Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Subcommittee No. 1 on Education

Senate Budget Subcommitee Number 1 on Education will come to order. Let me go through just a few of the ground rules here. The Senate continues to welcome the public in person and via the teleconference service. Unless there's exigent circumstances, we ask that people that actually present be in the hearing room.

And on the teleconference service, for individuals wishing to provide public comment today, the participant number is 877-226-8216. This is shown on the screen. And the access code is 621-7161. We're holding our Committee hearings in the State Capitol in Room 2100, and asking that all Committee Members report to the room so we can establish a quorum.

Today, we're going to do many of the items that we have not done yet on K through 12 education, including the County Offices of Education and the Administration on their proposals on school nutrition, Proposition 28 implementation, cultural field trips, the reduction in the Arts, Music, and Instructional Materials Discretionary Block Grant, literacy, opioid antagonists, the School Facility Program, and the Preschool, TK, and Full-Day Kindergarten Facilities Grant Program.

We do not quite have a quorum yet, and when somebody walks in the room, the third Member, I will call the roll. But I won't interrupt any of you if you happen to be talking at the time. And when we take public comment, we're not going to be doing it item by item. We will do it at the end of hearing every item, doing public comment on anything that we have heard during the day.

So with that, we're going to go directly to item number one on the County Offices of Education, and our three scheduled panelists are Sara Cortez from the Legislative Analyst Office, Dr. Mary Barlow from the Kern County Office of Education, and Susan Connolly from the Placer County Office of Education. And you can move to the table here. With that, welcome to the Committee, and we'll go in that order and begin with the Legislative Analyst.

Good morning. Sara Cortez, LAO. Today we were asked to provide an overview about how County Offices of Education, or COEs, as I'll refer to them, are funded. The state allocates bulk of the funding through LCFF. County Offices of Education receive LCFF through a two part formula. The first part is to provide direct instruction to students receiving alternative education, for example, in juvenile court schools and community day schools. Funding for alternative education is tied to the number of students enrolled in these programs.

The second part of the formula is for County Offices of Education to provide a variety of support services to their county, and funding for these services is tied to the number of districts and students in the county. In total, counties received 1.1 billion through LCFF in 22-23, which is flexible funding that can be spent for any purpose. Each COE also receives separate funding to support districts and charter schools that are identified as needing assistance, often referred to as differentiated assistance.

Statewide, County Offices of Education received 70 million in the 2022-23 fiscal year. Funding for these activities is tied to the number and size of districts identified as needing assistance. Some counties, County Offices of Education also receive additional funding to be geographically and support other COEs in their differentiated assistance work, and 4 million was provided to nine COEs for this work. And that concludes my remarks, but I'm happy to take questions.

Thank you very much. We'll move on to the Kern County Office of Education.

It should be red.

My apologies. Good morning, Chair and Members of the Committee. My name is Dr. Mary Barlow, and I'm the Kern County Superintendent of Schools. I'm also speaking on behalf of my 58 colleagues.

We're working here to make sure your microphone is on. And it's not you. While they're working on the microphone, I'm going to ask, we have a quorum, that the roll call be established.

[Roll Call]

We have a quorum.

Yes.

Goes another few seconds, maybe. Because that microphone worked for the first comments, so somehow that one's hooked up. And Senator Smallwood-Cuevas was speaking for all of us, just for the record. So welcome to the Committee.

Thank you so much. I, again, am here to speak on behalf of all 58 County Offices, Offices of Education, and thank you for the invitation to speak. In my testimony, I want to discuss three topics to help the Committee better understand the Statewide System of Support and how it directly impacts the lives of our students. The purpose of the Statewide System of Support is to improve student outcomes. And before the pandemic, we were doing just that.

In Kern, we saw that districts that were eligible for differentiated assistance in 2017, 66% were no longer eligible in 2018 or 19. Again, in 2017, we reduced the number of districts that were eligible by 50%, and in 2018, 57%. So as they are involved in the continuous improvement process and this very intensive support, we are finding that they were making great progress. And, of course, then the pandemic hit.

As a County Office, we work with 46 districts, from small rural to large urban suburban, and in that support, we provide tier one services to all 46. Let me give you an example of what that might look like. Panama-Buena Vista, 19,000 students. It's a large urban. 74% of the students are socially economically disadvantaged. Identified because African American students were disproportionately identified for special education and discipline.

In this case, we surveyed the entire staff, conducted focus groups with principals, teachers, and parents, conducted an audit of their student study team forms and processes used at each school site, and discovered that the district lacked a systematic approach to identification and tiered support. The county and district team collaboratively co-created a comprehensive set of recommendations and KCSOS provided essential professional development to calibrate student study team processes and intervention steps.

We helped design tiered supports, such as social emotional counseling and academic tutoring, including connecting the district with external partners that could provide the counseling support. Another example of tiered support, tiered two differentiated assistance. In 2019, Lakeside, a small rural district, was experiencing high rates of chronic absenteeism across multiple student groups. Again, a disproportionately high suspension rate among African American students.

Here, the County Office pushed into the district to understand the root causes through a highly collaborative, relationship driven process, and they agreed on a problem of practice. The next step was to design and implement an improvement plan to support the students and their teachers. In this case, we connected the district with the California Collaborative for Educational Excellence and the Placer County Office of Education.

We are a regional SUMS Committee, multi-tiered system of support. So school site teams participated in positive behavior intervention service tier one training, where they developed schoolwide behavior matrix with clear and consistent behavioral expectations, with the flowchart to help define minor and major behaviors among the and the appropriate interventions. In addition, they developed a recognition system to reinforce positive behaviors. The results, a 3% increase in attendance, and with that comes better outcomes for students. These examples illustrate several important points about the Statewide System of Support.

First, the system is multilayered. It's flexible, it's nimble, and it's there to respond to the achievement and opportunity gaps that exist in diverse students and school groups. It can be scaled for large and small districts and across an entire county. Second, notwithstanding the pandemic's impact on students, we are seeing early success as a result of differentiated assistance and the System of Support. Third, by the time interventions are required by the education code, achievement and opportunity gaps within a district are often well established.

It actually takes years of ongoing work well after the intervention occurs. Experts in change or transformation say it takes seven years for change of a culture, and there is no one and done solution. To that point, I want to go back to students. So we know that through new and transformative whole child programs, County Offices are helping school districts address trauma and learning loss that occurred during the pandemic.

And in the California 22 dashboard, we showed that students have persistent and widening gaps in outcomes, youth mental health crisis, and a need for safe and supportive relationships. All of this adversely affects learning. The way students and schools respond matters. So we see these recent investments, expanded learning opportunities, community school partnership programs, universal meals, universal pre-kindergarten, and children and youth behavioral health intervention. With each new whole child program, County Offices are providing the technical assistance and partnership to help districts implement these programs locally.

In the case of community schools, this is essentially a one stop shop. A community school is where a student might be referred for something like need for a pair of glasses. But once we begin to work with the family, we build trust, and then they are able to access other supports that might be needed, such as tutoring, parenting classes, or counseling. And County Offices help districts and school staff design and implement those community schools and case management systems that build trust and strengthen families.

In KCSOS's case, we were able to work with a total of 14 districts, 41 schools for implementation, and 8 districts for planning in the first cohort. It's significant, and it makes a difference in an economy where one in three children live in poverty. We developed a new department. We have experts in community schools, student wellness, collaboration, and we hold monthly community meetings of practice with those school level community leaders to share best practices.

Individually, we meet with each school community leader and we problem solve in real time and assist them with things such as developing memorandums of understanding with our county agencies and with other nonprofits. Subject matter experts help with developing LEA Medi-Cal billing, and LEA BOP to assist school districts design systems where they can draw down other dollars and therefore create a sustainable community school post-grant. Finally, the work of improving outcomes for students is intensive and dynamic.

As evidenced from the pandemic, we've seen how our education system has shifted and our students have changed. For County Offices, we remain nimble in our provision of support. We would like to highlight a few key lessons that we've learned. First, by the time differentiated assistance and other systems of support and interventions occur, the achievement and opportunity gaps in an LEA are often deeply established. This underscores the importance of offering universal level one tier one support to every district. It's critical to closing the achievement gap proactively.

Second, it takes years for data to reflect the impact of intervention. Transformative programs take a great deal of human capacity and ongoing support. We're not just creating programs. We're transforming mindsets and culture at school site levels. It's the right thing to do, but it takes time, and we need to create formative assessments that show those results are on track. We also, third, have a wide degree of variation between County Offices ability to provide technical assistance.

And that's why the state should continue to invest in universal supports that improve the capacity of County Offices to proactively close achievement gaps in school districts and charter schools. That concludes my remarks, and I'm happy to answer any questions at the appropriate time.

Thank you very much. And now we'll move to the representative from the Placer County Office of Education.

Thank you. Good morning, Chair and Members of the Committee. Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today. My name is Susan Connolly, and I am the Assistant Superintendent of Student Services for the Placer County Office of Education. Today, I will be sharing information about the students we serve in juvenile court schools, enrollment trends, and implications due to the realignment of the Department of Juvenile Justice. County Offices of Education operate over 40 court schools and juvenile detention facilities across the state.

Many of our students do not have sustained enrollments and return to their school of residence within a short period of time. For example, during the 21-22 school year at the Placer County Court School, only 5 of 121 students were enrolled for more than 90 days. As County Office educators, we feel it is imperative to use the students time in court school to support, nurture, and prepare them for what comes next in their lives. Many have been impacted by trauma and negative educational experiences.

We serve students who have faced some of the most significant barriers to achievement and opportunity in the public education system. Our schools serve a disproportionate number of students of color and students who qualify for special education. We recognize that we have been given an opportunity to meet the needs of our students and graduates. We know that one caring adult can and does make a difference. Court schools provide instruction in all content areas through grade 12.

Additionally, we provide services to students who are eligible for special education. Many COEs have made it a practice to employ teachers with dual general and special education credentials in these programs. Court schools require intensive staff support to maintain a safe and educationally productive student environment. It is not unusual for juvenile detention facilities to separate students based on various criteria, for example, gender, age, or severity of an infraction. A court school with 20 students might need three to four classrooms, each requiring its own teacher.

To gain perspective, I would like to give you a snapshot view of Placer County's Court School. On any given day 10 to 25 students and 1 to 5 graduates are in the facility. Three to four multigrade level classrooms are operating. This means four full time teachers must be in place during the school year, regardless of student numbers. Support staff will be working with students.

You might see a school psychologist providing counseling, an academic counselor helping a student complete a financial aid application, a transition specialist reaching out to a local school district to facilitate a school transition, a student support practitioner connecting families with community resources, or an employment specialist linking a student with employment services. Many court schools are experiencing declining enrollment, which is a good thing.

Communities have succeeded in reducing the number of children and young adults who experience incarceration. But court schools are funded exclusively based on average daily attendance. As a result, it is universal that County Offices backfill their programs from the General Fund and one time funds. COEs are committed to providing a robust educational program for all students and graduates. But clearly our current exclusively ADA based model is a challenge.

There is a high degree of variation between counties with respect to both K-12 and postsecondary education provided by court schools throughout the state. Opportunities for postsecondary education can differ depending on the county. You might see programs that include in-person courses with a community college instructor, dual enrollment courses with a court school instructor, virtual courses, correspondence courses, or a college level examination program. County Offices do not receive funding for educational services for graduates. In some cases, probation departments provide resources for these services.

Court school educators recognize these disparities do not provide equitable opportunities to students and graduates in juvenile detention facilities. County probation departments, County Offices of Education, and higher education institutions must establish and maintain a positive, solution oriented focus on providing high quality postsecondary education to students and high school graduates in juvenile detention facilities. In many cases, this has been a challenging task. I have worked with my probation colleagues for over five years to establish a community college partnership.

Our local community college is currently applying for the Rising Scholars Network Grant with our full support. While court school educators are very grateful for this opportunity, we are concerned about the sustainability of postsecondary access for high school graduates in these facilities. Thank you again for the opportunity to speak with you today, and I'm happy to answer any questions at the appropriate time.

Thank you very much. And we have an action packed hearing today where we have nine items, so I don't want to dwell too much. But there have been times in the past where this Subcommitee hasn't fully given time to County Offices of Education to present what they do. And you just did an excellent job on a number of topics of sort of lining them out, and I thought before we move on, or I'd see if anybody else has any questions.

