BILL ANALYSIS
AB 1988
Page 1
ASSEMBLY THIRD READING
AB 1988 (Hagman)
As Amended May 28, 2010
2/3 vote. Urgency
EDUCATION 9-0 APPROPRIATIONS 17-0
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|Ayes:|Brownley, Gaines, |Ayes:|Fuentes, Conway, Ammiano, |
| |Ammiano, Arambula, | |Bradford, Charles |
| |Carter, Eng, Miller, | |Calderon, Coto, Davis, |
| |Norby, Torlakson | |Monning, Ruskin, Harkey, |
| | | |Miller, Nielsen, Norby, |
| | | |Skinner, Solorio, |
| | | |Torlakson, Torrico |
|-----+--------------------------+-----+--------------------------|
| | | | |
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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 in two consecutive school years (either 2009-10 and
2010-11, or 2010-11 and 2011-12), where each school day
contains at least 240 instructional minutes for each grade
level.
2)Reaches an agreement on employee compensation for the
additional days of operation with each local bargaining unit
representing certificated or classified district employees.
3)Maintains, for each of the additional days of operation and
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.
4)Provides a quality educational program during each of the
additional days of operation, including standards-aligned
instruction by highly qualified teachers, class sizes that are
approximately the same as those during the 2008-09 school year
and support services that are equivalent to those provided
AB 1988
Page 2
during 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 (ADA) for each
affected grade level; the penalty equals 0.0056 (i.e., 1/180)
multiplied by that apportionment for each day less than 180
offered by the district.
3)Establishes the minimum school day for grades four through
eight to be 240 minutes.
FISCAL EFFECT : According to the Assembly Appropriations
Committee, there is a potential loss of Proposition 98 General
Fund savings to the state of approximately $7.6 million, if
fiscal penalties associated with Longer Year Incentive Funding
are waived for CVUSD.
COMMENTS : The Longer Day / Longer Year Incentive program,
enacted in 1983 as part of SB 813 (Hart), Chapter 498, Statutes
of 1983, 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 penalty for reducing the instructional time
offered below the minimum minutes specified is 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
also provides separate financial incentives under the Longer
Year Incentive program to school districts that commit to offer
180 days or more of instruction per school year. The penalty
for offering fewer than the required 180 days is equal to 0.0056
(i.e., 1/180) multiplied by the district's apportionment for ADA
for each affected grade level for each day less than 180 offered
by the district.
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There is clear legislative intent that when a school district
accepts incentive funding for both Longer Day and Longer Year,
the district must comply with both programs; thus a school
district cannot demonstrate compliance with one program by
demonstrating compliance with the other. The instructional
minutes provided by a district beyond the minimum requirements
for Longer Day can not be used to satisfy the requirements for
Longer Year. In addition, penalties for non-compliance are
important in that they provide strong disincentives against
districts that might take the Longer Day / Longer Year incentive
funding, but fail to meet the program requirements.
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 180
minute minimum day allowed as a statutory alternative. 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 $7.6 million. CVUSD had an annual budget in 2008-09
of $257 million. The district also had material audit findings
in its previous two annual audits amounting to approximately
$2.27 million, including a $2.2 million finding associated with
the Instructional Materials program.
The district has and/or had a number of options that could be,
or could have been, followed in lieu of seeking legislative
relief, however, the district appears to have been unable or
unwilling to move forward with a plan to resolve this
instructional time shortfall.
1)The district could have, but did not, 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 ? make
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every effort to make up any instructional days and minutes
during the school year in which the loss occurred?."
2)The district could have, but did not, apply to the State Board
of Education (SBE) to seek a waiver of the instructional time
penalty in exchange for making up the number of days it was
short in each of the following two school years (this double
penalty is a statutory requirement placed on the SBE's waiver
authority).
3)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 Education Audits Appeal Panel
(EAAP). The district filed such an appeal with the EAAP on
May 12, 2010. 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 CVUSD's case have
been denied by the panel.
4)The district could pay the full instructional time penalty,
estimated to be $7.6 million.
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 the
appeal of the audit finding that has been filed with the EAAP,
2) pay the $7.6 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. The
author previously introduced AB 35 X3 to provide this relief; AB
35 X3 was held under submission in the Senate Appropriations
Committee in 2009.
This bill raises two concerns. First, any approach 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. It should also be noted that, consistent with budget
flexibility provisions approved by the Legislature, the
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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 in a
school year under this bill would mean that pupils would be
attending for only 185 days in each of two school years, rather
than for 190 days.
This bill has a conceptual attraction in that operating two
school sites for the full 34 days, rather than for the same
number of days (as proposed in this bill) as required under the
statutory double-penalty applied with an 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 $7.6 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 36 schools in this district).
The 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
where the Legislature 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 imposed over two consecutive years, as
proposed by this bill, is such a compromise.
Analysis Prepared by : Gerald Shelton / ED. / (916) 319-2087
FN: 0004662