BILL ANALYSIS �
AB 1672
Page 1
CONCURRENCE IN SENATE AMENDMENTS
AB 1672 (Holden)
As Amended August 22, 2014
Majority vote
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|ASSEMBLY: |54-17|(May 28, 2014) |SENATE: |30-5 |(August 27, |
| | | | | |2014) |
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Original Committee Reference: ED.
SUMMARY : Requires, beginning June 1, 2015, 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 post specified information on its Internet Web site.
Specifically, this bill :
1)Requires the following information for the prior school year to be
provided:
a) 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.
b) The number of pupils in the school district referred, and
the reason for the referral, to a SARB meeting.
c) 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.
d) 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.
e) The number of pupils and parents or guardians referred to
community services following a SARB meeting.
f) The number of pupils referred to alternative education
placement following a SARB meeting.
g) The number of petitions to the juvenile court requested.
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2)Requires the information to be disaggregated and submitted by the
following subgroups:
a) English learner status, as defined in Education Code Section
42238.01(c).
b) Foster youth status, as defined in Education Code Section
42238.01(b).
c) Gender.
d) Grade levels.
e) Low income status, as defined in Education Code Section
42238.01(a).
f) Race or ethnicity.
g) Disability status.
3)Requires the governing board of each school district to make
available on its Internet Web site, if one is available, the
contents of the SARB reports no later than September 15 of every
year. Requires the information to be made available in an
anonymized format that is easy for the public to access and
understand.
4)Requires the California Department of Education (CDE) to maintain
current Internet Web site links to the Internet Web sites of SARB
reports required to be posted pursuant to this bill to provide
parents and the public with easy access to the SARB reports
maintained on the Internet.
5)Requires the governing board of each school district that posts
SARB reports to provide a current uniform resource locator for
their Internet Web site to the CDE.
The Senate amendments strike the requirement for school districts to
transmit the specified SARB information to county superintendent of
schools and the Superintendent of Public Instruction and instead
require school districts to post the information on their Internet
Web sites with links to the Web sites through the CDE Web site, and
specify that specified subgroups that the information must be
disaggregated by are those defined by the local control funding
formula.
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FISCAL EFFECT : According to the Senate Appropriations Committee:
1)For the CDE: $200,000 (General Fund) in the first year, and
$175,000 (General Fund) ongoing, for the CDE to develop and
administer a webpage and web application to collect local URLs and
maintain a search page, and to provide training and technical
assistance to school districts on reporting their data.
2)For local educational agencies: Potentially significant costs for
school districts that have established SARBs to comply with
reporting requirements.
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.
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
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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.
This bill 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
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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 posted on a school
district's Internet Web site by September 15 every year in an
anonymized format that is easy for the public to access and
understand. The CDE is required to maintain on its Web site links
to district Web sites of the SARB reports.
Analysis Prepared by : Sophia Kwong Kim / ED. / (916) 319-2087 FN:
0005410