This is your chance because there are a lot of people that are probably listening for music, arts, and history and don't have full familiarity with County Offices of Education. You've talked about juvenile courts, you've talked about different things. Is there something else you would like to highlight about the role of County Offices that makes them valuable in the education system that people listening might be something they might not know about?

I'm not sure that the general public understands the level of support that is provided through County Offices of Education, both for all things LCAP related, the development of the LCAP, and...

Just for the people that don't understand the dialogue. We have acronym issues here.

Local Control Accountability Plan.

Thank you very much.

Engaging with the community to develop a plan at each district and ensure that the plan meets all of the needs of the different student subgroups. We also approve budgets. That's a statutory requirement. That's reviewed three times a year, two interims and on an annual basis.

And we had our hearing already on the districts that are in receivership. And if some district falls into that, that's where this work beforehand, then after, falls within the County Office of Education to really monitor.

Absolutely. And so County Offices of Education under statute have been given a variety of expanded opportunities over the past several years. But really we're there in support as the intermediary agency between the state and school districts to ensure that we're able to fully support students, every student, regardless of the zIp code in which they reside, to access the supports to be successful. We run a lot of community school programs. We run quite a few regional occupational programs that support career technical education.

Most of our offices operate instructional programs that help with the direct supports I described earlier. So if you can think about it, we are providing that intermediary support for all districts.

Anything you'd like to add to that?

Yes, I would just like to add that many County Offices also provide regional special education programs that support moderate to severe learners, students who are eligible for IEPs for all the districts in our community.

Great. And let me ask my colleagues if there's any questions. Senator Smallwood-Cuevas.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you for the presentation. Coming from LA County, it was good to hear some of what your board of County Office of Education is dealing with. I'm really, one, was glad to hear about the instructional support to close achievement gaps, particularly for those students who are hardest hit and some of the ways in which you all are doing that and seeing results. I think the idea to have the services, but to also then have a metrics in real time.

Seeing the impact of those services is very important. In LA County, we have a fairly troubled juvenile system that is going through deep transition. And some of your comments about for juveniles who are going through the educational process while also going through what is often a traumatic event of being involved in a system, involved in a juvenile court school, it was really enlightening what you shared.

My predecessor, Holly Mitchell, was instrumental in passing SB 716, and it looked at making sure that youth are required to have access to participate in public postsecondary opportunities, and you talked about the challenges of that. And I have a follow up question for you. One is, you talked about the funding element surrounding the postsecondary work, and that the Department of Probation sometimes funds those activities. Could you elaborate a little bit about that? What is the shared responsibility there?

What is the formula for what that looks like? When you say sometimes that term just struck me. When it doesn't happen, what does that look like? And when it does? And then a second question is, has Covid impacted the delay of SB 16 and what's the status?

The Placer County, the colleges we reached out to, we had gained some traction, and then we had the pandemic and there was a ton of turnover at local community colleges. And so we lost our contacts. And so it's taken five years to get to where we are now. And I think that that's a fairly common situation in mid sized to small counties.

And so you have to have the will of the community college or the local community college, and they have to have the correct resources and be prepared to engage in that activity. Providing post secondary education in a court school is incredibly challenging. I could have two graduates, I could have five graduates who need to access post secondary. Some larger facilities might have 20, 40. Regardless of whether I have one graduate who needs to access post secondary education or 20, I need a program.

So all of the work still needs to happen. And it's difficult to engage a community college and to create all of that programming for a one student who may be there for two weeks a year. So now we know that we're going to be having more students that are going to be with us a longer period of time, more graduates. And so we're really feeling the pressure.

It's probation's requirement, but Title 15 says to us that education partners, COEs, should partner with probation to try to work through this. It's difficult in some places for probation departments to know the education lingo, to know who to reach out to at the community college level. And that's why we see that we have varying types of programs that are available.

For example, right now we have a few students that are able to log in and enroll with our local community college, but that's very limited and it's very challenging to have a student traditionally enroll for a 12 week course. And then what do we do when they leave? Are we making sure, is there any transition support to make sure that that student then connects with the local community college and continues their education?

So I think it's very complex and there has to be a will, like I said, of the COE, the probation department and any sort of post secondary education provider to work through the difficult intricacies of the problem.

And so. So that just brought up another question for me. So is it that the policy, that there's some support that the Legislature could offer in helping to more clarify what those partnerships need to be kind of. Or is it more of a budget question? Just trying to think about in terms of the Legislature, what could we do to make this process have more impact?

These are - all of our youth are important, but these are the most vulnerable, and these are the ones most at risk of coming back into the system. And the idea is to liberate, to rehabilitate, to liberate and to move folks into a different pathway where they are contributing and making things happen in their lives and not having things happen to them and then having to be supported, right. Deeply by the state. So for me, it's like, what is it that the Legislature can do to support the clarification, to bring those parties together in a willingness with real resources?

So I think that the community colleges. I think that there should be. It's a both. To me, it's a both thing. It's a resources answer and a legislative answer. I think that community colleges, probation departments and COEs should be required to work together. Right now it's unclear. There's shoulds. Okay. But I also think that that piece comes with a revenue piece.

So when our graduates, when we're not receiving resources for those graduates, but we know that it's the right thing to do the work, we're still going to do the work. But I think when you are funding something through a grant, in my mind, it's not necessarily sustainable. Are people really engaging in the work with the long term? These are grant funds that are over five years right now. The Rising Scholars Network Grant, will that sustain past the five years?

I mean, we are going to likely have a number of court schools and operations for the foreseeable future. We are going to have more graduates because of the DJJ realignment. We need to make sure that the resources are there so that when those graduates leave the facility at 25, if that's what they do, that they have a college education or some career technical education or some future. Because I agree with you, we need to make sure that generally these students stay in our community, and we need to make sure that they can become productive when they leave the facility.

Thank you. Any further questions? Whoops. Thank you very much. We really appreciate you participating in this panel and look forward to continuing to work on the issues that we've talked about today. We're going to move to issue number two, which is school nutrition. And are we still needing to have. Okay, we're going to have at least people sit on the wings here.

Well, we were going to put them on each, but you've moved over there, so maybe we'll put them, we were just going to put them up here someplace. Okay. Then we'll put them on this side. Okay. You're fine, I think, but we'll see in a second here. Yes, have a seat. And just for those of you at home, we are having microphone problems, so we're going to seat most people with us at the dais where the microphones clearly work.

So we're going to move to issue number two, school nutrition. First up will be Alex Shoap from the Department of Finance, followed by Sara Cortez from the Legislative Analyst Office. And we have both Kim Franzell and Sarah Neville-Morgan from the Department of Education. And we will go in that order. So welcome to the Committee.

Thank you, Mr. Chair and Members. Alex Shoap, Department of Finance. The Governor's Budget includes an increase of $75,008,000 to reflect an 8.13% cost of living adjustment and a decrease of $36,803,000 to reflect updated Fall meal estimates for the state meal program, for a total increase of $38,205,000 for the program. This increases the total appropriation for state reimbursement to 1.455 billion Prop. 98 General Fund for 23/24.

The state reimbursement rate in 23/24 will be 96.78 cents per meal served and an increase of more than $0.07 from the 22/23 rate of 89 and a half cents. So the total reimbursement per meal, including federal reimbursement, is estimated to be about $5.41 for lunch and $4.03 for breakfast. The Governor's Budget also maintains the $650,000,000 estimate from the 2022 budget for universal meals. However, due to timing, we only had actual meal data through August 2022 for these projections.

We continue to work closely with the Department of Education and are currently reviewing Spring projections, and we intend to further refine the budget for the state meal program based on updated trends for both 22/23 and 23/24 as part of the May revision. Lastly, the budget proposes to set aside $15 million of the $600 million appropriated for the 2022 kitchen infrastructure and training program to promote single use waste reduction in school cafeterias through the purchase and installation of commercial dishwashers.

While dishwashers are already an allowable use, we acknowledge that many LEAs may need to prioritize infrastructure funding for other purposes. We believe that utilizing this existing funds to provide a focus on and to promote the use of dishwashers will help to transition schools to reusable food service wear for their meals. It will not only help to reduce waste, but also litter and hauling costs to schools, especially with the increase in meals served. With the implementation of universal free lunch and breakfast. That concludes my remarks and happy to take questions at the appropriate time.

We'll move on to the Legislative Analyst Office.

Good morning. Sara Cortez, LAO. We recommend rejecting the proposal to redirect $15 million from the 22/23 kitchen infrastructure funding and to instead provide grants to LEAs to purchase or install commercial dishwashers. We find that the proposed modifications are unnecessary given LEAs can already use the 2022/23 kitchen infrastructure funds to purchase and install commercial dishwashers. Rejecting the proposal allows LEAs to determine what upgrades their kitchen needs their kitchens need.

Rather than setting aside funds for one specific purpose. We further question whether providing funding for commercial dishwashers is an effective way to achieve the administration's goal of reducing single use plastic. Many alternatives exist for LEAs to reduce single use plastic in school nutrition programs. For example, rather than using single use plastic trays to serve food, an LEA could instead use compostable trays. If the Legislature is interested in reducing single use plastic, it could direct CDE to provide guidance to LEAs on effective strategies of reducing single use plastic and nutrition programs. Thank you and that concludes my remarks.

Thank you very much. And then we'll move to the Department of Education.

Good morning, Mr. Chair and Members. Kim Franzell on behalf of State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurman. The Department of Education appreciates the continued investment in California universal meals. The program is key to transforming our California school system and is a vital element to a student's overall educational experience. Universal meals support more equitable opportunities for all of our 8.5 million public school students to receive nutritious foods each and every school day, without stigma. School meals are now more accessible regardless of income status.

School meals account for approximately a third to a half of a student's daily nutritional and caloric needs, and for far too many students, these are their healthiest meals and many times the most complete meal that they are receiving. We are happy to see a return to about 99% of our pre pandemic meal participation with an estimated 818,000,000 breakfast and lunch projected to be served this school year. We compare that to pre pandemic where we served 820,000,000 meals.

The ongoing investment in California Universal Meals affords students the ability to better learn and thrive and sets them up for lifelong healthy habits. And evidence and research confirms when students have access to school meals, there's increased academic performance, fewer absenteeism and tardy, increased concentration, and we see reduced obesity rates. Our schools rely on adequate meal reimbursement to keep their meal programs financially viable, especially as high food costs and staffing shortages continue.

In August of 2022, the Nutrition Policy Institute published their study on the benefits and challenges of providing universal meals in California. And food service directors, whether they were small, medium, large, urban, rural, reported that the minimum reimbursement rate necessary to provide meals that meet the nutrition standards and appeal to students was on average, $3.39 for breakfast and $5.08 for lunch. The Department of Education is working closely with the Department of Finance on universal meal funding levels, projections and trends.

The Administration has conveyed their intent to ensure that universal meals remain whole and financially viable for our schools. We appreciate this commitment to fully compensate our schools for providing a breakfast and lunch at no cost to students without risk of prorating the state meal mandate. The pandemic has revealed quite a lot and I want to share five trends that we've seen as a result of the pandemic, as well as the implementation of California universal meals.

The first one is that we're seeing schools are now offering meals more frequently when school is not in session. So, for example, during December break when there's a winter break. When we compared the Seamless Summer meals served in December of 2018 compared to summer seamless meals served during the break in December of 2022, there was a 4325% increase in meals being served in December during the break under the Seamless Summer Option.

The second trend is a greater number of school meals being claimed in the paid category. It's doubled since the pandemic. The third trend is that schools that are not on a community eligibility provision are reporting a decrease in the number of meal applications being submitted by households for the meal programs. This can be attributed to a couple of reasons.

First, three years of the pandemic, where we had many federal waivers that allowed meals to be served without the collection of meal applications, and now that we are back to normal federal regulations and requirements, it does mandate the collection of meal applications and families are having to transition back into that requirement.

This trend is actually supported by a report that we have to submit to USDA, where we are reporting in our verification of meal applications a 78% decrease in the number of meal applications submitted this year, and it is important to emphasize that the federal meal programs mandate that schools that are not on a community eligibility provision must still collect meal applications for the National School Lunch and School Breakfast Program, even though they are universally free for all students.

So we've been working with schools on strategies and best practices to increase their meal application return rate. The fourth trend is around community eligibility provision. We've seen an 88% increase in the school sites approved for community eligibility compared to pre pandemic. This is attributed to the California Universal Meal requirement, where it does require all high poverty school sites adopt a federal meal provision such as community eligibility.

