Assembly Standing Committee on Education

Can you hear me? Okay, there we go. I'm calling this hearing of the Assembly Education Committee to order. We do not have any other Members, so I will hold off on the roll called established quorum. I'd like to welcome everyone to today's hearing. We will be hearing bills in sign-in order. We have a good list about 10 people ready to go. We have 32 bills on file today. Six bills have been pulled.

So if you're here for a Bill and you want to know if it's going to be heard today, these bills will not be heard: AB 848, AB 960, AB 113, AB 1255, AB 1509, and AB 1604. So if you're here for those bills, they're not going to be heard today. There are 12 measures on the consent calendar. So we're just going to not have a hearing and we're just going to vote on it as a block without a hearing.

They are AB 19, AB 238 with amendments, AB 384 with amendments, AB 873 with amendments, AB 889, AB 1071 with amendments, AB 1326, AB 1433 with amendments, AB 1496 with amendments, AB 1510, AB 1642 and AB 1651. AB 1605 has been pulled from the consent calendar and will be presented. I think I saw Mr. Gallagher walking in.

As a reminder, each Bill we will have up to two witnesses testifying in support, two witnesses in opposition, each of whom may speak for up to 2 minutes each. For each Bill presented, members of the public in the hearing room will have an opportunity to state your position, hear your name, your affiliation, and your position on the Bill only. Members of the public are also welcome to provide comment through the position letter portal on the Education Committee's website.

We will now proceed with our first item, a special order for file item number one, AB 1051 by Assembly Member Cervantes. For this item, we will have sign language interpretation. Ms. Cervantes, welcome. You may proceed when you are ready.

Thank you Mr. Chair and Members for the opportunity to present Assembly Bill 1051 today. I do want to start by accepting the Committee's suggested amendments as outlined on page five of the Committee analysis. I also want to thank your staff for their assistance on this Bill. The objective of this Bill is to ensure parity for employees of state special schools and diagnostic centers by providing them with fair and equitable cost of living adjustments in future fiscal years.

State special schools and diagnostic centers provide California with invaluable services by catering to the unique educational and developmental needs of students with disabilities. As of 2021, California has had the highest number of students with disabilities in the nation. Despite serving these deserving public school students, these schools do not receive equal funding on par with other public schools. State special schools and diagnostic centers rely on funding from the state budget.

But unlike other public funded schools through the Local Control Funding Formula, there is currently no mandated COLA for employees at state special schools or diagnostic centers. In fact, employees at state special schools and diagnostic centers have not received a COLA increase in over 15 years. To ensure that educators and qualified staff are available to provide essential educational services to students with disabilities, it is critical that state special schools and diagnostic centers employees are provided with COLAs so they can better provide for their families.

Assembly Bill 1051 will address this issue by ensuring that California's state special schools and diagnostic center employees receive a cost of living adjustment in future fiscal years. Colleagues, for these very reasons, I respectfully ask for your Aye vote with me to testify are the sponsors of the Bill, Nancy Liebach Aman, Director of the State Special Schools and Service Division of the California Department of Education and Julie Rems-Smario, Early Language and Education Specialist at California School of the Deaf, Fremont.

Hello Chair and Assembly Members. Thank you for being able to hear what I want to share with you all today. I am Dr. Nancy Libachaman and I am the State Special Schools and Services Division Director at the California Department of Education, and it's an honor to be here with you today. On behalf of Superintendent Tony Thurmond, who is sponsoring this Bill, we have his full support and this is based on what he's seen with his involvement with all of our state special schools and diagnostic centers.

We have six different programs that service the entirety of California. And what makes us unique is that we are the only state school in the State of California that serves the entire State of California. We are not like public schools. We don't get our funding through local education agencies and SELPAs and local special education programs. We get them solely from the state special schools and services division.

I want to explain more specifically with regard to our deaf students and our VI students and our diagnostic centers, we are very unique. Our schools serve very in-depth criteria and curriculum. We have direct instruction through sign language, we have direct instruction through Braille, and many schools rely on our expertise. And we serve all special ed students in the State of California, not just those that attend our school and are enrolled at our school and on our campuses, but those all over the state.

There's no other agency in California that provides the services that state special schools does. The proposed budget augmentation will allow the state special schools to continue to provide quality services to those who need them, especially as the demands increase and every year they tremendously increase. Over the years, we have had to try to be very smart with our budget. That has not changed in over 15 years.

For example, mental health services, early language intervention services, home support services, all of those that we provide to the various districts. We need extra funding from the state and from the Federal Government. Public schools has received that. For those various programs, we have not. So to increase our services and to give our families and students what they deserve, we really need that augmentation. We have a very large campus in Riverside, in Fremont, and in L,A.

We have facilities as well that we have facilities to maintain, resources, technology support, professional development, teacher training, recruitment and retention for qualified staff, and the cost of living. So many people are leaving because if you look at the cost of living, the salaries between the state special schools for our credentialed staff, and local school districts for their credentialed staff, there is a huge deficit and gap in the difference between those pay rates. We have a learning and recovery program.

We have multi tiered services between home and school. We have early intervention services. And the additional funds will create an equitable situation. Currently, it is an equity issue. We want our students to succeed. For this reason, Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tony Thurmond, proudly sponsors AB 1051. And I encourage all of you to provide your Ayevote in support of State Special Schools and Services Division. Thank you.

Thank you. I should learn how to say thank you in sign language.

Just like that.

Okay. Hi, everybody. My name is Julie Rems-Smario. I work as an Early Education and Language Specialist. That is my area of expertise from the ages of zero to five. And I want to give you just an idea of what it looks like when you have your child attend a school for the deaf, specifically in Fremont. We also have a sister school in Riverside, but we are the only bilingual educational program for deaf children. Deaf babies are not getting the ASL resources that they need elsewhere.

We are oftentimes the first place where they come to get language exposure from all over, not just California, but from all over the U.S. Families move to Fremont because we offer bilingual and multilingual services. We have one family who has twins, and these twins are both deaf. They do not benefit from any listening devices. They cannot receive services elsewhere. So they moved from San Jose to Fremont, and now both of these twins are two years old. They're thriving.

They're meeting their language milestones based on ASB 210, which is deaf children's language milestone. So in California, we are leading for those language milestones for deaf and hard-of-hearing babies. All teachers within public school settings don't have the expertise that we have at our school. We also collaborate with Lead K Family Services. We've served over 1200 families with deaf and hard of human childrens annually.

Not just families who live in California, or not just who live in Fremont and Riverside, but who live throughout the entire State of California. But unfortunately, the information about the services that those families are entitled to don't get to them. By the time that these children are already seven to eight grade years behind, we have to help them through ASL immersion to catch up so that they can get the job training they need and become job-ready by the time they graduate high school.

So these language milestones prepared these children to go to college. Unfortunately, there are language-deprived childrens children who come to our schools and we have to play a big catch-up. We have to have a large time of catch-up we have to do in order to get these children ready. And so we have to think about our future, because these children will go on to become taxpayers rather than a burden on the tax system that exists right now.

So if you support AB 1051, that's an investment in the education and the outcomes for deaf children. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Any public comments in support of this Bill, please come forward to the microphone. Seeing none. Any witnesses in opposition to this Bill, please come forward. Seeing none. Any public comment in opposition to the Bill, please come forward. Seeing none, let me bring it back to the Committee. Any questions or comments from the Committee? Seeing none. We still don't have a Q\quorum, and so would like to say thank you to Ms. Cervantes for bringing this important Bill forward.

I assume that the Riverside school is in your district?

That is correct.

Okay, so thank you for fighting for all of your constituents, including for the hearing and vision impaired. Pleased to support the Bill as amended. You've already accepted the amendments and we will take a. Can I get a motion and a second for this Bill?

I was just asking that if it's proper to make a motion to pass the Bill.

Okay. Okay. The parliamentarian is telling me that we should wait for the quorum, and so we'll wait for the motion and second, but I want to give you the opportunity, Mr. Vantas, to have the last word.

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair and Committee Members. In California, we lead, we lead on so many issues, and if we want to provide equitable solutions, this is the time to do so by passing AB 1051 today and really appreciate the opportunity to have just our presence and our voice heard, because it is important that we get this through and representing our most vulnerable communities. So thank you so much.

All right. Thank you very much. And as soon as we establish quorum, we will entertain a motion and a second for the vote. Thank you for your presentation to all of you. Thank you. Okay, so this is our list. Okay, I thought Mr. Jones-Sawyer? Okay. Ms. Bonta is next on the list, but I don't see her here. So the next is supposed to be Mr. Fong. I don't see Mr. Fong here. So the lucky winner is Mr. Jones-Sawyer.

This is item number 13, AB 912.

Um, okay. Good afternoon, Chair and Members. First, I would like to start by accepting the Committee amendments. I present AB 912, the Strategic Antiviolence Funding Efforts Act, or SAFE Act. This comprehensive measure will capture the $235,000,000 associated with two prison closures and reinvestment, and reinvest those cost savings into effective programs proven to further reduce violence and provide critical support to our communities. Members, rather than returning these savings to the General Fund, it is imperative these savings are kept within the Legislature's Crime Prevention Budget.

Studies have shown that health-based approaches have successfully curbed violence through applied skill-based prevention programs. Addressing youth mental health and adverse childhood experiences is critical in mitigating long-term effects such as substance abuse, mental illness, chronic health problems, and criminality. Existing programs have been successful in providing crucial resources and early intervention to youth. For instance, skill-based group intervention have been proven successful in reducing PTSD symptoms, depression, and general anxiety among children exposed to trauma.

As such, it is imperative that these programs are additionally funded and expanded across local educational agencies statewide. Additionally, data has shown the public health benefits of school-based health centers. Located on school sites, these centers increase preventive health services, reduce mental health, mental illness among youth, provide better outcomes for chronic conditions, and improve overall school performance.

In order to effectively enhance public safety and health, we must ensure that we are investing in programs with a proven track record of keeping our communities safer and providing critical health support. The SAFE Act is a comprehensive measure that will fund effective strategies to divert youth from the juvenile system, reduce youth PTSD symptoms and mental illnesses, and provide life-saving resources to our constituents.

With me to speak in support of this Bill is Jim Mangia, President and CEO of St. John's Community Health, and hopefully in the next few minutes, Superintendent Alberto Carvalho of the Los Angeles Unified School District. But first, we'll begin with Mr. Mangia if we can.

Yes, please proceed.

Thank you. Thank you. Assemblyman Joan Sawyer. I appreciate your support. I'm here to support Assembly Bill 912. I represent St. John's Community Health, which is a network of federally qualified health centers in Los Angeles, mostly in South and East Los Angeles. We operate 21 health centers, including eight school-based health centers and three mobiles that provide services at elementary and middle schools throughout Los Angeles Unified and Compton Unified school districts.

This Bill would provide critical funding to school-based health centers and make sure that students across California continue to have access to the critical services provided by centers like ours. And those services are medical services, dental services, behavioral health services, social support, and a host of programs which intervene in social determinants that impact children's health. School-based health centers help keep our youth in school.

A recent study by the L.A. Trust for Children's Health showed that one school-based health center visit, reduced medical visit, reduced missed school days by three days, and one mental health visit reduced missed school days by seven days. So school-based health centers play a critical role in educational attainment, in preventing absences, keeping kids in school, as well as impacting on their behavioral health and their mental health and their physical health.

We operate a school in Manual Arts High School in the center of South Los Angeles. Right before the pandemic, we rotated every 9th-grade student, all 900 of them, through the Health Center for an annual physical. We found that a third of them were pre-diabetic, and we were able to work with the school to develop programming to intervene and dramatically improve health outcomes for those students. So our students really need school-based health centers.

The pressures from social media, from COVID have had a big impact, and we ask for your support. Thank you.

Thank you very much. I do not see.

He's across the street and he's on his way, so I don't know if we can go through a few.

Take them out of order. Okay, so any public comments in support of this Bill please come forward.

Got to turn the mic on.

Mine is on. There we go. Go ahead.

Oh, good. Okay. Izzy Swindler on behalf of California State Association of Psychiatrists, thank you. And support. Thank you.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and Members. Pamela Gibbs, representing the Los Angeles County Office of Education, and pleased to join in support on behalf of the Superintendent of Schools, Dr. Deborah Duardo.

Thank you. Any further witnesses or public comments in support of this Bill? Seeing none. Any witnesses in opposition to the Bill? Seeing none. Any public comments in opposition to the Bill? Seeing none. Your timing is impeccable. Superintendent Carvalho. Welcome to the State Capitol.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. It's a pleasure to be with all of you. I'll be very brief. Today is an important day. The state can take an affirmative direction in doing something right and something big. I am Los Angeles Unified Superintendent Alberto Crevalo, and I'm here today to testify in support of Assembly Bill 912 by Assembly Member Jones-Sawyer. The Strategic Antiviolence Funding Efforts Act will reinvest state General Fund savings from prison closures into school-based programs that reduce violence, provide diversion opportunities, and provide community supports.

We need this in Los Angeles, in our community. I cannot stress to you enough the importance of early intervention after recognizing trauma in youth. Addressing the root of the problems early on is critical to help the child develop in a strong way. This is what we as educators and parents want. One of the five programs identified to receive expansion through the SAFE Act is the Cognitive Behavioral Intervention for Trauma in Schools Program, which Los Angeles Unified began operating in 1999.

