Early childhood education reimbursement rates

Assembly Bill 125 (McCarty, D-Sacramento) would require the state superintendent to implement a reimbursement system plan that establishes reasonable standards and assigned reimbursement rates that would vary with additional factors, including a quality adjustment factor to address the cost of staffing ratios.

AB 125 would also require the reimbursement system plan, including methodology, standards, county rate targets and total statewide funding amounts necessary to reach annual rate targets for all agencies to be annually submitted to the Joint Legislative Budget Committee on or before November 10. The bill would require the plan to include a formula for annually adjusting reimbursement rates.

AB 125 passed out of the Senate Education Committee with a 7-0 (consent) vote on July 10, 2019. The bill now moves to the Senate Appropriations Committee.  

Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program for part-time faculty

Assembly Bill 463 (Cervantes, D-Riverside) would require the chancellor’s office to develop and provide to community college districts materials designed to increase awareness of the federal Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program among community college faculty members.

AB 463 would require the governing board of a community college district to annually provide this information to faculty members. In addition, AB 463 would require a community college district to annually provide a faculty member who is enrolled in the PSLF program with notice of renewal and a copy of the employment certification form with the employer portion of the form already completed. Finally, AB 463 would factor in part-time faculty preparation time and office hours in the calculation for qualifying for the PSLF program.

AB 463 passed out of the Senate Education Committee with a 7-0 vote on July 3, 2019. The bill now moves to the Senate Appropriations Committee.  

Paid maternity leave for K-14 certificated and classified employees

Assembly Bill 500 (Gonzalez, D-San Diego) would require K-14 districts to provide certificated and classified employees a paid leave when an employee is required to be absent for a length of time to be determined by the employee and their doctor for a minimum of six weeks for pregnancy, miscarriage, childbirth and recovery. 

AB 500 passed out of the Senate Education Committee with a 6-0-1 vote on June 12, 2019. Subsequently, the bill moved to the Senate Appropriations Committee and was placed on suspense.  

Community college apprenticeship program

Assembly Bill 595 (Medina, D-Riverside) would authorize a student enrolled in a community college class or classes pursuant to an apprenticeship training program or an internship training program who does not have a Social Security number to use an individual tax identification number for purposes of any background check required by the class or program.

AB 595 passed out of the Senate Education Committee with a 7-0 vote on June 5, 2019. The bill now moves to the Senate Floor for a vote following summer recess.

Assumption Program of Loans for Education (APLE)

Assembly Bill 843 (Rodriguez, D-Pomona) would repeal loan assumption benefits that rely on API rankings, and instead provide additional loan assumption benefits of an unspecified amount to a person who holds a credential appropriate for teaching and who teaches mathematics, science, special education, bilingual education or career technical education in a school district that is determined to be in need of differentiated assistance beginning in 2020-21.

AB 843 was scheduled to be heard in the Senate Education Committee, but the hearing was canceled at the request of the author. The bill now becomes a two-year bill.  

Increase allowable community college part-time faculty load to 85 percent.

Assembly Bill 897 (Medina, D-Riverside) would raise the community college part-time faculty workload maximum from 67 percent to 85 percent. AB 897 would also clean up part-time faculty job security language that is being misinterpreted by some districts.

AB 897 remained in the Assembly Appropriations Suspense File and now becomes a two-year bill.

Community Colleges: Student equity plans

Assembly Bill 943 (Chiu, D-San Francisco) would authorize the use of Student Equity and Achievement Program funding for emergency student financial assistance to help students overcome unforeseen financial challenges that would directly impact the student’s ability to persist in the student’s course of study, such as the need for food or shelter.

AB 943 passed out of the Senate Education Committee with a 7-0 vote on June 12, 2019. Subsequently, the bill moved to the Senate Appropriations Committee and was placed on suspense.  

Community college districts: Governing board elections

Assembly Bill 1150 (Gloria, D-San Diego) would require a candidate for election as a member of the governing board of the San Diego Community College District and the Grossmont-Cuyamaca Community College District to submit at least 40 valid signatures to qualify for the ballot.