High poverty schools are defined under universal mills as sites that meet the current federal threshold for identified student percentage through direct certification. This requirement helps California to maximize and draw down as many of the federal dollars for the meal reimbursement as possible, and that is our goal. The current federal identified student percentage threshold is 40%. The formula uses a factor of 1.6 that is multiplied by the identified student percentage to determine the number of meals that will be reimbursed at the free rate.

In the past, schools might not have opted into community eligibility if they were just at that 40% threshold because of the financial impact to their school's General Fund. The district would have to make up that difference at the paid rate. So, for example, a school site with an identified student percentage of 40%, they would receive the federal free reimbursement rate for 64% of their meals, and then the remaining 36% would be reimbursed at the paid rate.

With California Universal Meals, the state meal funding is now paying that difference between the free and the paid. On March 23 of this year, USDA released a proposed rule that would lower the community eligibility threshold from 40% to 25%. If this federal provision is enacted, it will impact our California Universal Meal funding. State funding for Universal Meals will need to cover a larger difference between the federal free rate and the paid rate so that schools are able to continue offering meals at no cost to students.

So I'll give you an example of what that would look like at the 25% threshold. If a school site has a 25% identified student percentage, times the federal multiplier of 1.6, 40% of the mills would be reimbursed at the free rate and 60% would be reimbursed at the paid rate. So this change, as I mentioned, would result in California's increased contribution to the meal reimbursement under Universal Meals.

So, to establish what does this mean for California and what does the impact of this proposed rule have the best kind of proxy that we had is a report that we submit annually to USDA, which is the Community Eligibility Provision near eligible site list and it's from school year 21/22. And this list only includes those school sites that are directly certified through a state level direct certification match through the California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System that we call CALPADS.

And so this number that I'm going to share with you is likely a low estimate, but we approximate that there are 190 school sites that would meet this near eligible threshold at the 25% level that is in the proposed rule. This represents approximately 115.5 million students. So assuming that all of those students participated in both breakfast and lunch each school day, 180 school days, California could expect an additional 20.7 million breakfast and lunch being served.

So while we love seeing more students receiving the meals, that is what it would mean for California. The advantage to lowering the community eligibility threshold is that more school sites are eligible for community eligibility in California. So they would not have to annually collect the federal household meal applications for the National School Lunch and School Breakfast Program. I think it would help speed up some of our point of service lines in our schools so the kids could get through lunch a little quicker.

So I think those are some positive. The fifth and final trend is really just the continued need for updates to kitchen and cafeteria facilities. The Kitchen Infrastructure and Training grants and the School Food Best Practice Funding are supporting students that have access not just to meals, but to quality meals, greater access to freshly prepared, plant based, culturally relevant, locally sourced meals each and every day.

The Department of Education is extremely thankful to the Legislature and the Administration for the $850,000,000 in school meal grant funds since 2021. Many of our school cafeterias throughout the state are outdated. They're inadequately wired, plumbed, equipped or designed to support increased meals under Universal Meals, as well as moving to more scratch cooking. For the 2022 kitchen infrastructure funding 1010 school food authorities opted into these fundings and 519 opted into the 40% freshly prepared meals.

So the interest is absolutely there with our schools and they have expressed their appreciation for the flexibility in determining at a local level how best to use the funding. They know their needs, they appreciate the local choice in how to spend the dollars for their cafeterias, their kitchens, the meals they're serving and training related needs.

We also know that there will be some ongoing needs as kitchen facilities and cafeterias think about how can we ensure that our students have adequate time for seat time to enjoy these meals. The Nutrition Policy Institute surveyed parents, students and food service directors of about adequate time to eat and the survey revealed that about 70% of the food service directors do not feel students have enough time to enjoy their school meals, which can increase food waste and also it can decrease participation in the meal program.

Students reported that they felt 30 minutes of seat time was needed for their lunch. So in closing, the State of California has accomplished so much since July of 2021 with the implementation of California Universal Meals. We are leading the nation and we are strengthening our food meal programs and providing our children with foods that nourish their bodies, minds and overall well being.

The Department of Education values the collaboration with the Administration, the Legislature, and our school nutrition professionals during this historic journey of implementing Universal Meals, and we look forward to this continued discussion. So I want to invite all of you that on May 5 is National School Lunch Hero Day. It's time to elevate and celebrate our professionals that work in school food service. So I invite all of you to contact your local school and go and partake in a lunch with them. Thank you. That concludes my remarks and I, along with deputy Sarah Neville-Morgan and Corey Kahn, are available to answer questions at the appropriate time.

Thank you very much. And since that recognition day is on Cinco De Mayo, I hope you have some themed food that day. I have a question or a comment from Senator Min, who had to leave. But before that, let me try to distill your five trends into a briefer global answer. Because the pandemic happened in March 2020, and before that, there was a certain usage of school nutrition. The pandemic lowered it. The Universal increased it. What can you say about the trend between before March 2020 and now? I mean, whether there's some raw numbers or whatever, how would you describe the trend in how many people have been served in that period?

So, as public school enrollment has dipped, we're actually seeing when we compare to pre pandemic, when we look at our meal programs, that we're actually at about 99% of where we were pre pandemic. So we're returning to where we were before the pandemic.

But with enrollment down.

With enrollment down.

And so those are numbers where it's 99%, that must mean that it's a higher percent, even if it's a small higher percent of students that are utilizing meal programs than before the pandemic.

Correct. Well, I would say when we look at actual numbers, pull that up. So between July and December of 2022, our actual numbers were 376.8 million meals in the School Nutrition Program compared to 377.5 million in 2018.

But that matches your 99%. It just was done with a slightly lesser enrollment. But the universal nutrition or meals is such that that's a trend that should be continuing to go up, right?

Absolutely.

And yet it's a function of some of the things that you were listing as nuts and bolts issues to try to address. Okay. And I don't know how much of this comment to read, but Senator Min felt like there were specifically other ways to reduce food waste and single use plastics, such as maybe LEA wide assessments of which types of food are being thrown away the most.

I don't think we want to hear that broccoli is being thrown away the most, and things related to food packaging or preparation. To him, it seems like the dishwasher approach is remarkably specific. And so could you comment on that?

What I would say is that many of our schools have lots of strategies to help reduce plate waste and certainly share tables. So if a child doesn't want to have their apple or their orange or their broccoli, they can put it on the share table that another child can take. Offer Versus Serve is a federal provision that has been proven to help reduce waste as well, because within the requirements of the federal meal program, students have some choice and options of what they can take.

So that's another great strategy. And certainly many of them work with their student councils. They do taste testing, they get the kids involved in menu planning. And so those strategies also help with helping to reduce the plate waste. And adequate time to eat is really, really important as well.

Well, that's interesting. Okay. Are there any other questions? Senator Ochoa Bogh?

So it's quite interesting. I have lunchtime here as a comment for me because I do have a son who's still in school, in high school. And one of the things that - I know that he's partaking of lunch more because I'm here during the week and so he gets lunch there. But the time, and I think the time is not necessarily that 30 minutes is not enough, but the fact that depending on the number of students, by the time they get to the line where he is standing, they really don't have very much time. So it varies. And I'm not sure how you fix that if you have more lunch periods or.

Yeah, I think that's the only option that you would have in order to accommodate students in order to have the appropriate time to eat lunch. But that's the hardest part is for them. And I think it's just the population of that school and the ability to serve all of those students in a timely manner. And, of course, because it's. I'm not sure what model it's called, but you choose where you want to go for the items that you're interested in.

And depending on the popularity of those items, the lines are a little longer than others. And there's another thing that I wanted to make. It was specific to the $15 million towards the dishwashers and how specific that is, because I'm not sure if we have considered, we're considering somewhere else the ability for some of the kitchens to be modernized, to be able to meet the ability to provide those healthy meals and the preparations and so forth.

So I think that it would probably be more helpful if it be a grant program so that the schools could decide and assess where and what it is that they need to have their kitchens updated and modernized in order to meet this new requirement by the state to feed our children. Just a thought. I'm not sure if it had been considered or not, but I believe that the grant program would be a great idea to allow for more flexibility in local decision making on the capacity for the kitchens to be able to meet the needs of their students. And let's see.

Were you asking for a comment on that, or is that for everybody to take note?

Yeah, just take note, because I figure this is our time to plant the seeds, as I like to call, just plant the seeds for consideration as we move forward. And the last comment?

Well, it's very appropriate. You're planting the seeds in the food.

And then this one is a question. I was just kind of curious as to how the Department of Finance calculated the $15 million. How did that figure come to be?

So the $15 million that would provide for 375 $40,000 grants, which is the maximum grant award under that language. I think that we saw this as a reasonable funding level for this set aside, both to be able to accommodate potential demand for the funding, but also not compromising the integrity of the existing kitchen infrastructure funding.

Sorry, may i? So, basically, we do have funding for infrastructure, for kitchens to be updated and have that this would be in addition to that funding.

So this $15 million would come from the existing funding from the 2022 Kitchen Infrastructure and Training grant program, which was a $600 million appropriation. I think the Department is holding back $15 million as this goes through the budget process. So it would not create any additional cost to the State.

So no additional cost to the state. Would that work to be able to accommodate the needs? Because I'm assuming it still meets the needs of the updating, the ability for the school districts to be able to apply for grants to update and modernize our kitchens. But this is just specifically for just the dishwashers.

Sara Cortez, LAO. So if I can clarify, so the 2022/23 Budget act provided $600 million for doing exactly what you're talking about, the updating kitchens, updating infrastructure. The proposal is now, the Administration proposes now taking $15 million of that $600 million and redirecting it specifically for the commercial dishwashers.

So that is the proposal before you, whether you would want to agree with the Administration and redirect $15 million of the $600 million that was part of the 2022/23 budget and use it specifically for dishwashers rather than kind of more of the general updates that schools can decide that their kitchens need. This would be specifically for dishwashers.

So without the specific allocation of the $15 million, the school districts would still have access to use that funding for dishwashers without specifically allocating the $50 million out of that original budget allowed.

Yes, correct.

So my follow up question is, why be so specific to say this is what you're going to have available just for that, when they could already have access to it with the general one?

So I think the Administration sees this as a way to use the existing resources to more intentionally promote sustainability and waste reduction in school cafeterias. The dishwashers are already in allowable use. I think that in proposing this set aside, we also want to acknowledge that schools likely have many needs for this funding as they're in the process of implementing universal meals. So I think we see this as a way to sort of signal that priority without creating new cost or a new program.

I would just say that let's just put it as a highlight, as that's something that we should be doing, and then just leave it in the general. Just my personal humble opinion.

Any further questions?

I just had a brief question about - what is the barrier for more campuses to do more of the farm to table more of the cook from scratch? So there are districts in South Central that are doing traditional rip and heat, right? And then in Culver City they have gardens and the students make their own salads and there's fresh vegetables that come in. So I'm curious what is the way we create more equity and access to that? And I'm just curious what the barriers are because it seemed like - I couldn't remember the number of schools that are participating in those kinds of fresh food programs.

I probably would have said something different before Universal Meals and the $850,000,000 in the Kitchen Infrastructure and Training grants. But it really does come down. You have to peel back that onion a little bit, the layers there. But many times it's the kitchen facilities, right? How large is that kitchen? Do they just have microwaves that they can just heat and serve? Are their staff trained? Like, do they know how to do scratch cooking, follow a standardized recipe? So what training is needed there?

What change agents do you have in your district to stand up a really solid farm to school program? Because it's not just about school food service, right. It really does take the whole school community to invest in that. So I think there's a lot of different layers, and I think investing in our nutrition professionals with the skill set and then the facility development is incredibly important as well.

Are specific grants that do that? And is that grant program sort of a revolving program? Is it sort of time bound? Is it just resourced? Is it sort of funding that can be flexible? And so folks are deciding, well, do we do books or do we do fresh food? In my view, there are many reasons to have a farm to table experience. It's about how we care for our bodies, it's jobs. There's a lot of lessons in that.

And so that's why I'm curious, what are the barriers, and how do you think about ways in which we can expose and expand more students, and particularly those students who are in concrete jungles where they are in open space scarcity. How do we begin to bring those kinds of programs and make it more accessible and fair? I was curious about the challenges and what is the opportunity that we may be able to help create.

I think there's lots of opportunity, and the Department of Education has a really strong partnership and relationship with the Department of Food and AG, and the Office of Farm to School is housed there. And so we meet with them, and they have a lot of grant program, and they're standing up a whole new regional system where they're going to have specialists in the regions to help them promote farm to school. So I think that is going to be phenomenal.