School-based programs like this one address behaviors that disrupt learning and attendance and support early interventions for school-age children experiencing extreme traumatic events. Whether it is gang violence, safe passage issues, the crisis of fentanyl in our streets, in our schools, or the recent pandemic, these are realities that must be confronted. This Bill will address them.

The programs that Assembly Bill 912 augment will significantly assist us in our school system, the second largest in a country, in developing training programs in positive behavior interventions and support and restorative practices. This Bill is the right Bill at the right moment to help absolutely the right kids.

It aligns with our strategic plan in terms of providing safe passage to our children, leveraging community schools, wellness centers, partnerships to promote safe, welcoming, and resource-rich environments in our schools and community-based organizations, and obviously providing a continuum of mental and physical health services for students and families at school wellness centers and through new telehealth initiatives. We are pleased to support this Bill. It is an important Bill, and I thank you for the work that you do, and parenthetically, I'm still a new Superintendent.

Watch LUSD soar to becoming the best urban school system in America. The indicators are already there. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

All right, so we've had a chance to give an opportunity to hear both supporters and opposition, and so let me bring it back to the Committee. Any questions or comments from the Committee? Mr. Carrillo

Just a comment. Thank the author for bringing this to this Committee. It is a really innovative way to get money to help these programs. I thank you for that, and I commend the LAUSD for the work that they're doing, the vision that they have.

And I'm in strong support of this Bill. Again, we cannot make a motion without a quorum, but when the time comes, thank you for doing that. And if you consider me being a co-author of the Bill.

I will. Thank you.

All right. Seeing no other Members, let me bring it back to myself before I give Mr. Jones sort of the closing comments. So this is where you get to spend the fruits of your labor from your 12 years? 10 years. Okay. I'm getting ahead of myself.

All of the cost savings from all the work that you've done to lead to making sure that we're not adding to the mass incarceration of communities that you've been fighting for, to kill all those bills that would have added to the present population, including some of my bills. But I am very happy to support this Bill, and I would also be honored to be added as a co-author.

I always respected your work, Mr. Jones Sawyer in terms of what you've been fighting for, what you continue to be fighting for, and this is where we can take the savings. I think we've always been in agreement that in the ideal world, we should be able to spend money to invest in kids rather than investing in incarceration, and in so, Mr. Jones-Sawyer you have the closing comments, unless Mr. Hoover has any comments or questions. No. Okay.

And I want to thank you, and I will let you know that the majority of it was our work together on rehabilitation. And I can honestly believe that it wasn't a result of me killing bills in the Public Safety Committee.

It really was the work of making sure that on the front end we reduced the number of young people going into the school of prison pipeline, and on the back end, we provided some good quality rehabilitation programs so that from the 160 down to 96,000, those people didn't recidivate because we had quality programs that you and I working on to make happen over the next 10 years.

So it's a two-phase, and now we both can enjoy the fruits of that labor and actually spend the money correctly, because part of my Bill actually talks about accountability measures, which I know you definitely want to see, and you can go back to your constituents, and everyone can go back to your constituents say these savings have reduced recidivism by X amount.

And in the school system, where we may have young people at a rate of 70% not coming back to school, if we reduce that down to 30, down to 20, down to zero, which I'm sure the Superintendent would love, because butts in the seat really help your budget. It's a win for everybody all the way around. And so I look at these savings as an opportunity of.

Actually, I know people hate to say, trying to run government like a business, but if we do ROI, return on investment, if we invest these money and we can prove that the ROI is extremely fruitful, then we need to continue to do more programs like that. So I definitely welcome you to be a co-author, and I think you will be very proud of the results after I'm gone and you're still here.

All right. But with that, it looks like we have a quorum now. And so let me ask, Madam Secretary, if you can please call the role to establish quorum.

[Roll call].

Okay, so we have a quorum. And Mr. Carrillo, wanted to make a strong motion in support.

I do.

And a second for Mr. Lee. Roll call, please.

File item 13, AB 912. The motion is do pass as amended to Appropriations. [Roll call].

Bill is out.

All right, thank you very much, Committee and Chair.

Thank you.

Okay. All right. We have Ms. Bonta in sign-in order. And so she would like to present file item 21, AB 1352, followed by file item 27, AB 1520.

Can I start with file item 27, AB 13? No, I'm going to go with what I have. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you. Just for clarification, which item did you want to present first?

AB 1520.

Okay. All right. So that's file item 27, AB 1520.

Thank you. Good afternoon, Chair and Members. I would like to express my appreciation to the Education Committee staff for their leadership and care in supporting our team in this bill. This has been a labor of love for all. I'm pleased to accept the Committee amendments. I have had the incredible honor to witness firsthand the transformative work of community organizations, helping to provide high quality action civics and witnessing students who have successfully been awarded the state seal of civic engagement.

The state seal for civic engagement, established in 2017 by AB 24, provides a graduating enhancement to students that have demonstrated excellence in civic education and engagement. AB 24 required the State Superintendent of Public Instruction to establish criteria for students that have demonstrated excellence in civics education and participation, and an understanding of the United States Constitution, the California Constitution, and the democratic system of government. Students that complete the outlined criteria would receive the official state seal of civics engagement education, basically a graduating degree enhancement.

And this was to encourage and create pathways for students in elementary and secondary schools to become civically engaged in governmental institutions at the local, state, and national levels. And now, in 2023, AB 1520 seeks to support equitable access to this very same thing.

Civics engagement with the creation of the state seal of civic engagement project to facilitate partnership between the county offices of education and a community organization for the purpose of providing support and technical assistance to local education agencies and charter schools to improve statewide access to the state seal for civic engagement. Civic learning is critical in helping young people develop the knowledge, skills, and commitments to interact effectively with fellow community members to address shared problems and become civically engaged.

It is, in fact, the backbone of our very democracy. While civic engagement is a necessary component of effective governance, many students are not receiving the civic education necessary to support informed and active participation in civic and political life. Research shows that low income students and students of color are, in fact disproportionately impacted by a lack of equitable access to civic learning opportunities.

It is our goal with AB 1520 to reach students in underserved rural and tribal communities and schools and districts with high rates of poverty where civic engagement is foundational to getting people involved in our participatory democracy by increasing the opportunity to experience these pathways with good, solid programming. AB 152 recognizes the importance of partnership between community and civic stakeholders and local schools in jointly teaching and training and preparing students to be active members of society.

This legislation has received over 50 letters of support with many organizations in all of our counties, and today we have two witnesses, young people here to speak about the critical role civics education has played in their life.

First, we have Malik Powell, a graduate of Hiram Johnson High School in Sacramento, California, and Anka Bolusok from East Oakland who is a 12th grader attending Alameda High School in my district and has been learning civics education with the Martin Luther King Junior Freedom Center for four years, an organization that, in fact, provides this access for lessons in our nation's civil rights movement, native sovereignty, farm market, and other nonviolent struggles to advance leadership and personal transformation through community, basic civic engagement, and advocacy. We'll begin with Malik.

Good afternoon, Assembly Members. My name is Malik Powell and I was a recipient of the California State Seal of Civic Engagement last year. To earn the seal, I worked with the City of Sacramento in a program called Summer at City Hall. I helped create a civic engagement project that highlighted local mental health resources for youth and also ending the stigma behind mental health, which had deep personal value due to my personal experience in foster care and any such services from Oakland.

When I was younger, I was removed from my mother's home. As a foster youth, I began to find warmth in a family and opportunities within my community. Although I was battling depression and experiencing these difficulties at a young age, I often kept my true feelings inside because I felt that I had no one to trust or talk to.

For the civilian engagement project, we formed a team to better understand and address youth mental health issues, which brought various points of views together and relied heavily on our ability to collaborate. I found it easy to take on a leadership role within my group, but that also meant that I recognized, supported and encouraged the strengths of the other members in my group. Despite our different beginnings, experiences, and ideas, my group came together and presented a public service announcement script for Mayor Steinberg and Council Members.

This left me feeling incredibly motivated. Throughout these events and activities, I have learned to be more open, engaging with others. I don't shy away from talking about my past and current struggles. How I found resources for myself is what motivates me. I have also found a purpose. I want to continue contributing to my community by celebrating its diversity and one day creating and running my own youth center programs that will focus on obtaining valuable life skills and pushing forward to opportunistic futures.

I currently work as a youth recreational aide at Oak Park Community Center. Through this position, I hope to inspire and further lead my mark on the community like those who inspired me and supported me along my journey. As a recipient of the state seal, I feel more accomplished and I feel more inspired to continue my youth advocate journey. The state still supported and recognized the hard work that I and others have put together put towards our community.

I'm honored to receive this award and those who are not courageous enough to take risks will not accomplish nothing in life. So don't wait for opportunities, create them yourselves. And by this you have to sacrifice the short term goals for long term investments. And as a youth of color, I am very invested in my future and I hope to achieve greater things because of this day still and what it brings to my life. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for your time and I am open to questions.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Chairman and the Members of the Committee. It is an honor to be here in the support of AB 1520. My name is Anka Bolusok and I am a senior at Alameda High School. I'm here on the behalf of the Martin Luther King Jr. Freedom Center to support AB 1520 to increase access and equity to the state seal of civic engagement for all students in the State of California.

The state seal of civic engagement encourages school districts and schools to offer civic learning and civic engagement yet it is only being used in a quarter of our counties across the State of California, and only four districts contributed to awarding more than half of the 2022 state seal.

With only two years the state seal of civic engagement being implemented, it is clear that we need to create greater access for a community organization with our schools. Civic engagement practice provide community organization greater opportunities to serve as a resource to our school which will dramatically impact access to civic engagement. We need equity in civics learning and we need access for all students in California.

Access to opportunity of this state civil civic engagement, including our ruler and tribal communities and community based organizations across our state do wonderful work in solving community problems. And this bill encourages our school district to take advantage of that resource by building stronger ties with the community. Civic engagement is about changing what we do, going from door to door, registering voters and being a part of this solution for our problems that we see in our community.

And it also gives us a meaning school, and it gives us a voice and agency and gives us a different mindset that we have the mindset of the we instead of an I and being the bridge in between ourselves and our community and to be the voices that cannot be heard. Thank you.

Thank you. Great job both of you. I want to welcome you to the state capitol. Thank you very much for your testimony. Want to give opportunity for any public comments in support of this bill. Please come forward. Please limit your comments to your name, your affiliation, and your position on the bill.

Henry Chang from APAPA, in strong support of AB 1520.

Nicole Morales on behalf of Children Now in support.

Omar Mahia, sophomore at Bishop O'Dowd High School, in support.

Ashley Chinyu, 9th grader at Oakland Technical High School, in support.

Mabel Mini, College of Alameda Running Start Program, in support.

Reba Mile Martin from Oakland Technical High School, in support.

Anya Dais from Encinal Junior Senior High School and I'm in support.

Ivano Ramirez of Life Academy, in support.

Rowan Bernsarno from Alameda Science and Technology Institute in support.

Hello, I'm Galilea Duran and I am in support.

Good afternoon. My name is Camila Perez and I'm here to support the bill.

Dr. Roy Wilson, Professor at Merritt College, Peralta Community College District, Oakland, California. We strongly support. Thank you.

My name is Beverly Thomas. I'm here in support of AB 1520.

I'm Hueling Lee, Executive Director of Authentic Preparation Today in support.

Good afternoon. Dr. Karen Bulky. I am the Director of Government and External Relations for the Martin Luther King Jr. Freedom Center. Thanks to the author of this Bill and strong support.

Hello, I'm Lydia Ingram, a student from West Sacramento. And I support.

Kei Yamamoto, community organizer in Oakland. And in support of AB 1520.

Hi, my name is Ahmad, and I'm a freshman at Visitor High School. And I support AB 1520. Thank you.

Good afternoon. My name is David Gaines. I'm the Director of Community Affairs for the Martin Luther King Jr. Freedom Center. Rising in strong support of AB 1520. Thank you.

Good afternoon. My name is Michaela Montoya. I am from Metwest High School. And I support AB 1520.

Hello. Good afternoon. Ursa Kaiser at the University of California Davis, in strong support. Thank you.

Good afternoon. Bella Lopez, Director of Educational Services, the Martin Luther King Jr. Freedom Center in strong support. Thank you.

Good afternoon. My name is Mark Huerta and I support AB 1520.

Thank you. Any further comments in support of this bill? Okay, before I turn it over to any opposition, I need to present a bill in Utilities and Energy Committee. They're about to adjourn. And so I'd like to turn the gavel over to Mr. Lee. Thank you.

Thank you.

Do we have any witnesses in opposition come forward? If not, let's do the public comment for opposition.

Not a comment, but. I'm sorry, not a question, but a comment. It is inspiring to see all these young people coming forward in support. Powerful words that I heard is equitable access, inspiration and leadership. That is what I feel we need in our schools. We need to encourage that. I think that some of us have experienced how difficult it is to get young people involved. Something like this, a civics class, is something that I remember taking many, many years ago.

Now, seeing it back, I think that it will be very beneficial for our society to inspire those young generation, the future generation, to come forward and participate in a civic engagement. Thank you for bringing that bill to this committee. Appreciate yours. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Carillo, can I take that as a motion?

I will motion in strong support, yes.

Yes, and I will second that. Ms. Bonta, would you like to close?

Thank you. I think we've seen the power, how we get moved when we see our youth come forward, exercising their ability to stay civically engaged. And we know that without them having a full awareness, cognizant, and facility in being able to engage civically in the way that they've demonstrated today. By the way, most of the youth who came up today actually don't have access to this very seal in their school districts.

