Assembly Budget Subcommittee No. 2 on Education Finance

You. Good morning. We will get going today with an abbreviated agenda here, some miscellaneous pre k through 12 proposals, and we will start, of course, with just me up here. It's a busy day with people presenting bills on their committees. Let's begin with issue number one, the Expanded Learning Opportunities program, otherwise known as after school programs. We'll have Department of Finance, LAO CDE and the Greenfield Unified School District. Okay, Department of Finance, please begin.

Finance I will be giving an overview of the investments in the expanded Learning Opportunities program for the 2023 Governor's Budget. The 2022 budget included historic investments into the ELO program by allocating an additional 3 billion ongoing Proposition 98 General Fund to the ELO program, increasing total ongoing program funding to 4 billion in the fiscal year of 2022-23.

The Administration remains committed to this program and that is reflected in the 2023 Governor's Budget by continuing the 4 billion investment of this fiscal year consistent with the implementation plan outlined in the Governor's Budget. Starting this fiscal year, local educational agencies will be required to offer expanded learning opportunities to all low income students, English language learners, and youth in foster care.

Local educational agencies with the highest concentrations of these students will be required to offer expanded learning opportunities to all elementary students, and the budget continues to assume that full fiscal implementation of the program will take place by 25-26. Additionally, the budget makes technical changes to ensure that leas do not incur penalties greater than their ELO program entitlement. And finally, the budget clarifies law so that leas can offer 30 non school days during the summer if they choose without being penalized. This concludes my remarks and I'm happy to take questions.

Okay, thank you LAO Jackie Boracio with.

The Legislative Analyst Office. As we discussed in the overview hearing, given the proposed Prop 98 budget would create a deficit for next year, we provide various options the Legislature could consider to address this shortfall, one of those options being reducing funding for ELP, which could be achieved through various program changes such as lowering the assumed participation rate from 100% participation to something that reflects actual trends.

Lastly, as we mentioned in the past, we would also recommend the Legislature require some form of statewide data collection reporting on ELOP program outcomes such as program participation. Thank you.

Thank you CDE.

Good morning. Michael Funk, Director of the Expanded Learning Division at the California Department of Education. Just a few weeks ago we had a great hearing on chronic absenteeism where we mentioned several aspects of the expanded learning program and features that contribute to the well being of students and their increased school attendance. I just want to circle back and highlight for the record. Because this is a public forum, there still seems to be some misconceptions about what expanded learning is.

And so I just want to say that expanded learning means before school, after school, summer or intercession learning programs that focus on addressing the academic, social, emotional, and physical needs and developing the interests of students through hands on learning experiences. Learning that is active and project based learning that is collaborative, learning that is meaningful, learning that supports mastery and learning that expands horizons. What I'm trying to emphasize here is this is much more than simply keeping kids safe and off the street.

It is expanding who they are. We've been very busy. This is an overview hearing for the expanded Learning Opportunities program, and I want to just highlight that the system of support for expanded learning has been working hard to coach and support leas through this implementation. The system of support provides technical assistance, quality support, coaching, and monitoring for all expanded learning programs in California.

Some examples include the system of support hosts regularly scheduled office hours that bring in 50 to 60 leas for intense, nuanced dialogue about the implementation of the program biweekly. We just concluded the ELO Spring Academy four sessions which had over a thousand educators from across California attending, addressing several issues and concerns in geographic regions all across the state. The system of support is hosting office hours and peer communities of practice.

Even with that, leas new to expanded learning need coaching and support over a span of months to implement ELOP as intended. A webinar or simple office hours is not enough. These LEAs need support through relationship and coaching. In addition, the expanded learning division is adding ELOP to the FPM federal program monitoring instrument for 2324. But I want to emphasize that the focus of the expanded learning team is to coach local educational agencies into compliance versus catching them out of compliance. We want leas to succeed.

One of the most critical things before us is to build the capacity of expanded learning programs to support TK and K. Building the capacity of the expanded learning staff to serve and support TK and K will take an intentional effort. If you don't know, most expanded learning programs in California historically have served primarily second grade and above.

So serving TK and K and even first grade requires some very specific capacity building to make sure that the approach to designing the time and the spaces the children spend it, spend their time in is incredibly safe and appropriate for that age group. A small tiger team if you don't know what that term means, it's a term that was launched during Apollo 13.

Tiger team means going fast and deep very quickly to address building the capacity of leas to understand what resources they need for their staff to be able to serve these younger children. We're also working across various parts of the state government to clear up some licensing language regarding ELOP and also to make sure that the health and safety policies are in place to ensure the safety of children.

I'm just going to take one more minute to address a couple of the questions that were put forth on the agenda. Is the administration's final funding goal for the ELOP initiative still 5 billion? What will the final goal look like? Well, I'm not going to approach the administration's goals, but I can tell you that our vision, if this program through the arc of time was to reach 5 billion, would be for there to be one tier of funding, not two tiers.

The two tiers of funding is very complicated and nuanced. If you're 75% and above ELOP, I'm sorry, unduplicated students, you have a certain set of requirements. If you're below 75%, you have a different set of requirements and different funding levels. And districts that are on the cusp of bouncing between that level are often confused about what their requirements are.

We've also heard from many small rural school districts that the minimum apportionment of $50,000 is simply not enough, and we would like to propose a consideration of an increase of the minimum apportionment to $100,000. I reached out to a County Office of Education and have two stories from two rural districts and these are some of the phrases that I heard. We currently have one expanded learning staff Member that we Fund each afternoon.

The morning hour is covered by the cook, who is paid for 1 hour and then makes snacks for the kids in the afternoon. We arranged for our part time office manager to work in the afternoon, so there is a second adult on campus. There's a challenge with financing, so they're saying we could limit participation to just one unduplicated pupil students and stay under the ratio of one to 10 per kid for kids. But in such a small school, that would feel exclusionary.

Again, in such a small school community, a strategy to charge non unduplicated pupils would only highlight who the unduplicated pupils are and who they're not. One more district just a few brief comments that are worth noting of the challenges. No classified personnel lives near the school. The district must transport a special education student from our school to their home at 150 miles round trip.

It's the only van we have taking that van out of circulation for the expanded learning program, and the only van driver is also the custodian, who does the district's landscaping as well. I've been searching for other summer camps and programs to partner with. In my district, there is a summer camp within a mile of the district, but it is faith based that a church runs. Other camps would involve a 140 miles round trip.

Last question. Is state and regional support capacity sufficient in the short term to sunrise a universal program? In all leas, would doubling the ACES system of support be sufficient? This fiscal year's allocation of $5 million for county offices of education that are in the system of support has been very helpful. It however, additional resources are needed. Local educational agencies new to expanded learning will not get what they need to be successful from a webinar or two. More resources are needed. More resources are needed to engage more people in direct coaching and support, and I'm happy to provide any answers to questions you may have. Thank you.

Okay, thank you. Lastly, we're going to hear from an actual school district rolling out extend learning after school programs on WebEx. We have a representative from the Greenfield Unified School District, Sandra Joe Galvin. And if you can just start talking, we'll see you on the screen here.

All right, great. Thank you so much for this opportunity. Can you hear me ok?

Yes, we can go ahead.

Yes. Excellent. Well, I just want to take the opportunity to say thank you so much for allowing me this space and place to be able to share a little bit about what we're doing out in the amazing fields of the Salinas Valley in Monterey County. I am the proud Superintendent of the Greenville Union School District. I proudly wear my Greenfield badge. And I'm also the President of the Association, the California Association of Latin School Administrators and superintendents for the State of California.

So I'm really proud to be in this space to be able to talk a little bit about what we're doing. And I want to just thank CDE staff for allowing me this opportunity. So, first and foremost, the Greenfield Union School District, a little demographically about where we're located. We are located in the Salinas Valley rich agricultural land. I serve an elementary school district from preschool, transitional kindergarten all the way up to 8th grade. And I am a product of my schools.

And so I'm a very proud Superintendent that gets to walk through classrooms and my school buildings and see little girls and little boys that look just like me. I am a proud Mexican American second generation here in the country. And the students that I serve are 98% Latin, of Latin descent. 95% of them are students in poverty. And so our unduplicated count of students is 95%. But I will tell you that 1000% of them are of amazing promise.

And some of the things that I'm going to share with you here today is what we've been able to do with the ELO program in Greenfield. And so a little bit about what we've done is we have been able to utilize the funds to create just an amazing experience for our students in Greenfield. That would not be possible absent of the funding. We stretch our LCAP dollars as much as we can.