The partnerships that we're building with local, small, socially disadvantaged farmers in communities is another great opportunity. Because many times they'll come into the school, right, and take on some of that garden and educational work. And then through the connections of what's served in the kitchen with the education and science and math and health, with farm to school, and making those connections at the district level, I think, are opportunities.

I love to connect with that program and to see how that works, we work with a number of urban farmers and would love to get a sense of how to build out more of those partnerships and pilots in some of the areas that are just, there's so much scarcity in food desert. So appreciate it.

Thank you. We appreciate this discussion, and I think you should take the questions as a real signal of interest. And I think that if Senator Min were here, we would have gone longer, and if some of us had our desires, we would have gone longer. But we have seven additional items and we have two people that have flights that are probably going to happen before I can get near public testimony. So we appreciate you being here.

We're going to move to issue number three, which is Proposition 28 implementation. And I suspect that issues 3 and 5 will be similar, of similar interest. But we're going to have to try to move it along a little so that we can try to make sure the testimony happens while people are still here. So we're going to move to issue number three and ask the panelists to - one to move to the table and the other three to move up here.

And we have Lena Grant from the Department of Finance, Michael Alferes from the Legislative Analyst, and Aaron Heredia, and Pete Callas from the Department of Education. And I know that I've been listing two Department of Education people here, and generally the second one might be just here to answer questions. But let's begin with Proposition 28 and begin with the Department of Finance. And you have to turn the mic on.

It's on now. Okay. Lena Grant with the Department of Finance. The Governor's Budget includes an estimate of 941,000,000 to support the implementation of the Proposition 28, to support arts and music programs in the state. We will adjust that estimate at the May revision and we're working with the Department and interested parties to determine if there are any particular areas of clarity that may require guidance or potential Trailer Bill Language amendments. But at this point we have not put forth any TDL guidance.

I would note that the Proposition 98 guarantee would be rebenched in future years to accommodate the payment this year. The structure of the initiative is such that the 941,000,000 would be permanently baked into the guarantee starting in 24/25. That concludes my brief remarks and I'm happy to take questions.

Thank you very much. Move to the Legislative Analyst Office. Welcome.

Good morning, Mr. Chair and Members. Michael Alferes with the Legislative Analyst Office.

Yeah, we're getting close to it not being morning. Sorry. Keep going. I'd already advanced past it. But you were correct. As always, the LAO is giving us a dose of reality.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Michael Alfredo with the Legislative Analyst's Office. California Department of Education shared with us their suggested modifications to the Proposition 28 Language. We don't have any specific concerns at this time. If any concerns arise in the future, we will follow up. Happy to answer any questions at appropriate time.

Thank you. And then we'll go to the Department of Education.

Good morning, still, Chair and Members. Aaron Heredia from the Department of Education, speaking on behalf of State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurman. Proposition 28 was passed in November 2022, establishing the Arts and Music and Schools Funding Guarantee and Accountability Act with the goal of creating minimum funding that is dedicated to arts program education, which includes instruction, training, supplies, materials, and partnership with programs in the various areas of arts and music education.

Beginning with the 23/24 fiscal year, the Proposition requires the state to provide a minimum level of funding for arts and music programs support to public preschool through grade 12 schools, including charter schools, county offices of education, and state special schools. Arts is a necessary part of a well-rounded education, and research shows that arts educational experiences have remarkable impacts on student achievement, social and emotional outcomes. Additionally, there is evidence that arts education has a positive impact on student attendance.

The team at the Department of Education is working hard on the implementation of this program. We're currently working with the Department of Finance, Legislature, and stakeholders to clarify some program provisions and ensure that the program is implementable as outlined in the - pardon me.

As the LAO mentioned in their comments, we have submitted some formal suggestions for cleanup consideration for the program, both to legislative staff and to the Department of Finance as we have identified several issues with the language around the allocation of funding at the school site level for preschools. For example, there are some data availability hurdles we have identified there that would need to be ideally cleaned up to have successful implementation and funding allocation. So those are there for consideration.

We also have received several questions and concerns from the field regarding the supplement not supplant requirement. For example, that's required in the statute, and I believe that that's outlined in the agenda today as well. The main concern centers around the baseline funding requirement, in essence, what constitutes existing funding in the statute and how that impacts whether a school is supplementing or supplanting funding for their programs.

The current language doesn't seem to provide direction for how this requirement would interact with various possible scenarios, for example, treatment of one time funds, whether from state, federal, or other sources treatment of PTA funds, charitable donations, philanthropy, et cetera. That may be one time or ongoing and expectation of .LEAs who are right sizing arts programs offerings due to declining enrollment.

If there is not technical cleanup language adopted to alleviate some of these fiscal implementation issues, it's unclear how soon the Department would be able to begin apportioning funds to LEAs pursuant to the current statute. We're also working with finance to get some dedicated staffing implementation resources for this program. Currently, the work is being spread over multiple divisions and does not have subject matter experts at this time for the program.

I would note as well, just a couple of weeks ago the CDE did post a Proposition 28 web page with some FAQs on our public website. There will also be a listserv link going up there soon as well for leas or others who want to subscribe to updates from the Department as we roll those out regarding the Proposition. With that, I conclude my presentation. I also do have Pete Callas from the career and college transition division to answer any programmatic questions you may have. Thank you.

Thank you. I'm going to lead off with a question, against my better judgment, weighed into the supplant supplement question. And our agenda does reference it, but it says we might wish to clarify it. And I just don't get the impression that we're the ones that do the clarifying. And so the real question is, how do we get to the bottom of this? Because everybody's buzzing about it. And if I just heard you say it's really hard to make the allocation until this is resolved, what do you see as the path to resolution of this question?

Well, I would clarify, and sorry if my remarks confuse the issue a bit. There are some fiscal implementation issues which, like I said, we have submitted the LAOs seen them, Leg staff's seen them, Finance has seen them. And those are separate, in our mind, Department from the supplement not supplant issue. That's really an LEA level implementation issue. Right. And kind of an accountability issue for what they'll be held. Those are, I don't want to confuse matters too much there.

Well, not to presume to know what the Committee staff were trying to say exactly in the agenda, but I think when I read that sentence, I assume that because our Department, and certainly folks from the field have said that in the statute, there's some vagueness around that requirement as well as others, that in order to clarify that, then that would require statutory legislative change. And I think that's where it's coming from. Given how it's written currently, issuing guidance, that's clear beyond what's in the statute might be difficult for us to do as a Department.

Would finance like to come in on this? Because if it's hard for them to do that means somebody has to do it. But it's like he's sort of backing away right now. So where does that leave us in this clarification?

Department of Finance. So the initiative, now, the Ed code, it does define supplement. And what, what it means, it says its supplement means that the funds appropriated by this chapter shall be used by an LEA to increase funding for arts education programs and not to supply existing funding for those programs. And that effectively means schools would need to show that their expenditures in a given year tied to a fixed point in time are increased by this new fund source.

I think the question is, what defines existing funding? And I think that's something we will have to issue in guidance. I'm not sure my colleague at CDE intends to say that we need to clarify that in actual language or if guidance would be sufficient, but we think we could issue guidance on the matter after discussing what existing funding excludes and what it includes, I'm backing away from the issue as well.

That is the most clarity I've had from finance on anything.

That as a compliment.

I know you're looking away, Mr. Alferes, like I'm not going to notice you're here, but two have backed away and you're still sitting here. Might you have any comment?

I'm afraid I might have to back away. I think this is an important issue.

Okay. Well, with everybody having backed away, let me just say we really would like to resolve this issue and would really like to figure out the way to get there. And it seemed to me in reading the staff report and all the visits I've had the last month or two from people on this issue, they really want clarification on this. And I think that it goes further, and I think it was going to come up.

It goes further in that there is a general view of people that were involved at the initiative, that there was a maintenance of effort in general, and that the fact that in one of the next items it's cut while this is coming in has not made a lot of people happy. And that is an issue that is in front of people now.

And so it is almost an ancillary issue to deal with, supplant or supplement, because there's this larger view that the previous funding should not be cut after the initiative was passed. And so I think that we are hearing this, and even though I may be the only one left here at the time of public comment, we're going to hear a bunch about it and have already.

And so I think it is our desire that within the framework of the may revise and the final budget, we address these issues one way or another so that we can start rolling out and we can deal with what the expectations were in the initiative being passed. So I think I'm just going to leave it at that because this is unique, because all three of you have backed away, but you're still sitting at the, you know, we will get with that.

And then let me ask the Department of Education, for starters, a more practical question, because one of the items that is raised in our agenda is the art teacher workforce, and we already had a hearing on teacher recruitment and retention and the problems. And we're dealing, if you look at the different things that we are dealing with as a Subcommitee, we're looking at pre kindergarten and transitional kindergarten and childcare and having enough staffing.

We're looking, in general, at not having enough staffing in a couple of teaching subjects. And then here's another one where we have added resources, but are there enough art teachers to do it, or do we have to work on a pipeline to have art teachers to do it? And I think you're the logical first person to address that issue.

What do you see as a workforce issue if there's going to be a workforce to be able to implement this, no matter how we resolve the other unresolved issue?

I think I would defer to my colleague Pete Callas, as far as the pipeline question goes.

Okay, so you're right. It is a pipeline issue. We're looking at just even my division oversees career technical education. Huge shortage in teachers in that area also, and looking at bringing on, looking at the initiative and looking at what the numbers were on how many teachers we need to bring on to make this work, we have to do something about creating a pipeline for these positions.

Okay. Then I would just set that out as another issue that we would like to partner on through the budget in whatever way we can, because we recognize that that's an issue. Sometimes in this process, people are focused on the shiny item, and the shiny item is resolving the supplant supplement when we could resolve all those issues and then not have enough teachers to spend the money that we have appropriated. And so it's going to be very important that we address that.

Does the other member have any questions?

No, Chairman.

Thank you.

Okay, then I would just, before we move on, and obviously we're getting to item five in a minute, and various things might come up again, I would just say we want to work on the resolution of the issues that we've talked about. And we know we have the may revise coming up and the final budget coming up.

And I think you're going to have to figure out with us how to resolve these issues because we're not going to be able to move ahead satisfactorily until they are. Then let me thank all of you and we're going to move to the next item and cultural field trips program. Mr. Alferes will remain here, and we have Paula Fonacier Tang from the Department of Finance, and I believe Malia Vella is joining us. There she is. She's joining us remotely.

So let's just go with any preliminary comments, in that order. Beginning with the Department of Finance, once the Department of Finance is seated.

Thank you Chair. It's still morning, so good morning Chair and members. Paula Fonacier Tang with the Department of Finance, the Governor's Budget includes 100,000,00 1 time Proposition 98 General Fund to provide all class of 2024 high school seniors with access to off campus learning experiences at California arts and cultural institutions, California arts and cultural institutions, museums, and other activities. Funding will be allocated to local educational agencies based on the proportionate enrollment of 11th grade students who make up the class of 2024.

These funds may be used for admission and transportation to California arts and cultural institutions and museums, live art and cultural performances, such as operas and plays, and arts and cultural enrichment workshops. This proposal has a different focus than the other two similar sounding arts investments. As previously mentioned, Proposition 28 requires funding to primarily be used to hire arts educators.

Additionally, the art, music, and instructional materials block grant that will be discussed in the next panel is discretionary, designed to be used broadly for various purposes, from instructional materials to covering operational costs. This proposal is intended to support high school seniors who may not be able to utilize the full extent of Proposition 28 programs that could still be in the ramp up stage next year, with opportunities to engage in immersive and handson art and cultural learning experiences that are outside of the typical classroom.

The administration recognizes the positive impacts that art and cultural experiences can have on student achievement, mental health, and well being, and engagement with school and learning. Although schools could use other sources of funding to support these activities, oftentimes funding from these sources, like the art, music, and instructional materials block grant or the Local Control Funding Formula, is for broader use, and schools may have other competing priorities for these funds.

Providing designated funding for this purpose will allow schools to see the value of these types of experiences for their students and, if the program is successful, encourage schools to prioritize ongoing funding that they receive to provide future students with similar off campus art and cultural experiences, especially for students who would not otherwise be able to access these opportunities. That concludes my remarks, and I'd be happy to answer questions at the appropriate time.

Thank you very much. Then we'll go to the Legislative Analyst.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Michael Alferes, LAO. Our office recently published a broader analysis looking at the governor's package of one time K-12 spending proposals, including this item. We'll talk more about the proposed reduction to the arts music and instructional block grant that Ms. Paula Fonacier Tang mentioned. But I'll just note here that this proposal is partly funded from the reduction to the arts music and instructional block grant that's going to be covered in the next panel.