So we want to make sure that this is an opportunity for every single youth across the State of California to be able to be recognized for their participation beyond the classroom walls, for their civic engagement with the state seal, for civic engagement, and the technical assistance and support infrastructure that we need to be able to provide to them to do that. I want to thank our witnesses here today. You'll note that one of them is actually Malik, wearing his state seal. Right there. Proudly so.

And with that, I respectfully request your aye vote.

I thank you for bringing the bill forward. The chair is recommending an I vote, and the motion will be due pass as amended. You know, one day, someone has to break my record, so maybe it'll be someone who gets the seal. Thank you so much.

File item 27, AB 1520, the motion is due pass as amended, to appropriations. [Roll Call]

That's three votes, and it'll be on call.

Thank you.

Thank you. And Assembly Member Bonta, would you like to present File Item 21 now, AB 1352?

Yes.

Whenever you are ready.

Good afternoon, Chair and Members. I'm pleased to present AB 1352, my child care pilot expansion bill. In 2006, we established the framework for the individualized county child care pilot plans to help high-cost counties overcome regulatory barriers to addressing child care needs in their local communities. Today, 11 counties across the State of California are currently participating in these vital child care pilot plans, with regulatory flexibilities tailored to the unique needs of their communities.

The flexibilities are all designed to increase access to subsidized child care and early learning services, which are accessed exclusively by families under the state median income and primarily benefit families of color. Some of the pilot counties include Alameda, Santa Clara, and San Diego, to name a few.

These pilots have increased access to child care and stability for families in many ways, including allowing families to stay in care for longer when their income increases, providing the security of extended eligibility timeframes, and allowing increased flexibilities for the most vulnerable families who are homeless, seeking housing, or seeking employment. As an example of the benefit these pilot programs provide, the Alameda County Child Care Program allows child care providers to offer additional hours of care to children whose parents are experiencing homelessness.

Without this flexibility, providers would only be allowed to offer part time subsidized child care to families experiencing homelessness. That doesn't sound like a system that's actually ensuring that every family has the quality access to child care that they need. With only part time care, parents have less opportunity to seek employment, seek housing, or work to try to get their families back on their feet.

Over the years, the pilots have created a space for ongoing collaboration, which is sorely needed between the counties and the state agencies who administer child care. Areas where these pilots have operated in have seen increased workforce stability, continuity of care for children, and access for working families.

The pilots are set to expire this summer in July of 2023, at the time when child care providers are still picking up the pieces from the devastating impacts of Covid-19 Pandemic, at a time when working families urgently need access to affordable care and safe child care more than ever before. AB 1352 builds on the success of the pilots by extending the sunset date of the child care pilot programs to July 2025.

Further, AB 1352 gives authority to the Department of Education and the Department of Social Services to expand participation in these flexible child care program pilots to all 58 counties. Ultimately, this bill will increase access to child care by allowing for the thoughtful implementation of evidence-based flexibilities, which will allow providers to maximize services to children and families.

With me today to testify in support of this bill are Dr. Mary Ann Dewan from Santa Clara County Superintendent of Schools, and Amanda Dickey, Executive Director of the Santa Clara County Office of Education, reading testimony on behalf of Dr. Matilda Soria, Senior Director of Early Care and Education with the Office of Fresno County Superintendent of Schools.

Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Dr. Mary Ann Dewan. I'm the County Superintendent of Schools for Santa Clara County. My office is pleased to support Assembly Bill 1352 in partnership with the California Child Care Coordinators Association and our other child care pilot counties. My deep appreciation to Assembly Member Bonta for bringing forward this important bill that would allow the state to continue these child care pilots, which have successfully helped to increase access to child care services and adequate wages for the last decade.

The Santa Clara County pilot has allowed child care providers in our county to serve an additional 280 children in 2019 and an additional 700 children in 2020. It gave providers flexibility to augment wages for child care staff and expanded eligibility for subsidized child care to families who were impacted by the high cost of living in our county. In fact, the pilots have proven so successful that most of the flexibilities trialed in the pilot counties have been expanded statewide.

The child care pilots created space for ongoing collaboration and innovation between our counties and our state agencies, and granted state agencies the authority to authorize regulatory flexibility when there was a demonstrated need. Without child care pilots, the collaborative space will disappear and the state agencies will no longer have the needed discretion to explore these innovative solutions to barriers. In light of the UPK implementation and emphasis on supporting mixed delivery systems, now would be a particularly important time to continue this creative collaboration made possible.

This bill would expand them to allow all counties to participate in the pilot process and to access these new flexibilities to maximize the availability of child care services. This approach would maintain the successful county-state collaboration established by the pilots and increase equity by allowing children and families to benefit. I urge you to join the Santa Clara County Office of Education in supporting AB 1352, and I respectfully request your aye vote.

Good afternoon, Chair and Members of the Committee. My name is Amanda Dickey and I'm here today on behalf of Dr. Matilda Soria from the Office of Fresno County Superintendent of Schools. I will be reading her testimony today on behalf of the Fresno County Superintendent, Dr. Michele Cantwell-Copher. 'So Fresno is one of the 11 original individualized child care subsidy pilots and has had the benefit of participating in a child care pilot since 2016.'

'In Fresno County, the pilot flexibilities have created greater workforce stability, increased wages for staff, increased continuity of care for children, and supported working families. A recent study on the 11 child care pilots found that 94 percent of the pilots reported increased ability to meet families child care needs, 91 percent of pilots reported increased family stability, and 84 percent of pilots reported greater ability to earn child care contracts and serve more children.'

As one Fresno County child care provider stated, 'the Fresno County pilot reduced administrative burden and children remain in our program for two years or more instead of one year due to changes in family circumstances. Additionally, it has provided families with the continuity of care for two years regardless of family changes and creates stability for our youngest and most vulnerable children by providing consistent care and learning opportunities.'

'The children and family in our county have greatly benefited from the opportunity to work closely with the state agencies to create and implement pilot flexibilities, and we're supporting this bill because we believe that all counties should have the same opportunities to maximize child care services. Further, we believe this bill would actually save costs. Currently, the state agencies engage in 11 separate pilot negotiations and processes.'

'This bill would consolidate that pilot process into a single Subcommittee, reducing staff time and resulting in a cost savings for both state agencies. I urge you to join the Office of the Fresno County Superintendent of Schools and the Fresno Local Planning Council in supporting AB 1352. I respectfully request your aye vote.'

Thank you so much. Now, if there's anyone in the room that wants to add on and support public comment, please have your name and organization, please.

Molly Sheahan with the California Catholic Conference, in support. Thank you.

Izzy Swindler, on behalf of the City and County of San Francisco and the San Francisco Department of Early Childhood, in support. Thank you.

Christina Marcellus, on behalf of the Alameda, Monterey, Contra Costa, Sonoma, and San Diego County Offices of Education and the San Bernardino County District Advocates for Better Schools, in support.

Cristina Salazar with Californians Together, in support.

Thank you so much. Now, if there are any opposition witnesses who would like to come forward and testify in opposition, please come forward. Seeing none, are there any public comment in opposition? Come up to the mic. Seeing and hearing none, we'll turn it back to the Committee. Do you have any questions? Comments?

No questions, but a motion to move the bill.

All right, we got a motion and I will second it. And Assembly Member Bonta, would you like to close?

Thank you. I respectfully request your aye vote.

Thank you so much. And the motion will be 'do pass to the Appropriations Committee, and the Chair is recommending an aye votes.' Madam Secretary, please call the roll.

File Item 21: AB 1352. The motion is 'do pass to Appropriations.' [Roll Call].

It's three votes, and we'll leave that on call. Thank you.

Thank you.

And next, we'll have Assemblymember Ortega with AB 800 come up, please. That is file item 19.

Good afternoon Chair and committee members, thank you for allowing me to present AB 800 today. AB 800 would enact a workplace readiness week in California high schools to inform students about their rights as workers and rights as employed minors. Statistics show that in July of 2022, 53% of young people aged 16 to 24 were employed in the US. That equates to 21 million people, the mass majority of whom work part-time, low-wage, entry-level jobs.

In 2021, 109 teenagers died from work-related injuries in the United States. The same year, over 33,000 teens suffered workplace injuries so severe that they needed to go to the emergency room. Workers' rights are essential knowledge for anyone participating in today's workforce. It is essential for minors joining the workplace to be prepared with information on wage and hour protections, worker safety, paid sick leave, and prohibitions against employer harassment.

Many of the laws that were passed by this body. AB 800, will ensure that young workers are informed of these workplace rights before they enter the workplace. Today, I have two witnesses testifying in support of AB 800, Mr. Mitch Steiger with a senior legislative advocate with the California Labor Federation. And we also have Ms. Raquel Lopez Blanco, a student from UC Berkeley.

Thank you, Mr. Chair Members and staff, Mitch Steiger with the California Labor Federation, proud to co-sponsor this bill for all the reasons stated so well by the author. We would just emphasize a few quick points about how the bill is structured. It basically does three things. The first is it establishes this workplace readiness week to coincide with Workers Memorial Day at the end of April every year.

During this week, schools will provide information, secondary schools will provide information to all students on all the topics that the author mentioned. The second thing that the bill does is integrate all of those topics into the regular school program as already required by the current framework for 11th and twelfth graders. But it provides flexibility so that teachers can do that whenever in the year they think that it makes sense for those students.

And the third thing that it does is create a document outlining these rights that's then given to the student when they get their work permit signed. And we strongly believe that with these reforms, students and young workers will be in a much better place to stand up for themselves when they face some of the issues you're about to hear from Ms. Lopez Blanco. They'll know a lot more about the laws and regulations and state agencies that are there to protect them.

And most importantly, they'll know a lot more about their right to join or organize a union to give themselves the power that they need to come together and win the rights and respect that they deserve. And with that, I'll turn it over to Ms. Lopez Blanco. We urge your support for the bill.

Hello, everyone. My name is Raquel Lopez Blanco, and today I will be sharing my story. Senior year of high school, I got my first job at a family-owned convenience store where my 17-year-old friend and I would work together. I was excited to earn my own money, but little did I know I would encounter many not-so-exciting situations. Coming from an undocumented, low-income household, I wasn't sure what to expect in the workforce.

We worked at least 30 hours a week and were paid way under minimum wage. We often had to close the store at night without any adult supervision, which is a scary thing to do as the store itself had been rubbed at a gunpoint recently and no precautions had been taken. However, for me, the scariest part was the sexual harassment from customers. It was an open secret that my boss would hire young girls to attract men.

She would tell me it was no big deal and that it was good for business, but I never felt comfortable flirting with them and would constantly get in trouble for setting boundaries. One time, I was cornered by an older man inside the store. When I told my boss about it, she treated it like gossip and referred to him as my boyfriend. Every time he came in, I was humiliated that my concern was entertaining for them.

Another time, a man threw a beer bottle at my head because I pulled away from him. He then waited for me after work. It was after this that I began to carry pepper spray. I thought this was a normal experience for all employees since both of my parents have had their workplace rights violated before, my dad worked in construction for six months and was only paid $1,000 and told not to complain because he was undocumented.

My mom got a kidney infection because her job as a babysitter didn't allow her to take bathroom breaks. These situations are not uncommon where I'm from in the San Fernando Valley. We are taken advantage of because we're young. Being a minor and working over 10 hours a week, a day, sorry. Getting harassed in the workplace or having our wages stolen was nothing new among my friends. That is why I believe AB 800 should be an essential part of high school curriculums.

If I would have taken a course that taught me none of my work conditions were normal and were actually a violation of my rights, I would not have stayed as long as I did. I want to thank Assemblymember Ortega for authoring this important legislation because teaching young students how to stand up for themselves and what their rights as employees are will go much further than just the students. Instead, it'll reach their parents and communities entirely. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Now do we have public comment in support? Please come up to the microphone. Name and organization only, please.

Mr. Chair and members. Mike West, on behalf of the State Building and Construction Trades Council in support. Thank you.

Good afternoon. Samara Palko with the California Catholic Conference in support.

Good afternoon. D'Artagnan Byrd with American Federation of State and County Municipal Employees in support. Thank you.

Good afternoon. Daniel Schoorl with SEIU Local 1000 in support.

Good afternoon. Sandi with GENup in support.

Good afternoon. Cassie Mancini, on behalf of the California School Employees Association in support.

Good afternoon. Kristin Heidelbach, as a single mom with three children raised in a labor household, and on behalf of UFCW Western States Council and SEIU, in strong support.

Thank you so much. Now do we have any opposition witnesses here to testify if they want to come up? All right, seeing none. Are there any public comment in opposition? All right, seeing none as well. Any comments from the committee Members? Mr. Carillo.

Having experienced the feeling of being taken advantage of us and undocumented young men coming to this country at the age of 15, I'm sorry to hear what you went through, but those are things that we experience. Unfortunately, that's just what we have to endure. Thank you for sharing that personal story with us. I'm in strong support of the bill, and I like to thank the author for bringing it in.

And I like to ask if you consider me to be a co-sponsor of the bill, and I'd like to make a motion to move the bill.

All right. Well, I would also like to thank the author bringing this bill forward. I've said many times before, even, especially when I was interviewing with my labor councils in Alameda or Santa Clara, that for my generation, especially, organized labor is like a foreign concept. That was something we talked about in the history books, and it was something in the past, and especially representing Silicon Valley was something that was not really talked about.

