Legislative Update: New positions on 2018 legislation
Published: May 2, 2018
View all 2017-18 bills with CSBA positions.
View positions adopted by CSBA’s Legislative Committee on April 27, 2018.
Last week marked the deadline for Senate and Assembly policy committees to hear fiscal bills introduced in their house. Fiscal committees in both houses are now loading up their respective suspense files with numerous bills and are continuing to hear bills this week. Policy committees in both houses have until May 11 to hear non-fiscal bills introduced in their house and send those bills to the floor.
Appropriations committees in both houses will take up their respective suspense files on or prior to May 25, determining which bills requiring an appropriation of funds will move on to the floor of their house and which will be held, and hence unlikely to advance before the end of the current session.
As is typical, the Senate and Assembly suspense hearings will both come roughly 10 days after the release of the revised 2018–19 budget proposal, which Gov. Brown will unveil on or prior to May 15.
In anticipation of the release of the May Revision, the Legislative Analyst’s Office yesterday released a brief on changes to the K-14 cost-of-living adjustment, which is linked by state law to a national price index developed by the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis (part of the U.S. Department of Commerce). The federal index shows a 2018–19 COLA for K-14 of 2.71 percent, compared to the 2.51 percent assumed in the January budget proposal. This higher rate increases the cost of providing a COLA for the Local Control Funding Formula by $96 million, which will then get distributed through the formula and does not translate as a COLA to local educational agencies. It also means a higher COLA to the few K-12 programs that receive one — such as special education — the mandate block grant and county offices of education since they have technically reached their LCFF targets.
Status of CSBA sponsored/co-sponsored bills:
View the info sheet on CSBA’s 2018 sponsored bill package.
Assembly Bill 2808 (Muratsuchi, D-Torrance), Local Control Funding Formula funding increase: Placed on the Assembly Appropriations suspense file on April 25; will be heard on or before May 25.
AB 2228 (Wood, D-Healdsburg), Wildfire mitigation: Placed on the Assembly Appropriations suspense file on April 18; will be heard on or before May 25.
AB 276 (Medina, D-Riverside), Charter school transparency: Referred to both the Senate Education and Judiciary Committees on April 19 and is awaiting a hearing.
AB 1951 (O’Donnell, D-Long Beach), Pathways to College Act: Placed on the Assembly Appropriations suspense file on May 2; will be heard on or before May 25.
AB 2285 (O’Donnell, D-Long Beach), Out-of-state prepared teachers: Passed the Assembly Floor on consent on April 19 and sent to the Senate; currently sits in the Senate Rules Committee awaiting assignment to a policy committee.
AB 3149 (Limón, D-Santa Barbara), Substitute teacher service and permits: Currently resides in the Assembly Education Committee and is scheduled to be heard on May 9.
AB 3192 (O’Donnell, D-Long Beach), Medi-Cal Billing Option; audit guide: Currently resides in the Assembly Appropriations Committee and is awaiting hearing.
Additional bills placed on suspense files include:
AB 2635 (Weber, D-San Diego) – LCFF, lowest-performing subgroups – Support – AB 2635 would provide LCFF funding eligibility (generated from Proposition 98 growth) for California’s lowest-performing student subgroup or subgroups that would be ongoing until that group meets the academic performance of the highest-performing subgroup(s). At present, approximately 90,000 African-American students do not generate LCFF supplemental and concentration grants, despite these students currently ranking as the lowest-performing group of students in the state.
Senate Bill 830 (Dodd, D-Napa) and SB 947 (Jackson, D-Santa Barbara) – Media literacy – Support – SB 830 would require the Instructional Quality Commission to develop, and the SBE to adopt, a model curricula in media literacy. SB 937 would establish a state-based advisory committee (on which CSBA would be represented) composed of educators, administrators, researchers and parents to develop best practices, resources and models for instruction in digital citizenship, internet safety and media literacy. CSBA supports both bills.
CSBA will report on additional bills placed on suspense in the coming weeks in advance of the suspense hearings in late May.