We're recommending rejecting this proposal for that reason and also due to the limited scope of this proposal, that it would just benefit one cohort of high school seniors for one set of activities. To the extent that local educational entities, sorry, local educational agencies, find this to be a local priority, they can use other fund sources such as LCFF, their Expanded Learning Opportunities Grant program funding, the portion of the Proposition 28 funding that is not restricted for hiring new staff.

So using these other fund sources will allow schools to provide these opportunities across grade spans, not just for high school seniors. That concludes our comments. Happy to answer any questions. Appropriate time.

Thank you very much. And then we have Malia Vella remotely I think you're muted. I think you're muted.

Can you hear me now?

Yes, I can hear you now, and so can everybody else.

Good morning. I'm Malia Vella from the Department of Education, speaking on behalf of Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurman. We support the governor's proposal of $1.0 million to our leas for cultural enrichment for high school seniors and the intention behind this. The proposal aligns with the California State Board of Education adopted Arts and Education standards from 2019 and the adopted Arts Education curriculum framework from 2020. For example, the arts education standards and curriculum framework are comprised of, in part, the artistic processes in visual arts.

The presenting process speaks to the following enduring understanding objects, artifacts, and artworks collected, preserved, or presented either by artists, museums, or other venues to communicate meaning and a record of social, cultural, and political experiences, resulting in the cultivating of appreciation and understanding in Chapter 7 of the arts education framework. Each grade level standard in visual arts includes skills that relate to arts in the environment, including museums and other venues.

The framework also discusses the ways museums provide primary sources of study for the visual arts and describes approaches to understanding art in physical and virtual web based galleries and museums. As noted by finance, without this proposed program, for a variety of reasons, many high school seniors would not have this important experiential opportunity. Research shows that culturally enriching field trips leads students to a greater interest in the arts, greater tolerance for people with different views, and boosts their educational outcomes. This concludes my remarks.

I'm happy to answer any questions at the appropriate time.

Thank you very much. I'll ask the remaining membership if there are any questions on this item.

I'm always really intrigued when we have one time grant funding for a specific purpose in this case. And as a mom whose children did classical piano, I truly appreciate the arts and the money. And this is why I've been so supportive of this funding. But I think it's kind of interesting that we have it as a one time funding specifically for twelveth graders. And my question would be one, why twelveth grade and not say sophomore or junior year?

Because that really directs the type of classes that you seek out in the following year with regards to. If that is something that really intrigues, if you're inspired by whatever medium or the arts exposure that you had, it could incentivize the child. I would really want to pursue this field and therefore direct their educational choices in high school classes moving forward. But the one time funding.

But I think it's interesting that we, and I think it's on the following item where we are removing part of the budget from the. Where do we see it? zero, issue number five. Yeah, the discretionary, the block grant that we have and the money that's being reduced on that end. But we're bringing back just that specific one time funding for the seniors.

I just find it's interesting how we're removing some of that funding, coming back and saying, okay, but from that funding we are allocating this specific funding just for our twelveth graders, not freshmen, sophomore, juniors, but just the twelveth graders. One time. I actually think that if, and I would liken it to probably what the statement was made with regards to the dishwasher. It's.

Maybe it's a statement that the administration wants to put out that the arts are very important and therefore they want to make sure that they're sending a message by providing this specific funding. If that's the case, then I get it.

But once again, I think we can make those statements here and carry that message to the Department of Education so that that can be emphasized and then give the leas the ability to make those choices and prioritize depending on the student need and the interests of the students. I'm about local control, but I can understand why you would want. The intent is to send a message. I absolutely understand what that.

And, Senator, are you asking for them to respond, or are you just saying.

This so they would note mean, sorry.

No, I'm just asking you.

Yeah. Is that the intent of the funding? Is it the same thing as the dishwasher to carry a message to the Department of Education saying, this is a priority for us?

Yes, Senator, I think you're correct in that providing these types of art and cultural experiences for students is a priority for the Administration. We recognize the value of these types of experiences to support student mental health and well being and their achievement, helping them stay engaged in learning, especially as we come out of the pandemic. I think our thinking behind this one time funding is that we recognize that Proposition 28 funds, there could be a ramp up period next year.

And so for these students that are graduating that year, these seniors, they may not be able to participate in activities or full extent of the programming while these Proposition 28 programs are still ramping up, which is why the Administration has decided to provide one time funding for twelveth grade students for this purpose.

So this is just ensuring, while we're going through the process, that they have the experience. This is not to say or imply, perhaps, that we won't be able to have that funding ongoing in the following year.

Yes, this proposal is currently one time, but we hope that if this program is successful, that schools can be able to prioritize these types of experiences for future students with the ongoing funding, as you mentioned, like the Local Control Funding Formula, expanded learning opportunities program. So we hope that schools see this as an opportunity to sort of pilot this program and see its success and then be able to prioritize their funding for these opportunities for future students.

Thank you.

Thank you. And then if I can ask a follow up question, I have one of those sprawling districts where I have basic aid schools in Carmel and Pacific Grove and in San Luis Obispo, and then I have really struggling school districts, such as the pairo, which is where the levee broke and people are really struggling. And one of those districts, as basic aid, has, I think, 43% higher revenue than some of the non Basic Aid Districts.

Why are we equally providing money to all districts when it's clear some have resources and some are much more disadvantaged? Why is there no differentiation between the districts?

I think our intention is to make sure that these opportunities are provided for all students, regardless of where they live or their socioeconomic status. But certainly we'd hope that these experiences, we think that these experiences are important, especially for those students who would not otherwise be afforded.

No, I agree totally. And it's like one of the things, and it's not in the arts realm. When I was resources secretary, I never ceased to be surprised at programs to help disadvantaged kids see the oceans over the fact that in San Diego there were kids that lived 6 miles from the ocean and had never been to it. And in San Jose there were all these kids that had never been to the ocean. And so, Neil, Sea Odyssey.

I'm trying to think wild coast, there are these programs that did it. And so I don't think anybody in the Carmel Valley that's a kid has not seen the ocean. And so it's great that you want every, I shouldn't say you, I'm sorry that the administration wants every kid to do this, but my guess is that there are some districts that are, well, to do that are doing this already and we're giving them money and we're giving the exact same amount of money to disadvantaged districts.

I would just say take it into account. I'm not asking for a response now because the proposal is what the proposal is, but it seems to me it's wasting money to give it to the wealthiest districts when it could go a little further, further for the districts that aren't wealthy. And either way, you're accomplishing the same thing. So no inflection. I would just say note it and hopefully take it into account. And we're on item number four, cultural field trips. We've essentially finished.

I don't know if you have any comments or questions before we move on.

No, I just want to say that in a district that I have, Culver City U nified does a phenomenal job of planning trips, teachers giving their time off to chaperone students all around the globe. The challenge is if you can't afford a trip, you don't go.

So even having it accessible, and there are students with diverse socio and economic backgrounds in some of the school districts that you might say are affluent or that are well funded, I think there's a need to always remember that there are students in need on every campus. And if these programs are being made available, often in the case it's through private, parents are paying for it, they're putting the Bill. But there are students who are on free lunch.

There are students who are coming from the title one elementary schools into the middle schools and the high schools, and they don't have access to those opportunities. It creates a very uneven educational experience in terms of their ability to participate. So I think I agree with what the chair lifted up and also that where we have those campuses that have a diversity of economic backgrounds, that we create funds for those students to be able to participate so no student gets left out.

Thank you. I don't know if anybody has any comment to make before we move on. Nobody's rushing to the microphone, so thank you. We really appreciate this. For those of you listening at home, our process is really to air issues and hope that either in the may revise or in how the legislature responds to the may revise, we address the issues that we are raising, because I know that every one of these we're holding open and not taking a position today.

But in many ways, we're sending signals about where we would hope the budget would go. So thank you very much. We really appreciate it. We'll move to issue number five, which is the Reduction in the Arts, Music and Instructional Discretionary Block Grant. We have Lina Grant from the Department of Finance. Michael Alferes is lucky enough to never have to move here with the Legislative Analyst Office, and Malia Vella is joining us again on this one remotely. And we will begin with the Department of Finance.

Good afternoon. Lina Grant, Department of Finance the Administration has put forth a reduction of approximately 1.2 billion in the arts, music and instructional materials discretionary block grant in recognition of the passage of Proposition 28, which is now providing an ongoing funding source for arts and music programs.

We recognize, of course, that it is a $1.21,000,000,00 1 time reduction, but we also utilize those resources to support the Proposition 98 package that has been put forward, which, as you may recall, does not reflect any ongoing program reductions. All of the ongoing programs are fully supported, so those resources were used to help balance that approach.

We recognize, of course, that there are certain leas that are concerned with the reduction, but we think in the short term it's a reasonable approach to support long term fiscal stability. That concludes my remarks.

Thank you very much. And we'll move to the Legislative Analyst.

Michael Alferes. LAO. As I mentioned in the previous panel, the proposed reduction to the arts, music and instructional materials block grant is needed to Fund other proposals included in the Governor's budget while maintaining spending at the Proposition 98 minimum guarantee. This relates to the item that you heard on the previous panel, as well as the item on the next panel for this block grant.

CDE has notified leas of their allocations as part of this funding last fall and distributed funding in December, the first half of the funding. Our understanding is that many LEAs, sorry, already adopted plans for how to use these funds, and this reduction would be disruptive to their local planning as they would have to revisit the plans that they've already adopted and might have to make bigger structural changes to their budget as part of that.

Given this, we recommend the legislature take action that would minimize the proposal reduction to this block grant, such as rejecting these one time proposals that you heard in the last panel, we'll hear in the next panel that would free up funding that would be able to be used to restore this reduction. That concludes our comments. Happy to answer any questions at the appropriate time.

Thank you very much. And then we'll move to the Department of Education.

Good afternoon. Malia Vella, deputy superintendent at the Department of Education, speaking on behalf of superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurman. For the most part, we agree with the LAO's presentation, especially about the hardship to our LEAs. The funds for the arts, music and instructional materials block grant are much more flexible than Prop. 28 funds. The block grant allows a much wider range of expenditure at the local level than the Prop. 28 funds.

And as the LAO mentioned per requirements, we too have heard that leas have already adopted plans by their local governing boards for how to use these funds. Reducing the funding would require the leas to revisit their budgets and get new local board approval. CDE issued the first apportionment of $1.8 billion directly to leas in November of 2022.

The second apportionment was scheduled to be released in May 2023, but has been delayed until summer 2023 pending the outcome of the governor's proposal, which would reduce the appropriation for the program from 3.5 billion to 2.3 billion. This approach avoids needing to recover the overpayment of funds from all leas should the reduction proposal be adopted with the flexibility of these funds. CDE recommends that funding for the arts, music and instructional materials block grant not be reduced.

These funds will help leas meet many of their competing needs. I have with me Aaron Heredia from the School Fiscal Services Division to help answer any questions, any fiscal questions you may have. That concludes my remarks.

Thank you very much. Questions or comments from committee members? Let me just ask, because seeing none right away, maybe I will inadvertently provoke one, but I think that I would tend to agree with the comments of the LAO on not necessarily where reductions might be to do this, but that there is, as I mentioned in the previous item, a big outcry over this, and I just hope we can figure out a way to work through it without sort of accepting this recommendation as it was presented.

But that's what the time is here. So, yes, Senator Ochoa Bogh.

You're right. Your comment did sort. So I want to just second the Chairman's comments.

I'm a little concerned with the proposed cut here, and the reason being, as the Department of Education mentioned, they have more flexibility to be able to provide programs and experiences, materials, the purchase of instruments when they have this budget in place, versus the Prop 28 that we just spoke about, which limits, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe it states that it's 80% of the monies on Prop 28 have to go directly to staffing, so it doesn't leave much monies for actual programs, equipment, materials and experiences.

And I think within that context, I appreciate the previous panel where we're talking about the funding for the twelveth graders, but in reality, the cost of the materials and the arts is extremely expensive. And I'm not sure that just allowing Prop 28 money, which is an ongoing, really provides for the funding for what they're going to be needing in order to implement the program, if that makes any sense. And so I'm really concerned that we're not allocating enough money towards that.

I think I know where the administration is going with regards to removing that funding and making it ongoing. But if you're going to lock in those monies to a percentage of as high as 80% for staffing and not much for those experiences and materials and ongoing costs of those materials and experiences, then I think, and I know that cannot be changed because it's a proposition.