If you were to look at our LCAP, we try to get as close to kids as possible and that funding is completely expended every single year. And so the opportunity to use ELo funds to provide extended enrichment opportunities after school, that couple what we receive is amazing. We have that opportunities for them after school. And we also have Saturday camps that we have able to run, a fall camp, a winter camp, as well as a spring camp.

And then during the summertime, we offer a robust schedule of a summer camp for all of our students for a five week period. The staff that we're able to invite to participate, again fully funded through this opportunity grant, is we have visual and performing arts, we have physical education teachers, we have our teachers that are trained in STEM robotics. We're a proud district that serves students, and an all means all is our mission. And so we're able to bring robotics to every single classroom.

We're able to start very low with Lego education. And first, if any of you are familiar with first, it's for inspiration, recognition, science and technology. So we're able to do that with our students. And also with the funding, we're able to extend our social workers and our school counselors. As you know, coming out of the pandemic, the game has changed. Students in poverty have always had extra work to do as well as our staff.

So we work double, triple time to make sure that we're serving them to the best of our ability. And we always go the extra mile because we know if we don't break them free from the cycle of poverty, no one else can and no one else will. And so, as a product of my community, as just a team Member, we say on the back of our business cards, we're elite team Members dedicated to the arduous task of saving students lives.

And we don't take that lightly with the opportunities that we provide. Additional opportunities that we're able to do as we partner with our parent engagement and we're able to offer on Saturdays as well, and during the summer and after school as well. Some of our parent camps that co work together with the students and our teaching teams to be able to develop that partnership, to make sure that what happens at home is supported and extended for what we do in our classrooms.

In addition to that, we don't hire and look at the ELO program as being an additional add on. It's a seamless transition from what we do during the day. So I'm able to hire my own principals, my own assistant principals to carry that work. What happens is with the data, as you heard Mr. Funk sharing data is so critical to the success of our program.

If we can't measure the impact, we're not able to really show you that the funds are absolutely serving the purpose that they were intended for. So not only do we track our academic data with pre and post, we look at our student information system and our data and assessment system, and measure the success of this extension by reteaching some of the essential standards that we know that our students have not been able to master.

A couple of other things that we also track, as you heard, was the chronic absenteeism and attendance. Students, when they came back out of the pandemic, were not as engaged as they were when they left. And so we have to do extra things to support them and to make sure we incentivize them to come. And then the final thing that I'll share with you is also the social emotional supports that you heard Mr. Funk sharing as well.

And that's all about how they feel and how they engage in school. And so that is a survey that we give them. It's a co vitality survey with all of our counselors and social workers administered to make sure that our students feel a sense of belonging in the spaces that we're able to provide for them.

So that's a little bit about what we've been able to do, but we're just incredibly proud of what we're able to do in the Greenville Union School District because of these funds. So I'll take any questions, if you have any.

Okay, thank you. Maybe I can start out maybe either Mr. Funk or. Thank you, Superintendent Galvin, what are some of the main implementation issues that you face today, in late April of 2023? We know that this can't start overnight, and this is a several year ramp up, but kind of where are we at with snapshot today?

Yeah, so I would say the staffing issues is something that is really difficult. Our staff are tired coming out of some of the things and really just feeling overworked. And so one thing that we do is we incentivize by adding additional stipends and providing resources that they might not otherwise get in a regular type of a camp or an academy.

And so one of the obstacles that we have is to find staff that is willing to stay after school for that extending component, or to come on Saturdays, or to give up their summers to be with us. And so those are some of the obstacles that we experience. And so once they have a little bit extra cash to help support them in that mission, or the resources we purchased, some 3d printers, and kids are engaged in the robotics design.

And so we try to put our staff front and in line with some of the programming to incentivize them to do that. But that's a critical issue. The problem that you would imagine is whether kids come to school, they get so excited about what we're able to offer. I mean, honestly, it is a Disneyland experience if you think of the things that we're able to do with the robotics. There's stomp rockets, there's painting, there's adding the numeracy and literacy. And so having them come to school is not the problem. It's really about the staffing issues that are coming forth.

Mr. Funk?

Yeah. Thank you. And Xander, thank you for your testimony. It's good to see you. She's amazing and does a great job. And there are so many like her in California that are really taking this program. And in spite of the challenges, doing some incredibly innovative things, I would amplify the staffing tends to be the thing that comes up most. But I think I have seen leas that have taken approach to staffing, and they're starting to make a dent in this.

And one of the things that they're doing that has been successful is they're blending their elop dollars with their aces funding to be able to pay a competitive wage, number one, which is allowable. And number two, they're advertising these positions for individuals to make a difference, to have a purpose, and possibly be a gateway into a career in education. When you think about the expanded learning staff, they are from the communities that the families are from.

They look like the kids they serve, and they are primarily, in most cases, the primary point of contact that that family has with the school district. I know this from 20 years in the Bay Area, working with a lot of immigrant families on the west side of San Francisco. When it was time to pick up kids from after school, parents would come, and instead of just picking up their child, they would bring a letter that they got from the mail from some other point of government.

They don't understand it, so they would talk to the after school staff. Help me understand this. If you think about where we're going with community schools in California, expanded learning and their staff are a critical part because it is the primary connection to the community that these families have with their school. So in addition to the staffing challenge, I've been thinking a lot about this and preparing for a session tomorrow at a large conference.

The leas that are having the most difficulty are the local educational agencies that are getting stuck in compliance culture. This expanded learning opportunities program is incredibly flexible. I've been giving superintendents my personal cell phone, say, if you're stuck, call me. And I've had several superintendents over the last year, year and a half call me up and say, we can't do this. I don't have any idea what to do, and we're just going to give the money back.

And in those cases, I have said two years ago when you said, if I only had more money, I would do blank, what did you say? And they would say, well, we would do this. I said, well, you can do that. We can. Yeah, you can. Edcode is permissive. If it doesn't say you can't, you can. But our school district staff are so used to thinking about keeping things in silos and categories and not mixing kids from different funding sources.

And if it doesn't say we can, then we might not be able to. So there is a culture of, if I'm not clear that I can do this, I'm going to say no. To manage risk, I think the biggest challenge before us is helping our local educational leaders understand what's possible with this funding and what's possible that they can do that their families need and deserve that they've never been able to do before.

My experience is that happens in conversation with educational leaders, not in a memo from the Department of Ed. We're committed to have those conversations. We are having those conversations. And I have seen educational leaders across the state move out of the fear of compliance culture into the possibilities of what's available for their families and kids.

Okay. Thank you. Assembly Member Dahle, good morning.

Good morning.

So, Mr. Funk, I have a question about. I represent very rural school districts.

I know you do.

I think I say that every time I start to speak. So the base grant of 50,000, what is the student enrollment? How is that base?

If you were moving now you're taking me into the weeds. I can't answer that question. It's a formula that our school fiscal services division uses. Maybe some of the panel can help me out.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Edgar Cabral with the LAO. So there's a per student grant amount. I believe it's about 2750 per student. And so essentially, the way the formula works is it's $2,750 essentially for every, based on the attendance of your low income El students. So we look at what that formula spits out, and if that's less than 50,000, then you get the 50,000 instead. If it's higher than that, then you get the higher amount. So it's really for the. I haven't figured out what the point is where you get there, but it's usually relatively small school districts that are getting that 50,000 grant.

I'd say that's probably all of my schools. Okay. Do we know what the amount would be to move all of those small schools into the $100,000 base? Do we know what?

We don't, but I've made a request internally at the Department to run those numbers and be able to bring that back.

Okay. I appreciate it.

If you could let honestly in a $4 billion program, hopefully, ideally moving to 5 billion, which is the vision moving these small districts from, can't make a huge difference in these districts that are getting large apportionments.

But it would open up so many opportunities for program.

It would be a game changer for your districts to be able to double the funding. And like I said in my comments, sometimes it's the Superintendent that's also the bus driver.

I was smiling and shaking my head during all those comments.

So I think from an equity perspective, making this policy change to double the funding for the minimum apportionment for these small districts would be one of the most significant moves we could make in this next fiscal year to really change that reality.

Thank you.

Okay. Assemblymember Muratsuschi.

Yes.

May I add.

Go ahead.

So small school districts, and since it's your area, you already know this, but in California we have over 1000 school districts, and some of my best friends are smalls. And California we have 60% of our districts are smalls. So anywhere from 100 students to 1100. And so the increase of what you're discussing would be incredibly significant.

And in my county, we go to all of our Superintendent meetings there in Monterey County, and there are quite a few in our rural areas that would be absolutely just thrilled to have those fundings because right now what they're doing is they're having to co kind of hire a science teacher or co hire a vapa teacher or co hire a physical education teacher just to be able to get those services to the students in their communities.

