BILL ANALYSIS
SENATE COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION
Gloria Romero, Chair
2009-2010 5th Extraordinary Session
BILL NO: SBx5 4
AUTHOR: Romero
AMENDED: January 4, 2010
FISCAL COMM: Yes HEARING DATE: January 6,
2010
URGENCY: No CONSULTANT: Beth Graybill
Lynn Lorber
SUBJECT : Open Enrollment and Parental Empowerment
SUMMARY
This bill establishes an Open Enrollment program to allow
any pupil in a low-achieving school, as defined, to
transfer to another school in the district or any school
outside of their district of residence. This bill also
establishes a Parent Empowerment program that authorizes
parents of specified schools to sign a petition requiring a
Local Education Agency to implement a school intervention
model, as specified.
BACKGROUND
Federal Law
The federal Department of Education has issued an
invitation to the states to compete for approximately $4.35
Billion of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA)
one-time funding as Race to the Top grants. To be eligible
to apply for Race to the Top funding, states must be
approved for State Fiscal Stabilization Fund money, and
have no legal, statutory, or regulatory barriers to linking
student achievement or student growth data to the
evaluation of teachers and principals.
In addition, states applying for Race to the Top funding
must comprehensively address four assurances or areas of
priority in education including:
1) Adopting high quality standards and assessments to
prepare students for higher education or work.
SB 4 (5th Extraordinary Session)
Page 2
2) Recruiting, developing, retaining and rewarding
effective teachers and principals.
3) Creating data systems to measure student success and
support instruction.
4) Turning around the lowest performing schools.
Competition for Race to the Top funding among those states
that meet the basic criteria will be determined by the
quality of the states' plans and that will be determined by
the degree to which the states address nineteen competitive
criteria. States receiving State Fiscal Stabilization
Funds are also required to provide data in each of these
four areas of reform and must ensure the information is in
place (or will shortly be in place) so that parents,
teachers, and policymakers know where schools and students
stand.
Each reform plan criterion has an associated performance
measure, for which states must set annual targets.
Finally, each state's application must include
certification from the state's attorney general that all
elements accurately reflect the state's legal framework;
and be signed by the Governor, the chief state schools
officer (Superintendent of Public Instruction in
California) and the president of the state board of
education. States that are awarded funds must meet annual
reporting requirements and progress measures, participate
in national and state-level program evaluations, and make
results publicly available.
Existing federal law requires schools identified under
Program Improvement (PI) to provide pupils the option to
transfer to another school within the district that has not
been identified for PI, and requires school districts,
where schools within the district have been identified for
PI, to provide transportation for pupils who transfer to
other schools within the school district.
Existing federal law requires school districts identified
for corrective action to authorize pupils to transfer from
a school operated by the district to another higher
performing school operated by another school district, and
to provide transportation for the pupil to that school.
SB 4 (5th Extraordinary Session)
Page 3
State Law
Current law establishes the policy of the State of
California to afford all persons in public schools equal
rights and opportunities in the educational institutions of
the state regardless of their disability, gender,
nationality, race or ethnicity, religion, or sexual
orientation.
Current law authorizes the governing board of a school
district to declare the district to be a District of Choice
(DOC) that is willing to accept a specified number of
inter-district transfers. The DOC program provides
protections against districts targeting students in
specific residential neighborhoods, on the basis of
perceived or actual academic or athletic performance, or
any other personal characteristic. A DOC district may
reject the transfer of a pupil if the transfer of that
pupil would require the district to create a new program to
serve that pupil, but prohibits a DOC from rejecting the
transfer of special needs pupils, individuals with
exceptional needs, and English learners. DOCs are required
to collect specific data about the students who transfer to
their district and report that data to surrounding
districts and the state. These data are required to be
reported annually to the Legislature and the Governor and
the Legislative Analyst Office (LAO) is required to prepare
a comprehensive evaluation of the program.