So I think integrating into the school week and teaching people about their rights is very essential to do. But I do have one question, especially as we're evolving into our workplace. Right. And kids have more opportunities to, if they need to earn money for their families, will you also be kind of talking about the workplace rights for people who telework, because, of course, there's more digitization of workplace. Do you think that will be incorporated into your bill?

Yeah, I'm sure we can incorporate it.

Okay, very good. Because it's also something I'm reminded that we talked about, even with our state employees, that half of them are going to digital work now. And, of course, in my constituency, many of them work remote jobs now, and I think that's here to stay. And that's a new aspect of our workplace, so it's important for them to know about as well. All right. Would you like to close as well, Ms. Ortega?

Yeah. Thank you so much. And I would absolutely take your co-authorship and anyone else who would like to jump on. I want to thank the staff for all their diligent work and working with my team, and thank Blanca for sharing her story. Since the announcement of this bill, we've received countless stories similar to Blanca's. I mean, to Raquel's. Sorry, I apologize. Raquel's story is not unique, unfortunately.

And as a State of California, we need to be a leader and not allow for more Raquels to come before us. As we pass these laws, we need to make sure that our youth know about them, are informed of them when they enter the workplace. So I appreciate your support and look forward to continuing to work with you all. Thank you and ask for your aye vote.

Thank you. The bill has moved and seconded. Right, I'll second it. And the motion is due pass to the Labor and Employment Committee and has an aye reccomendation from the Chair. Madam Secretary, please call the roll file.

Item nine, AB 800. The motion is due pass to Committee on Labor and Employment. [Roll Call]

That's two bills. It's on call. And we'll have more members add on later. Thank you so much. All right, next, we will have AB 1354 by Assemblymember Mike Fong. That's file item 22.

You may begin when you're ready, Assembly Member Fong.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, Members. AB 1354 requires the Instructional Quality Commission during its next revision of the history social science curriculum framework to consider the following the historical, social, economic, and political contributions of Asian Pacific Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders in the United States, and examples of racism, discrimination, and violence against this community. And we know during the pandemic, innocent individuals of Asian American descent were harassed, attacked, and even killed while going about their daily lives.

Seniors in San Francisco and Oakland and Southern California were pushed, shoved while grocery shopping or simply walking in their neighborhood, just going about their daily lives. Men and women were killed in Atlanta and New York for no other reason than the way that they looked. We know it's been very challenging times the last few years, and according to the US Department of Justice, the FBI reported a 70% increase in the number of reported cases of hate crimes during the pandemic.

Most recently, nearly 11,500 hate incidents against Asian Americans have been reported to the Stop AAPI Hate Reporting center from March 19, 2020 to March 31, 2022. Despite a long history in America, Asian Americans continue to be targets of hate, violence, and discrimination and treated as foreigners. AB 1354 will update our curriculum frameworks to include a more comprehensive perspective of the contributions of Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders in the United States and the harm caused to this community due to anti Asian sentiments throughout history.

Only through education can we create a more inclusive learning environment for students and a more inclusive society for all people. And here to testify in support are Nick Gee, representing Stop AAPI hate, and Henry Chang, representing the Asian Pacific Islander American Public Affairs Association. I respectfully ask for an aye vote.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and Members of the Committee. My name is Nick Gee. I'm an advocacy manager at Chinese for Affirmative Action, a civil rights organization based in San Francisco's Chinatown, CAA, AAPI Equity Alliance, and the Asian American Studies Department at San Francisco State University are cofounding partners of the national coalition Stop AAPI Hate.

I am pleased to testify in support of AB 1354, a bill authored by Assembly Members Fong and Ting to require the Instructional Quality Commission to consider including in the history social science curriculum framework for the contributions of Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders, as well as the racism, discrimination, and violence faced by our communities, which have been on the rise since the start of the pandemic.

Since March 2020, Stop AAPI Hate has received more than 11,000 reports of hate from AAPIs across the country, including more than 4,000 reports in California alone. Many more acts of hate continue to go unreported, making the actual number much higher, potentially in the millions. The vast majority of Stop AAPI Hate do not involve a crime, let alone a hate crime. Instead, they are hate incidents involving harassment, bullying, shunning, and discrimination.

AANHPIs want comprehensive solutions to hate. We conducted a nationally representative survey showing that a majority of AANHPIs see education equity as an effective solution along with civil rights and community based solutions. That's why Stop AAPI Hate advocates for education equity, including ethnic studies, to help all students learn about racism and develop empathy across racial lines and to get at the root causes of hate.

We are proud to support AB 1354, which would help ensure the curriculum in California is more inclusive and representative of AANHPI histories, experiences, and voices. We thank Assembly Members Fong and Ting for their important leadership in uplifting our community and appreciate the Committee's support. Thank you.

Terrific. I'm Henry Chang. I'm the national Executive Director for the Asian Pacific Islander American Public Affairs Association of APAPA. We're a nation nonprofit headquartered here, right here in Sacramento with over 43 chapters across the US, and our mission is to empower Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders AANHPIs communities through increased leadership and civic engagement.

Since hate crimes against our communities spiked due to the racial scapegoating that occurred with the Covid-19 pandemic, we have organized over 20 rallies nationwide from DC to San Francisco with over 185 diverse organizations. We have also mobilized nationwide to get the Asian American history into K through 12 schools because we believe this is vital to eradicating anti-Asian hate at its roots. The forever foreign stereotype is a form of systemic racism used against AANHPIs.

Despite the early Asian sellers having come to us around the 1750s and a long history of AANHPI contributions to us history, we're still stereotype as foreigners in the United States with no matter how long they have lived or whether they are American born. Thus, we cannot eliminate AANHPI hate without eliminating the forever foreign narrative that plagues our communities. This detrimental narrative persists because AANHPI individuals and communities' contributions to the economic, cultural, social, and political development of the United States are unknown to most Americans.

This lack of knowledge is rooted in our K through 12 educational system and the near invisibility of AANHPIs in our curriculum. So we're asking you for a unanimous vote on this bill today because it will send a powerful message to California Asian Americans, Native Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islander communities that our state and legislators care about our well being and about making sure that our children and our grandchildren are never thought again or treated as less than full Americans. And they never have to experience the alienated feeling of being constantly asked, so where are you really from? Thank you.

Thank you so much. Now we're going to see if there's any public comment in the room wishing to add their voices in support. Please come forward to the mic, name and organization. Anyone here in support? Seeing none. Any oppositions here to witness? Any opposition? Witnesses here testify in opposition? Seeing none. Any public comment in opposition? Seeing none again. I'm going to move it back to the Committee. Any questions or comments to move the bill? Right. So move. And seconded, bipartisan motion and second.

I'll just say that I appreciate the author, of course, bringing this bill forward. It's very important that as we move in a more inclusive direction for all our history, that we include the voices of our Asian American diaspora, from our 18th century roots in this continent all the way to modern day. And I also appreciate that it's a very holistic sense. It's all contributions, not just political and military. So it's very important.

And I would love to be added as a co-author, as you have most of the API caucus on there already. I would love to be added as a co-author. Yes, Mr. Fong, thank you. And would you like to close?

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair and Committee Members. Really appreciate the motion. And second, and thank you to the Committee staff for their hardworking efforts on this bill as well. Really appreciate the Committee staff for all their support with our, working with our team and to really make sure that we get this bill forward. So really, thank you so much, colleagues. And I respectfully ask for an aye vote.

Thank you. And the motion is do pass Appropriations Committee. Madam Secretary, can you please call the roll?

File item 22, AB 1354? The motion is do pass to Appropriations. [Roll Call]

That bill has three votes, and we'll keep it on call. Thank you. All right, next, we have Assembly Member Wicks with file item seven, AB 598. And you may begin when ready, Assembly Member Wicks.

Thank you, Mr. Chair and Members. I want to begin by accepting the recommended amendment outlined in page six of the Committee's analysis. With this proposed change, AB 598 does two things. One, it updates the California Healthy Youth Act to require that California school's sexual education curriculum incorporate guidance on contraception methods and abortion information, while also providing students with information about local resources to assist them with all forms of sexual health care, including pregnancy prevention, contraception, and support for sexually transmitted infections and sexual or domestic violence.

Secondly, the bill Implements a recommendation from the Future of Abortion Council to require the California Healthy Kids survey to be universally administered across the state and include a core module on abortion and reproductive health care in grades 7, 9, and 11. This will provide educators and policymakers with comprehensive data about what California's kids know and don't know about these essential public health topics.

As this Committee's analysis makes clear, nothing in this legislation changes the current ability a parent or guardian has to affirmatively opt out from having their child participate in sexual education classes or the Healthy Kids survey. As a reproductive freedom state, California must ensure that all communities have access to medically accurate, honest, inclusive, and complete information about abortion and sexual health services. Not only should we educate our students about these essential topics, but we must also ensure they know how to access this care. And we have two folks here to testify. I will let them self-introduce.

Afternoon, my name is Sanvi, I'm 18 years old. I'm a first year at UC Berkeley.

Good afternoon, my name is Smeksha and I'm a junior in high school.

Yeah, I'm a first year at UC Berkeley. I'm honored to represent GENup in supporting AB 598. GENup is a youth-led education advocacy organization. We work on uplifting youth and education policy. But yeah, I'm really excited to talk to you all about this bill.

If you were to ask 13 year old me, after my first and only sex ed course in the 8th grade, if I knew where I could seek sexual reproductive care, I would say no. If you asked 13 year old me, with whom I was comfortable speaking about reproductive or sexual health questions, I would probably flinch at the idea of talking to someone. For a long time, I was pretty clueless about sex ed, and especially at that age, I was pretty scared.

Scared that there was no safety net beyond absolute abstinence and that if something did happen against my will, that I would have no one to turn to for support. The sad reality is that my perspective isn't unique. A lot of young people experience sexual health anxiety. I grew up in a South Asian household where stigmas against sexual activity and concepts such as abortion and contraception always pervaded conversations about sexual and reproductive health care.

And what's most shocking to people is that I've never had a real conversation with my parents or any family members about sex. So my circumstances allowed me to believe that the notion that seeking help equated weakness and shame when I should have been associating reaching out for support with strength. This subconscious assumption was not corrected until I was almost 16 or 17 years old.

Because our current sexual health curriculum does not include discussions on where to seek care, many of us feel intimidated when coming forward and seeking support. Even after we receive formal sex education in school, we're taught to understand the importance of consent, how to identify signs of sexually transmitted infections, how contraception and abortion work. But we're not taught where to go to preserve our sexual and reproductive health.

Distributing a physical resource containing local care resources not only empowers students to understand and access sexual health care at large by enumerating support that is here and near to them, but targeted curriculum has also been shown to increase how young people perceive harm, especially in the context of violence and illness.

For example, a review conducted by the Journal of Adolescent Health actually found that curriculum, including information about reporting mechanisms and where to seek care for sexual violence were especially successful in helping students perceive the violence that they're facing and report or reach out for support for that violence. Gaps like this one only really become visible when we consult students and hear their perspectives, which is a principle that AB 598 directly incorporates by updating and improving.

You could please wrap up, please. Yeah, so your other speaker also has time to present. Thank you.

We'll ensure that we regularly and effectively collect data on the progress of sex ed. For all those reasons and more, I strongly encourage an aye vote.

Good afternoon, Members of the Assembly Education Committee. My name is Samik Sharmation. I live in Pleasanton and I am a part of the organization IGNITE. Currently, I am a junior in high school. I'm here today to support Assembly Bill 598.

My health classes in school have included education on sexual health, but more information on where students can access reproductive care needs to be included. Kids deserve to know what options and resources they have available to them, even though we have the Internet, which can be unreliable with misinformation. Including reproductive health care information in school curriculums will ensure that this knowledge is accessible to all and no student feels confused or unsupported. In addition, not everyone has equal access to the Internet.

Reproductive and sexual health is not irrelevant for school. By teaching kids information outside of academics, we create a community where students experience total growth and feel cared for. Students will learn information that will help them later on in life. Adding this information to school curriculums will guarantee that all students receive the same comprehensive overview of sexual health and reproductive care resources. Some families may not discuss these topics outside of school. Other students may not have a trusted parent or guardian.

Also, health teachers are professionals who will be able to answer student questions better. This allows students to ask questions, maybe even anonymously, they may not feel comfortable asking at home. Furthermore, the California Healthy Kids survey should be mandatory unless opted out of so the state knows how educated all students, not only certain students, are on sexual health. Overall, AB 598 benefits the well being of every student. It supports the kids in California and equips them with knowledge they may need in the future.

We need to make resources for sexual health care open to be talked about and accessible. I strongly urge you to vote in favor of Assembly Bill 598. Thank you for your time.

All right, thank you so much. Do we have any folks in the room that want to add their voice in support of the bill? Name and organization, please. Please come up to mic.

Arhan Serpenti with the Youth Power Project in support.

Good afternoon. Stephanie Stroud on behalf of California Latinas for Reproductive Justice in support.

All right, thank you. Do we have witnesses in opposition here? Please come up to the desk, please. And just a reminder, every witness has two minutes.

Good afternoon, Members of the Education Assembly. My name is Samara Palko and I'm with the California Catholic Conference as the Director of Education in opposition to AB 598. As a parent of a 15, 19, and 17 year old, as well as a former teacher and administrator in both public and private schools, I feel parents need to be fully involved in conversations about healthy lifestyles based on their beliefs.

This bill requires presenting positive community views of abortion, including how to access abortions through all trimesters, which Erasmus and poll found in October 2022 showed that 71% of California's were opposed. Additionally, the choice to opt out is not clearly stated in the bill. A majority of low income parents identify as pro-life, according to the Gallup, and a majority of black and Latino families want abortion restricted or ended, according to Emeritus poll.