I'm a little concerned that this budget cut will severely impact the quality of the programs that we're going to be able to be available for students in this endeavor. So just a seed to be planted on there that it's extremely expensive to have these programs, and if we don't have the money, we're going to have, once again, an imbalance between staffing and no program and no content in it.

Any other comments then? I think we have sort of indicated among the members what our general concerns are, and hopefully they will be taken into account as we move forward. We're going to move to item number six, which is the item on literacy. And Mr. Alferes gets to step aside for a moment. So we'll have Jackie Barocio from the Legislative Analyst. First we'll have Lina Grant again from the Department of Finance, and then Mary Nicely from the Department of Education.

So we'll begin with the Department of Finance.

Welcome.

Thanks. Lena Grant with the Department of Finance. The Governor's Budget includes 250,000,000 one-time Proposition 98 funding for the Literacy Coaches and Reading Specialists Grant Program to be available over five years with a minimum grant of 450,000 per qualifying LEA. This funding builds on the $250,000,000 investment for this program that was included in the 2022 Budget Act.

Continuing the focus of developing school literacy programs, employing and training literacy coaches, reading and literacy specialists, and developing and implementing interventions for pupils in need of targeted literacy support. This program funds high poverty schools to train and hire literacy coaches and reading specialists for one on one and small group intervention for struggling readers. The additional funding would allow several hundred more high poverty schools to hire these coaches and specialists and improve the quality of reading instruction for thousands of additional students.

In addition, the Governor's Budget includes 1 million General Fund for a literacy roadmap for schools statewide. This roadmap would provide educators, site leaders, and LEA administrators clear and practical direction for literacy instruction and intervention in alignment with the state adopted ELA and English language development standards and frameworks, in addition to current reading research for all students, including English learners, students with disabilities, students struggling with reading, and the state's earliest learners. That concludes my remarks, and I'm happy to take questions at the appropriate time.

Thank you very much. Then we'll move to the Legislative Analyst Office.

Jackie Brosa with the Legislative Analyst Office. Overall, we recommend rejecting the Governor's Budget proposal for two reasons. One, as been previously mentioned, the proposed dollars were made available as a result of the reduction to the Arts, Music, and Instructional Materials Discretionary Block Grant. So just being consistent with our recommendation of minimizing disruptions to LEA budget plans. Additionally, as part of last year's budget, 225,000,000 was provided for the literacy program. Those dollars barely went to LEAs January 2023.

So given that for that reason, we view that it's premature to provide additional funding when we don't have a sense of how effective this intervention will be. However, the Legislature could consider adopting the proposal to provide funding for an independent evaluation of the program that would just further assist the Legislature's ability to monitor program outcomes and then, at a future date, allocate additional dollars if the intervention is proven to be effective. And funding associated with that independent evaluation is 500,000, Proposition 98 General Fund. Thank you.

Thank you. And then we'll move to the Department of Education.

Sorry about that. Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and Members of the Committee. Mary Nicely here, Chief Deputy Superintendent at the California Department of Education, presenting today on behalf of State Superintendent Tony Thurman, we are pleased to see the Governor's continued investment in the Literacy Coaches and Reading Specialists Program, which provides funding to employ and train literacy coaches and specialists to schools that need it.

As mentioned before, 250,000,000 was appropriated for this program last year and a CDE released in January of 2023, 225,000,000 of this funding to 376 eligible school sites in 124 local education agencies. Of those funded, most indicated that they did not already have school literacy plans or family literacy initiatives in place, but were planning to develop them as a result of receiving these funds. The continued funding being proposed in this trailer bill will allow for hundreds of school sites to benefit from this funding.

Additionally, the proposed eligibility expansion allows a greater number of schools to qualify for the funding, and the new requirement of a program evaluation and evaluator ensures accountability over these important investments. This additional funding is contributing to what we know to be effective practices. Research shows that ongoing and sustained literacy coaching is more effective than isolated professional development, training, or workshops alone.

To truly sustain the teacher practice, professional learning must be active and collaborative and provide teachers with ample time to learn, practice, and implement and reflect on new strategies. With the current teacher shortage, uplifting new and existing teacher leaders is important to raising our educational system. In addition to positive impacts on teacher instruction, research has found that literacy coaching positively influences students and specifically multilingual learners across the content areas, particularly when reading language skills, vocabulary, and subject area comprehension were integrated into the effort.

The current and future funding of the literacy coaches and reading specialist program will work in tandem with the literacy roadmap previously mentioned. The California English Language Arts English language development curriculum framework still stands as a foundational resource for California educators and remains on the forefront of guidance for literacy instruction across the nation.

The literacy roadmap will provide the funding necessary to take a deep and lengthy document and craft a roadmap for classroom teachers to apply the framework to their instruction as well as navigate the myriad of resources available throughout the state. This literacy roadmap will serve as a one stop for our educators and is rooted in evidence based practices in the ELA ELD framework. This is critical in a local control state where the abundance of resources can sometimes be overwhelming.

Having a singular resource produced by the CDE will be the authoritative stance the CDE needs to take in supporting evidence based instruction informed by latest research. In closing, we greatly respect and appreciate the investment in literacy of our students. As this process moves forward, we are happy to provide technical assistance to DOF and the Legislature on specific points related to this proposal.

With me is Monique McQuain, division director of our Educator Excellence Division, who oversees these grant programs, and we are happy to answer any questions at the appropriate time.

Well, amazingly, this is the appropriate time. We have heard from our three speakers. So let me just do two quick questions and then see if my colleagues have questions. The first one to Ms. Nicely, who just spoke. You said that in January 2023, the money was released from the last budget. So if I were to ask you, what are the results?

It's too early to understand, and we're supposed to judge whether or not to do it or improve it in the next year with no results from this year yet. Is that a fair statement?

I think that's a fair statement, but I think even what we have found, that we have schools that had no literacy plans and are planning to have literacy plans and are moving forward with family initiatives in reading, I think that even being able to see that as a step forward and being able to include more school districts that have no actual plans for literacy in the very near future, I think is enough for us to be able to say and, to build in as what the LAO said, there's no evaluator or evaluation in this past, the money that went out last year.

But I think it's still incredibly important that we move forward with these literacy investments because we do have other investments that are out there that are showing positive.

No, we appreciate that. As you have heard in this hearing, we have less money than what everybody wants to do, and we're going to have some tough decisions to make. And the LAO is recommending rejecting some things to try to match that. And that's what's going to drop in our lap. Or first it's going to drop in the Department of Finance's lap, then it will drop in our lap. But that is the practical decision we have to make.

And then my other one is a question for the Department of Finance, and it's basically we have this continuing discussion, we had it earlier today about arts teachers, and we had it with everybody else, that the workforce is inadequate. This requires that the literacy coaches must hold, as is stated in the agenda, an administrative multiple subject or single subject credential. Here's another place that we could well have shortages.

How do you believe we will have people to do this, and do you not believe there won't be a shortage in a way that we won't be able to fully do this without additional certificated credential staff?

Sure. Department of Finance. So on pages 16 through 18 of the agenda that you were pointing to, there is a handy chart that shows the different requirements for credentialing.

A handy chart is the equivalent of saying it's just a simple Bill.

It's a simple chart. And under the literacy coaches and reading, so the literacy coaches, the credential authorization required is dependent on the kind of instructions or services of the position. So LEAs have some discretion to determine eligibility requirements for a literacy coach as aligned to the legislative requirements of supporting educators and pupils.

And how wide is that latitude? I mean, what could they really do? What flexibility do they really have in staffing it?

Yeah, well, because literacy coaches are distinct from reading specialists, I'm not working at the LEA level, but my understanding is that they can provide basic training for those literacy coaches to guide, to provide one on one tutoring services or small group tutoring environment, so there's less of a dependent on the kind of work that the LEA chooses to do. There's less of a multiple credential requirement. I think the CTC would probably be best equipped to answer this question or maybe CDE can.

To that, and Monique, you can step in if you like, but I know the reading specialists have a credential, the reading coaches do not, which actually does give you some ability to have someone giving instruction and then having support from coach small reading groups, being able to use other kinds of staff in the building, volunteers, you can also have paraprofessionals, you can have- my brain just went totally blank- mentors be able to come in which will expand.

And that's how we are working with actually trying to deal with the entire teacher shortage, to bring in other people that can do some successful supplemental support so that reading coaches do not have to have a credential. They can be other people within the LEA and to support the reading specialists.

I appreciate that, but I would just note that is a concern of the Committee, both in not being able to fully assess the money from the last year about adequate staffing, about the choices we have to make with all the different options that are given to us financially. Let me ask the other Members if they have any questions or comments. Senator Ochoa Bogh.

Thank you, Senator Laird. Mr. Chair, I just want to highlight that I really appreciated the effort, the work that went into creating these diagrams with all of the programs. I'm not sure who was the powers that be that put those together.

Somebody came close to owning it.

But I think this is great way to sort of summarize, especially for new Members and for all of us actually even though we've been here before, but I really appreciated the work that went into it and I know staff did as well. So thank you for that work and putting it together, summarizing everything that the Legislature has been doing with regards to the efforts in literacy programs. As far as questions go ahead, I think I'm good. Thank you.

Thank you very much. And I think we'll just note what we have said in that item and thank you for the participation. We're going to move to issue number seven, the opioid reversal funding, and the three presenters are Martina Dickerson from the Department of Finance, Michael Alferis from the Legislative Analyst Office, and Malia Vella from the Department of Education, who is remote. I don't see her on my screen yet, but hopefully she'll be on my screen by the time we come back here. And we'll begin with the Department of Finance. Welcome.

Good afternoon, Chair and Members. Martina Dickerson with the Department of Finance. I will be providing an overview of the opioid overdose reversal medication proposal. It is the priority of the Administration to continue statewide efforts to combat the opioid crisis in California. This proposal is intended to complement response investments on the health and human services side of the budget, which includes supporting prevention, assessment, education, recovery efforts, and reducing overdoses.

Specifically, the Governor's Budget provides 3.5 million ongoing Proposition 98 General Fund to the State Department of Education for allocation to local education agencies for the purpose of purchasing and maintaining a minimum of two doses of an emergency opioid medication at each public middle school, junior high, and high school site.

While schools can apply to receive this medication through the Naloxone Distribution Project administered by the Department of Healthcare Services, demand for this medication is expected to grow and schools, as eligible entities for this program, would be competing with other eligible entities, including first responders, law enforcement, local health departments, community organizations, and universities for these limited resources. Providing funding directly to schools would fill the gap in need for this medication to be on school campuses and ensure schools can be prepared to respond to these types of incidents.

The 3.5 million estimate was based on the cost of an average of 12 units per required school site. However, the allocation of the funding will be determined by the Department of Education based on the number of middle school and high school sites within an LEA, student enrollment at those sites, and any other relevant factors determined by the Department.

The proposal also requires LEAs to obtain a standing order for the distribution and Administration of emergency opioid medication from the Department of Public Health and to purchase the medication directly from the naloxone manufacturer at the public interest price. At the time of the Governor's Budget, naloxone was a prescription medication, which is why trailer bill language directs LEAs to obtain a standing order from the Department of Public Health.

However, as of March 29, the US Food and Drug Administration approved the nasal spray formulation of naloxone for over the counter use. So we intend to revise this language in May to reflect this new development to allow LEAs to have more flexibility when purchasing this medication. The training and restocking requirements in this proposal are consistent with existing statute that currently allows LEAs to stock emergency opioid medication.

Leas would be required to ensure school staff on campus have reviewed the training materials and resources on the California Department of Public Health website. These are the same materials that are available to the applicants of the Naloxone Distribution Project. Finally, schools already stocking this medication under current law would be eligible to receive this funding if they meet the requirements to maintain at least two doses of emergency opioid medication at the required school sites. This concludes my remarks and I'm happy to answer any questions at the appropriate time. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Now we'll move to the legislative analyst.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Michael Alfredo with the Legislative Analyst Office. We are recommending providing a lower funding amount for this proposal than the three and a half million dollars proposed for two reasons. The first is that the funding is not aligned with the specific requirements of the proposal.

Although the proposed trailer bill language requires middle schools and high schools to carry two doses of an emergency opioid antagonist, our understanding is that the administration's cost estimate of three and a half million assumes that every middle school and high school will annually purchase 12 doses of naloxone. The Administration indicates that this is because naloxone is sold in packages of 12. Most schools, however, are part of a multi-school district that will be making purchases on behalf of all of their school sites.

