BILL ANALYSIS
Senate Appropriations Committee Fiscal Summary
Senator Christine Kehoe, Chair
1988 (Hagman)
Hearing Date: 08/02/2010 Amended: 07/15/2010
Consultant: Dan Troy Policy Vote: ED 8-0
_________________________________________________________________
____
BILL SUMMARY: AB 1988, an urgency measure, would deem the
Chino Valley Unified School District to have offered the minimum
number of days of instruction for the 2008-09 fiscal year if the
district operates 10 additional school days for pupils in grades
4 through 6 for two consecutive years at two district elementary
schools, as specified.
_________________________________________________________________
____
Fiscal Impact (in thousands)
Major Provisions 2010-11 2011-12 2012-13 Fund
Audit Loss of $7,600 in savings
General*
Pressure Indeterminable pressure to forgive
General*
other school district audit penalties
*Counts toward meeting the Proposition 98 minimum funding
guarantee
_________________________________________________________________
____
STAFF COMMENTS: This bill meets the criteria for referral to the
Suspense File.
Under current law, school districts must operate a minimum of
175 school days annually between July 1 and June 30 of each
school year. Current law also provides financial incentives for
school districts to offer 180 school days and to provide a
minimum amount of instructional minutes, depending on the grade.
For apportionment purposes, the minimum school day is 240
minutes (except for kindergartners), though districts are
permitted to have days as short as 180 minutes provided that the
average number of minutes for any 10-day period does not fall
below 240 minutes.
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 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
of a school year. The Legislature initially provided an
incentive of $35 per unit of average daily attendance (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. Since 1985-86, the incentive
amounts for the
Page 2
AB 1988 (Hagman)
Longer Day / Longer Year Incentive program have been included in
each district's base revenue limit, and thus have grown due
primarily to the application of COLAs.
The Chino Valley Unified School District adopted a calendar for
the 2008-09 school year that provided relatively short days for
each Friday, whereby pupils were released earlier than normal.
Two elementary schools in the district, Doris Dickson and
Rolling Ridge, released pupils in grades four through six before
reaching the required minimum number of 180 minutes for the day.
Doris Dickson Elementary released pupils five minutes too
early, and Rolling Ridge Elementary released pupils 10 minutes
too early. This early release occurred on 34 days during the
school year, and as a result, those 34 days do not count as
schooldays at all for pupils in grades four through six at those
two schools.
Due to this error, the Chino Valley Unified School District's
annual audit has assessed a penalty in an amount equal to 1/180
(one day) multiplied by the revenue limit apportionment for each
of the 34 days not offered by the district, for each of the
three affected grade levels at the two elementary schools, for a
total of approximately $7.6 million.
This bill would deem the district to have offered 180 days of
instruction in the 2008-09 - thereby waiving the audit finding -
if the district:
Operates grades 4 through 6 in the two specified schools
for 10 additional schooldays of at least 240 instructional
minutes for two consecutive years (defined as either 1) the
2009-10 and 2010-11 or 2) the 2010-11 and 2011-12 school
years).
Maintains attendance of a least 75 percent for each of
the schools on each of the additional days.
Reaches a compensation agreement with the local
classified and certificated bargaining units for the
additional days.
Provides a quality educational program during the
make-up days that includes standards-aligned instruction by
highly qualified teachers, class sizes and support services
that are approximately the same as those provided during
the rest of the 2008-09 school year, as specified.
While the penalties in current law may appear harsh, they are in
place as a disincentive for districts to shorten instructional
time. Staff notes that the districts are not required to
participate in the instructional time incentives - the Chino
Valley USD entered the program voluntarily. In addition to
waiving the district's penalty, this bill may lead to pressure
to forgive future audit findings of other districts.
In 2009, the district applied for a waiver from the State Board
of Education to extend offer school days beyond July 1 of 2009
for the purposes of counting make-up days toward the 2008-09
school year. The request was denied. The district has filed an
appeal of the audit with the Education Audit Appeals Panel, but
their appeal has not yet been heard.
Page 3
AB 1988 (Hagman)
AB 35 of the 3rd Extraordinary Session (Hagman, 2010) was held
by this committee in 2009.