BILL ANALYSIS �
AB 339
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Date of Hearing: May 4, 2011
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
Felipe Fuentes, Chair
AB 339 (Bonilla) - As Amended: April 6, 2011
Policy Committee: Education
Vote:7-2
Urgency: No State Mandated Local Program:
No Reimbursable: No
SUMMARY
This bill requires the State Board of Education (SBE) to adopt
regulations to govern the social content reviews conducted at
the request of a publisher or manufacturer of instructional
materials (IM) outside the primary IM adoption process.
Specifically, this bill:
1)Requires social content reviews of IM to be conducted by the
State Department of Education (SDE) or its agents for IM
pursuant to existing statute and the guidelines for social
content adopted by the SBE. This measure also authorizes SDE
to contract with agents to conduct these reviews.
2)Requires SDE to assess a fee on a publisher or manufacturer in
an amount that does not exceed the reasonable costs to the SDE
to conduct a social content review.
FISCAL EFFECT
GF costs of approximately $100,000 to $200,000 to the SDE to
conduct social content reviews. According to SDE, they
contracted out to county offices of education to conduct
approximately 100 reviews in the 2009-10 fiscal year. This bill
authorizes the SDE to assess a fee to cover all costs for these
reviews. Likewise, the measure also requires the revenue
generated from these fees to be budgeted as a reimbursement and
subject to review through the annual budget process.
COMMENTS
1)Purpose . Current law requires IM to accurately and equitably
AB 339
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portray the cultural and racial diversity of American society,
the male and female roles, and the contributions of minority
groups and males and females to the development of California
and the United States. Statute also prohibits IM from
containing inappropriate references to commercial brand names
or companies.
Prior to January 1, 2011, statute required the SBE to adopt
regulations to govern the social content reviews conducted at
the request of an IM publisher outside the primary and
follow-up IM adoption processes. This bill, sponsored by the
Superintendent of Public Instruction (SPI), reinstates this
requirement. The SPI argues this bill is necessary to ensure
supplemental IM (IM not adopted by the SBE) used in California
classrooms accurately portray cultural diversity, demonstrate
the contribution of minority groups, and do not contain
inappropriate references to commercial brand names, products,
and corporate logos.
2)IM flexibility and adoption process . AB 2 X4 (Evans), Chapter
2, Statutes of 2009, specified that local education agencies
(LEAs) are not required to purchase IM through the 2012-13
fiscal year. Consistent with the non-purchasing requirement,
Chapter 2 also suspended the requirement for SBE to adopt IM
or conduct other procedures associated with adoption (i.e.,
adopting curriculum frameworks) until the 2013-14 fiscal year
(FY). SB 70 (Committee on Budget and Fiscal Review), Chapter
7, Statutes of 2011, extended this flexibility by two years,
until 2014-15.
Prior to the enactment of AB 2 X4 (Evans), Chapter 2, Statutes
of 2009, statute required the SBE to adopt basic IM in the
core academic content areas (ELA, mathematics, history/social
science, and science) every six years for use in grades K-8.
It also established a schedule for the adoption of IM in other
subjects. Statute also required the SBE to adopt statewide
academically rigorous content standards in the core curriculum
areas. These content standards are implemented through the
curriculum frameworks, as adopted by SBE. The adopted IM must
be consistent with the criteria and standards of quality
prescribed in the adopted curriculum frameworks. The
development of curriculum frameworks is a multi-year process.
Also, the governing board of each school district maintaining
one or more high schools is authorized to adopt IM for use in
the high schools (grades 9-12) under its control.
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3)Related legislation .
a) AB 250 (Brownley), pending in the Assembly Education
Committee, attempts to revise the IM adoption process,
including the role of the CDSMC.
b) SB 140 (Lowenthal), pending in the Senate Appropriations
Committee, establishes a streamlined process for the
state-level adoption of instructional materials that are
aligned with the Common Core Academic Content standards,
and expands the authority of local school boards to adopt
instructional materials to include K-8 schools.
Analysis Prepared by : Kimberly Rodriguez / APPR. / (916)
319-2081