AB 2273: Career technical education: California Pilot Paid Internship Program.

Existing law establishes the California Career Pathways Trust as a state education and economic and workforce development initiative with the goal of preparing pupils in kindergarten and grades 1 to 12, inclusive, to successfully transition to postsecondary education and training and to employment in high-skill, high-wage, and high-growth or emerging sectors of the states economy. Existing law establishes the California Career Technical Education Incentive Grant Program, administered by the State Department of Education, with the purpose of encouraging, maintaining, and strengthening the delivery of high-quality career technical education programs.

This bill would establish the California Pilot Paid Internship Program in the department to help prepare thousands of California pupils for high-skill jobs of the future in engineering, health care, mathematics, manufacturing, science, teaching, and technology. The bill would appropriate $12,000,000 from the General Fund to the department to provide technical assistance to, and allocate grant funds to, school districts, charter schools, and county offices of education that establish or expand existing local public-private internship programs, as provided. The bill would require the department to allocate grant funds to local educational agencies to support, in total, up to 5,000 rising grade 12 pupils per year participating in 8-week internship programs, as provided. The bill would require the department to develop an application process for local educational agency grant applicants, as provided.

This bill would require local educational agency grant applicants to use grant funds and employer matching funds to provide participating pupils with an hourly wage of $15. The bill would require public-private partnership internship programs to, among other things, include a career-related experience that exposes grade 12 pupils to the world of work and opportunities for supervised and specific practice for a future career. The bill would require grant recipients to report pupil internship data to the Superintendent of Public Instruction on or before December 31 of each fiscal year, as provided. The bill would authorize grant funds to be available for expenditure or encumbrance from the 202425 fiscal year through the 202627 fiscal year. The bill would require the Superintendent to contract for an independent evaluation of the program and provide a report to the relevant fiscal and policy committees of the Legislature by January 1, 2028.