BILL NUMBER: AB 2159 AMENDED
BILL TEXT
AMENDED IN ASSEMBLY APRIL 9, 2008
AMENDED IN ASSEMBLY MARCH 25, 2008
INTRODUCED BY Assembly Member Brownley
( Coauthors: Assembly Members
Hancock and Solorio )
FEBRUARY 20, 2008
An act to add and repeal Section 41054 of the Education Code,
relating to education finance.
LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL'S DIGEST
AB 2159, as amended, Brownley. Education finance: Commission for
Funding with Accountability, Transparency, and Simplicity.
Existing law establishes the public school system in this state,
and, among other things, provides for the establishment of school
districts throughout the state and for their provision of instruction
at the public elementary and secondary schools they operate and
maintain. Existing law establishes a public school funding system
that includes, among other elements, the provision of funding to
local educational agencies through state apportionments, the proceeds
of property taxes collected at the local level, and other sources.
This bill would express findings and declarations of the
Legislature with respect to the school funding system in the state.
The bill would establish the Funding and Accountability Commission
for Transparency and Simplicity (FACTS) to provide state policymakers
with a final recommendation and plan to comprehensively reform the
current education finance system and support pupil achievement by
making California's funding system simpler, more transparent, and
more effective. The bill would leave the size of the commission
unspecified, however, it would require that it be composed of
representatives of education and business, parents, and
representatives of the research community. The commission would be
required to develop a simple and transparent funding formula for
districts, Special Education Local Plan Areas, and county offices of
education, as specified. The commission also would be required to
recommend the steps and elements necessary to create or modify a data
system to provide school-level reports on revenues and expenditures,
to recommend the steps necessary to create an education finance
evaluation system, and to recommend how to transition to the
evaluation system, as specified. The bill would require the
commission to provide status reports on the progress of the
commission as requested, to submit an interim report to the Governor
and Legislature no later than August 1, 2009, and to submit a
comprehensive final report to the Governor and the Legislature no
later than December 1, 2009. The bill would require the
Senate Committee on Education and the Assembly Committee on Education
to convene a joint hearing within 60 days of the commission's final
report to review its recommendations. This provision would
become inoperative on July 1, 2012 2011
, and would be repealed on January 1, 2013
2012 .
Vote: majority. Appropriation: no. Fiscal committee: yes.
State-mandated local program: no.
THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA DO ENACT AS FOLLOWS:
SECTION 1. The Legislature finds and declares all of the
following:
(a) The 22 studies of the Getting Down to Facts Project and the
Governor's Committee on Education Excellence were consistent in their
conclusions that California's current education finance system is
overly complex, irrational, and burdensome, and is in need of a
long-term plan for comprehensive reform.
(b) The complexity of the current system poses a major obstacle to
transparency and effectiveness. It is almost impossible to determine
how much revenue each school district receives or how those revenues
are spent, let alone to report this information to local
communities, stakeholders, and the state.
(c) The current system is not logical, with district revenues that
are largely a historical artifact of spending in the 1970s combined
with a confusing and burdensome system of categorical programs.
Disparities in school and district revenues are substantial and are
not aligned to pupil or educator needs.
(d) The system places substantial restrictions on the use of
resources by schools and districts, creating high compliance costs
and making it difficult for local educators to respond to the needs
of their pupils. Fewer paperwork requirements and more flexibility in
allocating resources are cited by school principals as two of the
most important factors in improving pupil outcomes.
(e) Many schools and districts lack the proper tools or capacity
to ensure that money is spent on the most effective programs and
practices. Research consistently finds that successful schools use
data to inform teaching practices and innovation. However, California
schools and districts vary widely in their use of data and in their
capacity to use data to improve pupil performance.
(f) Ensuring that money is spent efficiently and effectively
requires a full understanding of how money is allocated by school
districts and spent within schools. However, California does not
collect financial data that is useful for determining the
effectiveness of resources at the state, district, or school levels.
(g) If financial data are available, it is difficult, if not
impossible, to link information across different datasets or sources.
Much of the data that are collected and reported locally, such as
the data collected through the School Accountability Report Card, are
not collected and reported centrally, and so comparisons among
schools cannot be made.
(h) Therefore, it is the intent of the Legislature to do all of
the following:
(1) Develop a comprehensive plan for school finance reform, with
consideration given to the interactions of school finance with
accountability and to the complexities of having multiple levels of
school governance.
(2) Simplify the formulas for allocating funding to each local
educational agency.
(3) Make the allocation of funding more rational so that the
revenues received by each local educational agency reflect the cost
of educating pupils with varying needs in varying environments.
(4) Support accountability by increasing the transparency of state
funding mechanisms and of expenditure decisions at the local level.
(5) Improve the reporting of financial data so that programmatic
investments can be linked to pupil achievement.
(6) Support continuous improvement by requiring periodic review of
the school finance system and of local resource decisions.
(7) Hold local educational agencies harmless and transition to the
new system gradually, as new moneys become available.
