BILL ANALYSIS �
AB 630
Page 1
Date of Hearing: April 27, 2011
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION
Julia Brownley, Chair
AB 630 (Hueso) - As Amended: March 31, 2011
SUBJECT : Pupil safety: bullying
SUMMARY : Expresses the intent of the Legislature to encourage
school districts to establish bullying-reduction programs to be
integrated either into the regular curriculum or through
separate instruction during National Bullying Prevention Month
for a minimum of one class period each day, or a minimum of five
hours, at the discretion of each school district.
Specifically, this bill :
1)Stipulates that bullying-reduction programs are to be
delivered through training with appropriate activities and
best practice methodologies involving collaboration among
pupils, parents, and school staff, in accordance with all of
the following:
a) Training should educate pupils to increase their
awareness of bullying and to create a school environment
that empowers parents, school staff and administration, and
pupils to prevent and manage bullying at their schools and
states that the training should have the following three
main goals:
i) Helping pupils identify different forms of bullying
behavior, which include physical, verbal, psychological,
and electronic bullying;
ii) Creating a school environment where pupils know that
reports of bullying will be properly handled, so that
pupils who are either targets of bullying or bystanders
will freely report incidents of bullying when it is
necessary; and,
iii) Building trust so that pupils will feel that the
confidentiality of statements they intend to keep private
will be respected.
b) Training should include school administrators and
teachers, parents, and pupils, and anyone else who is in
frequent contact with children and should promote awareness
of bullying, as well as kindness, communication,
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cooperation, and friendship while stressing empathy for all
pupils.
c) Training should foster key educational building blocks
to build a positive school climate, address and prevent
bullying behavior in California schools, create an
awareness and encourage discussion of the bullying problem
as a school community, and cultivate the positive behaviors
that can create a bully-free learning community in each
school.
2)Authorizes each school district to develop a training
curriculum that fits its specific needs.
EXISTING LAW :
1)Encourages school districts, county offices of education, law
enforcement agencies, and agencies serving youth to develop
and implement interagency strategies, in-service training
programs, and activities that will improve school attendance
and reduce school crime and violence, including vandalism,
drug and alcohol abuse, gang membership, gang violence, hate
crimes, bullying, including bullying committed personally or
by means of an electronic act, teen relationship violence, and
discrimination and harassment, including, but not limited to,
sexual harassment.
2)Prohibits the suspension, or recommendation for expulsion, of
a pupil from school unless the principal determines that the
pupil has committed any of various specified acts, including,
bullying, including but not limited to bullying by means of an
electronic act, as defined.
3)Establishes the Hate Violence Prevention Act and authorizes
the State Board of Education (SBE) at the request of the SPI
to adopt policies directed toward creating a school
environment in kindergarten and grades one to twelve that is
free from discriminatory attitudes and practices and acts of
hate violence, and to revise as needed the state curriculum
frameworks and guidelines and the moral and civic education
curricula to include human relations education, with the aim
of fostering an appreciation of the diversity of California's
population and discouraging the development of discriminatory
attitudes and practices.
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FISCAL EFFECT : This bill is keyed non-fiscal
COMMENTS : According to the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, bullying, particularly among school-age children, is
a major public health problem. Bullying can be defined in
various ways and can take many forms. The United States
Department of Health and Human Services notes that bullying
involves an imbalance of power, intent to cause harm, and
repetition of incidents overtime. A nationally representative
survey conducted by the National Institute of Child Health and
Human Development (NICHD), finds that approximately 30% of
American schoolchildren in grades six through 10 have been
bullied or have bullied other children "sometimes" or more often
within a semester.
This bill expresses legislative intent to encourage school
districts to establish bullying-reduction programs to be
integrated into the regular curriculum or through separate
instruction during National Bullying Prevention Month for a
minimum of one class period each day or for a minimum of five
hours, at the discretion of each school district. Additionally,
the bill specifies that these programs should reduce bullying
through training with appropriate activities and best practice
methodologies.
Who are these programs/trainings intended for ? As currently
drafted, this bill is ambiguous as to who the encouraged
programs and/or trainings are intended for. One part of the
bill specifies that bullying reduction programs would be part of
the regular curriculum or separate instruction and that
specified training should educate pupils to create a school
environment that empowers parents, school staff and
administration, and pupils to prevent and manage bullying at
school. While this provision suggests that there is a training
component for pupils, it is unclear as to whether some of the
specified content is relevant for pupils, as it specifies that
the training would educate pupils on creating environments that
empower parents, staff, and administration to prevent and manage
bullying. If the intent is to encourage some sort of
training/instruction that is targeted to pupils, it might be
more prudent to focus that training/instruction on peer
relations and respect and not necessarily on empowering adults
"to prevent and manage bullying at their schools." This bill
specifies other goals of the training that would be relevant for
pupils.
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In a separate subdivision, this bill states that the training
should include school administrators, teachers, parents, pupils
and anyone else who is in frequent contact with children. The
language is unclear as to how these groups are to be included,
and does not specify whether the author's intent is to include
the aforementioned groups as providers or recipients of such
training. If it is the former, this bill raises the question as
to whether it is necessary, efficient, and appropriate to
include all the listed individuals in the provision of the
specified training. If it is the latter, a question could be
raised as to whether this would mean parents, teachers,
administrators and the public would be participating in the same
training that is intended for pupils and that takes place during
school hours, as this training is meant to be provided during
the school day. A particular issue of concern is that the bill
specifies that "anyone else who is in frequent contact with
children" should also be included in the training, and whether
as a provider or as a recipient, this is a very broad category
of people. This can potentially result in anyone, without
specific qualifications to be involved in providing specified
training or receiving training alongside pupils. If the
author's intent is to encourage separate trainings for each of
the listed groups, the bill should be amended to clearly specify
the intent.