ANALYSIS
With regard to Open Enrollment, this bill :
1) Establishes the "Open Enrollment Act" to allow pupils
attending schools identified by the Superintendent of
Public Instruction (SPI) as "low-achieving" to attend
another school within the same district or transfer to
another school district, provided that the transfer
does not negatively impact either a court-ordered or
voluntary desegregation plan of the district or the
racial balance of a district.
2) Requires the Superintendent of Public Instruction
(SPI) to annually create a list of 1,000 schools
ranked by increasing Academic Performance Index (API)
SB 4 (5th Extraordinary Session)
Page 4
with the same ratio of elementary, middle, and high
schools as existed in Decile 1 in the 2008-09 school
year; prohibits the SPI from including charter schools
and court, community, or community day schools on the
list and requires the SPI to ensure that no more than
10% of a local education agency's schools are on the
list.
3) Authorizes a school district of enrollment to adopt
specific written standards for acceptance and
rejection of transfer applications. Permits the
standards to include consideration of the capacity of
a program, class, grade level, or school building, or
adverse fiscal impact. Prohibits the standards from
including consideration of a pupil's previous academic
achievement, physical condition, and proficiency in
the English language, family income or any of the
individual characteristics set forth in Section 200 of
the Education Code. Permits districts to apply their
usual requirements for admission to a magnet school or
program designed to serve gifted and talented
students. Requires a lottery to be conducted in the
group priority order if the number of pupils
requesting transfer to a particular school exceeds the
number of spaces available.
4) Requires a school district of enrollment to ensure
that pupils who transfer under this program are
enrolled in a school with a higher API than the school
in which the pupil was previously enrolled and are
selected through a random, unbiased process that
prohibits an evaluation of whether or not the pupil
should be enrolled based on his or her individual
academic or athletic performance, or other specified
characteristics. Requires first priority for transfer
be given to siblings of children who already attend
the desired school and second priority to pupils
transferring from a program improvement school ranked
in Decile 1 on the API identified on the SPI list.
5) Imposes certain notification requirements on school
districts:
a) Requires districts that go into program
improvement, corrective action, or a
restructuring program to provide the parents and
SB 4 (5th Extraordinary Session)
Page 5
guardians of all enrolled pupils with notice of
transfer options.
b) Requires school districts of enrollment,
within 60 days of receiving a transfer
application to notify the applicant parent and
the school district of residence in writing
whether the application has been accepted or
rejected.
c) Requires communication to parents or
guardians by districts to be factually accurate
and not target individual parents or guardians or
residential neighborhoods on the basis of a
child's actual or perceived academic or athletic
performance or any other personal characteristic.
6) Requires Basic Aid districts accepting open enrollment
students to receive 70 percent of the district revenue
limit that would have been apportioned to the school
district of residence. Specifies the apportionment of
these funds shall begin in the second consecutive year
of enrollment and continue annually until the pupil
graduates from, or is no longer enrolled in the school
district of enrollment.
7) Encourages, but does not require, each school district
to keep certain transfer-related data including but
not limited to:
a) The number of requests granted, denied, or
withdrawn.
b) The number of pupils who transfer out of the
district.
c) The number of pupils who transfer into the
district.
d) The race, ethnicity, gender, self-reported
socioeconomic status, and the school district of
residence of each pupil who transfers into our
out of the district.
e) The number of pupils who transfer into or
SB 4 (5th Extraordinary Session)
Page 6
out of the district who are classified as English
learners or identified as individuals with
exceptional needs.
8) Requires the SPI, from federal funds appropriated for
this purpose, to contract for an independent
evaluation of the open enrollment program and requires
the SPI to provide a final evaluation report to the
Legislature, Governor and State Board of Education on
or before October 1, 2014. Requires the evaluation to
consider all of the following:
a) The levels of, and changes in, academic
achievement of pupils in school districts of
residence and school districts of enrollment for
pupils who do and do not elect to enroll in a
school district of enrollment.
b) Fiscal and programmatic effects on a school
district of residence and a school district of
enrollment.
c) Numbers and demographic and socioeconomic
characteristics of pupils that elect and do not
elect to transfer to a school district of
enrollment.