And then they only get it like a couple of days a week. And so that significance would be huge. I'd vote for even more than over 100,000, because it's really difficult for them to do and make such an impact, but definitely here to advocate for our small school districts.

Okay. Thank you, Assemblymember Muratsuschi

Thank you. First of all, Mr. Chair, I apologize for being late, and please forgive me if I ask questions that may have been discussed already, but I wanted to see if any of the panelists. I understand that Elop was modeled after the ACS program. First of all. So acs, according to CDE 539, school districts that receive ELOP funding, did not have a history of receiving ACS. Does that sound familiar?

Yes.

So I think we have about 1000 districts. So more than half of districts had to come up with a new model for Elab. Is that correct?

Okay. For more than half of the school districts where they've had to just start from scratch, essentially. Is that.

That's correct.

Yes.

Well, statewide, I know it's maybe too early. I know the chair has a Bill to gather data to try to assess the effectiveness and the success of the ELA program. But what are the best early or anec.al evidence of the success that the ELA program is making a difference?

Well, you're correct, Assembly Member, we do not have any concrete data. The first data collection effort will be in July of this year because the education code calls for the districts to report on their expenditures for the 2122 apportionment at the end of this fiscal year. So we're currently developing and will deploy in June a report that the districts will submit to us with how much money they've spent out of the 21-22 apportionment.

But we're also asking some questions at the end of that survey to try to figure out who they've partnered with, what types of programs they're running. So we'll have some data in a few. Well, we'll start collecting that data in a few months.

Okay.

Anec.ally, I can tell you, I mean, your instincts are correct to talk about those districts that have never had aces or 21st century funding in the past. If you imagine a school administrator who, they know school well, they understand what happens in the periods when the bell rings, the curriculum, the assessments, the finance. And then you tell them, zero, and now we're going to ask you to program 9 hours on 30 non school days, and there's no curriculum, there's no guidance in what to do.

It causes great anxiety with these administrators. And the only way we've been able to get them to move past this is to connect them with their peers and connect them with our staff that have expertise in expanded learning. We tried to make it easy because the ACA's work plan is based on the quality standards for expanded learning, which describes in detail this is what a program looks like when there's youth, voice and leadership, when there's hands on, engaging learning.

This is what staff do in a program that has those qualities. This is what children experience when they're in a program. We've written all that out. It's been in place since 2014, and it's a standard for our aces and 21st century programs. When ELOP was modeled after the ACES program and the districts were required to develop a work plan, we based it entirely on the quality standards for expanded learning modeled after the ACES program.

We attached a workbook for the quality standards, which basically said, this is what the program looks like if you do these things. But even with that scripting and that kind of advice, most of the success, anec.ally, as you asked for, is when a Superintendent, we attend the small school district Association conference and we gather superintendents together to sit in the circle. And a Superintendent who is struggling sits next to a Superintendent like Superintendent Galvin and asks questions.

And when they have a chance to see what others have done, they get some ideas. I'm sure you don't tune in, but I do fireside chats about every two weeks. We've done about 52, and we record these videos and put them out on a video blog, and we bring on superintendents and community based organizations for the sole purpose of having them talk about how they've implemented the program, what their challenges have been, and what a difference it's making in their families.

The overwhelming response we get is hearing about this Superintendent and what they did has given me the ideas for me to move forward. So I'm convinced if we keep building the capacity of the system for people to talk to each other, for our staff to be out there on site, on the ground, and for us to lift up examples of where this is doing well, we're going to see a full and robust implementation of this program like we're seeing in most places.

I would say by and large, large districts and medium districts have done very well because they've all had aces in 21st century before in the past. I think the biggest challenge before us are the small districts.

Question for Lao. I remember in the beginning of this year we had an informational hearing where the State Board of Education President, Linda Darling Hammond pointed to ELOP as the reason why LAUSD actually, I believe that they actually increased their proficiency scores, and I'm not sure how they can draw that conclusion based on the one year of data that they may have. But have you seen similar data that would support early signs of success of the ELA program?

Editor Cabral with the LAO, we haven't seen anything that you're hearing about. The program is anec.al because we have literally no data at the state level right now about ELOP. In General, what I can say about expanded learning programs more broadly, I think my understanding of the research on what that finds is in General, what these programs, the evidence shows that they can be helpful, particularly for student engagement.

So, for example, helping students attend regularly school, if they're excited about something that's going on in an after school program, they feel more connected to the school, they may be more likely to attend. And then obviously that means they're there for learning. So that's our understanding of what, if you're thinking about more broadly, what should we expect from this program? That's, I think the goal is that it leads to that.

And obviously being in the classroom more frequently also means you potentially then can have an effect on student test scores. But in terms of any specific information on what's going on right now in the field, I think we don't have any good sense of, we don't have enough information on any kind of particular success stories.

So going back to you, Mr. Funk, you talked about how the school district example that you gave earlier, that they put a cook in the after school program in order to meet the one to 10 teacher or adult to student ratio. To me, when I hear about ELOP, I'm thinking literacy coaches, tutors, school counselors, I'm not thinking about cooking the classroom just to meet the ratio.

But based on your conversation about how often this is often the only contact with an adult that families and students mean, are you saying that that in and of itself is part of the value of having that adult in the classroom?

Well, we know that learning is social emotional. Linda Darlene Hamming co Chaired the Aspen Institute's social emotional academic task force a couple years ago. So what we do know is while a literacy coach might be necessary for some students who have specific challenges with decoding words or understanding the phonetic approach to reading, they're just not getting it otherwise. What we know, without a doubt, is that unless students are supported socially and emotionally, they're not going to learn.

And so while it might not be ideal to have the cook supervising the first hour in the morning, I can't think of a more socially, emotionally nurturing environment than having a cook help welcome my child to school and be supportive. So in some of these settings, as you know, if you don't have other options, having a caring adult in the classroom is what you've got, and that's where you've got to start. Is it the intent?

I've recently been personally experienced the value of a high quality literacy tutor in our family that whatever was happening during the school day, well intentioned, well designed, full of care and love, wasn't producing the academic results and the reading results that we needed.

So we had to find a literacy specialist to help in districts and in geographic areas where there are resources, institutions to partner with programs, that's exactly what this program needs to do, and should do, is to bring in high quality tutoring to students that aren't getting exactly what they need from the General education system. So I think it's a situation that in geographic areas where there's opportunities for partnership, we are seeing what you're describing, Assembly Member. We're seeing those academic interventions as part of this.

We're seeing expanded learning providers who have really developed expertise in literacy coaching, science, of reading, math, science, STEM. So it is what is happening and it's what is the ideal. But the baseline is supporting our children with caring adults in relationships and doing the best we can academically. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you, Assembly Member Alvarez.

Thank you. I have more of a basic question. We've had a lot of hearings on a lot of programs, and I just wanted to have clear understanding. The Expanded Learning Opportunities program, is that available to all students or only the students for which districts receive funding?

So every local educational agency in California receives an apportionment automatically. And if a district is 75% unduplicated students or above, then the requirement for the LEA is to offer the program to all students, regardless of income. All students are to be offered the program and they're required to provide access to any student whose parent or guardian requests access. And by access, the education code defines that as enrollment.

Let me make sure I got that second part right. If someone requests it, then they must be provided even if they're not at a 75%.

That is correct. If the district is 75% and above. If the district is below 75%, the requirement is for the district to offer the program to all unduplicated students and provide access to any unduplicated student that requests access. This is why assemblymember, in my vision of what this program could be fully funded is it is for all students at every school when fully funded and we don't have that tier between the two.

Imagine if you're at 74%, right, and you get less money and you're only required to offer it unduplicated and you're 76% and you're then required to offer to all students. It doesn't make a lot of sense to leas on the ground that arbitrary division.

And what happens when it changes from one year to the next?

You go from an LEA is guaranteed if you're above 75% and above an LEA is guaranteed that rate for three years.

Okay.

Even if they drop below after three years, if they still stay below 75, then they're dropped to that second tier. At any time that district pops above 75%, they're automatically back in the top tier.

Okay, thank you.

Okay. Thank you. This is one of the most significant things we've done in education the last couple years, and I know it's going to take time to implement it, just like universal TK community schools, universal school meals, but keep at it. And I'm glad we're hearing from a small district in the Spleenis Valley as well there in Greenfield. And yes, I have been to Greenfield in my life. Some campaign way back in the day, knocking on doors. Thank you for your participation today.