SEC. 2. Section 41054 is added to the Education Code, to read:
41054. (a) The Funding and Accountability Commission for
Transparency and Simplicity (FACTS) is hereby established for the
purpose of providing state policymakers with a final recommendation
and plan to comprehensively reform the current education finance
system to support pupil achievement by making California's funding
system simpler, more transparent, and more effective.
(b) The commission shall be composed of ____ members who shall be
representative of the diversity of the state population and shall
include:
(1) Representatives from the education and business communities.
(2) Parents whose children attend public schools in the state in
kindergarten and grades 1 to 12, inclusive.
(3) Representatives of the research community with expertise in
educational policy and best practices.
(c) For purposes of making formal recommendations and conducting
public hearings, the commission shall be subject to the requirements
of the Bagley-Keene Open Meeting Act (Article 9 (commencing with
Section 11120) of Chapter 1 of Division 3 of Title 2 of the
Government Code).
(d) The commission shall do all of the following:
(1) Develop a simple and transparent base district funding formula
that allocates resources rationally to meet district needs. The
funding formula shall include, but shall not be limited to, all of
the following:
(A) An adequate foundation amount per pupil for all districts.
(B) Adjustments to the foundation amount for district
characteristics that affect the costs of educating pupils but are
outside district control, such as grade levels served, regional wage
costs and population density.
(C) Adjustments for pupils that cost more to educate, such as
pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds and English language learners.
The adjustment will be identified as a percentage of the base
foundation amount.
(D) Additional funding for special populations served outside, or
in complement to, the traditional kindergarten, and grades 1 to 12,
inclusive, school environment, such as adult learners, gifted and
talented pupils, and prekindergarten.
(E) A mechanism to accommodate districts with declining
enrollment.
(2) Develop a simple and transparent funding formula for Special
Education Local Plan Areas (SELPAs) that allocate resources
rationally to meet regional needs. The funding formula shall include,
but shall not be limited to, all of the following:
(A) An adequate base foundation amount for each SELPA tied to the
size of the general pupil population.
(B) Additional funding for pupils with extremely high-cost
disabilities.
(3) Develop a simple and transparent funding formula for county
offices of education that allocates resources rationally in order to
meet regional needs. The funding formula shall include, but shall not
be limited to, all of the following:
(A) An adequate base foundation amount for each county office of
education.
(B) Additional funding tied to countywide pupil population.
(C) Additional funding tied to the number of districts served.
(D) Additional funding for direct services to special populations,
such as incarcerated and adjudicated youth, habitual truants,
homeless children, and other low-incidence, high-need pupils.
(4) Recommend the steps and elements necessary to create a data
system, or to modify existing data systems, to provide school-level
reports on revenue and expenditures. These report shall have all of
the following characteristics:
(A) Be centrally located and standardized for easy comparison
across schools and districts.
(B) Be linked to data on school demographics and academic
performance.
(C) Include reporting of program-level expenditures.
(5) Recommend the steps necessary to create an education finance
evaluation system focused on continuous improvement and
accountability that shall include, but shall not be limited to, all
of the following:
(A) A periodic review of the parameters of the base funding
formulas that shall include the base foundation amounts and
adjustments for local educational agency and pupil needs.
(B) Evaluation of programs funded outside the base funding formula
for effectiveness prior to renewal.
(C) Assistance to local educational agencies in allocating
resources effectively.
(6) Recommend how to transition to the new evaluation system with
minimal disruptions to operations of local educational agencies and
schools so that during the transition, all of the following occur:
(A) Districts are held harmless, meaning that no district will
receive less revenue per pupil than would have been allocated in the
prior year with adjustments for enrollment growth and cost of living.
(B) The new evaluation finance system gradually is phased in as
increased funding becomes available in future years. Phase in of the
new evaluation system shall include an equalization component based
on the characteristics of pupils in the district and the allocations
under the new funding formula. For purposes of this subparagraph, a
year with increased funding shall be defined as a year in which the
per-pupil funding guaranteed by Proposition 98 exceeds the prior year
per-pupil funding level, adjusted for the inflation increase set
forth in Section 42238.1 of the Education Code.
(e) Upon the request of either the Senate Committee on Education
or the Assembly Committee on Education, or upon a joint request by
both committees, the chairperson of the commission shall provide
status reports and be available to present public testimony on the
progress the commission is making toward accomplishing its charge.
(f) The commission shall submit an interim report to the
Legislature and the Governor no later than August 1, 2009.
(g) The commission shall submit a comprehensive final report and
set of recommendations, as described in subdivision (a), to the
Legislature and the Governor no later than December 1, 2009.
(h) The Senate Committee on Education and the Assembly Committee
on Education shall convene a joint hearing within 60 days of the
release of the commission's final report to review its
recommendations.
(i)
(h) This section shall become inoperative on July 1,
2012 2011 , and as of January 1,
2013 2012 , is repealed, unless a later
enacted statute, that becomes operative on or before January 1,
2013 2012 , deletes or extends the date
on which it becomes inoperative and is repealed.