As the curtain fell on another legislative year, Gov. Gavin Newsom had more than 1,000 bills sent to his desk to be vetoed or signed into law. CSBA had much to celebrate with three sponsored bills signed that will make needed reforms to school board recall and special elections and support districts in developing workforce housing. At the same time, many proposals were vetoed due to unfunded costs — a sign that the political winds may be shifting for the 2023–24 legislative session.
AB 2295 (Bloom, D-Santa Monica) will take on both the educator and housing shortages by easing the way for districts to develop workforce housing. Drawing on CSBA’s work with UCLA’s cityLAB, UC Berkeley’s Center for Cities + Schools and the Terner Center for Housing Innovation in the report Education Workforce Housing in California (www.csba.org/workforcehousing), the new law will remove bureaucratic hurdles and streamline the process for school districts to develop workforce housing on vacant school property.
Another key signed bill, SB 931 (Leyva, D-Chino), will impose new penalties on public employers, including school districts, for allegedly “deterring or discouraging” employees from joining or participating in a union. CSBA opposed the measure and successfully advocated for amendments that will permit the Public Employment Relations Board to consider: (1) the public employer’s annual budget, (2) the severity of the violation; and (3) prior history of violations by the public employer when determining the amount of the civil penalty.
Two bills that would have changed how kindergarten works in California met the same fate. The first, SB 70 (Rubio, D-Baldwin Park), would have made kindergarten mandatory beginning in the 2024–25 school year by requiring students to have completed one year of kindergarten before starting first grade. The second, AB 1973 (McCarty, D-Sacramento), would have required school districts to provide one full-day kindergarten class beginning in 2027–28 for schools with an unduplicated pupil percentage of 50 percent or more and beginning in 2029–30 for all other schools. CSBA opposed both of these measures, largely due to the lack of funding provided to fulfill the new requirements and in keeping with CSBA’s longstanding position that new mandates must be funded.
The veto message for all three bills included a warning that “with our state facing lower-than-expected revenues over the first few months of this fiscal year, it is important to remain disciplined when it comes to spending … bills with significant fiscal impact, such as this measure, should be considered and accounted for as part of the annual budget process.” This language was included in the rejection of a number of bills not funded by this year’s budget, not just those addressing public education, and could signal a new approach from the Governor as the fiscal outlook changes heading into the November elections and the next legislative session.