This is an informational item. Hold it open. Issue number two, school facility program.

Okay, please begin. Department of Finance.

Morning chair and Members, Michelle Nguyen with the Department of Finance. I'm also joined by my colleague Randy Katz, who is in the audience in case there are any questions related to the Governor's Budget proposal for capital outlay projects related for the state special schools the school facility program, also known as 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, like 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 4.31 billion in one time General Fund to provide support for school facilities and extend the SFP for a multi year period when a future school bond can be placed on the ballot.

Of that 4.3 billion, 1.3 billion was appropriated for fiscal year 20232.1 billion was intended to be appropriated for 202324 and 875,000,000 is intended to be appropriated for 202425. The Governor's Budget proposes to reduce the planned investment for 2023-24 by 100 million onetime General Fund as part of a roughly 22.5 billion budget solution package, which included a variety of reductions, delays and Fund shifts across the state budget.

The proposed Governor's Budget action brings the proposed amount for the budget year from 2.1 billion to 2 billion. 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 the original timeline, nor will it reduce the amount of funding that can be processed every month by the State Allocation Board.

Finally, the Governor's Budget, as amended by the April 1 finance letter, includes General Fund support netting to 5.2 million for three continuing state special school capital outlay projects, the Fremont Middle School Activity center, the Riverside Athletic complex replacement and the Riverside Modular Building Demolition and a reappropriation of 396,000 General Fund for the Fremont perimeter security fencing and with that, thank you. Happy to take any questions that you have.

Thank you LAO good morning.

Sara Cortez LAO. With regard to the. State special schools proposals, we don't have any comments at this time, but we're still reviewing those proposals so we can connect with staff if we do end up having concerns with regard to the early education facilities. So the Governor's Budget proposes delaying 550,000,000 for early education facilities for one year, and we mentioned this during the universal TK hearing, but when we first started that these delays do seem reasonable given the state's budget problem, but based augmentations for this facility program have been oversubscribed. The Legislature could provide some amount of funds or reevaluate next year based on the budget condition. And that concludes my remarks. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you. Office of Public School Construction.

Good morning. Barbara Kampmeinert with the Office of Public School Construction. The Office of Public School Construction serves as staff to the state Allocation board and administers the school facility program. Since 1998, 42 billion has been made available through the voter approved bonds, along with about 1.4 billion so far in General Fund proceeds. We have transitioned over to primarily using the General Fund proceeds to make apportionments, and we are still working through some of the cash that has been made available through the bond sale proceeds.

On average, we process approximately 125,000,000 per month, or 1.5 billion in funding each year. And speaking specifically to the proposal to reduce the 2324 General Fund amount for the SFP from the 2.1 billion to 2 billion, OPSE does not believe that this will impact the estimated time frame for which the funding is intended.

The 2 billion, along with the 875,000,000 proposed for the 2425 budget year, will still last through the end of the 24 calendar year, and this is primarily due to the fluctuations in the estimated requests from projects and the amounts that end up being funded ultimately. In addition, as we're going through the processing of applications, there are projects that fall off. So 100 million is not going to have a large impact on the timeline for those reasons. And so with that, this concludes my remarks, and I'd be happy to address any questions.

Okay, thank you. Questions? I know we have a Member that's authoring a school facilities measure. Maybe you have some thoughts on this. Mr. Muratsuchi.

Thank you very much. First of all, a question from the Committee staff. So, just to clarify, to make sure that I heard you correctly, the January budget proposal is projected to be sufficient for full funding for the SFP through 2024?

Yes.

Okay. So how many and what type of schools are projected to be left on the unfunded approval list based on the January budget proposal?

So on the January budget proposal. That's kind of a tricky question. So right now, we've moved all the projects over for the unfunded list onto our workload list in alignment with the funds that we have right now. So once the budget is decided. So if there's 2 billion there, it is going to take care of about 2 billion of what we have right now, about 3.6 billion in applications received beyond bond authority. And that's just over 900 projects. Is that 3.6 billion?

So the 2 billion will move over to our workload list once the budget is approved. So it leaves about 1.6 on the applications received beyond bond authority list. I can get you that project count breakdown, but largely the projects that we have right now, there's 690 in modernization requests and there's 231 projects that are in new construction requests. But I'd have to get you that information on what that 2 billion breakdown is specifically. So about 1.6 after accounting for the 2 billion.

Okay. Do you have a sense or an estimate in terms of. The chair talked about how the ELA program as well as transitional kindergarten is the biggest, most ambitious initiatives in k through 12 education in recent years. But we're concerned that the question of whether we're going to have the facilities adequate to meet these ambitious initiatives. What is your office's sense in terms of the unmet need? The unfunded need, based on the governor's January budget proposal, specifically as it relates to early childhood education.

I'm not sure. We have an estimate of that because we know what we have requested from school districts and we know what projects we have in house. The school facility program does allow districts to use those funds for TK classrooms as well as full day kindergarten classrooms. With respect to the funding specific to the preschool, TK and full day kindergarten classrooms, we are actually in the middle of a filing round for that. So we were oversubscribed. We had about 360,000,000 available from prior proceeds, and there were about just under 1.5 billion in requests for that funding.

You had 360,000,000 to allocate and you had 1.5 billion in applications in requests.

And that was across the preschool, the TK, and the full day kindergarten classrooms.

Okay. Are there regions of the states or types of school districts, like urban, suburban or rural, that will be disproportionately impacted if the proposed funding is insufficient, like the unmet need that you're seeing from the funding available versus the applications that are coming in? Do you have a General sense as to who has the greatest unmet needs.

Specific to the school facility program or to the preschool, TK and full day kindergarten?

Let's start with the School Facilities Program overall, and then I'll follow up with the early childhood preschool TK.

I would say with the 100 million reduction for the school facility program, that that's not necessarily going to target any particular area. So the school facility program works on a first in, first out system. So whoever is, it's in date order received from when a school district submitted the application. So wherever we happen to run out of money, then the next school district at the end of the day would be impacted by that.

But it's difficult to target until we get closer to exhaustion of the funds. We do prioritize health and safety projects in the school facility program, so those always go to the top of the list. So those are not in date order received. So health and safety projects will always take priority so those get taken care of.

Historically, we have seen that smaller school districts have a more difficult time with the first in, first out mechanism, but that's not tied specifically to the 100 million with respect to the other program, the preschool, TK and full day Kinder program. The statute does prioritize districts that cannot make the local matching share, so they're called financial hardship districts. And then also it does look at districts percentage of students that qualify for free and reduced price meals.

So we tend to see our funding go in order with that. So you're going to see those districts with the higher FRPM percentages and the districts that qualify for financial hardship receiving the funding. And we do get a mix of districts across the state applying for the funds. But who gets funded is driven by what the statute prioritizes.

I mean, I heard what you're saying in terms of your first in, first out model of funding as well as prioritizing facilities with health and safety issues. But my question is, do you have a sense on where the overall big picture statewide, where the greatest unfunded or lack of funding, do you see in terms of facilities, where are the greatest needs? Urban, rural, suburban?

Yeah. So we can look historically on what's been funded, but we don't have a comprehensive way to determine need because districts are not required to report capacity or enrollment information to us unless they are submitting an application for the program. So we're dealing with the universe of applications that have come to us. So we can certainly provide the Committee with the historical information. We actually include that on a regular basis in our state allocation board agendas and we can run specific reports to that.

So we have data on what's been funded, but on the need that would be a little less clear based on what is shared with our office.

That's right. You're reminding me that my staff told me that we don't have a survey of the school facilities needs statewide. And so you're saying that we're relying on the applications to give us a sense as to who was. Yeah. Okay. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you, Assembly Member Dahle.

I have a follow up about that. So we don't know what the need for our schools, like in General across the state.

We don't have, we know what's been.

Requested, so we know which applications have been submitted to us. We would have a sense of what school districts have previously established for modernization eligibility, but it's not necessarily current because it's an optional program. So districts will request the funding, and then it's at that time point that they tell us what their capacity is. So we will have a good deal of data, but we don't have the complete picture.

Could you walk me just quickly through the application process? Because as I think about my small schools and my superintendents who might be the principal as well as the van driver, at the end of the day, what kind of a process is it for them to say the school just take the TK facilities needing to be upgraded, what is the process for them to apply for? Those might not be on their first priority list because they have to run their schools. So what is the process?

Yeah, great question. So it looks a little bit different whether we're looking at the TK program or the school facility program. So if we're looking at TK through the TK program, that program actually was designed to be very quick and easy for a district to apply because you don't know if you're getting the funding and who that the program targets. Districts may not be able to spend a lot of dollars to design plans, et cetera, if they don't know that the money is coming.

