We highlight these key bills below, and a full list of actions taken this week by the Senate and Assembly Education Committees can be found here.
Resurrected AB 65 (Aguiar-Curry) Puts Paid Pregnancy Disability Leave on Parallel Track with Budget
You might recall AB 65, introduced in 2025, would provide public school and community college employees, both certificated and classified, up to fourteen weeks of leave at full pay for pregnancy and pregnancy-related conditions. The bill stalled last year amidst cost and workforce pressures.
Now, with the proposal contained within this year’s State Budget, it appears the bill has been resurrected. What remains unclear is the purpose of moving the bill in the context of the budget proposal. We suspect it could be to keep pressure on negotiations as the final budget deal comes together in the next few weeks, or to serve as a vehicle for a more thorough discussion about the policy.
As we have previously reported, the education community is largely supportive of providing fully paid pregnancy leave. The consternation has been over how the leave is paid for and concerns about inflexible rules for finding qualified staff to cover classrooms when teachers are on leave. A reminder that the Governor’s budget proposal would pay for the leave by providing a 4.31% cost of living adjustment (COLA) to the LCFF. However, using a COLA to pay for a specific policy undermines the intent of a COLA. Further, the policy would apply to all schools, but not all schools receive LCFF funding - Necessary Small Schools, and Basic Aid School Districts, for example. This point was discussed during the hearing, with the author admitting they are “looking for some trailer language that’s still going to come in so we can adjust…” Whether all these concerns are addressed remains to be seen.
The bill passed 5-0 and now heads to the Senate Committee on Labor, Public Employment and Retirement, where it will likely receive a similarly warm reception from committee democrats.
Bills seek to Ease Reporting Requirements on LEAs
AB 2008, sponsored by ACSA, CSBA , CASBO, and SSDA, would require, beginning in 2028, new bills that impose programmatic or expenditure reporting requirements on LEAs to include a sunset no later than four years after the requirement becomes operative, unless otherwise specified in the bill.
Bill author, Assembly Member Darshana Patel (D-San Diego), who Chairs the Assembly Education Committee, framed the bill as a “common sense modernization” measure, citing research estimating that compliance activities consume between $2.73 and $3.56 billion annually in California public schools, with small and rural districts hit hardest because they face the same requirements as large districts with far fewer staff.
While the bill was met with mostly positive feedback, some pushback came from Senator Christopher Cabaldon (D-Yolo), who raised a separation-of-powers concern. The bill would require, by statute, that future bills carry the sunset and template language and would direct Legislative Counsel’s drafting of future bills accordingly. The Senator’s worry is that this binds future legislatures by statute, something that can be undone only with the Governor’s consent, to accomplish what the Legislature could do on its own through a joint rule. “I’m not willing to give up my constitutional prerogative as a legislator to a statute that can only be changed with the governor’s consent over this issue,” he said.
Despite this concern, he voted to advance the bill but signaled he would need answers before supporting it on the Senate Floor. For her part, Assembly Member Patel said she had not heard the concern before and would take it under advisement and work with the sponsors. Senate Education Committee Chair Sasha Renée Pérez (D-Claremont), noted that the Legislative Counsel language already exists in statute because of a 2010 bill, and that AB 2008 is largely an effort to clean it up. The bill passed 7-0 and now heads to the Senate Appropriations Committee.
In a similar vein, the committee heard AB 1721, authored by Assembly Member Al Muratsuchi (D-Torrance). The bill would require the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, in consultation with the State Board of Education (SBE), to convene a work group to review existing comprehensive school safety plans (CSSPs) and make recommendations on the development, approval, and statutorily required elements of the CSSP.
Schools across the state have lamented that the CSSP has quickly become a compliance exercise, full of so many elements and requirements that the document is difficult to understand for school staff and the public. To that end, Assembly Member Muratsuchi noted in his testimony on the bill that “the Legislature is prone to pass bills every year that add to the requirements in the CSSP.”
The committee agreed that the CSSP should be examined. Senator Lena Gonzalez (D-Long Beach) said “anything that we can do to streamline the process, ensure that there is effectiveness, I’m all for 100%.” The bill moved forward on a unanimous 7-0 vote.
What’s Next?
The deadline for bills to be passed out of their respective policy committees in the second house is July 2. Accordingly, agendas for committees will be substantial in the coming weeks as the two houses look to ensure bills are passed to their fiscal committees by the deadline. The Legislature will be on Summer Recess from July 2 to August 3.
As these bills and other important education-related bills continue to move, we will keep you posted. In the meantime, please reach out with any questions.
Cheers,
Nick
Nick Romley
Legislative Advocate | Capitol Advisors Group