BILL ANALYSIS �
AB 1672
Page 1
GOVERNOR'S VETO
AB 1672 (Holden)
As Amended August 22, 2014
2/3 vote
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|ASSEMBLY: |54-17|(May 28, 2014) |SENATE: |30-5 |(August 27, |
| | | | | |2014) |
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|ASSEMBLY: |59-17|(August 28, | | | |
| | |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
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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.
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
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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.
FISCAL EFFECT : According to the Senate Appropriations Committee
(as approved August 14, 2014):
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
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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 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
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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 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
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its Web site links to district Web sites of the SARB reports.
GOVERNOR'S VETO MESSAGE :
Attorney General Kamala Harris has worked diligently
at both the local and statewide level to reduce
truancy and absenteeism in California schools, a goal
I share. Her package of sponsored legislation aims to
reduce rates of truancy and absenteeism.
AB 1866 would require school districts to collect and
report a significant amount of new student attendance
information through the California Longitudinal Pupil
Achievement Data System. While well intentioned, the
collection of data for the interest of faraway
authorities would not get to the root of the issue -
keeping kids in school and on track.
AB 1672 would place new data collection and reporting
burdens on districts that have voluntarily established
local School Attendance Review Boards. A broad group
of local education leaders believe AB 1672 "is simply
a new requirement that mandates large amounts of
specific data collection, disaggregation, formatting
and Internet posting." I agree. Districts already
have the ability to collect attendance and truancy
data, and must address school attendance and chronic
absenteeism under the Local Control Funding Formula.
The Local Control Funding Formula was created because
local education agencies are the ones best suited to
set goals and guidelines for their students. In the
same vein, efforts to combat truancy are best
exercised at the school level among teachers,
principals and local school officials.
I encourage educators, parents and community members,
through the Local Control and Accountability Plan
process, to address school attendance issues. Keeping
children in school and learning is a priority, but
collecting more data is not the primary solution.
AB 1672
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Analysis Prepared by : Sophia Kwong Kim / ED. / (916) 319-2087
FN: 0005670