So the first application process, they submit a site map for what the school site looks like, and they identify where their kindergarten classrooms are located. They provide the enrollment at the site, and they let us know kind of what the vision is for, what they would like to build. Do they want to add two classrooms? Do they want to add one classroom? So they give us an idea of what the project scope would be. So they submit that information.

If they're requesting the financial hardship status, the priority points for that, then they would provide some information at a certain time point, they'll provide some information about their financials, basically what they have available to contribute towards the project. So if they have any facilities funding, they share that information. So, like their bank account balances, basically. And then they would let us know the percentage of students they had that received the free and reduced price meals. So we can help rank that.

So that application comes in, and we review that. And in partnership with the Department of Education, we look to see how many title five compliant kindergarten classrooms they do have available to see what the need is for those classrooms. And then if they're successful in attaining enough points to be within the funding levels, then they get basically a reservation of funding, and then they have a time period after they know they've secured the funds.

They have 12 months to work with the State Architect and the Department of Education to design and with their architect to design the project so they know they have the money before they're spending dollars on construction drawings. So that's the TK process through that specific program. If they're going through the school facility program to access those funds, it's a bit different. We have our two main programs, the new construction program and the modernization program.

So that's going to, for many small school districts, they're looking potentially at modernization. If they're experiencing growth, then they would look at new construction. But new construction is looking at your projected enrollment over the next five or 10 years to see if you have enough classrooms to meet the need for that enrollment. So the simple way they do that is to count their classrooms, put some historical enrollment information into a tool or a form that we have available and see what that spits out.

And if they have more kids than they have classrooms, then they potentially qualify for new construction eligibility for modernization. It's looking at existing enrollment and the classrooms that they have that are over 25 years of age, if permanent construction, and over 20 years of age, if portable construction. So the facility age drives a lot of the eligibility for modernization. So they can look and see if they have modernization eligibility. Can they, then maybe they don't have a lot of extra enrollment.

Can they take that modernization eligibility, redesign the classrooms into kindergarten purposes? Or maybe they've got extra classrooms, take three, make two classrooms that meet the kindergarten size. And we do offer outreach, and we have done several outreach initiatives specifically to the small school districts because we know as an office that they may have less knowledge about the program existing and how to participate.

So actually, back when the last bond passed, we did about, I think it was about an 18 month campaign to try to reach out specifically to the smalls to try to get them aware of the program and let them know what their options might be. So if you have districts that are interested, we're happy to assist.

Okay, further questions, just one question related to either this or a potential facility bond. Obviously, all goes through the Office of Public School Construction. Do we have enough resources to address our needs for facilities for our youngest learners from universal transitional kindergarten or other pre k programs that are run by leas on campus.

I can take that one. And if you have anything to add, please feel free. As has been discussed in this Committee, we do anticipate there will be a school bond discussion at some point between the Administration and the Legislature. As mentioned, the remaining Proposition 51 bond funds and the Budget Act Investment approved last year should allow for processing of those facilities fundings until the end of 2024, even with the Governor's Budget proposed action.

As for what a future bond will look like, I'll just note that Assembly Bill 48, which was the Bill that was passed in 2019 and eventually became Proposition 13 and in 2020, it did not include a specific set aside for UPK facilities funding. But I will note recent budgets have approved over 1.1 billion in one time General Fund for the California Preschool Transitional Kindergarten full day kindergarten program, though, as my colleague at OPSC noted, there was demand exceeding that $1.1 billion.

And in addition to reiterate again what my colleagues stated, kindergarten classrooms can be constructed under the current school facility program. But I think this will be an ongoing.

But with the money delayed in January, is that at all concerning, that there won't be enough resources to meet demand? I guess that's kind of the issue, too. Yeah, we're not concerned. The proposed delay, we haven't approved it yet. With the proposed delay, is that going to lead to school districts applying and trying to get resources to do their work and not receive them and potentially stymie their ability to implement universal TK?

Yeah, we certainly understand that the proposed delay will create challenges for school districts. But as you know, that delay was proposed due to the budget and revenue outlook that we are seeing at the Governor's Budget. But yes, we certainly understand that it may cause challenges. I understand that the LAO may have, there may have been some data that the LAO mentioned on the previous.

Sarah Cortez Lao I'll just highlight that as part of the planning and implementation grants, there was reports submitted by 829 school districts. In these reports, 75% of school districts reported having adequate space to meet projected enrollment for TK students. But we do also note that the early education facilities grant has been oversubscribed. So it is at the Legislature's discretion if they want to Fund the provide additional funds for the grant or reevaluate next year based on the state's budget condition.

Okay, thank you. No further questions here. We'll hold this issue open. Issue number three, California School Finance Authority.

Michelle Nguyen, again with the Department of Finance. The California School Finance Authority, otherwise known as CSFA, provides facilities and working capital financing to school districts, community college districts, th county offices of education and charter schools. The Charter School Facility grant program, which is implemented by CSFA, largely provides Proposition 98 General Fund grants to assist charter schools with rent and lease costs. This program targets schools and communities with significant populations of economically disadvantaged students.

The 2022 Budget act reached an agreement to provide 30 million one time Proposition 98 General Fund per year for two years, those two years being 22-23 and 2023-24 to support eligible facilities costs for the charter school Facility grant program.

These onetime funds may be used by eligible charter schools for costs associated with remodeling buildings, deferred maintenance, site improvements, initially installing or extending service systems, and other built in equipment and facility modifications to mitigate the spread of Covid-19 the 2023-24 Governor's Budget proposed the second year of the 30 million one time Proposition 98 General Fund investment to support these eligible facilities costs, as was consistent with the 2022 Budget act agreement between the Legislature and the Administration.

In addition, the Governor's Budget proposes two workload adjustments for the charter school Facility grant program. The first is 4.9 million Proposition 98 General Fund to support an 8.13% cost of living adjustment, which is a statutory requirement, and the second is 4.3 million ongoing Proposition 98 General Fund to support revised lease cost estimates. These workload adjustments are consistent with adjustments that have been made in recent budgets.

The Governor's Budget also proposes 351,000 General Fund and two new positions for CSFA to accommodate increased workload for the charter school facility grant program due to growth in program funding over the past several years. Finally, the governance budget proposes trailer Bill Language to authorize Basic Aid Districts who are primarily funded with local revenue to enter into what's called a county intercept program with their county fiscal officer and CSFA.

This expands CSFA's current intercept mechanism, which allows CSFA to provide Low cost financing to k 14 schools in exchange for intercepting state revenues. Thank you. Happy to answer any questions you may have.

Okay, thank you. Next speaker, please.

Edgar Cabral with the LAO. In terms of the $30 million proposal, we don't have any concerns with the proposal. It's a continuation of the agreement from last year's budget and then we don't have any specific comments on any of the on the proposed staff for CFA. Thank you.

Good morning Members and chair Mccarty. My name is Katrina Johantgen. For over 20 years, I've served as the Executive Director of the California School Finance Authority. Just for reference, the authority was created back in 1985 was created back in 1985 to serve school district community college districts as well as County Office of Education. The authority currently administers over 12 active federal and state programs serving all leas throughout the state. Thank you for the opportunity to discuss the governor's January budget proposals relevant to CSFA.

We want to reiterate our support for the following items in the Governor's Budget the county level intercept language, the COLA funding adjustment of 8.13% under the charter School Stability grant program, augmentation to the program team of two AGPA positions, and fulfilling the $30 million commitment for other costs under the program. We also wanted to highlight the findings of the report 2022110 entitled Charter School Facility Grant Program and Conduit Financing program conducted by the California State Auditor.

Given that the audit was mentioned throughout the issue analysis, the audit found that the programs are generally achieving their purpose of increasing charter schools access to facility funding. The audit highlights three key program benefits. Program funding correlates with fewer school closures the Auditor found that closure rate was double for charter schools not participating in the program. Program funding is assisting the state in addressing classroom space needs and the program makes more funding available for students and directs more funding to the classroom.

Ryan Story, our manager one will now provide an overview of this charter school facility grant program and then we will be available to answer questions. We hope the Committee supports the department's proposed funding increases and staff augmentation to ensure the timely and effective Administration of this critical program. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good morning everybody. Let's get that a little closer. Sorry. My name is Ryan Story. I'm the manager one overseeing the charter school facility grant program. I will call it SB 740 as that's kind of what we call it at the staff level and kind of as a colloquial term for the program as it's an establishing Bill back in 2001. I've been with CSFA since 2016 and been with SB 740 since 2020. The program was transferred over to the authority, per Governor Brown in 2013-14.

