BILL ANALYSIS �
AB 47
Page 1
CONCURRENCE IN SENATE AMENDMENTS
AB 47 (Huffman and Brownley)
As Amended August 30, 2011
Majority vote
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|ASSEMBLY: |52-26|(June 2, 2011) |SENATE: |21-16|(August 31, |
| | | | | |2011) |
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Original Committee Reference: ED.
SUMMARY : Makes changes to the Open Enrollment (OE) Act.
The Senate amendments :
1)Delete the July 1, 2015, sunset date.
2)Delete the requirement for each District of Enrollment (DOE)
to keep specified records; delete the requirement these
records to be reported to the governing board of the DOE and
to each school district that is geographically adjacent to the
DOE, the county office of education (COE) in which the
district is located and the Superintendent of Public
Instruction SPI; and, delete the requirement for the (SPI) to
report to the Legislature and the Governor.
EXISTING LAW establishes the OE program which allows any pupil
enrolled in one of 1,000 schools identified by the SPI as low
achieving to enroll in a higher performing school anywhere in
the state. The list of 1,000 schools is established by ranking
schools based on the Academic Performance Index (API), making
the following exclusions from the list: county community
schools, community day schools, juvenile court schools, charter
schools, any school that would make a school district have more
than 10% of its schools in the program, and any school that
would disrupt the balance of elementary, middle and high schools
ranked in decile one based on the API in the 2008-09 school
year. DOEs are authorized to adopt written standards for
acceptance and rejection of applications, including
consideration of adverse financial impact pupil transfers may
have on a school district; and, requires that the standards
adopted by the DOE for accepting or rejecting student transfers
not include consideration of a pupil's family income, or any of
the individual characteristics set forth in Education Code
AB 47
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Section 200, and encourages districts to keep records on the
personal characteristics of students that transfer under this
program. The SPI is required to contract for an independent
evaluation of the program, and provide the final report of the
evaluation to the Legislature, Governor, and State Board of
Education (SBE) on or before October 1, 2014 (Education Code
48350-48361).
AS PASSED BY THE ASSEMBLY , this bill was substantially similar
to the version passed by the Senate.
FISCAL EFFECT : According to the Senate Appropriations
Committee, no additional state costs likely due to the
low-achieving school criteria. A potentially significant
reimbursable mandate for the alternative attendance records
requirement.
COMMENTS : Higher achieving schools on the OE list: Since the
implementation of the OE program began, many schools and
districts have come forward expressing frustration with their
identification as a "low performing school" despite their
success in achieving API scores in the 700-800+ range. This
bill prohibits schools with an API score above 700 from being
identified for OE. This bill also includes a growth component
to the identification criteria, by prohibiting schools that have
attained 50 points of growth on the API in the prior year from
being identified for OE. Also, the bill limits the schools
identified to those that fall below these criteria for two
consecutive years, in order to account for fluctuations in a
school's API score.
Conforming changes: This bill makes several conforming changes
between the OE program and the District of Choice program.
These conforming changes include specifying explicitly that a
DOE may not reject the transfer of special needs pupils or
English learners.
The 10% cap: Existing law limits the number of schools that can
be identified for the OE program within a district to 10% of the
total number of schools in the district. This bill clarifies
that if the number of schools in the district is not divisible
by 10, then the number of schools of schools eligible for OE
shall be established by rounding to the next whole number of
schools.
AB 47
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Ongoing open enrollment program concerns: When the Assembly
Education Committee heard SB 4 X5 (Romero), Chapter 3, Statutes
of 2009, Fifth Extraordinary Session, which establishes the OE
program, the following concern was expressed and continues to
persist. It is unclear whether the OE program requires
districts of enrollment to accept any transfers under this
program. The program specifies that a district can create
standards for accepting and rejecting students, and provides
protections for discrimination against individual students, but
the program may not prohibit a school district from rejecting
all transfers under this program. For example, could a district
create a policy that says they will not accept any transfers
and/or a policy that rejects all students from a specific
district or school?
Analysis Prepared by : Chelsea Kelley / ED. / (916) 319-2087
FN: 0002443