Analysis: 2006 Legislature—lots of money, lots of strings 

Editor’s note: CSBA’s Governmental Relations staff prepared this analysis of the Legislature’s actions in 2006. The December edition of California School News will include a look forward at the issues that will be before the Legislature in 2007.

The year began with legal challenges over action taken by the Legislature, and it will end that way as well. Two major lawsuits were pending in January: the California Teachers Association and Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell sued Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger over the state’s failure to fully fund Proposition 98, and the case of Chapman v. the California Department of Education challenged the requirement that special education students must pass the California high school exit exam. The year is ending with another legal challenge, this one to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s attempt to take control of the Los Angeles Unified School District under Assembly Bill 1381 (Núñez).

CTA v. Schwarzenegger was settled this past summer. At the core of the suit was the nearly $3 billion that was owed to schools for 2004-05 and 2005-06. The settlement calls for providing this funding to schools over seven years beginning in 2007-08.

The question remained as to how that money would be allocated. That was resolved in the final days of the session with Senate Bill 1133 (Torlakson), which targets the money to the lowest-performing schools but restricts the use of the funding to class-size reduction and hiring additional counselors and imposes a new accountability structure on schools.

The issues with the Chapman case were avoided early in the year with a one-year delay on the requirement for special education students to pass the CAHSEE in order to receive a high school diploma; however, the legal challenge to the test itself remains unresolved. A description of SB 1133 can be found on CSBA’s Web site at: www.csba.org/gr/index.cfm.

Politics trumps policy
The debate over AB 1381 quickly became the dominant education issue in the Legislature this year; not only because of what the bill proposed to do, but also because of the path it took to enactment. The bill passed because of power politics and not on the strength of its merits. To protect the integrity of elected school boards and the constitutional prohibition against transferring authority over schools to any entity that is not part of the public school system, CSBA has joined LAUSD and others in a lawsuit to challenge the legality of AB 1381.

Lots of money, lots of strings
There was some good news this year. The state budget included significant increases in revenues for schools, including full funding for a 5.92 percent cost-of-living adjustments, $350 million for equalization (getting the state 75 percent of the way to full equalization) and a $350 million increase for Economic Impact Aid bringing the total funding for that program to $975 million. Unfortunately, in appropriating the remaining new dollars, the Legislature once again fell into its habit of creating new programs rather than allowing districts more flexibility to restore or expand those programs and services that best fit the needs of their students. This resulted in billions of one-time and ongoing dollars being parceled out for increasing counselors, arts and music supplies, physical education teachers and equipment for physical education and career technical education. While all of these are worthy and important areas, they don’t allow districts the ability to maximize the effectiveness of the increased revenues that more flexibility would have allowed.

Declining enrollment
This year’s budget and legislation also failed to adequately address issues related to declining enrollment. Despite almost half of all districts in the state experiencing some declining enrollment and the total statewide enrollment actually dropping, the only provision in the budget that came close to providing resources to assist declining enrollment districts was the provision in the one-time district block grant that allowed the funding to be used for “any outstanding one-time fiscal obligation.”

There was one victory on declining enrollment this year: A provision that unfairly penalized districts when students transferred to a district-sponsored charter school and then returned to a noncharter district school was corrected in SB 1446 (Perata). Beginning in 2007-08, districts will base the adjustment to the declining enrollment formula on the net loss in average daily attendance to charter schools.

It is clear that more work needs to be done, and CSBA and the California Declining Enrollment Coalition will continue working to dispel the myth about “phantom” ADA and identifying new approaches for helping districts reduce the effects of declining enrollment.

Increased intrusion into school districts
Assembly Member Juan Arambula (D-Fresno), a former school board member, authored AB 2859, which proposed to increase the role of county superintendents in school district academic affairs, giving them the ability to stay and rescind all actions of a local governing board and allowing them to waive various Education Code provisions for low-performing schools. He also introduced AB 2656, which would have created Academic Crisis and Management Assistance Teams similar to FCMAT. Both of these bills were introduced despite the enactment of AB 953 (Coto) earlier this year, which was the work of a broad coalition of stakeholders seeking to establish a process to provide support and assistance to low-performing districts, and had not yet had the opportunity to be fully implemented. Both of these bills were defeated; however, similar efforts are expected next year.

English learners
The battle between the governor and the Legislature, particularly Latino Caucus Chair Senator Martha Escutia, over English learners resulted in the Legislature stripping funding for the state Board of Education (SBE) from the budget. SBE President Glee Johnson resigned over what she believed was lack of support from the governor for the board. One of the main issues was the SBE’s refusal to approve the use of “Option 6,” which is an alternative program that uses supplemental English Language Arts materials that are aligned to English language development content standards to teach English learners. Following the state board’s refusal to adopt Option 6, Sen. Escutia then amended SB 1769 to provide for the option and reinstate SBE funding. The bill passed the Legislature but the governor vetoed it, stating that it would create “segregated learning” for English learners.

There was some good news on the EL front. The budget included $20 million to examine best practices for ELs and $30 million for supplemental materials. In addition, the Legislature passed SB 1209 (Scott) that among other credentialing provisions will provide awards for providing more pre-service training on the teaching of EL pupils.