The program currently assists about 30% of California charter schools at its current level, and on average these schools have an average FRPM percentage greater than 70%. To explain how awards are capped, to make sure that it's the proper use of state funds, it's capped in two methods. The first is an overall Ada cap, which is determined by the Department of Finance that is adjusted with COLA since 2017-18 and that it's an ultimate cap on awards.

So schools, their ADA, which is right now 1420, that is the absolute maximum they can receive as an award for this program that is also matched with rent costs that are capped in a few different ways. Rent costs. If there is a multi year lease that we've already had in the program reviewed, it's capped by the COLA increase as determined by DOF. And then that would, no matter what the actual rent agreement says, it will be the previous year's eligible rent times the COLA percentage.

Or if it's a new facility agreement, we go ahead and get a fair market value from authorized appraisal and use that to cap the award as well. And then it'll enter into the COLA cap as it goes through its life in the program itself.

That rent cap itself is also capped at 75%, and then we take the Ada rate and the cap at 75% of eligible rent, and whichever one is less is the award that the school will be granted to explain kind of how this works with other costs. Schools are not allowed to just freely submit other costs and get unlimited reimbursement. It is only built into the 75% rent cost. So right now, we did an analysis.

About 50% of the current applicants in the 202223 funding round will be eligible for other costs, with an estimated average of about 190,000 per school. So we do get a lot of submissions. One year we've had, I think it was 100 million in submission and the actual reimbursement was 13 million. And that was 2016-17. So we rarely hit the actual request. We'll send in most documents, some of them we have to reject.

As Michelle explained that the certain reimbursement depends on whether or not it's eligible community was it common area maintenance is eligible Covid mitigation and janitorial supplies, for example, things that help with facility related operation, and those are all reviewed by staff. We're currently expecting about 100,000 documents to review to make sure that everything is approved and eligible for reimbursement. So that is the actual funding formula behind the program. And I do apologize. It's long winded. It's a very complex program.

Beyond that, there's eligibility benchmarks that schools must achieve in order to get funding. First and foremost, they must be serving student population that has an FRPM percentage of 55% or greater or give preference. A vast majority of school and preference in their charter petition has to be approved by the authorizer and actually inside their charter petition, a vast majority of applicants over the last five years, around 80%, rely on their own student population to meet eligibility.

Additionally, schools must have a good standing confirmation by their authorizer. Schools also must pass a legal status review by the state treasurer office's legal counsel. Schools must provide executed lease agreements and board information prior to any type of awarding of funds, including the review of those little atypical from how a traditional grant goes.

We review the documents, develop eligibility, and then parse out the grant in three disbursements, including a secondary review before the last to match Ada numbers, and also to see if there's any changes in calculation or if the rents. Maybe schools haven't realized their rents for whatever reason. Conflict of interest also, as this is something that's mentioned in the audit, we're currently working with the FPPC. We do have a thorough conflict of interest process.

It was developed in 2013 prior to the passage of SB 126, which brought charter schools into government code 1090 as the audit dove into. So we're working with FPPC to revise our current conflict of interest regulations. The loan change they want us to add is the CMO and the nonprofit CMO and support subsidiaries into the related party review. It's about a third of applicants, so they would be included in the review.

That would be the only technical change that was requested by the audit, just to be able to go through and request documents on the front end and assume they are related parties per our definition. And then for our for profit review, which was mentioned also in the audit, we are collecting documentation this year instead of just certification. We've already informed schools, per our webinar, that we'll be requiring documentation.

Additionally, we are developing independent verification so we can confirm nonprofit status in areas where we need that secondary confirmation. And last but not least, we have schools sign a certification which gives us the ability to recoup funds if we find any violations and regulations that were hidden from us or violations in government code 1090. Again, do apologize. A very dense there. So any questions, please, I'd be more than glad to answer. Thank you.

Okay, Mr. Alvarez, thank you.

I appreciate that last report in particular. Those are where my questions are given my attention a lot on audits these days. So I understand the 1090 issue. And you stated that the FPPC is going to be creating a form. Is that what you said? Or what is the FPPC doing to address the 1090 issue?

Yeah. So this state audit asked that we work with the FPPC to develop a different process for evaluating charter schools that apply to the charter school facility program. Back when SB 126 passed just back up. In 13-14, when we took over program Administration, we developed a robust set of regulations, and the issue of conflict of interest came up. We gave schools a year.

We said in 14-15, we're going to start this robust evaluation of conflict of interest, because, as you know, there was no umbrella law that said all charters are subject to one particular law as it related to conflict of interest. So when SB 126 passed in 2020, when it was effective, we really should have looked at our regs then and said, should we even be looking at this? Because now all charters are subject to 1090. So the Auditor asked that we work with the FPPC.

We've sent a formal advice letter to the FPPC, and we have a call with them tomorrow. As you may or may not know, the FPPC may say, we're not going to kind of draft a procedure for you because that's really in their lane.

So this would either be a procedure or potentially something that we'd have to address in the Legislature, depending on how this call goes tomorrow.

I don't mean, honestly, we don't know how.

We'll just hold that.

So the FPPC has always been, they've always been the enforcement agency as it relates to conflict of interest. So we've never heard from the FPPC to not grant a grant to a particular.

So maybe I'll just follow up or ask you to follow up after your call tomorrow. But the other one, that was sort of news to me and would like clarity, because I'm concerned, hopefully it's just because of the lack of clarity here. When a charter school ceases to operate, they can dispose of the property that perhaps a subsidiary of theirs was then leasing to the charter school. Am I following that already? Correctly?

Okay. And then they can dispose of it, and they potentially, quite likely utilize public dollars, including this program, potentially, to build these facilities or to enhance these facilities or modernize these facilities. But once they dispose of them or once disposition comes one, it sounds like the Attorney General's Office is one, not really being notified, but two in an instance or 10 instances, it wasn't really clear what had happened after the charter school left.

So my concern, and again, perhaps it's just a lack of understanding, is that we're utilizing public dollars to allow entities to build facilities, and then they're disposing of them, potentially selling them, I guess, whether they're profit or nonprofit, basically using taxpayer dollars that were utilized before to get these facilities built. What am I getting wrong about that?

So for a charter to get built. Let's hypothetical. They issue conduit bonds. Conduit bonds were mentioned in the audit. So the investor fronts 100% of the project cost to build a facility. The charter then enters into a lease agreement and applies for SB 740 to get an annual subsidy toward an annual payment on the facility. If the charter ceases operation and is sold, the minute the charter ceases operation, they're no longer getting SB 740. You have to be in operation. Sure.

So, in terms of any disposition of assets that's mentioned in a charter petition, it's an agreement with the charter and the authorizer. What happens when the charter closes, and how their assets. What happens to those facilities?

Okay, so it is possible then that the assets get sold, and disbursement of the funds of whatever sale then gets distributed to a board.

I'm not an expert in charter boards, quite frankly. I know there is nonprofit law that guides what happens to an asset and what happens to if there's any profit. If something were financed, let's say bonds were issued, the investor in the bonds would be made whole if a charter closed and an asset was.

I think. I think part of this also speaks to kind of like the stitched together kind of way that California's education system is with charters being public entities, but having this confusing elements to them, such as facilities, that kind of have to go into this description. From my understanding with the audit not involved in closeouts.

What we typically hear about with closeouts is that it's an agreement, and what we know is an agreement between the district and the charter when it is originally authorized through its charter petition. And then those specifics are between the authorizer, obviously, any type of state enforcement, and the charter school themselves. Far as the interesting thing about the charter school, we have a large fact pattern of schools in our program that rent from private landlords.

And so when that charter school closes, they don't have any type of input in that private facility itself, because it's not their property. So that's kind of also an element that exists in a lot of charter schools in the program itself as well.

And then I think to speak about the asset, the concern about program funds, at least from the program Administration side of it, in a single year grant, we're looking at whether or not they were in operation that year, met the eligibility requirements, and that that rent was extend, was properly done through a lease agreement. And if we occasional for month to month, we ask for canceled checks or some type of proof of payment.

And once that year is done, barring any type of violation in the agreements or violation. Let's say somebody found out they violated 1090 or something like that. We currently don't have a thought justification to go ahead and take that money back to then redistribute it to schools, which may include the school that was closed because if they were eligible that year, they technically would get the funding and it would be broken up between 400 schools plus depending on it.

