BILL ANALYSIS �
AB 203
Page 1
Date of Hearing: May 27, 2011
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
Felipe Fuentes, Chair
AB 203 (Brownley) - As Amended: May 11, 2011
Policy Committee: Education
Vote:7-3
Urgency: No State Mandated Local Program:
Yes Reimbursable: Yes
SUMMARY
This bill makes the following changes to the Parent Empowerment
Program (PEP), established pursuant to SB 4X5 (Romero), Fifth
Extraordinary Session, Chapter 3, Statutes of 2010:
1)Clarifies that an eligible low achieving school is also one
that is identified as persistently lowest-achieving, but did
not receive funding under the federal School Improvement Grant
program.
2)Requires the governing board of a local education agency
(LEA), at a regularly scheduled public hearing, to allow
parents/guardians to provide testimony regarding the PEP
petition.
3)Provides that no more than one parent/guardian per pupil may
sign a PEP petition and any written information provided to
parents/guardians is required to meet the language translation
requirements specified in current law.
4)Requires the State Department of Education (SDE) to provide
specified information on its Internet website, including
information regarding the PEP petition process and a sample
petition (available in other languages as well).
5)Defines "parents/guardians" as the natural or adoptive
parents, legal guardians, or other persons holding the right
to make educational decisions for a pupil, including foster
parents.
6)Defines "A combination of at least one-half of the
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parents/guardians of pupils attending the school and the
elementary or middle schools that normally matriculate into a
middle or high school" as one-half of the total number of
parents/guardians of pupils who attend any of the following:
a) The school for which the petition is submitted.
b) An elementary or middle school that normally
matriculates into the middle or high school for which a
petition is submitted, as applicable.
FISCAL EFFECT
1)One-time GF administrative costs to SDE, likely less than
$125,000, to provide specified information on its Internet
website, including a PEP petition template, as specified.
2)Potential, unknown, GF/98 state reimbursable mandated cost
pressure, likely less than $150,000 annually, to school
districts to conduct a verification process to ensure
parent/guardian signatures comply with the requirements of
this measure. While this bill does not establish a
verification process, it does specify who can sign the
petition and how many times he or she may sign it. The
original legislation, SB 4X5 (Romero), Fifth Extraordinary
Session, Chapter 3, Statutes of 2010, established state
reimbursable mandated costs, which will not be known until a
local education agency files a state mandate claim. Likewise,
Chapter 3 also specified no more than 75 schools statewide may
participate in the PEP program.
COMMENTS
1)Background . SB 4X5 (Romero), Fifth Extraordinary Session,
Chapter 3, Statutes of 2010, established the PEP program,
which authorizes a parent of a pupil enrolled in a school that
is not identified as a "persistently lowest-achieving school,"
as determined under the federal Race to The Top program, but
is subject to corrective action pursuant to the federal No
Child Left Behind Act and has an Academic Performance Index
score of less than 800, to submit an application requesting a
school district governing board implement specified education
reform models.
Over the last year, parents, LEA governing boards, SDE, and
the State Board of Education (SBE) have struggled to implement
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the PEP due a lack of statutory clarity. As such, in
September 2010, the SBE began developing emergency regulations
for the implementation of this program. The emergency
regulations were developed to address five key issues: (a) how
the PEP process interacts with the current charter school
petition process; (b) signature verification process (who can
sign the petition and who verifies the signatures); (c)
identification of eligible schools and appropriate
notification of stakeholders; (d) notification timelines; and
(e) allegations of threats and harassment. In April 2011, the
SBE voted to send draft regulations out for public comment.
To date, SBE has not released the regulations for public
comment.
2)Purpose . During the SBE's emergency regulations
deliberations, many education stakeholders, including
governing boards and SDE, indicated that any emergency
regulations adopted may not address all of the problematic
issues because current statute is not clear. According to the
author, "I have been monitoring the SBE and its process of
developing regulations. This bill is a vehicle to make
necessary clarifications that should be in statute and address
any unresolvable issues or any issued deemed to require
statutory authority or clarification in order to implement one
or more the proposals in draft regulation."
3)PEP petition in Compton Unified School District (CUSD) . On
December 7, 2010, 265 parents of pupils attending McKinley
elementary school in CUSD filed a petition for the school to
be turned into a charter school run by an outside organization
pursuant to the PEP program.
McKinley elementary school enrolled 447 students in 2009-10. Of
the enrolled students, 56.4% are Latino, 33.6% are African
American, and 91% are identified economically disadvantaged.
According to SDE data, the school had a base API score of 658
in 2010. Likewise, 32% of students scored proficient or above
on the state's English language arts assessment, which is
equal to the school district's average and 43% of students
scored proficient or above on the state's math assessment,
which exceeds the district average.
After the petition was submitted, CUSD determined certain
measures be taken to verify the signatures of the petition to
ensure they were McKinley parents as required under current
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law. As a result, the district required each parent who
signed the petition to appear in person with photo
identification to verify signatures. Parents who signed the
petition and Parent Revolution, a Los Angeles-based parent
organizing organization, sued CUSD in Los Angeles Superior
Court arguing this process "is designed to prevent parents
from exercising their rights under the Parent Trigger statute
as well as curtail their rights to free speech." In March
2011, the court issued a preliminary injunction, which
concluded that CUSD could not require parents to appear in
person with photo identification to verify petition
signatures. The order further required CUSD to verify the
signatures no later than April 1, 2010.
On May 20, 2011, the Los Angeles Superior Court tentatively
ruled the petitions to be invalid because each parent did not
provide a date indicating when he or she signed the petition.
The judge indicated he will issue his final ruling on June 7,
2011.
Analysis Prepared by : Kimberly Rodriguez / APPR. / (916)
319-2081