BILL ANALYSIS �
AB 47
Page 1
GOVERNOR'S VETO
AB 47 (Huffman and Brownley)
As Amended August 30, 2011
2/3 vote
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|ASSEMBLY: |52-26|(June 2, 2011) |SENATE: |21-16|(August 31, |
| | | | | |2011) |
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|ASSEMBLY: |52-26|(September 6, | | | |
| | |2011) | | | |
-----------------------------------------------------------------
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
AB 47
Page 2
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 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
AB 47
Page 3
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.
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?
GOVERNOR'S VETO MESSAGE :
This bill modifies the eligibility criteria used to identify
schools under the Open Enrollment Act which was enacted last
year to provide parents with enrollment options in 1000
public schools that fail to meet defined student academic
achievement criteria.
The bill increases the threshold for identifying open
enrollment schools to exclude schools that score above 700 on
the Academic Performance Index for two consecutive years. The
California Department of Education estimates that based on
the revised criteria only 150 schools would be included in
the new list of schools. I believe that the proposed changes
go too far and would undermine the intent of the original
law.
The State Board of Education has administrative authority to
AB 47
Page 4
exempt schools from the Open Enrollment Act that document
strong student academic achievement. I expect the Board will
thoughtfully exercise this authority and believe we should
carefully review the implementation effects of the program
before making significant changes.
Analysis Prepared by : Chelsea Kelley / ED. / (916) 319-2087
FN:
0002958