So not that there's any type of prohibition to the notion of the concern of taxpayer funds, just from a programmatic side, we have a hard time wrapping our minds around, I guess, the usefulness in having it come back to us and the notion of this grant being something beyond the single year kind of period, barring some type of, hey, they've been violating rules for years kind of stuff, recoup funds, the sense of the school just closes and we don't have any type of recourse eligibility regulations wise. So that's kind of like the area that I get when I hear that a little bit to tell you.

Okay. I remain a little uncomfortable with the idea that we're using public dollars. It's great if the school remains open, but if it closes down and the assets get distributed and there's some income usually. Correct me if I'm wrong, these charter school organizations are like leasing from a very similar entity. That's the one that has. So it's like, it's not the same people from the eyes of the law, but they're the same people, right?

Yeah. They do create sole Member llcs to hold facility. It's all very transparent as it relates to, as Ryan mentioned, that accounts for about 35, 30% to 35% of those programs, those fully disclosed related parties that we know and can track. The dollars account for about 35% of where these program proceeds go. The rest go to private individuals, private holding companies that, again, that state is making an investment in those as well.

Right.

And I just wanted to go along with that because we're talking about 140 schools out of the 1000201,300 active charter schools. It's really just about 10% or so of the actual operating base. And at 30% of this program itself, considering the program correlates with less closures that prevents these schools from closing. We don't have a large example base of schools closing. It's very rare in the program, honestly.

And then additionally, just because of the way charter schools are funded, the constant we hear about the idea of removing this and the Auditor backs it up, it's just going to come from other taxpayer funded money, and it put the school at more risk of closures.

So I understand the relationship, but I think to make this program as part of that discussion ignores the fact that this program prevents those closures from happening a lot of the times, and that there's no example of this program being used to initiate closures or have a swath of closures. More closures happen outside of this program. So I do understand what you're saying. Just want to point out that caveat.

Sure. But the audit also identified that charter school closures then contribute to classroom overcrowding in nearby schools. So my point is, keeping them as publicly accessible school facilities, if they're engaging in receiving these funds, is probably the best outcome, as opposed to potentially a closure and families no longer having access to a school nearby.

Yeah, I mean, there is a Bill right now that is trying to address that issue. AB 164. We're working with Bonta's office.

Okay, I'll take a look at that. Thank you very much, Mr. Muratsuchi.

Thank you. I am in line with our JLAC chair's instincts in terms of the concern about where the taxpayer dollars are going as it relates to private charter schools. My staff knows this better than I do. I'm going to try to ask some basic questions. So, the SB $740 are often used to finance the conduit bonds?

I wouldn't say often. There's a fair amount, but not often. About a third.

I think it's 69.

69 schools over the last five years benefited. Considering the program is only about 400, it's not insignificant, but I wouldn't say majority.

Okay, so 69 schools use SB $740 to finance conduit bonds?

Yes.

Okay. And who issues the conduit bonds?

CSFA, the IBank, CMFA, Cal PFA. CMFA. Did I say CMFA? Because of our. We have a number of credit enhancement grants. We have a bond report that we just released to the board, and it's on our website. I believe that we're over 80% of bonds issued annually, and by Paramount, we can provide that information. But there are a number of conduit issuers in the state for myriad infrastructure categories. So you've got CIFA, ChAFA, those within the treasurer's office, and then those that also serve as conduit issuers outside of the treasurer's office.

So the purpose of the conduit bonds is for the school to acquire the facility assets, is that correct?

Yeah. CSFA was created to finance educational facilities as well as working.

Well under this conduit. Bond financing scheme. Who holds title to the property?

I mean, there's a number of fact patterns. So typically it is an LLC that holds title to the facility for legal and financial reasons. But again, I'm not a bond attorney. I'm not an attorney. I was an investment banker, and I've been a state civil servant or employee for 23 years.

Okay. And I think there was information in the. Yes. This excellent staff report flags as part of its summary of the State Auditor report that the safeguards for notifying tax exempt llcs that often hold title to publicly funded charter school properties are not subject to existing law requiring the Attorney General to be notified for the sale of assets. I guess that's the notification issue. But my point is that, say.

There was a national charter management organization and they form an LLC to hold title for the publicly funded charter, that at least for those 69 schools, the taxpayer dollars in SB 740 goes to pay for the property rights held in that LLC. Is that correct?

They subsidize an annual payment? They subsidize an annual lease payment for eligible schools? Yes. California nonprofit charter schools. Correct.

Okay. If that title is owned by a private LLC, then taxpayer dollars are helping to subsidize private ownership of property. Is that.

I mean, again, there are myriad fact patterns as to who holds title. Ryan, did you want to weigh in?

Yeah, I just want to field this because I think, again, the nature of this type of public education choice in charter schools. Right. With private landlords. We would have to answer that question. Yes. As well to that. The difference that we always hear is that the LLC structure, being under a nonprofit law, provides extra scrutiny. But again, that's the Legislator's determination. More about that. But that fact pattern would be true for pretty much anyone that had in the facility leased, because they are leased facilities. So it would be a true fact pattern throughout the program. It just wouldn't always be LLCs. It might be a private individual.

Okay. I just wanted to share for the public information that there is an Assembly Bill coming up in the education Committee that's going to be addressing this issue.

The Bill had intended to have the Attorney General look at charter school closures, but I think that shifted a little bit as well, and it would be a different lens as it relates to how those charter school facilities are disposed of.

All right, thank you.

Anyone else have any questions or comments on this item? All right, we will move on to item issue number four.

Thank you. You.

Thank you. All.

If it's okay with the panelists, we have Department of Finance, then Legislative Analyst Office, then Department of Education and the Office of Cradle to Career. So if that works out and you are all set.

Good morning and thank you, chair Members Alex Schope with the Department of Finance. So I will be presenting on the Governor's Budget proposals for the California College Guidance Initiative and the Department of Education's data support BCP.

And then we'll hand off to Marianne from cradle to career or colleagues from the Department of Finance who will present on the cradle to career BCP. The Governor's Budget provides 3.9 million ongoing Prop 98 General Fund for the California College Guidance Initiative CCGI to increase personnel and meet rising operations and maintenance costs as CCGI continues scaling its services to reach additional school districts as an authorized operational tool of the cradle two career data system, the 2122 budget package authorized CCGI to provide its services to all California school districts, and upon full implementation, CCGI would be expected to provide several services, including free college planning, financial aid lessons, and career planning curricula for students in grades six through 12.

The additional funding will bring CCGI's ongoing appropriation to 20.5 million Prop . 98 General Fund, which is in line with estimates in the cradle to career workgroups operational tools assessment published in 2020. The Governor's Budget also provides 15 positions and 2.5 million ongoing nonprop 98 General Fund for the Department of Education to increase its capacity to meet increasing reporting, collection, and research needs involving student and teacher data.

So this includes responding to external research requests from the Legislature, the State Board of Education, and other stakeholders providing real time data to meet programmatic needs and supporting CDE programs in developing their own data resources. New positions would also support improved teacher assignment monitoring, outcome data collection and reporting through the California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System, calpads and CDE partnership with the Commission on Teacher Credentialing and their work with the California statewide Assignment Accountability system. So that concludes my remarks. And then I also have Tessa Deroy from CCGI here to answer any programmatic questions you may have related to that specific proposal. Thank you very much. Next.

Thank you. Good morning, Members of the Committee. My name is Mary Ann Bates and I'm the Executive Director of California's Cradle to Career Data System. With me in the audience today is Leslie Taylor, Director of operations. Cradle to career was named in statute to be California's source of actionable, useful data and research on education, economic, and health outcomes for California's communities. There are three areas of work.

One is to build a linked analytical data set that connects existing state level data to inform decision making, and we will build three different products for that, dashboards, query builder, and a data request process for researchers. The second area of our work is coordinating with partners to scale practical tools for students, including California colleges at and the third is to engage with communities by listening to their needs and conducting user centered design with a governance structure that reflects these priorities.

The governance structure for Cradle to career demonstrates how it was developed as a collaborative, governmentwide effort, a partnership between the Legislature and the Administration. I report to a 21 person governing board, which includes two appointees of the Assembly, two appointees of the Senate, as well as Senator Laird and Assembly Member Irwin. A number of highlights from our recent work so I joined in February of 2022. As of April 1, we've filled 12 of our current 16 authorized positions.

We have six additional recruitments in process right now, and we expect to hire the remaining positions before the end of the fiscal year and begin hiring the positions requested in our BCP into the blanket. Last summer, we signed legal agreements with 15 different entities to enable the data sharing to build that linked data set, and we've procured the relevant components of the technology stack.