In contradicting these values, the cultural values of family and the family values of faith-based values of the majority of millions of California families are being compromised. This bill puts a thumb on the scale favoring abortion as a choice rather than presenting options as a better objective. For these reasons and for the official public policy voice of the California Catholic Conference, we ask for a no vote. Thank you.

Thank you for testimony. Do we have any public comment in opposition in the room? Please come to the microphone. Seeing none, I'll bring it back to the Committee, do any Committee Members have any questions or comments? Mr. Carrillo?

No comments or questions. Just a motion to move the bill.

All right. You made a motion. Thank you for always doing that, and I will second it. Mr. Hoover, do you have any comments or questions?

Just a quick comment. I won't be able to support the bill today, but in terms of adding things to sexual education, I know that, I appreciate you making the point that students will still be able to opt out.

I think one of my concerns is that the more we're adding in there that some families may find objectionable, then the more kids are actually going to opt out of sexual education and important education that they probably should be receiving. And so that's why I won't be able to support the bill today. But thank you.

I want to thank the authoring bill forward. I think it's a pretty straightforward bill that is comprehensive, holistic health care for kids and students to learn about. So I'd love to be added as a co-author, if possible, to this bill. I was looking at a very similar bill, actually, earlier in the year, but, yes, we have a motion and I would actually ask if you would like to close and if you'd like to clarify anything as well.

Sure. Thank you. And just to clarify, current law requires instruction on pregnancy, include objective discussion of all legally available pregnancy outcomes, including parenting, adoption, and abortion. This does not change any of that. That is still what existing law states, and we will continue to adhere to that. It does allow for opting out, which is, again, current law. So we're not changing any of that current law. We're just adding the need for more additional information. Your point is taken, but I think it's important information.

Mr. Hoover, your point is taken, but I think it's important information that we do provide. I also just want to say how proud I am to be sitting here with these two young women who are coming to testify. And I think the more that we center and make the key parts of our argument coming from the young people about what their needs are and their desires are, the better policymakers that we are. So with that, I'd respectfully ask for an aye vote.

Thank you so much. The motion is due pass as amended to Appropriations Committee. This is file item seven. File item seven, AB 598 by Assembly Member Wicks. So, Madam Secretary, please call the roll.

File item seven, AB 598. The motion is due pass as amended to Appropriations. [Roll Call]

We have three votes and that will be on call. Thank you so much. Next we will have Mr. Gipson present File Item 32: AB 1695. And just as a reminder for witnesses, it's two minutes a pop. Whenever you're ready, Assembly Member Gipson, you may begin.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and Members. Thank you for allowing me to present Assembly Bill 1695, which seeks to create a nursing pathway pilot program that allows high school students to have hands-on educational experience and giving them a direct pipeline to getting their associate's degree in nursing. Before I begin, I want to commend and thank the Committee for working diligently--staff--to helping us strengthen this bill and make it better. So I will be accepting the amendments as discussed. So thank you very much.

This pilot program will develop a streamlined educational pathway for students interested in pursuing a nursing degree. Specifically, this bill would give students grades nine through 12 the opportunity to work towards a nursing degree earlier on and having a better chance of getting a jump-start on their nursing career in the grades of nine through 12, which is a very critical age.

Currently, our state is facing a nursing shortage, facing with us hiring individuals from out-of-state and also out of the country to bring in nurses in. And so it's a real significant indication that we need to be investing in our own. I'm a firm believer. I can't feed my neighbor's kids while my own kids are going hungry, and I would simply say that there's an opportunity for us to instill and pour into our own students, our own children right here in California and make sure they have the tools necessary they need in order to go into this nursing field.

No one else in this area knows quite firsthand as relates to--my sister is a nurse. She's been a nurse for 30 years and seeing her colleagues burn out. Nurses are burned out during this pandemic. People are leaving in droves the nursing industry, and we have to look at some innovative ways in order to one: jump-start and bringing some enthusiasm back.

Interesting enough, in a survey done in 2022 by the American Nurses Foundation, research found that 52 percent of nurses are considered leaving their position at the end of this year. In the United States, Bureau of Labor Statistics also projected more than 275,000 additional nurses needed from 2020 to 2030. Seeking to find a long-term solution, we are proposing a pathway for students to kick-start their future career.

By implementing these nursing programs in public high school, students will be able to gain academic and technical skills that are necessary to excel over the long-term. Students who participate will be able to earn a credit towards an associate degree in nursing at a California community college and will have preferential treatment of enrollment status.

Students will also be able to experience firsthand training in hospitals, clinics, and other health care facilities as they deem appropriate--that is, appropriate to their particular age. With me to provide supporting testimony is the State Secretary Elizabeth Hawkins, representing UNAC, and also we have Mr. Eric Robles representing UNAC as well.

Good afternoon. On behalf of the United Nurses Association of California/Union of Health Care Professionals, I want to thank the Chair and Members of the Committee for your consideration of AB 1695. I also want to thank Assemblyman Gipson for his strong support of the nursing profession and his commitment to students. My name is Elizabeth Hawkins, and I've been a registered nurse for 38 years. I once was a student who could have benefited from the potential outcome of AB 1695 if the idea existed years back.

Having a more direct pipeline to the nursing school would have saved many nurses time and could have also kept students from abandoning this goal and becoming a nurse. I knew I wanted to become a registered nurse when I was in high school. I also enrolled in a vocational nurses assistant program in high school and completed the program, graduating and going on to a community college. After completing my prerequisites for nursing school, I applied to the RN program.

It took me two years to get in. I was lucky to have avoided some of the challenges today's applicants face. Today's applicants sometimes have to wait two to five years to get into a nursing program after they've completed the prerequisites, oftentimes resulting in the student deciding to pursue different career avenues and taking an overly expensive route and incurring tens of thousands of dollars worth of debt or leaving the state completely, getting their RN license outside and never returning to California.

I know this for a fact because I have precepted many students and I've heard these stories over and over again. Moreover, when a student foregoes nursing school because they don't want to wait the two to five years, it's oftentimes because of commuting priorities, family priorities, lack of child care, having to work. The profession often loses the potential nurse who is willing to provide service to an underserved community.

AB 1695 works to address barriers in getting into a nursing school by creating a Nursing 101 in high school that will count towards the credit of the students in the nursing program at a community college and providing an automatic placement into the program, avoiding the daunting two to five year waiting list.

Thank you. If you could please wrap up your statement.

Yeah. With our current nursing shortage, we need to elevate and recognize the thoroughly commitment to high school students and the profession, and AB 1695 will provide that opportunity. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Do you have another witness as well, Mr. Gipson? All right. Let's see. Is there any public comment in support of this bill in the room? Would they like to come up to the microphone and add their name and support? All right. Seeing none, do we have any opposition witnesses here to testify? Seeing none. Anyone in the room here to testify in opposition? Seeing none again, I'm going to bring it back to the Committee. Any comments, questions? Comment from Mr. Hoover?

Yeah, I just want to say thanks for bringing this bill forward. As the son of a nurse and just talking to constituents that are nurses, this is desperately needed and I look forward to this moving forward. So thank you.

Thank you.

All right, the bill has been moved and seconded. Mr. Gipson, would you like to close?

Yes. One, again, I think that we need to--as California trying to do everything that we can to create a new generation of nursing--to go into this career. There's a lot of issues that have been facing our frontline warriors in nursing and this is a big step to try to address the nursing shortage in the State of California and respectfully ask for an aye vote, and thank my witness for being here.

Thank you so much. And thank you for bringing the bill forward. As a son of a nurse as well, I thank you for this effort. This bill has a motion, is 'do pass as amended to the Committee on Higher Education,' and has been moved and seconded. Madam Secretary, please call the roll.

File Item 32: AB 1695. The motion is 'do pass as amended to Committee on Higher Education.' [Roll Call].

That bill has five votes and it is the first bill out today. Congratulations. All right, I'm going to turn the gavel over to Vice Chair Dahle. Actually came right on time because I need to go now.

All right, file item number eight. AB672. Mr. Jackson, thank you. You could proceed whenever you're ready. Thank you.

Thank you very much Madam Chair. My bill is not about nursing, but I'm a son of a nurse, too. I thought we just should just make sure we all are on the same page here, okay?

Madam Chair and members, it's an honor to present AB 672. I want to thank the committee and staff for working with me on this bill, and I'm accepting the committee amendments. AB 672 will establish a teacher credentialing task force within the Commission on Teacher Credentialing, tasked with examining the entire teacher pipeline in California and developing recommendations for this body to combat the teacher shortage and ensure that our teacher workforce is as diverse as the students that they serve.

We all know that our schools are suffering with the lack of and a dire shortage of teachers. Too often we are seeing administrators having to go back into the classroom to be able to be the substitute for that day, and we know that that is no way to be able to ensure that our children are receiving a quality education.

Per this year's Legislative Analyst Office report on the teacher workforce, it has been shown that we've actually had shortages for nearly three decades, especially in the subjects of science, special education, bilingual or foreign language, and mathematics. But now, since the pandemic, it has stretched to virtually every subject area. Worse still, communities of color are significantly underrepresented in the educator workforce in California, where over students of color make up 77.4% of the population, but only 39.4% of teachers are people of color.

We are noticing similar to the great debate in California when we started to talk about the ACT and SAT when it came to students being able to qualify for higher education. We are concerned that the same thing might be happening when it comes to candidates of color who are seeking to be teachers. Is there something in the pipeline to being a teacher that is unintentionally weeding out candidates of color? And certainly this is the time when we look at the workforce shortage that we need to find out and study this pipeline to find out what is it, what's causing this, and what can we do as a legislature to help to solve that problem. And that's what this vill strives to do. This bill is co-sponsored by the California Faculty Association and the California Teachers Association.

And joining me today in support are representatives from the California Faculty Association, Dr. Theresa Montano from CSU Northridge, and Dr. Margarita Berta Avila with CSU Sacramento. At this time, they will be presenting their testimony. Dr. Montano.

Good afternoon. My name is Theresa Montano, and I am the Chair of the Teacher Education Caucus for the California Faculty Association and a Professor at Cal State Northridge, where I work with prospective teachers of color in our pathway to teaching and our undergraduate single subject major.

I'm very proud to be here to speak on behalf of the California Faculty Association, and I look forward to working with my colleagues in the California Teachers Association and working with Assemblyman Jackson on this very important piece of legislation that will finally, after many, many years of no movement, begin to look at what are the constraints and obstacles impacting the recruitment, credentialing, and retention of a diverse teaching workforce.

I must say that the idea or the desire to increase the number of teachers of color is not simply a diversity issue. Research shows that the performance of K12 students of color increase significantly positively when their teachers also come from similar backgrounds. And this manifests in many ways in the classroom, including higher graduation rates, higher scores on state assessments, decreased incidence of absenteeism, decreased suspension, and decreased expulsion for students of color.

We also know that in an effort to address a teacher shortage, we are facing an increasing, dire shortage, and I have to tell you that in my many years as a CSU Professor, the number of students going into the teaching profession is decreasing when the need is increasing.

We know that in order to increase the number of teachers of color, the problem and ameliorate the problem before us, we can strengthen the teacher pipeline through early mentoring, through the creation of field-based experiences in communities and schools, and multiple pathways that emphasize early involvement with content knowledge and pedagogy, community-responsive teaching, ethnic studies, and social justice. I, in my many years of teaching, have never had a student say to me, multiple test, high stakes tests, have helped me honed my teaching skills.

Professor, I'm going to ask you to try to wrap up.

But what we do know is that 40% of those who enter the pipeline leave because of those tests, 50% in math and science.

Thank you.

This bill gives us a positive way forward.

Thank you.

Good afternoon. Chair Muratsuchi and members of the Assembly Education Committee. My name is Dr. Margarita Berta Avila. I am a VP of Northern Chapter, President of the California Faculty Association as well as a professor of education teaching credentials at Sacramento State University. The California Faculty Association would like to thank Assemblymember Jackson for authoring AB 672. I am here today to speak in strong support of it.

AB 672 is a bill, as shared already, that would require the Commission on Teacher Credentialing to convene a teacher credentialing task force to examine the available research on factors that really enable the constraints or recruitment, credentialing and retention of a diverse teaching force, and the experience of student candidates in various credentialing pathways.

As a current advisor to students interested in entering the field, there are various factors that I can say influence students of color in particular, not starting a credential program or completing it or being retained, but the one with the most impact is high stakes testing. These high-stakes test assessments serve as an institutional barrier, gatekeepers to keep the norms the same, but more problematically, serve as barriers to expanding the number of diversity of quality teacher candidates at a time when California, as shared, is facing a shortage.

It is time to review critically the negative impact that these assessments have on that shortage. In fact, I can immediately notice the level of stress and worry and sometimes decisions not to enter or finish a program when I have to review with students the assessments that have to be completed and the accrued cost on top of what has to be paid already.

As such, circling back to my comments, it becomes a gatekeeper, preventing or causing inequity and access through an institutionalized requirement. The impact of high-stakes assessments is also felt by students by how they are taught. A nationwide network of education deans recently argued that teacher performance assessments, when used for high-stakes decisions, overly prescribe the teacher education curriculum and result in teaching to the test that results in the reduced quality, ultimately phasing to raise teacher.

Quality can I ask you to wrap up?

