BILL ANALYSIS �
AB 1670
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Date of Hearing: May 7, 2014
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION
Joan Buchanan, Chair
AB 1670 (Donnelly) - As Amended: March 28, 2014
SUBJECT : Open Enrollment Act: waiver: parent notice.
SUMMARY : Specifies the governing board of any school district
requesting a waiver of the provisions of the Open Enrollment Act
(OE) that require a school to be included on the list of
low-achieving schools, shall send a written notice to the
parents or guardians of each pupil attending each school that
would otherwise be listed; and, specifies the notice shall
include, but not be limited to, instruction on how to contact
the State Board of Education (SBE) regarding the request by the
school district to waive the listing requirement.
EXISTING STATE LAW :
1)Open Enrollment Act : The Open Enrollment program (OE) allows
any pupil enrolled in one of 1000 schools identified by the
Superintendent of Public Instruction (SPI) as low achieving to
enroll in a higher performing school anywhere in the state.
The list of 1000 schools is established by ranking schools
based on the academic performance index (API), making the
following exclusions from the list: county community schools,
community day schools, juvenile court schools, charter
schools, any school that would make a school district have
more than 10% of its schools in the program, and any school
that would disrupt the balance of elementary, middle and high
schools ranked in decile one based on the API in the 2008-09
school year. Districts of enrollment (DOE) are required to
ensure that communications to parents do not target individual
families or neighborhoods. DOEs are authorized to adopt
written standards for acceptance and rejection of
applications, including consideration of adverse financial
impact pupil transfers may have on a school district; and,
requires that the standards adopted by the DOE for accepting
or rejecting student transfers not include consideration of a
pupil's family income, or any of the individual
characteristics set forth in Education Code Section 200, and
encourages districts to keep records on the personal
characteristics of students that transfer under this program.
The SPI is required to contract for an independent evaluation
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of the program, and provide the final report of the evaluation
to the Legislature, Governor, and state board of education
(SBE) on or before October 1, 2014. (Education Code
48350-48361)
2)Open Enrollment Regulations : The SBE adopted regulations which
specify the following with regard to the process for
identifying schools eligible for the OE program:
a) Schools with less than 100 valid scores reported on the
2009 Base API data file are excluded.
b) Because of the required ratio, 687 of the 1,000 on list
are elementary schools, 165 are middle schools, and 148 are
high schools.
c) Creating the list starts with the identification of the
elementary middle and high schools that have the lowest API
scores within the criteria described above. This list is
ranked from lowest API score to highest API score. When a
school district on the list has reached its 10% cap, the
district's schools with the highest API scores are dropped
from the list until the district has no more than 10% of
its schools on the list. Schools with the next lowest API
scores remaining in the pool are then added to create the
next list of 1,000 schools that maintains the required
ratio of schools. This process continues until a final
list of 1,000 schools is achieved that both maintains the
ratio of 68.7% elementary schools, 16.5% middle schools,
and 14.8% high schools and does not exceed any district's
10% number of schools. Schools that are closed are exempt.
(Title 5 of the California Code of Regulations, � 4701 -
4703)
EXISTING FEDERAL LAW :
1)Requires schools identified under program improvement (PI) to
provide pupils the option to transfer to another school within
the district that has not been identified for PI. Requires
school districts, where schools within the district have been
identified for PI, to provide transportation for pupils who
transfer to other schools within the school district.
2)Requires school districts identified for corrective action to
authorize pupils to transfer from a school operated by the
school district to another higher performing school operated
by another school district, and provide transportation for the
pupil to that school. The obligation of the school district
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to provide transportation for the pupil ends at the end of the
school year if a school district determines that the school
from which a pupil transferred is no longer identified for PI.
FISCAL EFFECT : This bill is keyed non-fiscal.
COMMENTS : This bill requires school districts that petition
for a SBE waiver to remove a school from the list of low
achieving schools, to first send a letter to all the parents at
the school notifying them of the request for a waiver and
informing them of the process to contact the SBE for comment on
the school district waiver request.