AB 1150 passed out of the Senate Elections and Constitutional Amendments Committee with a  4-1 vote on July 2, 2019. The bill now moves to the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Mandated child abuse reporting employee training

Assembly Bill 1153 (Wicks, D-Oakland) would establish the Child Abuse Reporting Training Act of 2020 which would require each governing board of a community college to 1) annually train, using an online training module, employees and administrators of the district who are mandated reporters on the reporting requirements; 2) develop a process for those persons to provide proof of completing this training within 6 weeks of each academic year or within 6 weeks of that person’s employment; and 3) develop a process to identify students who are minors enrolled in classes at a community college district and provide that information only to faculty members and other employees who are mandated reporters.

AB 1153 passed out of the Senate Education Committee with a 7-0 vote on June 12, 2019. Subsequently, the bill moved to the Senate Appropriations Committee and was placed on suspense.  

Classified employee probationary period

Assembly Bill 1353 (Wicks, D-Oakland) would shorten the maximum length of a prescribed period of probation from not exceeding one year to not exceeding six months or 130 days of paid service, whichever is longer. In addition, AB 1353 would provide that, to the extent these provisions conflict with a collective bargaining agreement entered into before January 1, 2020, these provisions would not apply until the expiration or renewal of that agreement.

AB 1353 passed out of the Senate Labor, Public Employment and Retirement Committee with a 4-1 vote on June 19, 2019. The bill now moves to the Senate Floor for a vote following summer recess.

Charter school authorization

Assembly Bill 1505 (O’Donnell, D-Long Beach) would address a number of charter school policy issues, including the following: 1) allowing school districts to deny charter petitions based on the impact a proposed charter school would have on the district’s services, programmatic, or academic offerings or if the charter’s proposals were already being offered by another school with capacity for more students; 2) creating multiple tiers of charter school renewal options based on the charter school’s performance on the dashboard metrics, including presumptions of a petition denial when a charter school is under performing with strong language to prevent cherry-picking or counseling-out of students to inflate test scores; 3.) restricting the State Board of Education appeal powers to only those petition denial appeals in which the local education agency is shown to have abused its discretion; and 4) ensuring that every teacher at a charter school has the appropriate credential.

AB 1505 passed out of the Senate Education Committee with a 4-3 vote on July 10, 2019. The bill now moves to the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Charter school cap

Assembly Bill 1506 (McCarty, D-Sacramento) would establish a cap on charter schools permitted to operate in the state of California. The total number of charter schools authorized by a school district, county office of education or the state would not increase above the actual number that are operating on January 1, 2020.

AB 1506 was not heard on the Assembly Floor. The bill now becomes a two-year bill.

Charter school location

Assembly Bill 1507 (Smith, D-Santa Clarita) would close a loophole in current law which allows a charter school to operate outside of its authorizing district. The bill would end the practice of local school districts being forced to accept a charter school in their district if it was authorized by a different school district.

AB 1507 passed out of the Senate Education Committee with a 4-3 vote on July 10, 2019. The bill now moves to the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Charter school moratorium

Senate Bill 756 (Durazo, D-Los Angeles) would express the intent of the legislature to enact legislation containing specified policies relating to charter schools and would prohibit the approval of a petition for the establishment of a new charter school until January 1, 2022. The bill would require by January 1, 2022, the Legislative Analyst’s Office to publicly issue a report that answers specified questions relating to charter schools, the effects of the moratorium and the projected effects of those specified policies if enacted by the legislature.

SB 756 was not heard on the Senate Floor and was ordered to the Inactive File at the request of the author on May 29, 2019. The bill now becomes a two-year bill.

UC-AFT librarians resolution

Senate Concurrent Resolution (SCR) 29 (Leyva, D-Chino) would recognize June 27, 2019, as the anniversary of the commencement of the University Council-AFT representation of librarians.

SCR 29 passed out of the Assembly Higher Education Committee with a 10-0-2 vote on July 9, 2019. The bill now moves to the Assembly Floor for a vote following summer recess.

For additional information, contact the CFT Legislative Department.
Ron Rapp Legislative Director  
Tristan Brown Legislative Representative  
Bryan Ha Legislative Representative  
Telephone (916) 446-2788