Also, I just want to share with a quick story from my students. Just last week, my students had to submit their ED TPAs. I entered class checking in on everyone, asking how they felt, how they were doing with respect to their submissions. They all shared a level of exhaustion, mental, physical incapacity to think about what is next. But there was one student in particular as I approached, just shook her head no and started crying. We went outside. She had an emotional breakdown.

And though there is more I can share about this experience, an emotional breakdown is not what we should be striving here in order to become a teacher. So to that end, I request an aye vote on AB 672.

Thank you very much. Any public comments in support of the bill?

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members. Ron Rapp, speaking on behalf of the California Faculty Association, we are proud co-sponsors of this bill and respectfully request your aye vote. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair and members. With apologies to the committee and the author for the lack of a timely letter. Jeff Baca, Riverside County Superintendent of Schools in support.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members Pamela Gibbs, representing the Los Angeles County Office of Education, in support of the bill.

All right, thank you very much. Seeing no further public comments in support of the bill. Any witnesses in opposition to the bill? Seeing no one coming forward. Any public comments in opposition to the bill? Seeing none. Want to bring it back to the committee. Ms. Quirk-Silva.

I want to thank the author for this bill. This is not only timely, but it's vital. I think I'm the only elementary school teacher here at this moment. And again, when I got my teaching credential, well over 40 years, testing even then, which was the CBEST, was quite difficult and stressful, although I was able to move through that process, I know there's additional layers that have been added on to testing, depending on the school district.

Of course, there's the state testing, but some school districts, in addition to the state testing, also have their own assessments for teachers to make their way through. But the biggest obstacle is much more than just the testing. It's, as all the notes you noted, many of those obstacles. But also, I think this task force can really delve into some of the reasons not only teachers who do make their way through the assessments become teachers, why they're leaving.

And that's really important, is how do we retain teachers who've spent 5, 6, 7 years, depending on their program to be a teacher, and how do we keep them in that classroom? So I think it's vital, it's important, and we need to have these teachers in the classrooms.

Thank you. Any other comments? Was that a motion to support?

Yes.

Okay. Motion by Ms. Quirk-Silva, seconded by Mr. Hoover. Seeing no other comments. Thank you very much, Assemblymember Jackson, for working with the committee. Happy that we're able to land to come together on this working group that hopefully will come up with meaningful recommendations, not only to making sure that we're removing obstacles for people that want to become teachers, but especially to diversify our teaching workforce.

I mean, I can testify from personal experience the empowering impact of seeing myself represented through teachers who come from my background, can appreciate my cultural experiences. And so I am fully in support of getting more teachers and having our teaching workforce reflective of our student population.

At the same time, I want to make sure that this working group prepare our teachers well so that our students of color have the best teachers that they can get so that they can be empowered by their education like I was. And I'm sure, like you, Assemblymember Jackson. You have the last word, I'd like to turn it back to you.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. And obviously, ensuring that through the conversations with the committee, being able to making sure that those that are at the table reflect the entire universe of the teacher experience, making sure that we look at the entire pipeline so that there's multiple areas throughout the pipeline that we are hearing could be problematic. But before we start legislating on this, it's important to have the objective research behind what is causing it and what needs to be done about it.

And so I think this is a responsible thing to do. Not only that, quite frankly, I only saw myself in my education experience through K through 12 once. And that was a freshman in high school my entire time. And then after that, I didn't see myself represented until I was in a master's program. And I spent six years to get my bachelor's right.

And so I think at the end of the day, hopefully this will help to find out and nail down what the issue is, especially in this critical workforce time that we're in. So I respectfully ask for an aye vote.

Thank you. Madam Secretary, please call the roll.

File item eight, AB 672. The motion is due pass as amended to Appropriations. [Roll Call]

Five votes. The bill is out. Thank you. All right. Did Mr. Fong present his earlier bill? He did? Okay. Thank you so much, Mr. Fong, for your patience. Like to take my bill out of order, given that Mr. Fong is a joint author. And where is my file? Here. And so I'd like to indulge on Vice Chair Dahle's kindness again, and turn the gavel to her.

We're taking up item five, AB 247. Mr. Chairman, you're ready.

Thank you very much, Vice Chair Dahle and Members of the Committee, I am proud to be joint authoring the Kindergarten through Community College Public Education Facilities Bond Act of 2024, a measure that seeks to place on the 2024 statewide ballot. To be joint authoring this with my colleague and my brother, Assembly Member Mike Fong, the Chair of the Higher Education Committee, as well as Assemblymember Laurie Wilson, who was not able to join us today.

I think we all know from our local schools how important the conditions of school facilities are and how they impact academic achievement. The California Department of Justice Education estimates that approximately 30% of the state's K through 12 classrooms are at least 50 years old and 10% are 70 years or more old. In addition, to educational, health, and safety concerns, we need to make sure that our schools and our classrooms meet 21st-century educational needs, especially as it relates to things like broadband and closing the digital divide.

Researchers from the Public Policy Institute of California estimate over $100 billion in K through 12 needs in terms of new construction as well as modernization of our increasingly aging facilities.

While community colleges PPIC have projected a $42 billion need over 10 years, the last time we had a successful state school facilities bond was Proposition 51, approved by voters in 2016 that provided 7 billion for K through 12 and 2 billion for community colleges. While not all of the bond funds have been sold to date, all funds have been committed and over $3.1 billion in applications have been submitted for unmet still to be met K through 12 facility funding needs.

If approved by voters, this school facilities bond measure will provide state matching funds for K through 12 and for California community college districts. The bottom line is that as we are all embarking on efforts to expand early childhood education, we need more TK facilities. We need more broadband to close the digital divide. There are provisions in this Bill for lead abatement continuing our ongoing efforts to address those efforts.

Measures in this Bill to provide funds for disaster responses we just saw the recent article about all of the schools, one out of five schools in the State of California at risk of flooding. We're going to need funding for portable classrooms to be able to address this ongoing threat. And at this time, this Bill is not specifying a specific dollar amount.

But as the Bill moves forward in the Legislature and we continue to work with stakeholders analyzing polling results, given that this ultimately will be meaningless unless it's approved by California voters and examine the facility needs, that bond size will ultimately be set. I wanted to also specifically add is that we gave special attention and special love to small school districts. We hope that you, Madam Vice Chair, and others will give special consideration to that. Bottom line is we need a new school facilities bond.

I'm now proud to turn the mic over to our joint author on this Bill, Assembly Member Chair Mike Fong.

Thank you so much, Chair Muratsuchi, for those comments, and thank you, Madam Vice Chair Members, for the opportunity to join you here today. I am proud to join our Assembly Education Chair and my brother, Assembly Member Al Muratsuchi, and Assembly Member Lori Wilson, as a joint author of Assembly Bill 247. As a former trustee for the Los Angeles Community College District, representing nine community colleges and over 250,000 students, modernizing and upgrading facilities was always a priority for myself and our board.

And before my election to the State Assembly last year, we worked closely to put our local bond on the ballot to modernize and upgrade our facilities. And last November, voters approved a $5.3 billion bond to modernize, facilities and upgrade technology as Assembly Member Muratsuchi mentioned as well in terms of information technology and modernizing facilities. But before students enter higher education, we need to ensure that our TK through K12 facilities are safe, upgraded, and conducive for learning.

This bond is important not only for our 13 school districts in Assembly District 49, but for the millions of children throughout our great State of California. This bond will have a lot to offer, but also will highlight funds for career technical education facilities. As we've heard the need to grow our workforce here in California, and CTE will help prepare our students for jobs and continue workforce pathway at our local community colleges throughout the state.

And AB 247 is not the same bond that voters failed to pass in 2020. We know that part of it may have been done due to the numbering it was numbered 13, but I believe voters again will show their support for funds to shore up our school's infrastructure so that students can focus on learning. And as Assembly Member Muratsuchi mentioned, our Chair of the Assembly Education Committee mentioned, we want to make sure that we have small school districts involved.

And so here to testify in support are Dorothy Johnson with the Association of California School Administrators and Tim Taylor with the Small School Districts Association. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Good afternoon. Dorothy Johnson with the Association of California School Administrators here in support on behalf of the Association, the 17,000 California educators we serve, we extend our deep appreciation to the Assembly Members who are authoring this Bill and their leadership to bring this important measure forward. This Bill provides the necessary framework to provide resources ensuring our students and school employees have high quality and dependable facilities. For nearly 40 years, the state has shared the responsibility of building and modernizing facilities with our local districts and the developer community.

And through this partnership, we've been able to leverage every possible dollar that we've invested to ensure that students have a safe place to learn and grow. We have 6 million students in California and 10,000 K through 12 school sites. AB 247 helps secure a long-term investment for today's well-established need and the future decades of California students who we strive to provide with a world-class education. And for these reasons, we urge your Aye vote. Thank you.

Hi, Tim Taylor from the I'm the Executive Director of the California Small School District Association and I'm so excited to be here today and I can't wait to say this. Vice Chair, Madam Dahle. When I get up to Modoc, I'll tell everybody I called you Madam.

Hey. I want to thank the authors and staff for their dedication and leadership on AB 247 and it will provide 583 districts. So two out of three districts in California are considered small districts with 2500 kids or less. And I have the best job in California. I worked in Elk Grove District and now I get to work as the Executive Director. And I want every child to have the same facilities we see in Elk Grove where they're top notch and very much appreciate that.

With limited staff and lean budgets, small districts often face significant hurdles when accessing the state school facilities bond. Managing a new construction project is not easy for these Superintendent, principals, bus drivers, food, they do everything. And AB 247 will directly assist the small districts by providing a construction management grant because it's so needed. It also provides apportionment which will allow immediate access to funding.

And then most importantly, I think 10% of it will be reserved for the smalls and so we don't have to compete with the Long Beaches and that it'll be set aside for them. AB 247 expands the Financial Hardship Program, provides state board with discretion to swiftly make this happen. And you guys know this, but the small districts have dealt with the wildfires, floods, earthquakes, et cetera, and this money is so needed for them.

And I want to just kind of wrap up saying Shasta, little Shasta School District, is the second oldest school in California and it needs to be modernized. And I think you guys have a responsibility to help us get to that point, to help our small districts that have birthed education in California and they come from these small little towns and we support this Bill. Thank you.

I wasn't aware of that.

Little Shasta in Montague.

Thank you. Are there any more support witnesses?

Madam Vice Chair and Members, Mike West, on behalf of the state Building and Construction Trades Council, in proud support.

Madam Chair and Members, Chris Reefe, on behalf of the California School Boards Association, in strong support.

Good afternoon. Nancy Chaires Espinoza, on behalf of the Coalition for Adequate School Housing, California Statewide Association of School Facilities Practitioners, in support.

Mr. Chair and Members, Ian Padilla, representing the School Energy Coalition and the Association of California Construction Managers. Thank you.

Rebecca. Colleen, on behalf of the County School Facilities Consortium and the Community College Facility Coalition, in support, thank you.

Pamela Gibbs, representing the Los Angeles County Superintendent of Schools, Dr. Debra Duardo. Thank you for the Bill.

Good afternoon. Patty Herrera, on behalf of the San Diego Unified School District and Corona-Norco Unified School District, in strong support. Thank you.

Thank you. Jeff Vaca representing the Riverside County Superintendent of Schools and the school district superintendents in Riverside County.

Thank you. Sasha Horowitz with the Los Angeles Unified School District, in support.

Good afternoon. Stephanie Estrada on behalf of the California Building Industry Association, strong sponsors and in support. Thank you.

Christina Marcellus on behalf of the San Bernardino County District Advocates for Better Schools, in support.

Good afternoon, Cassie Mancini on behalf of the California School Employees Association, in support.

Good afternoon. Tristan Brown with the California Federation of Teachers, excited to support.

Good afternoon. Mishaal Gill on behalf of California Association of School Business Officials, in support.

Thank you. Chair and Members, Mark McDonald, on behalf of a number of local community college districts, including Antelope Valley, Kern, Mt. San Jacinto, Peralta, San Bernardino, and the Yuba Community College districts, all in support.

Thank you. Are there any opposition witnesses? Any opposition in the room? Thank you. We'll bring it back to Committee Members. Any questions or comments? Mr. Hoover.

So obviously, there's still going to be some work done on this, a few blanks we got to fill in and things like that. I really appreciate the Bill. I will be supporting it today. I think the only thing I would encourage as we move forward is working to address some of the concerns raised by the Charter Schools Association. I understand the politics of that issue, but I think it's really important that we have equitable funding for our charter public schools.

I think they've received about 3% of the bond funds since 1998, but they serve 11.5% of our students. And I think it's really important that our charter public school students are also being prioritized as well. So that would be the only thing I say. I would say, but I look forward to supporting the Bill today. Thank you.

I have a question, and this may not be the right question for this particular Bill, but student housing seems to be an issue. During the spring recess, I visited the Victor Valley College and the Antler Valley College, and both presidents said that they're looking at providing student housing. Will this facilitate some of that? Will it depend on how the college districts want to use the funds? Is there an option for student housing at all?

The Bill currently does not include any provisions for student housing. While we certainly recognize that you can't learn without having a roof over your head, the focus is on the classroom and on school facilities.

Understood. Thank you.

McCarty.

Yes, thank you. Thank you for being here and new generation and Assembly pushing the education bond. So thank you for your leadership. Maybe a friendly amendment I was going to propose. So you know how you're a sports fan. Mr. Muratsuchi, you know that Major League Baseball retired number 42, Jackie Robinson and NBA retired this year, number six. Can we permanently retire number 13, California propositions? So maybe a friendly amendment or tuck that in some budget trailer bills somewhere?