According to the author, "The Open Enrollment Act provides
students enrolled in one of the 1,000 "low achieving" schools
the option to enroll in a different school with a higher
Academic Performance Index (API) than a pupil's school of
residence. The CA Department of Education (CDE) constructs the
Open Enrollment list based upon Education Code � 48352 which,
among other restrictions, provides that no district shall have
more than 10% of its schools on the list. School districts are
authorized to seek a waiver from the State Board of Education
(SBE), and thus far some districts have been granted waivers to
have schools removed from the "low achieving" school list
largely due to the fact that restrictions in EDC � 48352 results
in schools with 800 API scores on the list. Nonetheless, the
result of those waivers means that students were no longer
authorized to transfer to another school with a higher API
without seeking permission from the school district."
The author further states, "There may be a new wave of requests
to be waived from the Open Enrollment list due to the recent
suspension of the API; after all, how does one determine which
schools are "low achieving" when there is no measurement
available? While this is speculative, the very least we can do
is ensure that the students who otherwise would enjoy the
opportunity to seek educational opportunities elsewhere are
notified before that option is removed. In short, the purpose
of this bill is to promote transparency by ensuring that parents
and guardians are notified when a school district seeks to
remove a school from the open enrollment list. Furthermore
those parents would be instructed on how to contact the SBE
regarding the waiver request."
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Open Enrollment Waivers : Below is a chart that displays the
number of SBE waivers requested by school districts from
2010-2013. One should note that in 2011, 87 waivers were
requested, but the SBE took no action and therefore 86 of those
waivers were automatically granted for one year. Also,
generally when OE waivers are approved with conditions, the
condition is generally that the district shall honor any
transfer requests made by parents at the identified school prior
to transfer request deadline. This means that when the OE list
is published in October, the district is still required to
notify the parents at the schools on the OE list of their option
to transfer to a higher performing school, and those transfer
requests must still be honored regardless of whether the waiver
is later granted.
State Board of Education Waiver Requests for the Open Enrollment
Program 2010-2013
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| | |Approved with | | | | |
| | Approved | Conditions | Denied | Withdrawn | No Action | Total |
|--------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+--------------|
| 2010 | 40 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 42 |
|--------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+--------------|
| 2011 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 86 | 87 |
|--------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+--------------|
| 2012 | 1 | 12 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 18 |
|--------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+--------------|
| 2013 | 0 | 29 | 7 | 0 | 0 |36 |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Source: SBE Website)
Public Notice of Waiver Request : This bill requires districts
to notify parents at schools on the OE list that the district
plans to seek a waiver. The intent of the bill is to provide
public notice and "sunshine" the waiver request. Local school
district boards, however, are already required to hear waiver
requests at a public board meeting prior to submitting a SBE
waiver. With this existing public notice at a local school
board meeting, the committee should consider whether it is
necessary to require the district to send a separate notice to
each family at the schools on the OE list, when the district is
seeking a waiver, especially in light of the fact that any
transfer requests from families at the schools on the OE list
must already be honored.
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Ongoing Open Enrollment Program Concerns : When the Assembly
Education Committee heard SB 4 X5 (Romero), which established
the OE program, the following concerns were expressed and
continue to persist:
1)The District of Choice (DOC) program, on which the OE program
is modeled, includes several safeguards that are not included
in the OE program. The committee should consider whether to
include the same safeguards in the OE program that exist for
the DOC program, which include:
a) Including a sunset date for the program, so the
Legislature can consider the results of the evaluation and
decide whether to continue the program based on those
results.
b) Specifying explicitly that a district of enrollment may
not reject the transfer of a special needs pupil, and an
English learner.
c) Requiring each district of enrollment to keep records
of: 1) The number of requests granted, denied, or withdrawn
as well as the reasons for the denials; 2) The number of
pupils transferred out of the district; 3) The number of
pupils transferred into the district; and, 4) The race,
ethnicity, gender, self-reported socioeconomic status, and
the school district of residence of each of the pupils
described above.
d) Requiring the information listed above to be reported to
the governing board of the district of enrollment and to
each school district that is geographically adjacent to the
district of enrollment, the county office of education in
which the district is located, the SPI, and the Department
of Finance (DOF).
e) Requiring the information listed above to be annually
reported to the Legislature and the Governor.
