BILL ANALYSIS �
Senate Appropriations Committee Fiscal Summary
Senator Christine Kehoe, Chair
AB 47 (Huffman)
Hearing Date: 08/25/2011 Amended: 07/07/2011
Consultant: Jacqueline Wong-HernandezPolicy Vote: Education 6-2
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BILL SUMMARY: AB 47 modifies the Open Enrollment Act to exempt
schools with Academic Performance (API) scores of at least 700,
schools with at least 50 points growth in the prior year, and
certain special education schools. This bill makes charter
schools subject to being on the list of low-achieving schools.
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Fiscal Impact (in thousands)
Major Provisions 2011-12 2012-13
2013-14 Fund
"Low-achieving school" criteria ---No additional state
costs likely--- General
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STAFF COMMENTS: SUSPENSE FILE. AS PROPOSED TO BE AMENDED.
In response to the federal Race to the Top initiative,
California enacted the Open Enrollment Act in 2009. The Open
Enrollment program allows any pupil enrolled in one of 1,000
schools identified annually by the Superintendent of Public
Instruction (SPI) as "low-achieving" to apply for enrollment in
a higher performing school anywhere in the state. The list of
1,000 schools is established by ranking schools based on the
API, with the same ratio of elementary, middle, and high schools
as existed in decile 1 in the 2008-09 school year. A particular
district cannot have more than 10% of its schools placed on the
list. Additionally, court schools, community schools, community
day schools, and charter schools are all exempt from being
included on the list of low-achieving schools.
This bill modifies open enrollment provisions to exempt schools
AB 47 (Huffman)
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with Academic Performance Index scores of at least 700, schools
with at least 50 points growth, certain special education
schools, and make charter schools subject to being on the list
of low-achieving schools. It also creates a cap of up to 1,000
schools that are to be on the list of schools subject to open
enrollment, instead of requiring exactly 1,000, and removes the
existing exemption for charter schools. Changing criteria for
inclusion on the SPI's list of low-achieving schools is unlikely
to result in any additional state costs. The Open Enrollment Act
is existing law, and these changes will not likely drive
significant new workload for the Department of Education (CDE).
Existing law, also under the Open Enrollment Act, encourages
each school districts to keep an accounting of all requests made
for alternative attendance and records of all disposition of
those request that may include, but are not limited to, all of
the following: A) The number of requests granted, denied, or
withdrawn (and in the case of denied requests, the records may
indicate the reasons for the denials); 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 district of
residence of each of the pupils who transfer in or out of the
district; and E) the number of pupils who transfer in or out of
the district who are classified as English learners or
identified as individuals with exceptional needs.
This bill requires (instead of encourages) school districts to
keep an accounting of requests, and requires the information to
be reported to the district board at a public hearing. This bill
further requires districts with schools subject to open
enrollment to report, by May 15 annually, the information to
adjacent districts that accept transfer pupils, and to the
county office of education. This bill requires districts to
report the information to the CDE by May 15 biennially. These
new requirements on schools districts go beyond the existing
Open Enrollment Act, and constitute a new state reimbursable
mandate on school districts. The actual cost to the state will
depend upon costs claimed by school districts and the number of
schools included on the low-achieving schools list. Considering
that these requirements would apply to up to 1,000 schools in
any given year, reimbursable costs could reach hundreds of
thousands of dollars.
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AS PROPOSED TO BE AMENDED: The amendment would delete the
accounting and reporting requirements on school districts,
removing the reimbursable state mandate.