No, but two things I want to note is a couple of years ago did have a little pushback with our then great Chair, Mr. O'Donnell, on the youngest learners here. And so the name of this is the TK through 14. And so we do have our littlest kids in California. And that's an issue right now. If you look at ramping up our early ed program in TK, we need more facilities. And so this is a piece of that. So this is critically important.

And then I know this is the, it just goes through 14. So it has some higher ed, but just the community colleges and some would say, oh, what about CSU and UC and some of the polling and public surveys? So that's not as appealing to the electorate. And I get that. You know, higher ed, they have much more philanthropy, you know, think about Silicon Valley. They give to the UC Berkeley or UCLA centers. No one gives to the little elementary school money like they give to.

But that being said, higher ed does have significant capital needs. And so I think what we should be thinking about is how do we maybe address that and not poison pill this bond. In other words, years ago we gave UC and CSU the ability to basically bond on their own. We gave them extra money in the budget to pay that debt service. So this is the same thing as opposed to paying as you go for these stuff we're putting on a credit card.

So I think this is not your Bill here, but maybe talking to us in our other world, we should think about how we can make that issue whole and focus on the out year capital needs and potentially put the equivalent to what there would be for debt service in this bond so they can focus on their capital needs. But I do think it's the right approach to just to have TK through 14. So thank you. And with this in full support. Thanks.

Thank you. Did you want to respond to higher ed?

Thank you so much, Mr. McCarty, for those comments. I hear you on the CSU and the UC system and thank you Mr. Juan Carrillo as well for the comments on student housing. These are issues that we're also dealing with in budget sub two and really looking at how we can get the financing back for student housing on the $250,000,000 and then also the 900 million Revolving Loan Fund. So these are issues that we're focused on. Thank you.

Ms. Quirk-Silva.

Just a question. I'm confused. You said TK, but our information says kindergarten through community college. Is that a friendly amendment?

Well, because of your. Can I answer Ms. Madam Chair? Yeah. So the definition of K is two K's, TK and K.

So we all have to get used to the TK and K being as part of a companion program. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you.

So, we do have a motion a second. But I would like to thank you so much for your special attention to our small schools. I championed them, so I, too, will be supporting it today. But I do think that there are numbers to fill in. And we're going to have to convince our voters that this is where we should put our money. But I think our children are very important. So, thank you so much for the special attention to my small schools.

So, we do have a motion and a second. Call the roll.

File item five, AB 247. The motion is do pass to Committee on Higher Education. [Roll call].

That's six votes. It's out. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you so much. I just saw that.

Who does the bond? Is that you? I just thought of a really clever idea. We should think about negotiating.

Welcome, Mr. Arambula. This is file item 14, AB 915. Floor is yours, sir.

Thank you. I'd first like to thank the Committee for their guidance. I am happy to accept the Committee's amendments. Laced fentanyl and opioid use is a persistent public health crisis in the state among our youth. AB 915 is an opportunity to prevent overdoses, to bring hope, and to empower others to save a life during a crisis.

This bill directs the California Department of Public Health to establish a certification training program for public high school students in grades nine through 12 on how to identify and respond to an opioid overdose and how to administer naloxone nasal spray during an emergency. Additionally, this brings comprehensive and stigma reduction materials that are key elements to this life saving training for California's youth. We have seen that the war on drugs has failed to reduce drug use.

AB 915 is a better approach to the war on drugs that was inherently racist in nature and that stigmatized individuals, especially among communities of color. There are two witnesses in support of AB 915 today. First is Jim Horton, who is the President of the Zachary Horton Foundation. And second is Dr. Kathy Rindahl, Fresno State University School of Nursing. Mr. Horton.

Good afternoon, Chair and Members of the Committee. I'm Jim Horton. The mission of our foundation is to end the stigma of addiction. My son and only child, Zach, died of an accidental drug overdose on January 7, 2020. He was only 19 and just graduated high school seven months earlier. He had spent the last nine months of his young life in rehabs and sober livings. He was making incredible progress toward his recovery.

However, he made a fateful choice the night of January 6 and decided to spend the night with an old partying friend of his. That night, Zach tried a mixture of heroin and meth as the first time he had ever done that. During this time, his friend Facetimed some of their buddies, who said Zach seemed to be in distress. They told my son's friend where he could get naloxone.

For reasons unknown, because it was either late or he was loaded or unconcerned, his friend opted to just go to bed, leave Zach on his own. Zach's mother heard my son breathing hard, what's termed as death rattles. It's common in opioid overdoses, where they can't get enough air. My son died later that night. Zach didn't have to die. Zach had naloxone in his car.

But neither my son Zach, his friend, or his friend's mom had the knowledge or training needed to recognize the severity of his overdose or how to respond to it. Just this past Monday, I spoke to a fraternity at Fresno State and trained all 60 of the young men in the use of naloxone. At the end of that training, one of the young men came to me and said, Mr. Horton, just last year, I lost three of my friends to a fentanyl overdose.

He said, if we had had this kind of discussion, they wouldn't have had to die. We all know of someone, a loved one, a friend, or a relative, that we've lost to opioids. The opportunity to have naloxone in high schools and train young people in this life saving method is absolutely critical. It's an action that will save the lives of young people. We have an opportunity to alter the negative trend of overdoses. We can battle the incredible fentanyl epidemic happening today. We can save lives. Thank you. I'm Zach's dad.

Thank you, sir.

Hi, I'm Kathleen Rindahl. I'm Associate Professor at Fresno State University, and I'm also a nurse practitioner. I strongly support AB 915. As you all know, fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine. It also has been identified as a major cause of drug overdose death in the United States. In 2021, the California Department of Public Health indicated at 6,843 opioid related deaths in California alone. Eighty-four percent of those deaths were related to fentanyl.

224 of those deaths occurred in individuals between the ages of 18 and 19 years old. As a healthcare provider and a CPR instructor, I know the importance of emergency preparedness. When I teach CPR, I tell people, just remember to call 911, but give them the skills they need in order to perform CPR in a case of emergency. I had an individual, a friend, who made fun of me for telling him that. Why would you teach me CPR if I only call 911?

Well, he apologized to me six months later when his friend went into cardiac arrest on the golf field golf course, and he just remembered to call 911. But having the skills, he was able to perform it successfully and train his friend. Same goes with fentanyl training. We need to train these individuals ahead of time. So AB 890 will give our students the knowledge they need. And to quote Sir Francis Bacon, knowledge itself is power. AB 915 will give individuals the power to save a life. So please, a yea vote.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Any comments from the public in support of the bill? Any witnesses in opposition to the bill? Any public comments in opposition to the bill? Seeing none. Want to bring it back to the Committee. Mr. Hoover.

Just want to say thank you for bringing this forward. I think there's a lot of parents in our Legislature and in our communities that do not want their child to be the next victim. And I think this is going to be critically important in helping make sure that doesn't happen. So thank you. Thank you.

Ms. Quirk-SIlva.

I just wanted to thank you for sharing Zach's story. It's very powerful and devastating and so sorry for your loss. We are losing too many of our youth. And as you said, almost daily we're hearing of another story and another story. And sometimes it's not just one individual, it's friends and groups, and this stuff is deadly. I definitely support this bill. We have to do more. Thank you.

Mr. Carrillo.

I'm of those parents that Mr. Hoover mentioned, four children. And I do worry because of the epidemic that we're facing. I want to thank you for sharing your own personal story. I know it's painful. I cannot imagine what that is like. But we should, must, and will do something about this, because, again, as a parent of four, I worry about that. And I just want to be able to support in whatever capacity I can as a Legislator. I will support that. Thank you.

Motion has been made by Mr. Hoover, seconded by Vice Chair Dahle. Ms. Dahle, did you want to?

I'm so sorry for your loss. My son just called, and a friend died last night. So thank you for coming. It took a lot of bravery to share your story, and we're all grateful for it because we know that there is a crisis and something has to be done. And that's what we're here for, is to protect our children. So thank you so much.

Seeing no other comments from the Committee, I also, sir, want to thank you very much for sharing Zach's story. I have an 8th grade daughter, and I'm always talking about how fentanyl kills. And I think you're continuing your work and your son's memory is going to save lives like you're doing with this bill. So I want to thank you very much. Dr. Arambula, thank you for your leadership on this. Would you like to close?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm going to appreciate the witnesses, both Mr. Horton and Dr. Rindahl, for coming and testifying. Like so many of us, we share a fear of what will occur if you are exposed to fentanyl. And what we must do is figure out how to provide hope through empowering people to seek the knowledge and training that's right before us. Just like we did with CPR training, just like we've done with AEDs before.

We have to figure out how to provide a simplified training so that all of our members can be the eyes and ears and to recognize when these events are happening in real time and to provide solutions. I thank you and respectfully ask for an aye vote.

Madam Secretary, please call the roll.

File item 14, AB 915. The motion is do pass as amended to Committee on Health. [Roll Call]

Six votes. The bill is out. Thank you very much. Thank you. All right, I see Assembly Member Rodriguez. File Item Three: AB 71. The floor is yours when you're ready.

Thank you, Chair and Members. Thank you for allowing me to present AB 71. First, I would like to start by accepting the amendments for the bill requiring the Instructional Quality Commission to consider including content regarding bleeding control the next time the Health Education Curriculum Framework is updated and require that the California Department of Education post resources on bleeding control on its website.

This bill is a follow-up to AB 2260 from last year, which would require the placement of trauma kits in certain new construction buildings. In response to the tragic mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, a group of doctors convened a panel of national experts from law enforcement and emergency medical services to create an improved response system directed primarily at the control of life-threatening blood loss.

In their recommendations, the group of experts concluded that bystanders--immediate responders--should be trained and empowered to stop hemorrhage in order to save lives. With mass casualty events becoming more common, in 2015, President Obama launched Stop the Bleed Campaign to encourage bystanders to become trained and empowered to take life-saving action while EMS personnel are en route. During these tragic events, a person suffering from severe blood loss can die within five minutes, so every second counts.

That is why it's so important to ensure our immediate responders have the instruction and equipment needed to save and render emergency care at the scene of an emergency. This bill focuses on ensuring our young leaders are empowered with saving lives.

With me to provide testimony are Christy Woods, who is the State Government Relations Director of American Red Cross, California, and Dr. Sigrid Burruss, who is a trauma surgeon and Associate Professor of Surgery and Trauma Division at Loma Linda University on behalf of the American College of Surgeons and the California Chapters of American College of Surgeons.

Good afternoon, Chair and Committee Members. My name is Christy Woods, and I am the Director of Government Relations for the Red Cross of California, here today as a proud sponsor of AB 71. As the Assembly Member said, a person can die from severe blood loss in five minutes. Tragic injuries are the leading cause up for children and anyone under 45 years of age. The Red Cross has been a national sponsor of the Stop the Bleed Campaign since its inception in 2015.

This campaign is a grassroots effort to encourage bystanders to become trained, equipped, and empowered to take life-saving action while emergency medical services personnel are en route. Controlling bleeding increases the odds of survival. Life-threatening bleeding consists of blood that flows consistently, continuously, blood that is squirting, blood that is equal to a half a can of soda, or pooling blood. But are high school students capable of learning to control traumatic bleeding? The research says yes.

Dr. Craig Goolsby, a member of the Red Cross Scientific Advisory Council and Department of Emergency Medicine at Harbor UCLA Medical Center, administered a study in 2019. A randomized controlled trial enrolled high school students from 39 different states at a 2019 national conference. After answering questions about their willingness to use tourniquets, participants received hemorrhage control education in three different formats, one: instructor-led, two: web-only, and three: blended. Participants were then assessed on their ability to apply a tourniquet and to identify wounds that require a tourniquet.

Finally, they completed a questionnaire. The results were positive. 82 percent of the participants applied the tourniquet correctly overall, 88 percent in the instructor-led program, 61 percent in the web-only program, and 94 percent in the blended program.

Ma'am, I'm going to ask you to wrap up.

Okay. There are willing learners at all ages, but children in particular are willing to learn and are highly susceptible to learning new lessons. We also know that by teaching young people, there tends to be a multiplier effect. They go home and tell their parents what they learned and tell their friends.

All right, thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon. Thank you for the privilege of addressing you this afternoon. I'm Sigrid Burruss, a double board-certified trauma surgeon and surgical intensivist at Loma Linda University Medical Center. I am here representing the American College of Surgeons in the three California Chapters of the American College of Surgeons, as well as myself. As a trauma surgeon, I see patients on a daily basis with life-threatening bleeding, and many of them don't survive, unfortunately, because of the amount of blood loss on the field.

We know that uncontrolled bleeding in the field causes preventable death with about 45,000 of those individuals dying every year. Interventions that are performed by community members in the field immediately at the time of an injury have the potential to save that life.

As we see school shootings continue to increase and other nonviolent injuries occur on campuses that result in massive bleeding, we want our high school students to have the knowledge and skills to apply bleeding control techniques. Stop the Bleed is a nationally-recognized training by the American College of Surgeons that teaches crucial skills in pressure packing and tourniquet application.

This allows for bleeding control prior to arrival of any emergency responders, which can take sometimes up to eight minutes or even longer, especially in the event of a mass casualty or active shooter where the scene is not secure for emergency responders to enter a school. Interviewed faculty and staff at an urban public high school were not only satisfied with Stop the Bleed training provided, but also felt it was relevant to situations that they encounter.

