



In 2018, the Legislature sent a total of 1,217 bills to then-Gov. Jerry Brown’s desk for his consideration in his final year. That was a notably hefty stack of legislation, even for the second year of a two-year legislative session; it is typical to see a higher count of bills passed in the second year of a session than in the first.
In 2019, Gavin Newsom’s first year as governor and the first year of a new two-year session, it would appear the Senate and Assembly were quite eager to throw all they could his way to see what would stick — a total of 1,341 bills. That does not include measures that were introduced and not passed, many of which can still be passed in 2020 (more on this later).
While only a fraction of these bills affect education, it’s time now for CSBA’s annual look at how your Senators and Assemblymembers voted on key legislation that will impact public schools.



In 2018, the Legislature sent a total of 1,217 bills to then-Gov. Jerry Brown’s desk for his consideration in his final year. That was a notably hefty stack of legislation, even for the second year of a two-year legislative session; it is typical to see a higher count of bills passed in the second year of a session than in the first.
In 2019, Gavin Newsom’s first year as governor and the first year of a new two-year session, it would appear the Senate and Assembly were quite eager to throw all they could his way to see what would stick — a total of 1,341 bills. That does not include measures that were introduced and not passed, many of which can still be passed in 2020 (more on this later).
While only a fraction of these bills affect education, it’s time now for CSBA’s annual look at how your Senators and Assemblymembers voted on key legislation that will impact public schools.
- The favorable vote percentage is relative to how many total opportunities each legislator had to vote on these 57 bills. Instances where a member did not record a vote, either an abstention or an absence at the time of the vote, do not count as a favorable or unfavorable vote.
- Education and Appropriations Committee members had more opportunities to cast votes on these 57 bills than other legislators — members of those committees are noted in the scorecard.
- On average, members of the Assembly cast 76 votes on these bills, with members of the Senate casting an average of 64 votes; this is due primarily to the relatively higher volume of bills introduced in the Assembly versus in the Senate.
- Thirty-six of 57 bills were passed by the Legislature and sent to Gov. Newsom, which means they were heard on both the Senate and Assembly Floors, thus giving each legislator at least one opportunity to vote.
- Twenty-one of 57 bills did not pass the Legislature, which means some were heard on only one of the two floors, and some only in one or two committee hearings.
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.
Aaron Davis is a legislative analyst for CSBA.






