BILL ANALYSIS �
AB 2710
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Date of Hearing: May 14, 2014
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
Mike Gatto, Chair
AB 2710 (Muratsuchi) - As Amended: May 1, 2014
Policy Committee: EducationVote:7-0
Urgency: No State Mandated Local Program:
Yes Reimbursable: Yes
SUMMARY
This bill requires school district and County Office of
Education (COE) officials to receive ethics training and makes
changes related to employment contracts and public disclosure.
Specifically, this bill:
1)Provides that an employment contract for a school district or
county superintendent of schools that is executed or renewed
on or after January 1, 2015, may include a loan for the
purchase of a home only if certain conditions are met,
including that the employee is relocating to an area with a
high cost of housing.
2)Requires the governing board of a school district, before
executing or renewing an employment contract between the
school district and the district superintendent, to review the
proposed contract, including each contract term and the value
of each element of compensations at a regularly scheduled
meeting of the governing board, and makes the proposed
employment contract void unless all elements of compensation
are listed on the agenda of the meeting.
3)Requires a school district or COE that maintains an Internet
Web site to post annual expenditures for its activities,
including, but not limited to, salary schedules for
certificated and classified employees.
4)Adds school districts and COEs to the definition of "local
agency" for the purposes of the requirement to provide local
agency officials training in ethics, at specified intervals,
if the local agency provides any type of compensation, salary,
or stipend to those officials. Further requires school
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district and COE officials to receive training before January
1, 2016 and at least every two years thereafter, except as
specified.
FISCAL EFFECT
Unknown potential reimbursable General Fund/Proposition 98
mandated costs, likely between $110,000 and $275,000, to require
school district and county superintendents to complete ethics
training. This assumes approximately one-half of educational
entities file a mandate reimbursement claim related to
notification of training, cost of providing the training, and
enforcement of the requirement. There are 1,050 school district
governing boards and 51 county boards of education.
COMMENTS
Purpose. According to the author, this bill seeks to provide
greater transparency to the public regarding a superintendent's
compensation and hold local education agencies (LEAs)
accountable for their financial decisions. This bill was
spurred by news that the Superintendent of Centinela Valley
Union High School District was provided $663,000 in compensation
despite enrolling only 6,600 students. For context, this is
nearly twice the compensation provided to the Superintendent of
Los Angeles Unified School District.
As a part of this contract, the Superintendent also took out a
low-interest $910,000 loan to purchase a home outside the school
district's boundaries. Since the initial report, additional
information has been disclosed that the district also paid
nearly $98,000 last year for whole life insurance for the
superintendent, bringing his total taxable income to $772,457.
This bill requires a local governing board to discuss, in a
regularly scheduled meeting, the terms of the contract, and the
value of each element of compensation. This bill would also
require school board members to take governance and ethnics
training. The author maintains these governing board members
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have a fiduciary responsibility to protect public resources in
order to provide the best education possible to their students.
Ethics and governance training will not only improve public
trust in local school boards, but will also ensure that
leadership in school districts can make informed decisions about
topics like superintendent compensation.
Analysis Prepared by : Misty Feusahrens / APPR. / (916)
319-2081