BILL ANALYSIS �
AB 1672
Page 1
ASSEMBLY THIRD READING
AB 1672 (Holden)
As Amended April 24, 2014
Majority vote
EDUCATION 5-0 APPROPRIATIONS 12-0
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|Ayes:|Buchanan, Ch�vez, |Ayes:|Gatto, Bocanegra, |
| |Gonzalez, Nazarian, | |Bradford, |
| |Williams | |Ian Calderon, Campos, |
| | | |Eggman, Gomez, Holden, |
| | | |Pan, Quirk, |
| | | |Ridley-Thomas, Weber |
|-----+--------------------------+-----+--------------------------|
| | | | |
-----------------------------------------------------------------
SUMMARY : Requires the governing board of each school district
that has established a local school attendance review board
(SARB) to adopt rules and regulations to require the appropriate
officers and employees of the school district to gather and
transmit specified data to the county superintendent of schools
and the Superintendent of Public Instruction (SPI) by September
15 every year. Specifically, this bill :
1)Requires the following information for the prior school year
to be provided:
a) The number of pupils enrolled in the school district.
b) The number and percentage of chronic absentees, as
defined in the California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement
Data System, in the school district.
c) The number of pupils in the school district referred to
a school-level meeting, such as a student attendance review
team or a student success team.
d) The number of pupils in the school district referred,
and the reason for the referral, to a SARB meeting.
e) The number of pupils referred to a SARB who improved
their attendance by at least 50% during the following
semester or trimester after attending the SARB meeting.
AB 1672
Page 2
f) The number of pupils and parents or guardians referred
to the district attorney, city prosecutor, or probation
department for mediation or prosecution following a SARB
meeting.
g) The number of pupils and parents or guardians referred
to community services following a SARB meeting.
h) The number of pupils referred to alternative education
placement following a SARB meeting.
i) The number of petitions to the juvenile court requested.
2)Requires the information to be disaggregated and submitted by
the following subgroups:
a) English learner status.
b) Foster youth status.
c) Gender.
d) Grade levels.
e) Low income status.
f) Race or ethnicity.
g) Disability status.
3)Requires the county office education (COE) to make available
on its Internet Web site, if one is available, the contents of
the SARB reports it receives from local SARBs, or that
summarize the results of those reports, or that the COE
creates, if the county SARB accepts referrals. Requires the
information to be made available in an anonymized format that
is easy for the public to access and understand.
FISCAL EFFECT : According to the Assembly Appropriations
Committee:
1)Ongoing Proposition 98 (1988) and General Fund state mandated
costs to school districts in the range of $200,000 to $1
million. This assumes 30% to 50% of school districts currently
AB 1672
Page 3
have established SARBs. Costs associated with school district
workload will vary depending on existing SARB support and
resources.
2)Minor costs to COEs to make contents of SARB reports available
online.
3)Ongoing administrative costs to California Department of
Education (CDE) related collection, certification and
reporting of attendance and SARB data. CDE estimates ongoing
costs of $432,000. The bill requires various data elements to
be reported to CDE but does not explicitly state what CDE is
to do with the data. CDE would incur costs assuming the
intent is to have the data processed at the state level.
COMMENTS : California's compulsory education law requires all
students between the ages of six and 18 to attend school
full-time and requires their parents and legal guardians to be
responsible for ensuring that children attend school. In
2011-12, the CDE reported a truancy rate of 28.5%, down from
29.76% in 2010-11; with 1.829 million students out of a total
enrollment of 6.2 million considered truants.
A student who is absent from school without a valid excuse three
full days in one school year or tardy or absent for more than
any 30-minute period during the schoolday without a valid excuse
on three occasions in one school year, or any combination
thereof, is considered a truant. Parents or legal guardians are
notified when their children has been classified as a truant and
are provided specified information, including a reminder of
their obligation to compel the attendance of pupils at school,
that parents or legal guardians who fail to meet this obligation
may be guilty of an infraction and subject to prosecution, that
alternative educational programs are available, and that the
parents or the legal guardians have the right to meet with
appropriate school personnel to discuss solutions to the pupil's
truancy.
