BILL ANALYSIS �
Senate Appropriations Committee Fiscal Summary
Senator Kevin de Le�n, Chair
AB 2160 (Ting) - Cal Grant Awards: GPA Verification
Amended: June 18, 2014 Policy Vote: Education 6-0
Urgency: No Mandate: Yes
Hearing Date: August 14, 2014
Consultant: Jacqueline Wong-Hernandez
SUSPENSE FILE. AS PROPOSED TO BE AMENDED.
Bill Summary: AB 2160 requires the California Student Aid
Commission (CSAC) to require electronic submission of the grade
point average (GPA) of all 12th grade students at public schools
and charter schools and, with specified exceptions, deems all
12th grade students in a California public school to be Cal
Grant applicants for this purpose. This bill requires that
parents be notified of such, and that they be provided an
opportunity to opt out of such designation by a school district
or charter school.
Fiscal Impact:
Mandate: Potentially significant reimbursable mandate on
school districts to electronically submit the GPAs of every
12th grade student, with specified exceptions, and to
administer an opt-out system for families.
CSAC administration: Potentially significant workload to
receive and process additional GPAs, and to provide
technical assistance to schools and school districts. This
workload would be off-set, to some degree, by a reduction in
the number of hard copy GPAs that CSAC processes.
Cal Grant awards: Potentially significant Cal Grant costs
(General Fund), to the extent that this bill results in more
Cal Grant awards.
Background: Existing law requires GPAs for Cal Grant A and B
applicants to be submitted to CSAC; requires GPAs to include a
certification by a school official that the GPA is accurately
reported; authorizes CSAC to establish grace periods for the
receipt of GPAs and corrections; and, establishes Legislative
intent that high schools and institutions of higher education
certify GPAs of students in time to meet Cal Grant application
deadlines. (Education Code � 69432)
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A school district is prohibited from permitting access to pupil
records without written parental consent with some exceptions,
as specified. School districts are authorized to release
information from pupil records to agencies or organizations in
connection with the application of a pupil for, or receipt of,
financial aid. (EC � 49076)
The federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA)
regulations authorize an educational agency or institution to
disclose personally identifiable information from an education
record of a student without consent if the disclosure meets one
of several specified conditions. These include an instance in
which the disclosure is in connection with financial aid for
which the student has applied or which the student has received,
if the information is necessary to: a) determine eligibility for
the aid; b) determine the amount of the aid; c) determine the
conditions for the aid; or, d) enforce the terms and conditions
of the aid. (34 CFR 99.31(a)(4))
Proposed Law: This bill deems each student enrolled in 12th
grade in a California public school to be a Cal Grant applicant,
and requires every school district, or charter school, by
October 15 annually, to:
a) Notify the parent/guardian of each 12th grade
student that the student will be deemed a Cal Grant
applicant.
b) Provide an opportunity for the student to opt
out of being automatically deemed a Cal Grant applicant.
This bill requires that the CSAC require all public high
schools, including charter schools, to provide an electronic
submission of a GPA for each 12th grade student, each academic
year, with specified exceptions.
Staff Comments: In order to apply for a Cal Grant award, a
student must complete the Free Application for Federal Student
Aid (FAFSA) or a Dream Act application, and the CSAC must
receive the student's verified GPA. Currently, there is no
standard practice for submitting GPA verification to the CSAC.
Some schools submit hard copy verification forms, others submit
GPAs electronically, and still others rely on their students to
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submit the verification forms themselves (once signed by a
school official).
This bill requires the CSAC to require public schools to submit
the GPAs of all of their 12th grade students (with specified
exceptions) to the CSAC each year. While schools currently
verify student GPAs upon student request, and some have systems
for communicating all GPAs to the CSAC, the only statutory
"requirement" on schools is legislative intent language
specifying that schools "certify the grade point averages of
their students in time to meet the application deadlines" of the
Cal Grant. This bill enacts a new universal requirement to
electronically transfer every 12th grade student's GPA, which
will likely constitute a significant reimbursable mandate on
public schools. Transferring GPAs to the CSAC electronically
could ultimately save staff time and school resources compared
to a hard copy process that may exist at a school. However,
whatever process the school currently uses is at local option
and, thus, not reimbursable. This requirement will make the act
of transferring GPAs a reimbursable mandate, even for schools
that were already submitting GPAs to the CSAC electronically.
In order to comply with FERPA protections, this bill deems each
student enrolled in 12th grade in a California public school to
be a Cal Grant applicant. Under FERPA, a school can transfer
certain student information to other entities as part of an
application for financial aid; since this bill would make every
12th grade student an applicant, GPAs could be transferred as a
batch. Separate from FERPA compliance, this bill does require an
opt-out process.
This bill requires every school district, or charter school, by
October 15 annually, to: a) notify the parent/guardian of each
12th grade student that the student will be deemed a Cal Grant
applicant; and, b) provide an opportunity for the student to opt
out of being automatically deemed a Cal Grant applicant. This
bill's requirement for schools to administer an opt-out process
for students will also likely be deemed by the Commission on
State Mandates to be reimbursable.
Staff notes that the opt-out provision may need clarification.
The bill language specifies that parents and guardians receive
notifications that "the pupil will be deemed a Cal Grant
applicant unless the pupil opts out". Typically, a parent or
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guardian makes that decision when a pupil is under age 18; once
a pupil is 18, he or she can make those decisions. This bill
will impact students that are likely to be 17 and 18-year-olds,
and who may be 17 when a parent receives the opt-out
notification but turn 18 before the GPA would actually be sent
to the CSAC. The author may wish to clarify intent regarding how
schools should handle the required opt-out process.
The most significant cost of this bill will likely be in
increased Cal Grant application completions, and the resulting
increase in Cal Grant awards. This bill is likely to increase
application completion rates, but it is not known what that
increase will yield in terms of actual awards. If, for example,
the measure were to result in 4,000 more awards in the first
year dispersed across UC and CSU so as to average to $7,000
each, the cost of the additional awards would be about $28
million in the first year, growing annually thereafter as
additional cohorts were added.
Author's amendments clarify the process for
students/parents/guardians to opt out of the student being
designated a Cal Grant applicant. Amendments also specify how
social security numbers should be treated by the CSAC.