Charter schools and school districts that are smaller can make bulk purchases by pooling together with other smaller entities. Assuming schools only purchase two doses of naloxone annually, we estimate that the cost would be about $550,000. The second reason is that under the proposal, the funding will be distributed annually while the medication has a longer shelf life of around two to three years. For example, the FDA recently just approved a longer shelf life of three years for naloxone.

As a result, schools would not be required to replace medication on an annual basis. Schools would need to replace medication that was administered to reverse an overdose, but doses that are not used and one school year can likely be kept for at least one other year. Given these issues, again, we are recommending the Legislature provide a lower funding amount.

We think that $750,000 would be sufficient to fulfill the requirements of the proposal to carry two doses at minimum, while also setting aside additional funding to reflect costs of maintaining a larger number of doses in large schools and replacing medication that was administered to reverse an overdose. The Legislature could revisit in future years the funding level if the cost of the medication or other factors result in higher than anticipated costs. That concludes our comments. Happy to answer any questions at appropriate time.

Thank you very much. And then we'll move to Malia Vellas of the Department of Education.

Good afternoon. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Deputy Superintendent Malia Vella on behalf of the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, The CDE is in support of the additional funding in the governor's January budget proposal for opioid reversal medication for secondary schools in California. The California Department of Health, based on preliminary 2021 data, reported that there were more than 6500 opioid related overdose deaths in California. Over 5500 of these deaths were related to fentanyl and over 200 were overdose deaths amongst teens ages 15 to 19 years old in California.

Fentanyl deaths accounted for more than 80% of all drug related deaths among California's young people in 2021. The CDE believes that it is vital that California middle and high schools have access to this type of medication to help save our young people's lives and stands ready to assist with the implementation and distribution.

Just as we have partnered with CDPH and local health agencies on distribution of COVID-19 tests to our LEAs. SB 367 was passed this last legislative session requiring all community colleges and CSU campus centers to have approved opioid overdose reversal medication available. The same needs to be available for all of our California middle and high schools. The CDE has already been working in partnership with CDPH and DHCs to assist our LEAs in addressing the opioid crisis.

Last fall, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurman and the CDE and CDPH developed and shared a toolkit to our LEAs, sharing best practices and resources for addressing the opioid crisis. Additionally, last fall, Superintendent Thurman convened several webinars in conjunction with CDPH, attended by over 1500 representatives of our LEAs.

These well attended webinars featured a panel of experts who spoke about strategies to combat the opioid and fentanyl crises, including how to participate in our Naloxone Distribution Project, sharing draft policies for leas to store naloxone on campus, discussing ways to work together to educate, prevent, and intervene to support and protect students and provide a robust resource toolkit.

The webinar was open to all educators and parents and featured special subject matter experts from the US Drug Enforcement Agency Administration, California Health and Human Services, California educational agencies, the Department of Education, and the California Department of Public Health. AB 1748 went into effect in 2017 and authorized school districts, county offices of education, and charter schools to obtain FDA approved opioid antagonists to administer in the event of an opioid overdose.

Since then, CDE has worked with our LEAs to develop and implement local school naloxone or Narcan policies, including sharing sample policies from early adopting districts. Schools should train staff on how to safely store and administer Narcan, but we also need to make sure that they have sufficient access to naloxone.

Many of our leas have done the training and put in requests for naloxone through the Naloxone Distribution Project, but there were delays in getting supplies delivered, with some LEAs reporting that they had more than three months delay in actually receiving the naloxone. Last fall, LAUSD placed naloxone on all of its campuses.

We also want to note that within the first several months of the school year, several schools had already administered naloxone several times, 12 times in Los Angeles by early February, and at least once in Santa Clara County and once in Sacramento. And that concludes my remarks. I'm happy to answer questions at the appropriate time.

Thank you very much. I'm just going to lead with one question. It's alluded to in the agenda, and start with the Department of Finance, just about what is contemplated for technical assistance on this, because I can imagine that you look at the breadth of LEAs in California and there's not total experience in the ability of how to use this and administer it, or even how to have it in a place or a way that it's ready to be really responsive in a crisis. What do you contemplate for that kind of help or technical assistance as part of this?

Sure. The current trailer Bill does not currently address technical assistance related to contracting. However, we are open to discussion around the need for technical assistance. If there are concerns with LEAs being able to purchase this medication, as far as training for school staff and recognizing symptoms of an overdose is already available on the CDPH website.

Then I would state that there are concerns. So you know that there are concerns because I honestly think if you just look at the, you know, I like to visit schools in my district, and I visited really, really small ones. Parkfield has nine students in their K through eight. Pacific Valley has 17 in K through 12. I was in the Carrisa Plains. I think they had 20 or 22 in their K through eight. Just really hard for me to imagine that they would have that level of technical.

It's not just about buying it. It's about how to use it and how to recognize it and other things. So that is a concern, and I would hope that you would consider it in however this program is recommended going forward. Let me ask if the rest of the membership has a question or a comment. Senator Ochoa Bogh.

Thank you, Senator Laird. So just curious on the understanding that we have that the antagonist has a shelf life of about two to three years, and we have the ongoing funding for the purchase of the nalox... How do you pronounce it?

Naloxone. Yes, I have a hard time saying that word.

Sometimes you can use the more generic name, Narcan.

Narcan. Oh, okay.

And you don't have to struggle.

I can say Narcan. Narcan. So I'm kind of curious as to the, and I'm not sure if it was taken into consideration when it was designed this way, but it does have a shelf life of two to three years. So why would we want this as an investment every year? I could see maybe every 2-3 years or as need be. Do you have any comment on that?

Sure. As far as ongoing funding, we provided ongoing funding to acknowledge that this has been a continuing problem and a growing problem, and we are going to approach this issue aggressively. We're committed to supporting schools in an effort to reduce the risk of fatal opioid overdose incidents on school campuses. And we are open to considering limited term or reducing funding once certain conditions are met.

We're hopeful that we will make good headway in the areas of prevention, awareness and education with the funding and supports on the health and human services side of the budget. And hopefully we start to see more positive results and decline in both emergency room visits and deaths.

Well, we just appreciate the discussion and just hope you note some of the concerns. And thank you for the work on this. We're going to move to item number eight, the school facility program. And we have Michelle Nguyen from the Department of Finance, Jackie Barocio from the Legislative Analyst Office, and Barbara Kampmeinert from the Office of School Construction. And we'll go in that order. So as soon as welcome.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, Michelle Nguyen with the Department of Finance. The school facility program, also known as the SFP, provides funding for local educational agencies for school facilities, such as for new construction and modernization. For background, the SFP has typically allocated funding approved from statewide General obligation bonds, the last one being Proposition 51 in 2016.

However, because all remaining Proposition 51 bond funds are anticipated to be exhausted this year, the 2022 Budget Act approved an investment of approximately $4.3 billion onetime General Fund to provide support for school facilities and to extend the SFP for a multi year period until a future school bond can be placed on the ballot. Of that $4.3 billion, $1.3 billion was appropriated for 2022-23, $2.1 billion was intended to be appropriated for 2023-24 and 875,000,000 was intended to be appropriated for 2024-25.

Given the budget and revenue outlook that we saw in January, the Governor's Budget proposes to reduce the planned investment for 2023-24 by $100 million onetime General Fund, which brings the proposed amount for the budget year from 2.1 billion to 2 billion. This is part of an overall $22.5 billion budget solution package that was presented at the Governor's Budget, which included a variety of delays, reductions and fund shifts.

The 2022 investment was intended to extend the availability of state funding for school facilities construction into 2024, and the administration anticipates that this reduction will not significantly affect that original timeline, nor will it reduce the amount of funding that can be processed every month through this program. So with that, thank you and happy to take any questions that you might have.

Thank you. We'll go to the Legislative Analyst.

Jackie Barocio with the LAO. Just as a General overview, last year in the budget, there was approximately $1.4 billion in K through 12 bond authority remaining based off of February 2023. Financial reports from the school allocation board that amount. The remaining amount of bond authority is about 700 million. And then of the 1.3 billion General Fund that was provided last year, based off of the same fiscal reports, it looks like there's about 300 million remaining authority.

Okay, thank you. And the Office of Public School Construction welcome.

Good afternoon. Barbara Kampmeinert, deputy executive officer with the Office of Public School Construction. We serve as staff to the state allocation board and administer the school facility program. I'm here today to address any questions that the committee may have.

Okay, and let me ask the Department of Finance. I know what the answer is going to be, but I have to ask do you contemplate supporting an additional bond measure at some point so that we're not just doing this year to year in the budget process.

Sure. Michelle Nguyen, Department of Finance. We do anticipate that there will be a school bond discussion at some point between the Administration and the Legislature given at the 2022 or as we are working on the 2022 Budget Act. A school bond hadn't been placed on the budget on the ballot at that time, hence the investment of $4.3 billion for school facilities. But we do anticipate that there will be a discussion about a school bond in the future.

It is just something that, and don't get me wrong, when I was resources secretary, nothing made me crazier than having to pay an additional 40% or more in financing costs for what were bonded items, and that it is either much cheaper or you get much more for budgeting it and not financing it. And the trend to do that, as opposed to go to the voters of bonds is a good one.

But I think the school districts are looking for certainty that there will be facilities money going forward, and that is just an important thing to do. As a member of the State Allocation Board, I see what comes by in the expenditures for schools, and I see that we are always on the edge of running out of money until we sort of resolve that on a longer term. So that's a long winded way of starting the discussion that you said we should have between the legislature.

Are there any, no other comments. So appreciate your being here and appreciate your noting that, but amazingly, we're moving to the last item, issue number nine. That's not what's amazing. It's the same panel. Nobody has to move. So we're going to go to issue nine, which is preschool, transitional kindergarten and full day kindergarten facility program. We have the same three panelists. Well, we actually have a switch out. But we'll go in that same order. We'll start with the Department of Finance.

Michelle Nguyen, again with the Department of Finance. The 2022 Budget act approved 650,000,000 one-time General Fund for the California preschool, transitional kindergarten and full day kindergarten facilities grant program, which provides grants for the construction and modernization of classrooms for these early education programs. Of that 650,000,000, 100 million was appropriated for 2022-23 and the remaining 550,000,000 was intended to be appropriated in 2023-24.

Again, given the budget and revenue outlook, the Governor's Budget delays that planned investment of 550,000,000 onetime General Fund by one year from 2023 to fiscal year 2024-25. The Governor's Budget maintains the overall funding commitment for this program in recognition of the importance of providing facilities for early education. But the Governor's Budget proposes a funding delay for this program given the budget outlook that we were facing at the time of the January budget. So thank you. Happy to answer any questions.

Thank you very much. We'll go to the Legislative Analyst.

Sarah Cortez Lao. Delaying these funds seems reasonable given the state's budget problem. As we mentioned a few weeks ago, when the state first started TK expansion conversations, facilities was identified as one of the main implementation barriers. But based on recent reports from planning implementation grants, facility issues do not appear to be as large of a barrier to implementation as we initially thought. 75% of school districts report having adequate space to meet the projected enrollment of TK students.

However, since augmentations for this program have historically been oversubscribed, the legislature could provide some amount of funds or reevaluate next year based on the state's budget condition. That concludes my remarks. Thank you.

Thank you very much. And once again, from the Office of Public School and Construction.

Thank you. Barbara Kampmeinert, Office of Public School Construction, just wanted to provide a status on the current filing round. So we are working with the remaining 360,000,000 that we have available for the filing round that actually just closed in March, and we did receive 1.5 billion in requests, just under 1.5 billion in requests for these funds. We do anticipate that we will use all of the 360,000,000 when the state allocation board is presented with the apportionments this fall.

And that completes the presentation. We'll go to questions, and you went to write what my question was going to be. And so let me take it a step further. Having received four or more times requested money than is available, how do you prioritize that against 350,000,000 that is available?

Yes. So the statute does provide two priorities when we are doing funding. So we look at the percentage of students that qualify for free and reduced price meals, and we also look at whether or not the school district qualifies for financial hardship status under the school facility program. And that's a program that's available when a district doesn't have the funds to complete its local matching share for the program. So there are points awarded to the applications based on those two criteria, and then we just go down the list in order of those preference points in the statute.

Okay. Thank you very much. And it just goes without saying, once again, facilities, whether it's for pre K, TK or regular k through 12 is a priority and a challenge, and particularly in the early childhood ones, in ramping up in some cases, the facilities is the major issue. So I just make that note heading into the may revise in the budget, are there any other questions from members of the committee? There aren't. So let me thank you.

