BILL ANALYSIS                                                                                                                                                                                                    �




                   Senate Appropriations Committee Fiscal Summary
                           Senator Christine Kehoe, Chair

                                          SB 477 (Wright)
          
          Hearing Date: 05/16/2011        Amended: 04/26/2011
          Consultant: Jacqueline Wong-HernandezPolicy Vote: Education 7-2
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          BILL SUMMARY: SB 477 would require school districts to establish 
          a policy specifying the time period for notifying a parent when 
          a pupil is initially classified at a truant.
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                            Fiscal Impact (in thousands)

           Major Provisions         2011-12      2012-13       2013-14     Fund
                                                                      
          Mandate: Notification policy     Likely minor costs, if the 
          activity is claimed     General*
                                                          in mandate costs 
          and deemed reimbursable    

          *Counts toward the Proposition 98 minimum funding guarantee 
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          STAFF COMMENTS: 
          
          Under existing law, a pupil is declared to be a truant when 
          absent without a valid excuse for three days in a school year, 
          or absent without a valid excuse three times for more than 30 
          minutes at a time, or any combination of days and minutes 
          totaling three instances. Upon classification as a truant, 
          school districts are currently mandated to notify the parent or 
          guardians of specified options and consequences related to that 
          status, including that the pupil is truant, that the parent or 
          guardian is obligated to compel the attendance of the pupil, 
          that the pupil may be subject to prosecution, and that 
          alternative educational programs are available to the pupil. 

          In recent years, the existing mandate for truancy notification 
          has resulted in approximately $15.9 million in annual 










          SB 477 (Wright)
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          reimbursements. As a result, AB 1610 (Committee on Budget, Ch. 
          724, 2010) limited the state costs for the existing truancy 
          notification mandate, by requiring school districts to provide 
          the truancy notification using the most cost-effective method 
          possible rather than requiring the notice be sent by mail.  

          The current statute does not specify when the notification must 
          be provided to the parent. This bill would simply require that 
          each school district establish a policy specifying the time 
          period for notifying the parent or guardian of a pupil upon the 
          pupil's initial classification as a truant. This bill does not 
          specify what the timeframe should be, only that districts have a 
          policy with a timeframe.

          This new mandate is unlikely to expand the reimbursement level 
          of the existing truancy notification mandate. The state 
          currently reimburses districts for doing the actual work of 
          notifying parents and guardians, in accordance with state law. 
          This bill requires that a district have a policy specifying the 
          time frame for activities it is currently completing. School 
          districts likely already have some sort of policy, since some 
          sort of policy guides the activities and timeframes for which 
          they are claiming reimbursement. Districts are free to make that 
          timeframe lengthy enough that no activities need to be changed, 
          and setting a timeframe for performing an existing duty should 
          not require additional staff training. It would be very 
          difficult for a district to prove that establishing a policy 
          from which the reimbursable work is generated constitutes a new 
          duty or higher level of service than is currently required.