AB 631: School finance: Common Core and Next Generation Science Standards Implementation Fund Act.

Existing law requires the Academic Content Standards Commission to develop, and the State Board of Education to adopt or reject, academic content standards in language arts and mathematics that are internationally benchmarked and built toward college and career readiness by high school graduation, and requires at least 85% of these standards to be the common core academic content standards developed by the Common Core State Standards Initiative consortium or any association or related interstate collaboration, except as specified.

This bill would establish the Common Core and Next Generation Science Standards Implementation Fund Act, to be implemented if funds are received in the annual Budget Act or another statute, as specified. The bill would require the Superintendent of Public Instruction to allocate funds for the 201516 fiscal year to local educational agencies, as defined, on the basis of an equal amount per pupil based on the prior years enrollment for specified purposes relating to the integration of common core academic content standards, Next Generation Science Standards, and English language development standards in schools, including, among others, the professional development of teachers, administrators, and paraprofessional educators or other classified employees involved in the direct instruction of pupils that is aligned to specified academic content standards. The bill would require a local educational agency that receives funds to meet specified requirements, including reporting detailed expenditure information to the State Department of Education, and would require the department to summarize and submit the information to the appropriate budget subcommittees and policy committees of the Legislature on or before July 3, 2017.

The bill would require the Superintendent, upon appropriation by the Legislature, to allocate $900,000,000 $1,000,000,000 to local educational agencies for purposes of implementing the act, and to allocate $1.1 billion to local educational agencies to satisfy outstanding claims pursuant to Section 6 of Article XIII B of the California Constitution for reimbursement of state-mandated local program costs for any fiscal year. The bill would express the Legislatures intent that the local educational agencies use the latter one-time funds for the acts purposes. act.