This includes applying skills to other emergencies that result in life-threatening bleeding such as falls, sports-related injuries, and general accidents. There are many barriers to assisting victims that are actively bleeding, including not knowing what to do or uncertainty whether their assistance will help or hurt a patient. With Stop the Bleed training, research studies have shown that community participants are able to effectively control bleeding with taught techniques and with this knowledge, are now empowered to help bleeding victims.

A survey done of guardians of junior and high school students reported that if a shooting or an event happened at a school, 95 percent of families wanted their children to be taught Stop the Bleed. Several states, including Texas and Arkansas, have passed bills requiring bleeding control training for their high school students. These life-saving skills can be taught in an hour course and both my 10 and 12-year-old children have learned to apply pressure and packing.

Can I ask you to wrap up?

Bleeding control education not only provides knowledge and skills, but empowers our community. We have the opportunity to implement training in our high schools to Stop the Bleed and save lives. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Any public comments in support of the bill?

Thank you, Mr. Chair and Members. Pamela Gibbs, representing the Los Angeles County Office of Education, in support of the bill.

Thank you. Seeing no further witnesses in support, any witnesses in opposition? Any public comments in opposition? Seeing none, bring it back to the Committee. Any questions or comments from the Committee? Seeing none, entertain a motion? Motion by Mr. Lee, second by Mr. Carrillo. Thank you very much, Mr. Rodriguez, for your--it's great to have a paramedic in the house, and thank you for your ongoing leadership to save lives. Would you like to close?

Thank you. Respectfully ask for an aye vote. Thank you.

File Item Three: AB 71. The motion is 'do pass as amended to Appropriations.' [Roll Call].

Six votes. The bill is out. Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay. All right, let's do that. All right. So first we're going to take the vote for the consent calendar. Do we have a motion and a second? Okay. Motion by Vice Chair Dahle. Second by Ms. Quirk-Silva. This is a vote on the consent calendar.

[Roll Call]

Six votes. The consent calendar is out. Want to accommodate Vice Chair Dahle. Can we have the roll call for the other bills to give Members an opportunity to vote or add on? Okay, so we first have item number one, AB 1051, we need a motion by Vice Chair Dahle, seconded by Mr. Carrillo. Roll call please.

[Roll Call]

Six votes. The bill is out. So we're going to take up the bills that are on call.

[Roll Call]

Five votes. The bill is out.

[Roll Call]

Five votes. The bill is out.

[Roll Call]

Seven to zero. The bill is out.

[Roll Call]

7 and 0. The bill is out.

[Roll Call]

The bill is out. Okay. We will now turn to bills to add on. Thank you very much, and thank you for the two remaining authors for your patience. We have two bills left. In sign in order is Ms. Rivas, file item 18, AB 1251. Okay, before we take that up, we have one more on call. And this is file item 13, AB 912.

[Roll Call]

Six votes.

Six votes. The bill is out. All right. Thank you very much, Ms. Rivas. The floor is yours.

Thank you. Good afternoon, Mr. Chair, Members, and thank you for accommodating me today. I want to start by thanking Tanya for her work on this analysis. California is in the process of losing its position as a global leader in technology if we do not provide our students with computer science instructors to teach them coding, programming, and keyboarding skills. As many of you know, I'm an engineer by training, STEM educator. I've taught coding to kids and lots of hands on science and engineering in my past work.

And I know that kids want to learn this at school. Teachers want to teach computer science in school. It always is painful for me to see that our students in K to 12 public schools here in California are not being prepared for jobs here in our state. This is the tech hub of the world, especially Silicon Valley.

But other parts of California, lots of people come in from other states, other countries to work here, and they're high paying jobs that I feel we are not preparing all of our students for, or even giving them that option, that opportunity to even consider going into these fields, because if it's not offered at school, it doesn't exist for a lot of students. Someone like me, if I didn't take computer science as a kid, my parents weren't professionals. They didn't go to college.

They weren't scientists or engineers. We didn't know anybody that was a scientist or engineer growing up. For someone like me, the only way to get into this field is if computer science is taught in school. And that's what happened to me in the 1980s, and that's how I ended up on this track, to go into technology.

And so I've made it my life's work, right, to increase the opportunities for kids that don't have parents that are already engineers, that are Californians, that are, wherever they are in the state, will have this opportunity. And this is why I introduced this bill. One of the issues with computer science is we don't have a computer science teaching credential, and the state only authorizes teachers with a math credential, business, industrial, and technical education. They're the only teachers that are authorized to teach computer science currently.

And so what this bill had proposed was to include science, teachers with a science credential, so that way we can increase the number of teachers that want, if they want to, can teach computer science. I am accepting your amendments, and I know it changes the bill, but it's my commitment to continue working on this while I'm in the Legislature.

We have to find a way to get more teachers, authorize more teachers to teach this course that I think makes a difference in children's futures in our state, too. And so thank you for hearing this bill. I want to turn it over to Lia Nitake, Deputy Executive Director of California and the Southwest of TechNet in support of the bill.

Thank you. Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and Members. Leah Nitake with TechNet. TechNet is a national network of technology companies, and I thank you for this opportunity to speak in support of AB 1251 and the amendments accepted by the author. California currently ranks 10th lowest in the nation when it comes to student access to computer science courses in high school.

Fewer than half of California's high schools offer a foundational computer science course, and the primary reason for that is a lack of teachers trained to teach the subject. Despite years of work, there are significant disparities in access, in particular for rural schools and those with high proportions of economically disadvantaged students. This generation of students is growing up in an increasingly digital world. They're surrounded by technology on a daily basis, both inside and outside the classroom.

A computer science education gives these students the opportunity to not only understand how that technology works, but also to become the creators of it. In 2019, the State Board of Education adopted the computer science Strategic Implementation Plan. Among the recommendations of the plan are to increase the pool of computer science teachers and ensure that all students have access to quality computer science courses. I'd also like to note that California has the highest number of open computing jobs in the nation.

In 2022, California averaged over 76,000 open computing jobs each month, with an average salary of over $115,000. And these jobs aren't exclusive to the tech industry. They're in every field imaginable. Even if students choose not to pursue this career pathway, it makes it a possibility for them.

Establishing a workgroup that's represented by key stakeholders to make recommendations on who should be authorized to teach computer science and to address workforce strategies is a critical next step in making high quality computer science education available for all California students. For these reasons, we strongly support AB 1251, and we urge your aye vote. Thank you.

Thank you. All right. Seeing no further witnesses in support of the bill. Public comments in support of the bill?

Hi, Jason Horowitz with Los Angeles Unified. We certainly support the goal of increasing the number of computer science teachers. We have no position on this bill at this time, but we look forward to reviewing the Committee amendments once they're in print, and hopefully we can get to a support at that time.

Thank you.

Annie Chow with the California Teachers Association. With those amendments, we're processing a removal of our opposition. Thank you.

Thank you. Any further comments, public comments in support or tweeners? Any in opposition? Seeing none. Witnesses in opposition? Seeing none. Bring it back to the Committee. Motion by Mr. Lee, seconded by Mr. Carrillo. Any further questions or comments? Thank you very much, Ms. Rivas. I mean, your passion for this, it's obvious it's good to have MIT graduate in the House to champion this cause. And, yeah, we certainly recognize as the innovation state that we need to have more computer science qualified teachers.

We do have, like so much of education, we have a process that educators have established over decades to address these issues, like who should be credentialed, who should be qualified to teach these courses. But I think the goal is to have this work group to come back with recommendations upon which I'm sure you'll be first in line to introduce that bill once the work group comes back with its recommendations. So happy to support the bill as amended. Motion is made and seconded. Madam Secretary, please call the roll. Oh, Ms. Rivas, would you like to close?

Thank you. I understand that there is a process and definitely willing to work with the educators on developing recommendations. I look forward to the recommendations. And you're right. I will be ready to go as soon as I see a recommendation. So thank you and I respectfully ask for an aye vote.

Thank you. Madam Secretary, please call the roll.

File item 18, AB 1251. The motion is do pass as amended to Appropriations. [Roll Call]

Five votes. The bill is out. Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, Mr. Gallagher, last but not least, this is item number 29, AB 1605.

Yes, thank you, Mr. Chairman, I appreciate your accommodation here. And proud to present AB 1605 which really just continues to update our code with regard to space force, which is a new branch of our armed services and military, specifically allowing for the recruiters to go onto campus under current law, like other branches of the military are allowed to do, and also helping with military children who are attending school in California schools as well. So continuing that updating process that I believe the Chairman began with his previous legislation. And so I'd ask for your support for this bill. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Any witnesses in support? Any witnesses or public comments in support? Any witnesses in opposition? Mr. Gallagher, do you accept the committee amendments?

Yes, I do. Sorry I didn't say that earlier. Thank you. Accept committee amendments.

Okay. Seeing no witnesses in opposition. Any public comment in opposition? Seeing none. Bring it back to the committee. Mr. Lee.

Thank you. Thank you for presenting the bill today. We had a very short chat today about it, and you know my principled opposition to this bill. I understand you're trying to bring alignment to the other branches of the military, but fundamentally, I do not believe in the existence of the space force. It should not have been created under President Donald Trump. And fundamentally, I don't think we should be expanding its mission to recruit more children into it. Frankly, space ought to be, maybe this is a Star Trekian kind of idea, but it should not be where we have another cold war or hot war. And fundamentally, this is, of course, beyond your bill. But the space force, us as a country, creating a militarized branch for space, has given free license to our other adversaries to do the same, and it could launch.

I don't want to be 30 years from here, where we have wars over mineral deposits on asteroids and stuff like that, but I don't think it should be militarized. This should be a frontier where all of humanity gets to share in its riches together. And frankly, that's why I don't believe it should exist. And frankly, I don't think kids should be recruited to join this branch that I hope will be dissolved in the near future because I think it was a mistake to do under the President Trump. So I will be voting no today on it. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other comments from the committee? All right, well, Mr. Gallagher, thank you for bringing this bill forward, and I'd like to respectfully disagree with Mr. Lee. For your information, Mr. Lee, I'm very proud that my Assembly district includes the Los Angeles Air Force Base, and it's the headquarters of the US Space and Missile Command systems, where basically all of the research that takes place, that's funded by the Los Angeles Air Force Base, funds all of the cybersecurity and the satellite systems that are so critical to monitor activities like the nuclear missile testing in countries like North Korea, as well as providing critical intelligence information for our allies like Ukraine.

And so as much as in the ideal world, we would like to live in a world with no wars and no military. I am proud of the fact that the United States Space Force is in my district and that they are providing critical cybersecurity and intelligence information to fight countries like Russia and to keep countries like North Korea and China in check. I'm proud to be in support of this bill. Mr. Gallagher, I would be honored if you would add me as a co-author of the bill.

Absolutely.

And wanted to give any committee members any other opportunity for comments. Mr. Carrillo.

I respect your comments, too. Mr. Lee. I do represent Aerospace Valley or the Antelope Valley, where there is a significant presence of air force military support. While this may be futuristic, I do believe in national security, and I think that that's something that inevitably, we may be able to get there. And I think that we will get there in conjunction with international support. For that reason, I will support the bill.

All right. Thank you. Yes, Mr. Lee.

I don't want to engage too much of back and forth, but I just want to, just to clarify, our surveillance capabilities, our satellite defense systems have all existed before the space force. That has always been domain of our intelligence agencies and the air force, right? But this creation of a new direction and a new mission is kind of arbiter of the future, where you can imagine quite easily that we have fights over the moon, we have fights over different places, and that's kind of my fundamental preservation about it.

And while there is value, of course, in national defense, I think extending it beyond the borders, beyond our planets, into interstellar system, and having conflicts for minerals, intelligence, whatever it is between our adversaries, like the Russians or Chinese, and they create their own space forces, is very troubling. So I know this is a conversation that goes a bit beyond Mr. Gallagher's bill, but it is something I feel very strongly about. So that's what I wanted to just clarify. Thank you.

Thank you. All right, Mr. Gallagher, let you have the last word.

Appreciate the bipartisan support for this bill and ask for your aye vote.

Thank you. We had a motion. Okay. Mr. Carrillo moves second by Ms. Quirk-Silva. Madam Secretary, please call the roll.

File item 29, AB 165. The motion is do passes amended to Appropriations. [Roll Call]

Four votes. The Bill is out. Okay. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I think we're okay. We're going to have an opportunity for Members to add on it. All right? Okay. So we are going to gavel down to close the hearing, and we will give Members an opportunity to add on two votes. Um. Yeah.

File item one, AB 1051, the chair and Vice Chair voting aye. Hoover. Hoover aye. File item three, AB 71, the Chair and Vice Chair voting aye. Hoover. Hoover, aye. File item five, AB 247. The Chair and Vice Chair voting aye. Lee. Lee aye. File item eight, AB 672, the Chair and Vice Chair voting aye. Lee Lee, aye. McCarty. McCarty aye. File item 14, AB 915, the Chair and Vice Chair voting aye. Lee, Lee, aye. File item 18, AB 1251, the Chair voting aye. Dahle, Hoover, aye. File item 29, AB 165. The Chair voting aye. Dahle, Hoover. File item 29, AB 165, Hoover, aye. File item 32, AB 1695. [Roll Call]

Did I cover all of my votes? I thought I missed a lot more. Okay. That's right. Okay. But, yeah, good. All right. Thank you. Decade. Well, mark my words, your daughter, she doesn't move towards. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. See you later.