Thank you, we appreciate your participation here, and that completes our discussion of the items. But we are going to take public testimony on any of the nine items. And in a moment, I'm going to start with people in the room and let them go. But I'm going to ask the moderator in a moment to let me know how many people queued up, and that's going to determine if I'm going to have any limits on that testimony. So we will go here in the room and begin.

Please welcome your testimony on the items today.

Chair and Members Ian Padilla with the Coalition for Adequate School Housing. And my comments will be directed to the TK item that was just discussed. So it's pretty good timing. The Coalition for Adequate School Housing and School Facilities coalition does oppose the delay of the $550,000,000. Our experience is that most schools don't have existing kindergarten classrooms vacant for new TK students, even in declining enrollment areas. And that's primarily because of the move from the partial day to the full day.

So it's putting a lot more pressure on kindergarten facilities. I'll be brief. We know that there's some specialized needs for these, and we just heard about the need versus funding available. So for all those reasons, this is a whole new classroom on this facility end. So we do oppose that. We think there's some good reasons for the funding. Also, we do appreciate the discussion of the previous items, the school facility program. We know there are bills and are involved in those discussions.

So we appreciate that being discussed. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Next speaker.

Hi, I'm Laura Kerr. I'm with the charter school development center. We're a small nonprofit that's been around for 30 years. We provide financial and leadership support for charter schools across the state. Most of our members are small, so that's what I'm speaking to today. First on child nutrition, universal meals are fantastic, and we're really excited about that. But for small LEAs, it remains a substantially unfunded mandate. We have increased staffing costs, skyrocketing ingredient costs, and they're outstripping some of our increased reimbursement rates.

Many of the vendors are pulling out of this space or dropping smaller accounts altogether, leaving our members with few or no options with increasing cost. So we support rejecting the governor's dishwasher grants and recommend expanding eligibility for the infrastructure grant program, which initially didn't include folks who hadn't been participating in the national reimbursement programs. So we'd like to see that. On Prop 28, we believe it's self-executing and we don't need the legislature to get more involved.

We think that our CBOs can figure that out and then maybe come back for more direction later. We also oppose a retroactive cut to the block grant, the arts music instructional block grant, and on K-12 facilities. We think that the funding should be available to charter schools, too. And on the issue of facilities, I'll plant a seed, a broccoli seed.

The LAOs did a report in 2015 about facilities funding with more accountability and an eye towards maintenance over time of the existing investments that we've made. We really like that proposal, something that doesn't rely on grants or on bonds, which we get very little of, and yet we still are educating about 11% of the students in the state. So we're happy to share that wonderful LAO report from 2015 on facility financing. Thanks.

Okay, thank you very much. Seeing no one else in the room that wishes to comment, we'll go to the teleconference line and moderator, please queue people up, and if you would give me a hint about how many people are in line, it might dictate whether I'm going to limit the testimony.

Sure. And ladies and gentlemen, if you have a comment, please press one, then zero at this time. An operator will then give you your line number. Again, please press one, then zero. Looks like we have nine that has queued up.

Thank you very much. Then I'm going to allow everybody to have up to a minute, so please give us your name, your affiliation, and whatever you would want us to know about the budget items in the remaining part of the minute. Moderator, queue up the first caller. Thank you.

Thank you. And the first caller is line 25. Please go ahead.

Hello, this is Martha Zaragoza-Diaz, representing the California Music Educators Association. The consistent annual funding provided by Prop 28 will increase opportunities to quality arts and music education courses that are standards-based by Prudential Teachers and accessed by all students during the school day.

CMEA is calling for stronger fiscal oversight and accountability of Prop 28 funding and program, clear guidance on what is supplanting, and supplementation, clarification on the waiver process, and greater transparency regarding expenditure and data reporting of these funds is required. Additionally, CMEA believes Prop 28 is clear that LEAs are to employ certificated and classified employees to provide the arts education instruction. Lastly, we oppose the reduction to the arts music and instructional materials block grant thank you.

Thank you very much for your comments. Moderator Next Caller.

The next caller is line number 24. Please go ahead. Line 24, you are open.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and Members. Faith Conley with NextGen California, thank you for your leadership on continuing the progress made in school nutrition programs.

In addition to the ongoing funding for school meals for all, NextGen supports the Senate, including an additional 600 million for kitchen infrastructure training, 100 million for the California school Nutrition Best Practices Incentive fund, and 1.3 million for the evaluation of school meals for all. And those are all foundational for the continued success of the School Meals For All program. Thank you very much.

The next caller is line 30. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much. Moderator next Caller

Good afternoon, Chair Laird and Members. My name is Abby Halperin with the Center for Ecoliteracy. Thank you for your leadership and strong commitment to continuing the progress that has been made in school nutrition programs. With the 1.4 billion in ongoing funding for school meals for all and the increased state meal reimbursement as discussed today, there is a real need for kitchen infrastructure and staff training. There is currently no proposed investment to continue these grant programs.

In the 2023 budget, we are in support of including an additional 600 million for kitchen infrastructure and training, 100 million for the School Nutrition best Practices Fund, and 1.3 million for the evaluation of school meals for all, which are key to protecting the progress that has been made in successfully implementing California school meals for all programs. The Center for Ecoliteracy works with a network of over 100 public school districts across the state as part of our California Foods California Kids initiative.

We've heard from these nutrition directors that state investments will help realize the full potential of school meals to nourish our students, support local farmers, and benefit the planet. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Moderator next caller.

Line 27. Please go ahead.

Sorry. One moment. Line number 27, please go ahead.

Mr. Chair and Members Andrew Antwih, representing the office of Kat Taylor on the school nutrition item. We'd like to add our voice of thanks for your leadership and strong commitment on the progress that has been made on the school nutrition items that have been discussed pre early today during the subcommittee's proceedings, specifically the 1.4 billion in ongoing funding for school meals for all and for meal reimbursement.

We do add our voice to those that have already testified supporting, including an additional $600 million for necessary kitchen infrastructure and training and 100 million for fresh and nutritious meals. That has been discussed as well during the meeting today. We just also thank the members for their thoughtful debate and comments as the item was discussed. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Moderator next call.

Next caller is line 32. Please go ahead.

Hi, chair Laird and committee members. My name is Tom DeCaigny and I'm the Executive Director of Create California, formerly known as the California alliance for Arts Education. Create California advocates for high quality arts education for all students by providing policy expertise and mobilizing a statewide network of advocates and allies partners. We appreciate your hearing the landmark proposition 28 before you today. We want to encourage expedient guidance on the do not plant issue and also on the waiver clarification.

We also would like to encourage the clear guidance around the data collection, as we know that will be important to ensuring equity in the measure. And we do support the Department of Education's request for proper staffing to implement Proposition 28. We'd also encourage the Department of Education and CTC to designate the visual and performing arts as a qualified teacher shortage area to help address the potential issues with regards to the new 15,000 educators that will be funded through Proposition 28.

Finally, Create California strongly encourages the legislature to protect the arts, music and instructional materials, discretionary block grants at the original full funding level of $3.5 billion. Thank you.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members. Chris Reefe on behalf of California School Boards Association, just want to say thank you very much for your discussion and itemizing of issue number one. Wanted to really highlight and take this advantage of the opportunity to bring up AB Nano Six, which is a co sponsored bill that DSPA has to help address juvenile court and community school funding. In anticipation of the realignment of DJJ, we're going to see additional students coming into our county correctional facilities, and that will be putting a pressure on county's offices of education to provide their education and the current funding model is too volatile and unpredictable to be adequately serve those kids.

And so AB 906 is part of a joint legislative budget strategy to help address and more stabilize that funding methodology. So thank you very much for your time and again to the staff for their hard work on the issue.

Thank you very much for your comments. Moderator next caller.

Yes, good afternoon. This is John McPherson. I am a trustee for the Monterey County Board of Education, and I am also the President elect of California county boards of Education. And I am also commenting on item number one. Students referred to the juvenile court and county community schools are underserved by an exclusively attendance based funding model that is insufficient for the unique staffing and programming necessary in these schools. The current funding model disadvantages court and community schools where attendance and consequently funding is highly variable and unpredictable.

Just to give you an example, recently in the Monterey County Juvenile Hall, a high percentage of our female students were victims of human trafficking, and it is our responsibility to help these individuals become survivors versus victims, and we need the resources to be able to do that. Thanks very much for your time.

My name is Drew McAlister and I'm the board President for the San Benito county office of Ed, and I, too, am calling in regarding AB 906 and thank you for the opportunity to weigh in on this. Currently, due to the thankfully low enrollment in the program as it stands, with funding based on attendance, it doesn't generate enough revenue to cover the cost of the program, and it encroaches on the San Bernardino County Office of Ed general fund.

Our board is asking for greater and more stable funding to help juvenile court and county community schools meet the needs of some of California's most vulnerable students. This new funding would allow for the county office of ED to add and offer additional services like having a full time mental health therapist. A base funding level would allow us to more equitably serve our high need students. Thank you for your consideration.

My name is Bonnie Christensen with Berkeley Unified School District. Thank you for your leadership and strong commitment to continuing the progress that has been made in school nutrition programs with 1.4 billion in ongoing funding for school meals for all and the state meal reimbursement. In addition to the ongoing funding, I'm in support of the Senate, including an additional 600 million for kitchen infrastructure training, 100 million for the school Nutrition best practices Fund and 1.3 million for the valuation of school meals for all at BUSD.

The kitchen infrastructure funding funds have allowed us to update the menu aging equipment, add energy efficient equipment to meet the increased participation we are experiencing as a result of school meals for all. These funds are critical for us to continue to innovate, educate, train our staff and incorporate sustainable practices. This is a win for our neediest communities and a win for us all. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Moderator are there any other callers?

We do have two in queue.

Then we'll take those two and we'll be done. So thank you very much. Next caller.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members, Pamela Gibbs, commenting on item number one and representing the Los Angeles County Office of Education. First, I'd like to thank the committee for the continued support for the pupils attending juvenile court schools. It is important to note that students attending juvenile court schools could not always avail themselves of programs or funding available to other students in the TK through 12 education system. On the 10th anniversary of the Local Control Funding Formula, and in recognition of the needs of California's youth which were exposed during the pandemic, we urge your support for a funding mechanism already discussed by my colleagues at CSCA and the county boards of education.

In addition, we are addressing the needs of students who are also known as at promise students, now, based on legislation authored by Assembly Member Joan Sawyer in 2019. It is our hope that with this necessary funding, our pupils will receive the support needed to live out the goals of that legislation to achieve college and career success. Our letter on other agenda items was submitted to the Committee and as co sponsors of AB 906, we look forward to working with you. Thank you.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members. Nancy Chaires Espinoza, also with the Coalition for Adequate School Housing. I apologize, we're bifurcated today. I want to address first, I want to appreciate the committee's thoughtful discussion around kitchen infrastructure funds, especially around the specificity of the funding for commercial dishwashers.

Given the ongoing difficulty that LEAs are having recruiting and retaining school nutrition staff, it's not likely that switching to a more labor intensive process, washable trays, is going to be a feasible or scalable solution for waste reduction. So we would encourage the legislature to keep kitchen infrastructure funding as flexible as possible with respect to the various proposals for reductions to the arts, music and instructional materials, discretionary block grant cash opposes reductions to these discretionary funds, which LEAs have used and are planning to use for some facilities related projects such as shade structures, which are a high priority in many communities. Lastly, with respect to the School Facilities Program, there is already a backlog at the School Facilities Program of approximately 3.5 billion.

The next bond, which is not assured, may only be able to catch up, meaning the backlog may begin to grow again immediately. We recognize the need to reduce or delay General Fund expenditures. We would nonetheless encourage the legislature to maintain commitments if at all possible, because students don't experience delays in facilities funding as delays, by the time the funding catches up, they will have moved on.

Students experience this as their entire elementary, middle school or high school career in an outdated, overcrowded or otherwise inadequate facility, and we will follow up with the letter in more detail. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much and I appreciate all the public comment. And if you were not able to testify today, or if you were not able to give your full comments or suggestions, you can submit your comments in writing to the budget and fiscal review committee or visit our website.

Because your comments and suggestions are important to us and as we said during the hearing, we are working toward the may revise in the final budget. We want to take into account public concerns as we do that. Thanks to everyone for their patience and cooperation. We have concluded the agenda for today's hearing. The Senate Budget Subcommitee One on Education is adjourned. End.