A full PDF report on how your legislator voted on each bill is available at www.csba.org/2019scorecard. Each legislator’s name is bookmarked within the PDF for ease of navigation.

Among the 57 bills your legislators are scored on, CSBA is recognizing specific votes on four key measures, with the school start time bill easily representing the quintessential local governance vote of the year:

Senate Bill 328 (Portantino, D-La Cañada-Flintridge) — OPPOSE: Would require all non-rural middle and high schools to begin the regular school day no earlier than 8 a.m. (middle schools) or 8:30 a.m. (high schools). Signed into law on Oct. 3, 2019.

Senate Bill 126 (Leyva & O’Donnell) — SUPPORT: Would require charter school adherence to The Ralph M. Brown Act (or the Bagley-Keene Open Meeting Act, if the charter school is operated by an entity that is governed by that act), California Public Records Act, Political Reform Act of 1974 and Government Code 1090. Signed into law on March 5, 2019.

Assembly Bill 48 (O’Donnell, D-Long Beach) — SUPPORT: Would place a $15 billion school facilities bond on the March 3, 2020 ballot. The bill was significantly amended during the final weeks of the 2019 legislative year to adjust the size of the bond authority for K-12, add money for University of California and California State University systems and make a series of changes (contingent on passage at the ballot box) to how State School Facilities Program money is allocated. Signed on Oct. 7, 2019, to be placed on the March 3, 2020 ballot.

Assembly Bill 751 (O’Donnell) — CO-SPONSOR: Allows local educational agencies the flexibility to administer an alternate assessment (such as the SAT or ACT) for 11th-grade students in place of the Smarter Balanced Summative Test, if the alternate test has been approved by the State Superintendent of Public Instruction. Vetoed on Oct. 13, 2019.

The sheer volume of bills passed by the Legislature this year was relatively unsurprising. In the waning years of the Brown Administration, there had emerged a relatively clear picture of what legislation he was likely to support, and that which he would not. With Gov. Newsom taking office in January 2019 and coming in with a palpable appetite for bold and monumental statewide policy moves, the doors blew open for the Legislature to flood his desk with bills — which it did with gusto.

In the education world, there is no greater example of this than the signing of SB 126 (Leyva and O’Donnell) in early March — a bill that flew through the Legislature at a breakneck pace. SB 126 requires charter school adherence to transparency and accountability laws that have long applied to traditional public schools. Prior versions of this legislation, sponsored or co-sponsored by CSBA, had been passed by the Legislature multiple times over the last decade-plus but vetoed by two different governors, yet it was among Gov. Newsom’s first official acts, signed 57 days after he took office. This bill brought resolution to a series of key local governance issues that CSBA had long made a top legislative priority and sought resolutely to address.

The Legislature did not slow down from there. While much of the focus around the Capitol in 2019 was on a variety of measures to address the housing crisis, climate change and other hot-button statewide issues, CSBA monitored more than 430 bills in 2019 to assess impacts on public education, with more than a third of those bills passing the Legislature and being sent to the Governor.

For the third year in a row, the CSBA-opposed school start time bill, SB 328 (Portantino), roared back to life in the final days of the year. Despite the ongoing efforts of a coalition opposing the bill, co-led by CSBA, the Association of California School Administrators, the California Association of School Business Officials, the California Teachers Association and others, SB 328 squeaked through the Assembly with 44 “Aye” votes (three more than the 41 needed for passage), 20 “No” votes and 18 members not recording a vote. Gov. Newsom signed SB 328 on Oct. 13, his final day to act on 2019 bills, and the law will now go into effect on July 1, 2022 for the 2022–23 school year (or upon expiration of a collective bargaining agreement operative as of Jan. 1, 2020).

Building off the SB 126 signing, charter school legislation was the biggest headline grabber in education circles throughout 2019, as AB 1505 (O’Donnell) emerged as a year-long process to come to an agreement on a series of sweeping changes to charter authorization and oversight that will ultimately benefit LEAs. CSBA worked integrally with the author and key stakeholders throughout the year, leading up to an August agreement on the bill. Gov. Newsom signed it on Oct. 3, along with a companion bill placing new parameters on charter school resource center locations (AB 1507, Smith), while vetoing a bill on Local Control and Accountability Plan requirements for charters (AB 967, Smith) on Oct. 7. CSBA was supportive of all three bills, despite some implementation issues on AB 1505 that CSBA will work with the Legislature to address in 2020.

In the final days of 2019, AB 39 (Muratsuchi, D-Torrance) was set as a two-year bill at the request of the author, meaning that it can be heard and passed in 2020. AB 39, a CSBA co-sponsored bill that aligns with the association’s efforts surrounding Full and Fair FundingSM, expressed legislative intent to raise the Local Control Funding Formula base grant targets to a level reflecting the national average in per-pupil funding. The bill is likely to be a part of more robust discussions surrounding education funding at the Capitol as the new legislative year begins.

An additional topic of discussion gaining traction for 2020 is special education. AB 428 (Medina, D-Riverside), a bill that would significantly increase special education funding statewide, was held in the Senate Appropriations Committee in August, due primarily to a special education investment made in the enacted 2019–20 budget — an investment for which ongoing funding beyond the 2019–20 fiscal year is contingent upon the passage of special education reform in the 2020–21 budget. The money allocated in this year’s budget did not fully meet the funding goals of AB 428, but did provide $152.6 million to equalize programs up to the “statewide base target rate” and funded nearly two-thirds of the Special Education Local Plan Areas (SELPAs) in the state.

AB 331 (Medina), which would add a one-semester course in ethnic studies for high school students as a graduation requirement beginning in 2024–25, was also made a two-year bill at the request of the author and will re-emerge in discussions at the Capitol next year. In a separate move, the deadlines for development and adoption of the California Department of Education’s model ethnic studies curriculum were also delayed by one year, to spring 2021.

For now, the waiting game begins to see just how many bills will be introduced in January and February when the Legislature reconvenes. 2020 doesn’t figure to be a boring year.