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· Charter Schools
· Curriculum & Instruction
· Immigration Enforcement
· Social Media & Mental Health
· Nutrition
· Human Resources
· Technology
· Transitional Kindergarten
· Facilities
The Legislature’s attention will now shift to the Appropriations committees, which will look at the fiscal impact of bills.
Please reach out to any of us here at Capitol Advisors Group if we can provide any additional information.
Best,
-Caitlin
Caitlin Jung
Partner | Capitol Advisors Group
Charter Schools
With the state’s current moratorium on new non-classroom-based charter schools set to end January 1, 2026, there is much speculation about what, if any, charter reforms the Legislature would propose in the time remaining. A lot of the discussion has centered around the recommendations found in the 2024 reports from the Legislative Analyst’s Office’s (LAO’s) and Fiscal Crisis Management and Assistance Team (FCMAT) and the State Controller, both of which had been commissioned to address the recent fraud committed by a few non-classroom-based charter schools.
AB 84 (Muratsuchi): School accountability: office of the Education Inspector General: school financial and performance audits: charter school authorization, oversight, operations, and contracting: data systems. AB 84 proposes significant reforms to the accountability, auditing, and oversight systems governing California's charter schools. It is a dense bill and includes all the recommendations found in the LAO/FCMAT report, as well as the State Controller’s Office (SCO) report. A summary of the bill’s numerous provisions can be found in our update from when the bill’s language first went into print in March.
The bill had its first hearing on Wednesday (April 30), passing out of the Assembly Education Committee, which is chaired by the bill’s author, on a 7-2 vote. The author took several amendments in committee - a list of the amendments can be found in the 27-page committee analysis, beginning on page 20. There has been significant opposition to the bill by the charter school community and, in committee, the author committed to working with the opposition on possible compromises. The bill now moves to the Appropriations Committee, where it could face cuts to some of the more costly proposals.
SB 414 (Ashby): School accountability: school financial and performance audits: chartering authorities: tort liability: educational enrichment activities: flex-based instruction. SB 414 is the second bill proposing reforms of the auditing standards for charter schools. This bill, like AB 84, is based on recommendations from the LAO and Controller reports but unlike AB 84, it does not propose to implement all the recommendations. The bill, which is supported by the charter community, also incorporates recommendations from a recent report by the California Charter Authorizing Professionals.
During the committee process, the author agreed to take amendments to (1) strike the requirement for the LAO to conduct a study of charter oversight models in other states, (2) amend the bill’s vendor contracting provisions to require background checks for all vendor personnel who interact with students, and (3) remove immunity provisions related to the provision of information in response to oversight inquiries.
While largely referred to as “charter bills”, it should be noted that both AB 84 and SB 414 propose auditing changes that will impact all LEAs, not just charter schools.
Curriculum & Instruction
AB 401 (Muratsuchi): California Career Technical Education Incentive Grant Program: annual adjustment: renewal grants. Looking to provide increased funding stability for career technical education programs, AB 401 would allow a career technical education incentive grant (CTEIG) grant to be automatically renewed for an additional 3 years (for a total of four years of funding per grant) and provide an annual cost-of-living-adjustment (COLA) to the total funding for CTEIG.
AB 1454 (Rivas): Pupil literacy: administrative services credential program standards and professional development: instructional materials. Dealing with literacy and reading instruction, sometimes referred to as the “science of reading,” AB 1454 is a late compromise between equity and labor groups, including EdVoice and CTA, following intervention by Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas and weeks (some would argue years) of tense negotiations. Specifically, the bill will be amended to do the following:
- Require CDE, by September 1, 2026, to identify and post a list of professional development (PD) programs for effective means of teaching literacy, primarily focused on TK-5 educators
- Establish a program, subject to an appropriation, to provide funding for LEAs to train teachers using the identified PD programs
- Require State Board of Education (SBE), by June 30, 2027, to conduct a follow-up instructional materials adoption in English language arts (ELA)/ English language development (ELD), with LEAs that adopt non-SBE approved instructional materials having to certify that the materials align with the SBE’s criteria for adoption
- Require the Commission on Teacher Credentialing, by September 1, 2027, to update administrative preparation standards to include training on supporting effective literacy instruction.