“Not voting” member declined to vote, or was absent



Favorable
Vote %
(Oppose)
(Support)
(Cosponsor)
(Support)
Aguiar-Curry, Cecilia

59

10

86%
Not voting
AYE
AYE
AYE
Arambula, Joaquin

48

7

87%
AYE
AYE
AYE
AYE
Bauer-Kahan, Rebecca

59

6

91%
AYE
AYE
AYE
AYE
Berman, Marc

59

10

86%
AYE
AYE
AYE
AYE
Bigelow, Frank

73

23

76%
NO
AYE
AYE
NO
Bloom, Richard

92

18

84%
AYE
AYE
AYE
AYE
Boerner Horvath, Tasha

56

12

82%
AYE
AYE
AYE
AYE
Bonta, Rob

94

15

86%
Not voting
AYE
AYE
Not voting
Brough, William

64

25

72%
NO
AYE
AYE
NO
Burke, Autumn

62

8

89%
AYE
AYE
AYE
AYE
Calderon, Ian

84

17

83%
AYE
AYE
AYE
Not voting
Carillo, Wendy

93

16

85%
AYE
AYE
AYE
AYE
Cervantes, Sabrina

54

12

82%
AYE
AYE
AYE
AYE
Chau, Ed

88

16

85%
Not voting
AYE
AYE
AYE
Chen, Phillip

44

13

77%
Not voting
AYE
AYE
Not voting
Chiu, David

58

12

83%
AYE
AYE
AYE
AYE
Choi, Steven

45

16

74%
NO
AYE
AYE
NO
Chu, Kansen

58

10

85%
AYE
AYE
AYE
AYE
Cooley, Ken

33

10

77%
AYE
AYE
Not voting
AYE
Cooper, Jim

54

8

87%
Not voting
AYE
AYE
AYE
Cunningham, Jordan

52

14

79%
NO
AYE
AYE
AYE
Dahle, Brian

20

6

77%
N/A
Not voting
AYE
NO
Daly, Tom

56

10

85%
NO
AYE
AYE
AYE
Diep, Tyler

77

14

85%
Not voting
AYE
AYE
AYE
Eggman, Susan

84

15

85%
AYE
AYE
AYE
AYE
Flora, Heath

49

15

77%
Not voting
AYE
AYE
Not voting
Fong, Vince

63

19

77%
NO
AYE
AYE
AYE
Frazier, Jim

52

5

91%
NO
AYE
AYE
AYE
Friedman, Laura

56

10

85%
AYE
AYE
AYE
AYE
Gabriel, Jesse

91

17

84%
AYE
AYE
AYE
AYE
Gallagher, James

39

19

67%
Not voting
AYE
AYE
Not voting
Garcia, Cristina

53

8

87%
Not voting
AYE
AYE
AYE
Garcia, Eduardo

59

10

86%
Not voting
AYE
Not voting
AYE
Gipson, Mike

56

10

85%
AYE
AYE
AYE
AYE
Gloria, Todd

57

11

84%
AYE
AYE
AYE
AYE
Gonzalez, Lorena

88

17

84%
AYE
AYE
AYE
AYE
Gray, Adam

49

10

83%
AYE
AYE
Not voting
AYE
Grayson, Tim

53

8

87%
AYE
AYE
AYE
AYE
Holden, Chris

58

11

84%
AYE
AYE
AYE
AYE
Irwin, Jacqui

61

8

88%
NO
AYE
AYE
AYE
Jones-Sawyer, Reginald

63

11

85%
AYE
AYE
AYE
AYE
Kalra, Ash

93

14

87%
AYE
AYE
AYE
AYE
Kamlager-Dove, Sydney

55

10

85%
AYE
AYE
Not voting
AYE
Kiley, Kevin

71

26

73%
AYE
AYE
AYE
NO
Lackey, Tom

54

14

79%
NO
AYE
AYE
AYE
Levine, Marc

58

13

82%
NO
AYE
AYE
AYE
Limón, Monique

61

10

86%
Not voting
AYE
AYE
AYE
Low, Evan

62

12

84%
AYE
AYE
AYE
AYE
Maienschein, Brian

82

18

82%
AYE
AYE
AYE
AYE
Mathis, Devon

44

18

71%
NO
AYE
AYE
NO
Mayes, Chad

57

14

80%
NO
AYE
AYE
NO
McCarty, Kevin

98

13

88%
AYE
AYE
AYE
AYE
Medina, Jose

61

12

84%
AYE
AYE
AYE
AYE
Melendez, Melissa

44

14

76%
NO
AYE
AYE
AYE
Mullin, Kevin

59

10

86%
AYE
AYE
AYE
AYE
Muratsuchi, Al

55

10

85%
NO
AYE
AYE
AYE
Nazarian, Adrin

64

9

88%
Not voting
AYE
AYE
AYE
Obernolte, Jay

76

23

77%
AYE
NO
AYE
Not voting
O’Donnell, Patrick

95

11

90%
NO
AYE
AYE
AYE