Existing law specifies actions that may or shall be undertaken
each time a truancy report is required. Existing law authorizes
a peace officer to give a written warning upon a first truancy
report. The record of the warning is kept for two years and may
be transferred to a new school if the pupil changes school.
AB 1672
Page 4
Upon a pupil's third truancy in a school year and after a school
or district personnel has made a conscientious effort to meet
with the parent and pupil, a pupil is classified as a habitual
truant and may be referred to a SARB or to the local probation
officer. A SARB can be formed by a COE, a school district, or
by two or more school districts, and can be comprised of
representatives of school districts, county social services
agencies, and law enforcement agencies. SARBs were devised to
address pupil attendance and behavioral problems by
investigating the reasons for the problems and referring
students and/or parents or guardians to community or social
services or to law enforcement, if necessary. SARBs may also
refer a pupil to a truancy mediation program, whereby the
district attorney or the probation officer may notify the
parents or guardians that they may be subject to prosecution for
failure to compel the pupil to attend school, or request the
pupil and his or her parents or guardians to attend a meeting at
the district attorney's office or at the probation department.
A fourth truancy puts the pupil within the jurisdiction of the
juvenile court and may deem the pupil a ward of the court. If
the pupil is adjudged a ward of the court, the pupil may be
required to do court-approved community service, attend a
court-approved truancy prevention program, have his or her
driving privileges suspended or revoked, and/or pay a fine of
$100. Parents or legal guardians in charge of any pupil who
fails to compel a pupil to attend school is guilty of an
infraction and may be fined between $100 and $500 based upon the
number of convictions.
This bill is part of a package of truancy-related bills
sponsored by Attorney General (AG) Kamala Harris. Last fall,
the AG's office released a report titled "In School and On
Track" on truancy of elementary school kids. Calling it a
crisis, the AG argues that truancy at the elementary level has
negative impacts on the students, who are more likely to drop
out of high school; on public safety, when students become more
likely to become involved with gangs, substance abuse, and
incarceration; on school districts, who lose attendance dollars;
and on the economy, due to lost economic productivity and
revenues. In the course of conducting the report, the AG found
that attendance, truancy, and SARB data were not readily
available. Consequently, several of the bills sponsored by the
AG, including this bill, focus on data collection.
AB 1672
Page 5
This is intended to focus on collection of information from
SARBs. Under current law, the governing board of each school
district is required to direct school district staff to transmit
the number and type of referrals to SARBs and the requests for
petitions to juvenile courts to the county superintendent of
schools. The state SARB has developed a couple of reporting
forms that districts may use to submit reports to county
superintendents. One is a simple form that captures the number
of referrals by grade, gender, reason for the referral
(behavior, attendance, or truancy) and court referrals. The
other form additionally captures the impact of SARBs (e.g.,
number of students who improve attendance, number of students
who improve behavior, number of court referrals, number of
agency referrals, and number of transfers to alternative
schools). This bill incorporates almost all of the information
found on the expanded form, and requires the information to be
sent to the SPI in addition to the county superintendent of
schools. The COE is required to post, in an anonymized format,
the content of the reports or a summary of the reports on its
Internet Web site. If the county SARB accepts referrals, that
information must also be posted on the Web site.
The author states that some SARBs "have been effective in
reducing truancy and helping students. But in some districts
students' specific needs have not been addressed and students
are falling through the cracks - referred to the court system or
alternative schools and forgotten. Currently there is not
substantive information on how to make a SARB effective.
Current law requires SARBs to report the number and types of
referrals they receive and the number of requests for petitions
to juvenile court. Those that are effective have no way of
sharing their methods and those that are not effective have no
accountability and no incentive to fix their program. In
addition, there is not adequate information on the number of
truancies in the state."
Analysis Prepared by : Sophia Kwong Kim / ED. / (916) 319-2087
FN: 0003759
AB 1672
Page 6