. The Education Code specifies that, "It is the
intent of the Legislature that school districts and county
offices of education make every effort to make up any
instructional days and minutes during the school year in which
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the loss occurred?." The district could have taken either of
two courses of action to make up the days.
a) CVUSD reported to the California Department of Education
(CDE) in late spring 2009 that it was planning to add 34
days to its previously scheduled school calendar for this
school year. In fact, on May 7, 2009, the district
governing board voted to extend the school year at the two
school sites by 37 days to August 4, 2009. However, 22 of
those 34 days would have fallen beyond the last day of June
and into the following (2009-10) school year. Since current
law requires the instructional days to be provided in a
single school year, the district submitted a waiver request
to the CDE and the SBE asking that it be allowed to extend
the 2008-09 school year beyond June 30, to August 4, 2009,
in order to allow 22 days of school to count toward the
2008-09 school year. That waiver was denied by the SBE in
part because of district actions. The district opted to
open the two schools for 10 additional days in June 2009,
hoping to make up part of the shortfall or to meet the
provisions of a bill, AB 35 X3 (Hagman), that was pending
in the Legislature at the time. In its notifications to
parents about the additional instructional days, the
district conveyed information to parents reflecting what
appeared to be indifference concerning pupil attendance
during this period. As a result, the district's auditor
determined that those 10 days did not meet the standard of
instructional days and disallowed any credit toward the
district reducing the instructional time penalty. In
addition, this 10 day offering did not match the waiver
request submitted to the CDE and SBE asking for 22 days
beyond the normal school year; 10 additional days in June
would have required the district to complete 24 days after
June 30. It is possible that the district had already
decided to rely on passage of AB 35 X3, which would have
required only 10 additional days.
b) The district could have made up 12 of the 34 days in
June of the 2008-09 school year by operating a legitimate
program and enforcing attendance rules, and thus reduced
the penalty by more than one-third to approximately $5
million. This action could have been taken under current
law without any waiver or legislative relief.
2)After legitimately making up 12 of the 34 days in the 2008-09
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school year, the district could have returned to the SBE to
seek a waiver of the instructional time penalty in exchange
for making up the number of days (22) short in each of the
following two school years (this double make-up is a statutory
requirement placed on the SBE's waiver authority). No such
waiver was sought. The district would have had to taken this
action prior to issuance of the district's annual audit
report, as SBE policy states that the board does not approve
waivers related to apportionment significant (valued at more
than the dollar equivalent of one unit of ADA) audit findings
3)The district could pay the full instructional time penalty,
estimated to be in excess of $7.5 million.
4)The district now has its certified annual audit with the
instructional time audit finding, and is authorized to file an
appeal of that finding with the EAAP. The district has
indicated that it will file such an appeal. Though the EAAP
decides each case before it on the merits of the individual
case, appeals in earlier cases that appear to be substantially
similar to the case that CVUSD could make have been denied by
the panel.
If the district had been willing to move in a timely fashion in
2009, even in the absence of waiver or legislative action, it
could have substantially reduced the impact of this audit
finding. At this point in time CVUSD has only three remaining
alternatives for resolving this issue: 1) file and win an
appeal of the audit finding with the EAAP, 2) pay the $7.5
million penalty, or 3) acquire legislative relief. Rather than
relying on other options that have been available to fully or
partially resolve its instructional time shortage, the district
has asked for legislative relief. In the Third Extraordinary
Session, the author introduced a bill to provide this relief; AB
35 X3 (Hagman) was substantially similar to the current bill
except that it also required the district to maintain, for each
of the 10 additional days of operation and in each school being
operated, attendance equal to at least 75% of the 2008-09 total
enrollment reported to the Department of Education for grades 4
through 6 at that school, and required the make-up days to be
completed during the summer of 2009. The current bill makes the
same proposal, absent the attendance requirement, but allows the
make-up days to be completed up to July 1, 2011.
The current bill raises three concerns. First, any approach
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that reduces the number of required make-up days for the
district acts to undercut the disincentives that are established
by the penalties and requirements in existing law. Second,
though this bill is specific to a single school district, it may
be viewed as a precedent and thus open the door to any number of
similar future requests. Third, this bill places no
requirements or conditions on pupil attendance; since the
district will generate no additional ADA or funding (beyond the
elimination of the penalty) as a result of this bill or the ten
make up days, there may be little incentive for the district to
work to ensure pupil attendance or otherwise enforce compulsory
education requirements. As mentioned above, one of the schools
in question, in its 2009 preparation for the 34 days of make up
that was planned, provided a letter to parents asking for
information on when pupils might attend during the make up
period, and indicating that the school would not be contacting
parents on days when their absent children were not expected in
school.
It should also be noted that, consistent with budget flexibility
provisions approved by the Legislature, the district's governing
board has approved a policy that would allow the board to reduce
the number of instructional days below the 180 day requirement
in each school year through 2012-13, subject to approval in the
collective bargaining process. Thus the 10 additional
instructional days that would be provided under this bill would
mean that pupils would be attending for only 185 days if the 10
days were added to one school year; if those 10 days had been
added to the previous school year, pupils would have attended
for 190 days.
This bill, however, does have a conceptual attraction in that
operating two school sites for 34 days, or for sufficient days
to meet the statutory double-penalty under SBE waiver, beyond
the scheduled end of a school year would be a tremendous penalty
to be imposed on a school district and community; at the same
time, payment of a $7.5 million penalty in this time of fiscal
crisis would be equally imposing. This situation could have
been avoided by school officials who were more attentive to both
current law and their school schedule (in fact, this situation
was avoided in all but two of the schools in this district).
This impact on the district could have also have been
significantly reduced by a district that was committed to an
effort to resolve the situation in 2008-09. Despite that
inattentiveness and lack of commitment, this may be a situation
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where the Committee chooses to consider a compromise penalty
that is not as onerous as the current alternatives, but that
also continues to reinforce the Legislature's intent to provide
a strong disincentive against non-compliance with the
requirements of the Longer Day / Longer Year Incentive program;
the ten day penalty proposed by this bill is such a compromise
Committee amendments: If the Committee should choose to adopt
this compromise penalty and pass this bill, then Committee staff
recommends that the bill be amended to require CVUSD to
maintain, for each of the ten additional days of operation at
each school being operated, attendance equal to at least 75
percent of the 2008-09 total enrollment reported to the
Department of Education for grades 4 through 6 at that school.
This requirement was approved by this Committee as an amendment
to AB 35 X3 in 2009. Without a requirement relative to pupil
attendance (i.e., as the bill is currently written) the district
could open its doors, have few or no pupils in attendance, and
still meet the requirements of the bill. The author has
accepted this amendment.
Previous legislation: AB 35 X3 (Hagman), held in the Senate
Appropriations Committee, was substantially similar to this bill
except that it required the district to maintain, for each of
the 10 additional days of operation and in each school being
operated, attendance equal to at least 75% of the 2008-09 total
enrollment reported to the Department of Education for grades 4
through 6 at that school. SB 178 (Costa), Chapter 573, Statutes
of 2001, revises fiscal penalties for school districts that fail
to maintain strict compliance with the instructional time
requirements of the Longer Day / Longer Year Incentive program.
SB 813 (Hart), Chapter 498, Statutes of 1983, (the Hughes-Hart
Educational Reform Act) establishes fiscal incentives to school
districts willing to increase instructional time schedules in
order to expand both the school day and school year.
REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION :
Support
None on file
Opposition
None on file
AB 1988
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Analysis Prepared by : Gerald Shelton / ED. / (916) 319-2087