Patterson, Jim

45

21

68%
NO
AYE
AYE
NO
Petrie-Norris, Cottie

90

15

86%
AYE
AYE
AYE
AYE
Quirk, Bill

90

13

87%
AYE
AYE
AYE
AYE
Quirk-Silva, Sharon

57

11

84%
NO
AYE
AYE
AYE
Ramos, James

55

11

83%
Not voting
AYE
AYE
AYE
Rendon, Anthony

57

10

85%
AYE
AYE
AYE
AYE
Reyes, Eloise

58

10

85%
AYE
AYE
AYE
AYE
Rivas, Luz

56

10

85%
AYE
AYE
AYE
AYE
Rivas, Robert

88

17

84%
AYE
AYE
AYE
AYE
Rodriguez, Freddie

61

10

86%
Not voting
AYE
AYE
AYE
Rubio, Blanca

53

9

85%
Not voting
AYE
AYE
AYE
Salas, Rudy

58

9

87%
NO
AYE
AYE
AYE
Santiago, Miguel

69

11

86%
AYE
AYE
AYE
AYE
Smith, Christy

92

9

91%
NO
AYE
AYE
AYE
Stone, Mark

58

11

84%
AYE
AYE
AYE
AYE
Ting, Philip

52

9

85%
AYE
AYE
Not voting
AYE
Voepel, Randy

50

18

74%
AYE
AYE
AYE
NO
Waldron, Marie

51

18

74%
NO
AYE
AYE
NO
Weber, Shirley

91

15

86%
AYE
AYE
AYE
AYE
Wicks, Buffy

58

10

85%
AYE
AYE
AYE
AYE
Wood, Jim

63

11

85%
AYE
AYE
AYE
AYE






“Not voting” member declined to vote, or was absent



Favorable
Vote %
(Oppose)
(Support)
(Cosponsor)
(Support)
Allen, Benjamin

39

9

81%
AYE
AYE
AYE
AYE
Archuleta, Bob

37

9

80%
AYE
AYE
AYE
AYE
Atkins, Toni

37

9

80%
AYE
AYE
AYE
AYE
Bates, Patricia

66

28

70%
NO
AYE
AYE
AYE
Beall, Jim

44

12

79%
AYE
AYE
AYE
AYE
Borgeas, Andreas

25

15

63%
Not voting
AYE
AYE
AYE
Bradford, Steven

84

21

80%
AYE
AYE
AYE
AYE
Caballero, Anna

38

8

83%
NO
AYE
AYE
AYE
Chang, Ling Ling (R)

57

19

75%
AYE
AYE
AYE
AYE
Dahle, Brian

18

10

64%
N/A
Not voting
AYE
N/A
Dodd, Bill

37

9

80%
AYE
AYE
AYE
AYE
Durazo, Maria Elena (D)

102

22

82%
Not voting
AYE
AYE
AYE
Galgiani, Cathleen

35

9

80%
AYE
AYE
AYE
AYE
Glazer, Steven

64

16

80%
NO
AYE
NO
AYE
Gonzalez, Lena

29

9

76%
N/A
AYE
AYE
N/A
Grove, Shannon

31

14

69%
NO
AYE
AYE
AYE
Hertzberg, Robert

44

11

80%
AYE
AYE
AYE
AYE
Hill, Jerry

86

24

78%
AYE
AYE
AYE
AYE
Hueso, Ben

38

9

81%
AYE
AYE
AYE
AYE
Hurtado, Melissa

46

12

79%
Not voting
AYE
AYE
AYE
Jackson, Hannah

40

12

77%
AYE
AYE
AYE
AYE
Jones, Brian

66

36

65%
AYE
NO
AYE
NO
Leyva, Connie

76

11

87%
NO
AYE
AYE
AYE
McGuire, Mike

75

16

82%
AYE
AYE
AYE
AYE
Mitchell, Holly

42

11

79%
AYE
AYE
AYE
AYE
Monning, Bill

43

11

80%
AYE
AYE
AYE
AYE
Moorlach, John

30

11

73%
NO
NO
AYE
Not voting
Morrell, Mike

27

17

61%
NO
NO
AYE
NO
Nielsen, Jim

33

21

61%
NO
AYE
AYE
AYE
Pan, Richard

76

15

84%
AYE
AYE
AYE
AYE
Portantino, Anthony

86

22

80%
AYE
AYE
AYE
AYE
Roth, Richard

38

7

84%
Not voting
AYE
AYE
AYE
Rubio, Susan

42

9

82%
AYE
AYE
AYE
AYE
Skinner, Nancy

39

10

80%
AYE
AYE
AYE
AYE
Stern, Henry

39

10

80%
Not voting
AYE
AYE
Not voting
Stone, Jeff

34

13

72%
NO
NO
AYE
AYE
Umberg, Tom

40

12

77%
AYE
AYE
AYE
AYE
Wieckowski, Bob

86

24

78%
AYE
AYE
NO
AYE
Wiener, Scott

45

12

79%
AYE
AYE
AYE
AYE
Wilk, Scott

65

19

77%
AYE
AYE
AYE
AYE