2)It is unclear whether the OE program requires districts of
enrollment to accept any transfers under this program. The
program specifies that a district can create standards for
accepting and rejecting students, and provides protections for
discrimination against individual students, but the program
may not prohibit a school district from rejecting all
transfers under this program. For example, could a district
create a policy that says they will not accept any transfers
and/or could a district create a policy that rejects all
students from a specific district or school?
3)Existing law excludes charter schools from the list of schools
required to participate in the open enrollment program. Of
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the 945 schools ranked in decile one based on the API in
2008-09, there were 103 charter schools. This means that 103
of California's lowest achieving charter schools are be
excluded from the open enrollment program and an equal number
of higher achieving traditional public schools are required to
participate in this program. Since charter school pupils who
leave a charter school only have enrollment rights in their
district of residence, this exclusion will limit the
opportunity for charter school students to move to a
higher-performing school if they choose to leave their low
performing (charter) school. There is no clear rationale for
limiting the opportunity for charter school pupils to leave a
low-performing school, and treating charter pupils differently
than non-charter pupils in this respect.
Arguments in Opposition : The Association of California School
Administrators opposes the bill and states, "AB 1670 places a
significant burden on local education agencies (LEAs) to send a
written notice to the parents/guardians of each pupil attending
each school the district is seeking to remove from the
low-achieving schools list under the Open Enrollment Program via
the State Board of Education (SBE) waiver process. Under
current law, LEAs may request a waiver with the SBE to remove a
school from the low-achieving schools list and to date, the SBE
has granted hundreds of these waivers, with the condition that
the LEA "must honor any transfer requests pursuant to the Open
Enrollment Act." ACSA believes this process is sufficient and
transparent."
Previous Legislation : SB 172 (Huff) from 2001, which died in the
Assembly Education Committee, would have modified the Open
Enrollment Act by changing the term "low-achieving school" to
"enrollment opportunities school;" and, changed the application
deadline for a parent to transfer their child to another school
from January 1 to January 5.
AB 47 (Huffman), from 2011, among other things, would have
modified the Open Enrollment Act to exempt schools with Academic
Performance (API) scores of at least 700, schools with at least
50 points growth in the prior year, and certain special
education schools. This measure was vetoed with the following
message:
This bill modifies the eligibility criteria used to
identify schools under the Open Enrollment Act which was
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enacted last year to provide parents with enrollment
options in 1000 public schools that fail to meet defined
student academic achievement criteria.
The bill increases the threshold for identifying open
enrollment schools to exclude schools that score above 700
on the Academic Performance Index for two consecutive
years. The California Department of Education estimates
that based on the revised criteria only 150 schools would
be included in the new list of schools. I believe that the
proposed changes go too far and would undermine the intent
of the original law.
The State Board of Education has administrative authority
to exempt schools from the Open Enrollment Act that
document strong student academic achievement. I expect the
Board will thoughtfully exercise this authority and believe
we should carefully review the implementation effects of
the program before making significant changes.
SB 4 X5 (Romero), Chapter 3, Statutes of 2010, created the Open
Enrollment program, which allows any pupil enrolled in one of
1000 schools identified by the SPI as low achieving to enroll in
a higher performing school anywhere in the state, as specified.
SB 266 (Huff) from 2009 would have enacted the Open Enrollment
Act for the purpose of allowing pupils attending low-performing
schools, as specified, to attend schools in a different
district. This bill was held in Senate Appropriations
Committee.
REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION :
Support
None on file.
Opposition
Association of California School Administrators
Analysis Prepared by : Chelsea Kelley / ED. / (916) 319-2087
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