With regard to Parent Empowerment, this bill :
9) Authorizes the parents or legal guardians at a school
that is not identified as a persistently low achieving
school, but is subject to a second or later year of
corrective action, and has an Academic Performance
Index score of less than 800, to petition the local
board to implement one of the four interventions
described in Race to the Top (RTTT) or any other major
restructuring of the school's governance arrangement
described in No Child Left Behind. If at least half
of the parents or guardians at a school, or in the
feeder schools of a middle or high school, petition
their school's local governing board then the local
board must implement the intervention requested by the
parents unless the board makes a finding in writing at
a public hearing stating the reason it cannot
implement the specific recommended option, in which
case the board would be required to designate one of
SB 4 (5th Extraordinary Session)
Page 7
the other strategies for implementation.
10) Provides that a total of 75 schools may be subject to
intervention strategies initiated by parent petition.
11) Requires a school district to notify the
Superintendent of Public Instruction (SPI) and the
State Board of Education (SBE) upon receipt of a
parent petition and upon its final disposition of that
petition.
12) Requires a school district that indicates in writing
that it will implement a different intervention than
requested by the parents to notify the SPI and SBE
that the intervention selected has substantial promise
of enabling the school to make adequate yearly
progress.
13) Prohibits a school district from being required to
implement the option requested by the parent petition
if the request is for reasons other than improving
academic achievement or pupil safety.
With regard to other provisions, this bill :
14) Contains a contingency provision that specifies the
act shall become operative only if SB 1 (Steinberg) of
the Fifth Extraordinary Session is also enacted and
becomes operative.
STAFF COMMENTS
1) Bills are linked . This bill and SB 1 (Steinberg) both
contain contingent enactment provisions. This bill
becomes operative only if SB 1 of the Fifth
Extraordinary Session of 2009-10 is also enacted and
becomes operative.
2) Fifth extraordinary session legislation . SB 1
(Steinberg) would make several changes to law in an
effort to make California more competitive for federal
K-12 Race to the Top (RTTT) grants. The measure
establishes a framework for the state's application
for federal RTTT funding and the related memoranda of
understanding (MOU) with local agencies, sets forth
SB 4 (5th Extraordinary Session)
Page 8
intervention strategies for low-achieving and
persistently low-achieving schools, establishes an
alternative credentialing route for individuals
interested in teaching science, technology,
engineering, math, and career technical education,
extends the authorization of the state's testing
programs, and authorizes data in the California
Education Information system to be used by local
education agencies for evaluating teachers and
administrators and for making employment decisions.
SB 1 was passed by this Committee on November 2, 2009
on a 5-0 vote and was heard by the Assembly Education
Committee on December 9, 2009 and failed passage by a
vote of 6 to 5, with 6 absent. SB 1 was granted
reconsideration by the Committee and was subsequently
amended to replace its contents and is currently
awaiting concurrence in the Senate.
SB 2 (Simitian) develops a process for reviewing and
responding to requests for individual pupil data
records housed in the emerging pre-school through
higher education statewide longitudinal educational
data system (P-20 data system). SB 2 was passed by
the Legislature on December 17, 2009, and is before
the Governor awaiting action.
3) Related regular session legislation . SB 19 (Simitian)
in the 2009-10 Regular Session repealed the firewall
and addressed statutory changes related to the
collection and use of data necessary to qualify for
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funding.
SB 19 was signed into law by Governor Schwarzenegger
on October 11, 2009.
SB 680 (Romero, Chapter 198, Statutes of 2009), was passed
unanimously by this Committee on April 15, 2009. This
measure extended the sunset date of the District of
Choice (DOC) program to July 1, 2016, and included
several new provisions to enhance the operation of the
DOC program.
4) Open enrollment . This measure establishes a new
school choice program that allows students attending
designated low-performing schools to transfer to
schools in districts that may or may not be DOCs.
SB 4 (5th Extraordinary Session)
Page 9
5) Mandated costs . The enrollment process and
notification requirements in this measure impose
certain mandated costs on both districts of residence
and districts of enrollment.
SUPPORT
None received on this version of the bill.
OPPOSITION
None received on this version of the bill.