BILL ANALYSIS                                                                                                                                                                                                    �




                   Senate Appropriations Committee Fiscal Summary
                           Senator Christine Kehoe, Chair

                                          AB 848 (Campos)
          
          Hearing Date: 08/25/2011        Amended: 05/11/2011
          Consultant: Jacqueline Wong-HernandezPolicy Vote: Education 7-2
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          ____
          BILL SUMMARY: AB 848 requires programs receiving state 
          apprenticeship funding through the Department of Education (CDE) 
          or the California Community Colleges (CCC) for building and 
          trade programs to report specified outcome data annually.
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          ____
                            Fiscal Impact (in thousands)

           Major Provisions          2011-12       2012-13       2013-14       
           Fund

           Program reporting                       Potentially significant 
          costs / savings      Local/General*

          CDE and CCC administration        Minor and absorbable workload 
          increase     General

          *Counts toward meeting the Proposition 98 minimum funding 
          guarantee. 
          _________________________________________________________________
          ____

          STAFF COMMENTS: SUSPENSE FILE.
          
          Apprenticeship programs, overseen by the Division of 
          Apprenticeship Standards (DAS) in the Department of Industrial 
          Relations (DIR), offer on-the-job training and classroom related 
          and supplemental instruction (RSI). According to the DAS, each 
          program operates under apprenticeship training standards agreed 
          to by labor and/or management in accordance with state and 
          federal law. Local education agencies (LEAs) and CCCs partner 
          with apprenticeship program sponsors in sharing the 
          responsibility for RSI development and delivery. 

          LEAs and CCCs receive funding based on the actual number of RSI 
          coursework hours provided. Each LEA is capped on the number of 
          hours of instruction it can claim for reimbursement. The 2010-11 








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          Budget Act allocated $15.7 million (Prop 98/General Fund) for 
          CDE apprenticeship programs, and further required programs to be 
          reimbursed $5.04 per instructional hour. According to the CDE, 
          35,000 of the 60,000 registered apprentices in California are 
          enrolled in programs affiliated with the CDE or LEAs. Since 
          2009, this funding for CCCs has been part of categorical 
          flexibility; CCCs are permitted to use these program funds for 
          virtually any education purpose and are not subject to reporting 
          requirements for use of that funding. 

          This bill requires recipients of reimbursements for RSI provided 
          to apprentices in the building and construction trades to report 
          specified information prior to receiving reimbursement. 
          Specifically, programs must report the number and percentage of 
          apprentices who received postsecondary educational credit, the 
          amount of credit, and the number and percentage of apprentice 
          graduates who completed a postsecondary degree. This bill 
          requires Superintendent of Public instruction or the CCC 
          Chancellor to determine the format for collection and 
          presentation of the required information and, upon request, 
          provide the information to the DAR and DIR.

          Both the CDE and the CCC Chancellor's office have indicated that 
          the activities required by this bill would be minor, and the 
          workload absorbable within existing resources. The bill's 
          requirements for collecting and reporting student and former 
          student data are imposed on individual participating LEAs and 
          CCCs, and those entities will bear the bulk of the expense and 
          workload for compliance. Collecting data on former students 
          (apprentice graduates) will be far more difficult than current 
          student data, and programs will be forced to devote staffing 
          resources to collecting and managing data. This bill would 
          require every student be somehow tracked through postsecondary 
          education, even if he or she completed the apprenticeship 
          program in high school. Data collection and reporting could 
          increase program costs at the local level, and divert staff 
          resources. 

          This bill does not impose a state mandate, because institutional 
          participation in offering apprenticeship programs is voluntary. 
          However, to the extent that the newly required data is difficult 
          to collect, institutions may opt not to participate, reducing 
          both program opportunities and state reimbursement expenditures. 
          Moreover, if the reporting institutions participate in the 








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          programs but do not adequately meet the reporting requirements, 
          reimbursements cannot be issued and that money would revert back 
          to the General Fund for other Proposition 98 purposes.