June 2, 2023 marked the legislative deadline for each California legislative house to pass bills that are introduced in that house. The CFT started the year off with eight sponsored bills, and co-sponsored an additional nine bills. Each bill must pass through a policy committee(s), and the appropriations committee if the bill has significant cost, before being passed off the floor. 

Thanks to a highly successful lobby day and ongoing efforts of CFT leadership, CFT supported bills moved through their policy and appropriations committees. In the lead up to the legislative deadline, CFT members and staff have been advocating with legislators to secure enough votes to move bills forward to the second house for their second round of review. Thanks to these efforts, all but two bills are on their way to the second house. 

The Legislature will resume policy committee hearings for bills in their second house, before taking off half of July and August for summer recess. 

When the Legislature returns in mid-August, it will be a quick sprint to session adjournment by September 14. CFT lobbyists will be back to advocating for sponsored legislation in the second house and the Appropriations Committee.

CFT-supported bills passed out of the first house:

AB 938 (Muratsuchi) – Increases the base funding of the TK-12 public education system to provide critical fiscal support so that local education agencies may hire and retain educators at competitive salary levels as compared to their local labor markets.

AB 383 (Zbur) – Expands the allowable use of funds within the California Classified School Employee Teacher Credentialing Program to assist with wage replacement during student teaching assignments and tuition at training programs with regional accreditation and accreditation by the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation, as well as entitle applicants to leaves of absences for student teaching assignments.

AB 811 (M. Fong) – Requires community  colleges to update their policies regarding repeatability and course repetition standards to allow students more access to courses both when students fail to successfully complete a course or when they wish to repeat a course for enrichment and skill building purposes.

AB 1273 (Bonta) – Establishes a workgroup among school employee representatives, education management groups, the Department of Industrial Relations, a University of California Labor Center, among others, in order to establish guidelines on classified employee work capacity and ratios. 

AB 1699 (McCarty) – Provides existing classified school employees with a right of first refusal for new part time work assignments, so that employees are able to obtain more hours and strive closer to earning a living wage.

SB 872 (Min) – Requires local education systems to report actual numbers of students in each classroom to the Department of Education rather than average ratios, among other data, in order to begin the process of lowering class sizes throughout the state to appropriate levels that yield higher student achievement.

AB 5 (Zbur) – This bill will attempt to make sure teachers and certificated employees in schools operated by a school district or county office of education or charter schools have the skills and training to better assist LGBTQ+ pupils and make schools safe for everyone. It will create a timeline for implementation of cultural competency training programs developed by the State Department of Education.

AB 504 (Reyes) – Provides that state employees have the right to refuse to enter areas that are part of a primary labor dispute, or go through a primary picket line. This bill would also protect employees against discipline or other adverse actions for exercising these rights.

AB 800 (Ortega) – This bill would create Workplace Readiness Week, which would take place during the first full week of May and require public schools to teach 11th and 12th grade students their rights as workers and give them knowledge about topics related to the labor movement and requires a labor rights explainer document when a student requests a work permit. 

AB 897 (McCarty) – Provides permanent employee status to adult education educators.

AB 1604 (Bonta) – This bill will attempt to implement portions of a JLAC audit regarding the Charter School Facility Grant Program in California which provides assistance with rent and leasing costs for charter school students.

SB 88 (Skinner) – This bill will bring private drivers and vehicles who perform student transportation for compensation in alignment with existing requirements of school bus drivers.

SB 98 (Portantino) – Changes school funding from attendance-based funding to enrollment-based funding. Schools that demonstrate a “maintenance of effort” to address chronic absenteeism and habitual truancy will receive additional funding based on this new calculation. At least 30% of this additional funding must be used to address chronic absenteeism and habitual truancy. 

SB 394 (Gonzalez) – The Leroy F. Greene School Facilities Act of 1998 would also set up necessary rules and regulations regarding the allocation of state funds from the State Allocation Board for the construction and modernization of public school facilities. This would help fund new and remodeled schools throughout California, providing students with new and improved learning environments.

Bills that were not able to move:

AB 260 (Santiago) – This bill would require people who teach adult or community college classes part-time to receive the same ratio of compensation to full-time employees as the amount of time they worked. It would also require districts to negotiate terms of compensation, reemployment and evaluation for part-time employees as part of any new or renewed collective bargaining agreement by 2024.

ACA 3 & AB 259 (Lee) – Establishes the first-in-the-nation wealth tax, requiring individuals worth $50 million or more in net assets to pay a 1% tax on that amount, and individuals worth $1 billion or more in net assets to pay a 1.5% tax on that amount, generating approximately $20 billion in state revenue.