Up until this week, conversations in this space had been centered on two other bills: AB 1121 by Assembly Member Blanca Rubio, which would have required LEAs to participate in SBE-approved PD on teaching literacy and reading, and AB 1194 by Assembly Member Muratsuchi, which would have required the SBE to adopt instructional materials for K-8 in English language arts and English language development by June 30, 2027. As attention has shifted to AB 1454, neither of these bills received a policy committee hearing before today’s deadline and are effectively dead for the year.
Agreement on the proposal was so last minute that the bill was heard in the Assembly Education Committee on Wednesday despite the bill’s language not being in print. As of Friday, the bill text still does not reflect what was agreed to and the only details we have are the proposed amendments listed in the Assembly Education Committee analysis. Perhaps the biggest difference between AB 1454 and the other literacy bills is that AB 1454 does not mandate all LEAs to use only the literacy professional development programs approved by the SBE.
AB 1053 (Zbur): Educational technology: evaluation and selection. Sponsored by the California Federation of Teachers, AB 1053 would require the governing board of each LEA to provide for substantial teacher and paraprofessional involvement in the selection of educational technology they are required to use, and to promote the involvement of parents and other members of the community in the selection process. The bill was heard in the Assembly Education Committee this week and moved forward on a 7-1 vote, but not without some opposition from the education management community.
In particular, opponents noted that the definition of “educational technology” in the bill seems overly broad and would force governing boards to enter into the “substantial involvement process” every time there are proposed software or applications that contain implications for teachers or paraprofessionals within the district – even for tasks largely unrelated to their duties like management of attendance or business operations. For his part, the author of the bill, Assembly Member Rick Zbur (D-Los Angeles), has indicated his willingness to work with the opposition to narrow the definition of education technology in the bill.
AB 1468 (Zbur): Ethnic Studies; content standards, curriculum frameworks, instructional materials, compliance monitoring. This bill would require, by January 1, 2028, the SBE to develop and adopt content standards for high school ethnic studies instruction and the IQC to review and recommend to the SBE ethnic studies curriculum frameworks and instructional materials. The bill would also require LEAs to provide CDE, on or before June 30, 2026, a copy of all curricula, instruction, and instructional materials in ethnic studies that its schools offer or plan to offer in high school. Current law requires high schools to offer at least one ethnic studies course beginning the 2025-26 school year. However, that requirement was contingent on the state providing funding for that purpose and the Department of Finance has stated such funding has not yet been provided, putting the requirement’s implementation in limbo.
Interestingly, the bill is still alive despite not yet having had a hearing in a policy committee. With questions about whether the bill would be heard in time, AB 1468 received a waiver on Monday to allow for the Assembly Education Committee to take up the bill after today’s deadline. The waiver comes after the chair of the committee, Assembly Member Al Muratsuchi, requested an extension to allow for more negotiations on the bill. The bill is supported by the legislature’s Jewish Caucus, which maintain that there needs to be additional guardrails around ethnic studies instruction to combat antisemitism. However, opponents of the bill argue that the bill is using bureaucracy to “censor and dilute critical discussions on race and ethnicity.”
With the rule waiver, the bill is now set to be heard in the Assembly Education Committee on May 15th.
Immigration Enforcement
Amidst growing concerns about ICE officials showing up to school campuses, particularly after President Trump’s January directive repealing the designation of schools as protected “sensitive locations,” a series of immigration-related bills continue to move through the committee process. While some have tagged such concerns as unfounded fearmongering, reports have now come out about Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials showing up at two elementary schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District last month to conduct “wellness checks” on children they claimed arrived at the border unaccompanied. The officials were turned away by school administrators after they failed to present a court order or warrant, and DHS has maintained that the visits “had nothing to do with immigration enforcement.”
SB 48 (Gonzalez): Immigration enforcement: school sites: prohibitions on access and sharing information. This bill would establish the steps an LEA must take when an immigration authority requests access to a school site or student, depending on whether or not they present a valid judicial warrant/court order. When first introduced, SB 48 also included language that would have prohibited law enforcement agencies from collaborating with immigration authorities if an enforcement action would be taking place within one mile of a school site, but that language was removed in the bill’s most recent amendments. Having passed out of the Senate Education committee on April 3rd, the bill is next scheduled to be heard in the Senate Judiciary Committee on April 29th.