Encouraging districts to implement the specific training
outlined in this bill during the specified time frame might make
it prohibitive for school districts to be able to establish
these programs. In a time when school districts are reducing
instructional time and shortening school years due to budget
cuts, it is uncertain whether school districts will be able to
spend one class period a day or five hours in the span of a
month to conduct the specified training activities. This
Committee may wish to consider whether districts should be
encouraged to spend one class period a day or five hours during
the month of October in bullying-reduction training programs, or
whether this timeframe is too restrictive.
Permissive Education Code : The Education Code (EC) expressly
grants broad legislative power to school districts. Since the
EC is permissive, local education agencies have the ability to
take actions and implement programs as long as those actions and
programs are not in conflict with the purposes for which the
state's schools are established or with specific prohibitions in
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code. While this bill highlights the issue of bullying in
schools and the need for bullying prevention and reduction
programs in schools, this bill does not create or establish
bullying prevention programs, but rather expresses intent to
encourage districts to establish bullying reduction programs. A
resolution that expressed similar intent and encouraged schools
to conduct bullying prevention activities was introduced by the
same author - ACR 22 (Hueso)- and passed out of this Committee
on March 23, 2011.
An argument can be made that bullying prevention programs should
be encouraged, however as currently drafted, this bill does not
provide clear guidance on what districts should be encouraged to
do and thus the bill may have little effect. Additionally, the
time frame specified in the bill is narrow and might be
limiting. Should this Committee wish to approve this bill,
staff recommends that the author clarify the language to address
the aforementioned questions and to uncodify the provisions of
this bill. The Education Code is already very lengthy and given
that the EC is permissive, there are fewer reasons to add to the
EC than is the case in other state codes. Considering that this
bill expresses legislative intent, rather than create a specific
program, this bill should be uncodified.
This Committee recently approved AB 9 (Ammiano), a very
comprehensive measure requiring school districts to establish
and publish anti-bullying and anti-harassment policies and
procedures for reporting and addressing complaints.
Additionally, AB 9 encourages grade-level appropriate
professional development for school personnel that addresses
anti-bullying policies and procedures and prevention techniques.
National Bullying Prevention Month : The National Bullying
Prevention Center, a project of the Parent Advocacy Coalition
for Educational Rights (PACER) developed the National Bullying
Prevention Month campaign in the United States in 2006 which has
been held during the month of October. The campaign came in
response to the need to raise awareness of bullying and its
devastating effects such as school avoidance, loss of
self-esteem, increased anxiety, and depression. The campaign
reached out to education based organizations such as the
National PTA, the American Federation of Teachers and the
National Education Association to provide schools, parents and
students with resources to respond to bullying behavior and to
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address the issue of bullying through education and support.
The author states, "Current law establishes the School Safety
and Violence Prevention Act that promotes school safety and
reduces school violence, but it does not specifically address
bullying. It is the intent to encourage schools districts to
establish programs to be integrated either into the regular
curriculum or through separate instruction during National
Bullying Prevention Month for a minimum of one class period each
day, or a minimum of five hours, at the discretion of each
school district, to reduce bullying through training with
appropriate activities. Raising awareness of bullying is
critical to securing safe learning environments for California's
children."
Related legislation : AB 9 (Ammiano) requires school districts
to have policies prohibiting discrimination, harassment,
intimidation, and bullying and a process for submitting and
investigating complaints of such acts, and to establish
alternative discipline for pupils that engage in specified acts.
Encourages school districts to offer professional development
to address discrimination, harassment, intimidation, and
bullying. AB 9 is pending in the Assembly Appropriations
Committee.
AB 1156 (Eng) amends the development of school safety plans to
include training of school-site personnel in the prevention of
bullying, amends residency requirements for school district
attendance to include a pupil who has been the victim of
bullying by another pupil of that district, as determined by
personnel of their district, and expands authorization of
suspension or expulsion for acts of "bullying" to include those
acts that are or can be reasonably predicted to effect physical,
mental health, academic performance, participation, or fear of
harm of the pupil.
AB 1156 is pending in this Committee.
SB 453 (Correa) expands authorization of suspension or expulsion
for acts of bullying to include those acts motivated by any of
the following actual or perceived characteristics of the victim:
disability, gender, nationality, race or ethnicity, religion,
sexual orientation, or association with a person or group with
one or more of these actual or perceived characteristics, and
includes acts of bullying that have persisted and reoccurred
despite repeated efforts at remediation and termination of the
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behavior by the principal or the superintendent of schools on
the list of acts for which expulsion may be recommended. SB 453
is pending in the Senate Education Committee.
Previous Legislation : AB 86 (Lieu), Chapter 646, Statutes of
2008, added bullying and bullying by means of an electronic act
to the list of reasons for which a student may be suspended or
recommended for expulsion.
AB 537 (Kuehl), Chapter 587, Statutes of 1999, established the
California Student Safety and Violence Prevention Act. AB 537
added the following two new forms of discrimination to the
existing prohibitions against discrimination and harassment in
California public schools: actual or perceived sexual
orientation and actual or perceived gender.
REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION :
Support
California Teachers Association
Child Abuse Prevention Center
State Public Affairs Committee of the Junior Leagues of
California
Opposition
None on file.
Analysis Prepared by : Marisol Avi�a / ED. / (916) 319-2087