BILL ANALYSIS
AB 2556
Page 1
Date of Hearing: April 12, 2000
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON LOCAL GOVERNMENT
John Longville, Chair
AB 2556 (Hertzberg) - As Amended: April 10, 2000
SUBJECT : Co-location of services: school and community
partnership collaborations.
SUMMARY : Establishes a program to award planning, operational,
and capital grants to school districts, local government
agencies, and private or community organizations for the
co-location of academic, health, and social services to
children, families, and communities, and for the development of
joint-use community centers. Specifically, this bill :
1)Enacts the School and Community Partnerships Grant Program,
under which the Superintendent of Public Instruction would
award grants for locally-based efforts to coordinate and to
physically combine the efforts of a school district or county
office of education and at least three of the following:
a) Counties;
b) Cities;
c) Libraries;
d) Park and recreation districts;
e) Philanthropic organizations;
f) Nonprofit organizations;
g) Community-based organizations; or
h) Other organizations addressing the needs of children,
youth, families, and communities.
2)Provides that planning grants of up to $50,000 may be awarded
to school districts and local agencies or organizations
preparing to enter the operational phase of the grant program.
Recipients must contribute a match of half the amount
awarded.
3)Provides that operational grants of up to $150,000 may be
awarded in the first year of the operation of a proposed local
program, with grants thereafter not to exceed $50,000 per
year. Recipients must contribute a match of half the amount
awarded, and must retain the services of a professional
coordinator to facilitate collaboration and fundraising.
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4)Provides that one-time capital funds up to $250,000 may be
awarded for the development of joint-use community centers on,
adjacent to, or near a school site or otherwise accessible to
pupils and the community at large. Recipients must contribute
a match of half the amount awarded.
5)Requires that, to qualify for grants, service providers meet
at least two of the following qualifications:
a) Give priority to pupils from low-income families;
b) Assist families in securing support services for pupils;
c) Involve teachers and parents or guardians in identifying
a pupil's service needs and in securing services to meet
those needs;
d) Qualify as Medi-Cal providers.
6)Specifies the academic, health, and social services that may
be provided by a qualifying program.
7)Requires that recipients of operational grants provide for
recordkeeping and program evaluation, as specified, and
develop governance structures and systems for the coordination
and tracking of case management.
8)Provides that no more than 10% of the annual state cost of the
program may be used for state-level administration, including
technical assistance.
9)Directs the Superintendent to issue requests for grant
applications by November 1, 2000, to accept applications no
later than March 1, 2000, and to award grants on or before May
15, 2000.
EXISTING LAW authorizes school districts to provide specified
services, such as school library services, through contractual
arrangements with other public agencies.
FISCAL EFFECT : Contains no appropriation.
COMMENTS :
1)This measure is the product of several years of work not only
on the part of Assemblymember Hertzberg and his staff, but
also by a number of other past or present legislators,
including Senators Alpert and McPherson and former Senate
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President pro Tempore Bill Lockyer; Assemblymembers Aroner,
Davis, and Steinberg; former Assembly Speaker Willie Brown;
the 16 member organizations of the California-based Foundation
Consortium; the California State Association of Counties and
the League of California Cities; numerous policy institutes,
local agencies, and community advocacy groups; the Senate
Office of Research, and even the bygone Assembly Office of
Research.
It is the collective finding of these individuals and entities
that, if low-income families in general, and their children in
particular, are to come to know the facts and master the
processes that shape their lives, then the community as a
whole must pull in the same direction. Mere collaboration on
a programmatic basis-the "one-stop" blending of programs that
already exist-can improve results, but only on a limited
scale. What this bill seeks to accomplish is something more:
to co-locate as well as to coordinate the maximum of people,
organizations, and facilities latent within a neighborhood,
and to direct those resources to the transformation of
families, of communities, and of children and youth.
At the core of this measure is an invitation to California
schools to join with parents and with at least three agencies
or organizations in the community to combine efforts to bring
better intellectual, moral, physical, emotional, and social
development to young people-and, in so doing, to transform the
school and the community as a whole. This bill would foster
joint-use community centers wherever local communities felt
that such facilities might conduce to these ends.
The community center principle dates at least to the efforts of
the industrial leader Charles Stewart Mott, who, in the 1930s,
offered funding to authorities in Flint, Michigan to throw
open that city's school facilities, late into the night and
through weekends and academic holidays, to all comers, young
and old. By the 1950s, Mott was designing and funding new
facilities intended for use as both schools and community
centers. The Flint approach was found to produce superior
student outcomes and was promoted throughout the U.S. and
Canada, and also overseas, and by the 1970s elaborate
community resource centers, comprising schools, had opened in
such cities as New Haven, Atlanta, Arlington, and Pontiac,
Michigan. In the early 1990s the initial Flint approach was
repeated in New York City, where public schools were
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designated as "Beacon Centers" that welcomed students,
families, service providers, and community members to a clean,
well-lighted place during nonschool hours. The Beacon model
and similar Mott-inspired efforts recently have been
replicated, with evident success, in other U.S. cities,
including San Francisco.
2)The Committee may wish to consider, in view of the recent
defeat at the polls of a statewide initiative relative to
school bonds, how the sharing of school facilities by the
community might engender taxpayer support for such facilities.
3)One shortcoming common to nonschool-hours programs, especially
those located at school sites, is that they sometimes can be
counterproductively school-like. Such programs are viewed by
authorities as augmentative of a school's institutional
objectives, rather than as an important part of a larger
effort of which the school itself is also, but merely, an
important part. Subordinated in this way to the school, these
school-auxiliaries naturally are expected to ape the usual
rituals and canons. Students in most after-school programs,
for example, are still regarded as students. They continue to
spend much of their time in the seat, and seat-time continues
to serve as an unfortunate proxy for competence or the
acquisition of useful dispositions. Where parents or other
adults are enlisted as learners in these or similar programs,
it is often with the aid of a "needs assessment", or simple
questionnaire, establishing their eligibility for "information
sessions", "prevention education", or "workshops"-meaning
coursework. These approaches ignore the fact that adults and
adolescents lacking in fundamental skills such as basic
literacy are quite commonly averse to institutional settings
and arrangements. Nor are those poorly served by seat-time
likely to respond well to more seat-time.
4)This bill would place a new grant program under the authority
of the Superintendent of Public Instruction. The author and
Committee may wish to consider whether the Superintendent is
likely ever to award a capital facilities grant to a program
not located on a school site, regardless of whether applicant
communities find a nonschool site best. Moreover, the State
Auditor recently has found that the Department of Education
cannot dependably administer state or federal grant programs.
The previous version of this bill housed the grant program in
the Governor's Office of Planning and Research. Another
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appropriate administering agency might be the Division of
Community Affairs, within the Department of Housing and
Community Development.
REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION :
Support
CA Child, Youth and Family Coalition
Opposition
None on file
Analysis Prepared by : Glenn Gilbert / L. GOV. / (916)
319-3958