AB 49 (Muratsuchi): School sites: immigration enforcement. This bill would prohibit an immigration enforcement agency from entering a school site for any reason without providing valid identification and a valid, judicial warrant. Recent amendments to the bill removed the requirement that the agency must also receive approval from the district or county superintendent or charter principal before being able to enter a school site.
AB 1348 (Bains): Average daily attendance: emergencies; immigration enforcement activity. This bill would add “immigration enforcement activity” to the list of specified emergency situations for which a school district, COE, or charter school may seek a J-13A waiver for a material decrease in attendance. When the bill passed out of the Assembly Education hearing earlier this week, it was amended to also do the following:
- Require an LEA that files a J-13A for immigration enforcement activities to do certain things, including offer an independent study program to students for the school year in which they submit the affidavit and adopting written policies for providing instruction to students through independent study
- Require the Controller, for the 2026-27 Audit Guide, to incorporate compliance with the above independent study requirements
- Sunset the authorization to apply for a J-13A for immigration enforcement activities as of June 30, 2029.
Social Media & Youth Mental Health
Addressing the impact of social media on youth mental health remains a priority for the Legislature. This year’s efforts build on bills from last year, including AB 3216 (Hoover), which requires LEAs to adopt smartphone use policies, and AB 2481 (Lowenthal), which requires large social media platforms to establish a mechanism by which verified reporters, including school officials, can report social media-related threats.
AB 772 (Lowenthal): Cyber bullying: off-campus acts: model policy. This bill originally would have required CDE, by June 30, 2026, to develop, post on its website, and distribute to LEAs, a model policy on how to address acts of cyber bullying that occur outside of school hours. LEAs would then be required to adopt a policy on cyber bullying by July 1, 2027. Coming out of the Assembly Education Committee, the bill was amended to clarify that the model policy authorizes but does not require LEAS to address cyber bullying that occurs outside of school hours, and to clarify that the policy adopted by an LEA may be based either on CDE’s model policy or a locally adopted policy with stakeholder input.
AB 962 (Hoover): Pupil Safety: comprehensive school safety plans: use of smartphones. A follow up to the author’s AB 3216 from last year, this bill would provide that if an LEA’s comprehensive school safety plan addresses the use of smartphones by students, those provisions must not conflict with the AB 3216 requirement that the LEA adopted smartphone policy cannot prohibit the possession or use of a smartphone in the case of an emergency or in response to a perceived threat of danger. Seen largely as a clean-up bill, AB 962 has been moving swiftly through the process and is already in the Senate.
Child Nutrition
AB 1264 (Gabriel): Pupil nutrition: particularly harmful ultraprocessed food: prohibition. On January 3rd, Governor Newsom issued an executive order (EO), citing the “emerging scientific evidence” linking ultra processed foods (UPFs) with increase health risks and directing state agencies to recommend potential actions to limit the harms associated with UPFs, including in school meals. Building on this EO, Assembly Member Jesse Gabriel (D-Encino) introduced AB 1264, which would establish a timeline by which the state’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) must establish a definition for “particularly harmful UPFs” and schools must begin phasing out the use of particularly harmful UPFs in meals.
Assembly Member Gabriel, who is the current chair of the Assembly Budget Committee, has become a champion of minimally processed foods in recent years. He authored AB 2316 last year, which prohibits the use of specified dyes and other substances in school meals beginning December 31, 2027, and before that he ran AB 418, the California Food Safety Act, which prohibited the sale of any food with certain substances beginning January 1, 2027. Both bills were signed by Governor Newsom and cited in his January EO.
Having previously passed out of the Assembly Education Committee on an 8-0 vote a few weeks ago, AB 1264 passed unanimously out of the Assembly Committee on Environmental Safety and Toxic Materials on Tuesday, April 29.
Human Resources
AB 65 (Aguiar-Curry): School and community college employees; paid disability and parental leave. A reintroduction of AB 2901 (Aguiar-Curry, 2024), AB 65, which is sponsored by the California Teachers Association, would require all school employees to be offered up to 14 weeks of fully paid pregnancy-related leave in addition to the leave already required by law.
Despite widespread concerns from statewide education associations regarding the bill’s cost implications for schools, as well as the bill’s impact on instruction and classroom continuity, the bill passed unanimously out of both the Assembly Education and Higher Education Committees. The bill’s author has reportedly requested an $100 million appropriation in this year’s state budget to cover the costs of the bill. However, concerns from the education community remain as it is unclear if that amount would fully cover the costs of the newly required leave (last year’s version of the bill was estimated to cost “hundreds of millions of dollars” by the Appropriations Committee), and whether that money would come from within the Prop 98 Guarantee.
AB 1224 (Valencia): Teacher credentialing; substitute teachers: days of service. This bill would make permanent the ability of a credential holder to substitute teach in a general, special, or CTE classroom for up to 60-cumulatve days in a single assignment. During the Pandemic, the state had granted similar flexibility, but usually only one-year at a time and the most recent extension had ended July 1, 2024. Under the bill, for an LEA to use this added flexibility, they must first (1) employ all available and suitable substitute teachers with a teaching permit for statutory leave, if for a position in which the teacher on record is currently on statutory leave and (2) make reasonable efforts to recruit an individual for the assignment.
AB 1224 has already passed out of the Assembly Appropriations Committee and is now on the Assembly Floor, pending a full house vote. If passed, it will then head over to the Senate to start the committee process all over again in the other house.
AB 917 (Ávila Farías): County offices of education: school districts: average daily attendance of less than 250 pupils: permanent status. This bill would remove the flexibilities that allow school districts with fewer than 250 average daily attendance (ADA), and most ROC/P programs, to make hiring decisions based on their current needs as opposed to the employment status of existing employees. Specifically, AB 917 would delete the exemption for those school districts and ROC/P programs from being required to make a certificated employee permanent after a certain number of years of service. The bill is opposed by a coalition of education management groups, who point to the unique nature of these super small school districts and CTE programs that makes the exemption in current law vital to ensuring they can adapt quickly to changing circumstances.
Attempts to remove these exemptions are nothing new. Last year, Assembly Member Juan Carrillo (D-Palmdale) carried AB 2245, which originally sought to remove the exemption for all ROC/P programs but which was ultimately narrowed down to only apply to ROC/P programs operated by a single school school district. Some have questioned the timing of AB 917 and its attempt to remove the exemption for all ROC/P programs, given that AB 2245 was only signed last year and doesn’t even go into effect until later this July.
AB 917, which was not tagged fiscal, has been on the Assembly Floor awaiting a vote since it passed out of the Assembly Education Committee at the end of March.
Technology
AB 810 (Irwin): Local government: internet websites and email addresses. Some of you may recall AB 1637 (Irwin, 2023) which, when introduced, would have required all school districts to switch their website domain names to “.ca.gov”, or “.gov”, and further would have required a similar switch for all employee email addresses. Due to successful lobbying from the education community, when ultimately signed into law, AB 1637 only applied to cities, counties, or cities and counties. AB 810 is a follow-up to that bill, and initially sought to re-include schools in these provisions. However, again amidst a strong opposition campaign from the education community, amendments were accepted by the author to exclude “K-12 public school districts” from the provisions of the bill. While the language appears to be an attempt to remove schools from the bill, there is concern the provisions of the bill may still apply to county offices of education and joint powers authorities. There is continued advocacy to secure the technical amendments needed to clarify no school agencies will be included in the bill’s provisions.
Transitional Kindergarten
AB 1391 (Addis): Education finance: transitional kindergarten: funding for basic aid school districts and necessary small schools. This bill would allow TK funding provided for all four-year-olds within Proposition 98 to flow to four-year-olds attending basic aid districts and necessarily small schools (NSS). The author notes that the Prop 98 Guarantee has been increased incrementally over several years to include all four-year-olds in California (including those in basic aid and necessary small schools), but those new TK funds are only distributed through the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF), which misses four-year-olds attending necessary small schools and Basic Aid school districts serving four-year-olds. The bill cleared the Assembly Education Committee on a 8-0 vote.
Facilities
AB 503 (González, Mark): School facilities: Civic Center Act: direct costs. Under current law, the Civic Center Act (Act) allowed school districts to assess “direct costs,” defined as a proportionate amount for maintenance, repair, restoration, and refurbishment for the use of non-classroom facilities and grounds when authorizing the use of school facilities or grants by a nonprofit organization, or by a club or association organized to promote youth and school activities. However, that authorization inadvertently sunset on January 1, 2025. AB 503 would restore, indefinitely, the above-described authorization.
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