And our team and contractors are building the infrastructure needed to receive data, and our data partners are actively reviewing the data security protocols that our team is refining. We've also launched user centered design and seated 32 advisory board Members. Our budget request is for 4.9 million General Fund in fiscal year 2324 and ongoing to Fund and manage ongoing workload related to the cradle to career data system. This includes requesting 10 new positions.

Approval of this request will enable cradle to career to deliver on its statutory requirement to build and maintain a new statewide data system that prioritizes the security and privacy of the data, the needs of end users, including a focus on advancing equity, a user centered design process, and tools and resources that are accessible and useful to California's diverse students and families. Thank you and I'm happy to answer questions.

Would you like me to this is Paul Steenhausen with the Legislative Analyst Office. So there are three proposals in issue four, I will address the cradle to career proposal, which you just heard from Ms. Bates, and then my colleague Jackie Barosio will provide comments on the other two proposals. So when the state authorized the cradle to career data system in the 202122 budget package, it charged the new office.

The state charged the office with a large scope of work, and Ms. Bates just named a lot of the requirements linking data with 15 data providers creating several tools for accessing that data coordinating with a companion state data portal, the California College Guidance initiative, staffing the governing board, and a requirement to engage extensively with the public on the design and usage of the data tools.

Though the proposed increase in staffing and funding is notable and would be notable for this office, based on our review, the requested resources do align with those statutory responsibilities. We did ask the office, the cradle care office, for more detail on the proposals. We did get that information, and based on that detail, we think the request appears reasonable. That said, the state is faced with a large budget deficit. This is nonproposition 98 General Fund money that's requested.

So the Legislature, of course, does have trade offs to consider. My colleague Ms. Barracio will talk about the other two proposals, but I'm here, of course, to answer any questions you might have on the critical career data system. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Jackie Boracio LAO with regards to the proposed increase to CCGI, we have no concerns, but would again raise our broader comments regarding the long term implementation plan for CCGI that are laid out in the agenda on page 18. Specifically, we believe that there is uncertainty about the long term cost for fully scaling CCGI and just not a lot of detail on the overall plan on how CCGI will expand to the remaining districts.

Creating a long term implementation plan could clarify how CCGI would target outreach and resources to engage new districts and address any barriers to participation. But also a long term plan could identify opportunities in which existing state law could be amended or changed to encourage or incentivize more district participation.

With regards to the Department of Education proposal on data support, as the Administration noted, these resources in part will be beneficial to the Legislature as it would expand the department's capacity to respond to legislative data requests and proactively produce data products of legislative interest, such as trend analysis of enrollment by LCFF subgroups. Thus, if these resources are approved by the Legislature, the Legislature could consider adopting specific expectations or reporting parameters.

This could include specifying certain data products of legislative interest are regularly produced, such as the continued production of the teacher assignment data and requiring periodic updates of what new data products are produced by the Department with these new resources. But also, the Legislature could specify the process in which legislative request would be submitted to the Department and how that back and forth process would go. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Go ahead.

My name is Tessa Carmen De Roy . Sorry. My name is Tessa Carmen De Roy. I'm the President of the California College Guidance Initiative. We manage californiacolleges.edu on behalf of the state, I appreciate the opportunity to just address a couple of the questions that were raised by the Leo just now. There are multiple variables involved in the scaling of this work, but let me step back for a moment and just explain very briefly what the work entails.

Californiacolleges.edu is a college and career planning platform, so there's a student facing component that includes all of the tools that you would need to figure out interests in careers, the relationship between careers, and different programs of study. How does one get access to financial aid?

There's also the ability that we've built out over the last 10 years to apply to either the community colleges, the CSU, or the University of California from within that one platform, as well as the ability to launch one's FAFSA or California Dream act application. Those are student facing tools, and the scaling of that will be achieved through a data sharing agreement that we're just about to sign with the Department of ED.

It's sort of being readied for circulating for signature shortly, which will provide us from the CalPAd system the basic data elements required to establish an account for every 6th through twelveth grade student in the State of California. There's another dimension of the work which we call transcript informed accounts, and they're basically what they sound like. It's a college planning account that contains your transcript data that's really important both for the k 12 educators that are supporting students in their college transition process.

Because we run the transcript data through some algorithms to help them understand, for example, their eligibility for the CSU or the University of California systems, that transcript data is also essential to building out efficiencies and streamlining processes for students. So, for example, when students launch an application to the Cal State system right now, we can take all of that transcript data and instantaneously populate it into the application.

This avoids tremendous confusion for students and then provides the Cal State system with the sort of pre verified data that makes their admissions processing and first year academic placement process much more efficient. That part of the work, the transcript inform accounts right now, is happening on a district by district basis. There are 420 unified and high school districts in the state. That's our target population we're presently serving.

Well, we're scheduled for 2324 to serve 240 of them, and by 2425 expect to be serving an additional, probably 60 of them. That will represent about 80% of the students in the state. I've heard a lot of discussion today about small schools. Those are clearly going to be the hardest for us to reach.

And that's proposed to happen through both our partnership with CDE as well as some work with the student information service providers, the private sector companies that manage the systems that have the transcript data within school districts. And I'd be happy to take any questions.

Thank you very much. Is someone from CDE going to go next?

Yes. Good morning. Cindy Kazanis on behalf of the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, I manage the state's data reporting for requirements that relate to state and federal accountability. The governor's proposed budget, as Department of Finance mentioned, includes an increase of 2.5 million in nonprop 98 General Fund and 15 positions for the California Department of Education to meet state and federal data and accountability reporting requirements, support data exchanges with other agencies, and design to quickly respond to emergent needs for data, both internally and externally.

This proposed funding would provide critical support for the continued need to process, analyze, and report high quality data. Specifically, the funding would support two projects focused on teacher data and the creation of a data science office. The first proposal would support the continued collaboration with the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing, or CTC, and the State Board of Education, in which we have released, for the first time this past year, teacher assignment monitoring outcomes by full time equivalency reports.

This information provides a snapshot, broken down by county, district, and school, that shows how many teachers are authorized to teach in their assigned courses based on a variety of factors, including the subject area of the course and the number of students enrolled in the course.

And this release has created for the state a baseline data set that will inform state and local decisions over the coming years as agencies work to address teacher shortages, which is, of course, a long term national issue exasperated by the Covid-19 crisis.

With these positions and funding, the Department would be able to provide comprehensive support, technical assistance, and guidance to schools and districts in analyzing and understanding subject areas, class sizes, and teacher shortage areas, as well as staff assignments with proper certification, thus promoting, of course, the mission of the California Department of Education, which is to close achievement gaps and better serve schools and districts to provide a world class education for all students.

Additionally, the positions being requested will support collaboration around analyzing relevant policies, compiling staff and course data, producing reports and files, communicating with internal and external partners, and providing technical assistance to the field.

The information technology positions included in this budget change proposal will help to mitigate or rather migrate our system to the cloud, perform an upgrade to the platform, data reporting and visualization enhancements of our dataquest reporting system, and this alignment, we think, will ensure that the Department is better positioned to respond to the changing needs of the state around the teacher workforce and areas around teacher shortage. And finally, the second proposal.

The data Research Science Office supports the creation of a dedicated data science office to help remove the pressures from existing and fully employed resources, allowing them to focus on their existing mission. The dedicated team would provide the Department with new and much needed internal capacity to answer key questions from the Legislature. We've already responded to six data requests this year from legislative staff regarding Bill analysis and other proposals, as well as the Department of Finance and the public on responding to emergent situations.

The internal capacity to collect one time, new, one time or short term data and provide contextual analysis is needed to measure priority initiatives and programs, ensure initiatives and programs are moving in the correct direction, and provide feedback directly to leadership, administrators and the Legislature so that effective policy decisions can be made.

While existing data tools such as the California school dashboard and dataquest can be used to a degree, they are static and they provide a look at the data from a single context in a retrospective and not able to provide perspective on the changing conditions in the education environment using current data from calpads or other systems. And so we ask for your support of these proposals.

And then just briefly, I wanted to turn my attention to the discussion that just was had on the CCGI work and just wanted to acknowledge that the Department has been engaged over the last 10 months with Tessa and her team to make sure that we get over the finish line on a data sharing agreement, and we are proposed to have that agreement in place in the next month.

We're very excited about the partnership being able to allow all students who are graduating from California public schools or trying to graduate from California public schools access to this critical resource. With that, I'd like to turn it to my colleague Stephen Proffer to address the other issues in this proposal.

Thank you, Cindy. Good morning chair and good morning chair and Members. Steven Proffer, on behalf of the State Superintendent, Public Instruction here to speak specifically on the elements of the California State preschool program as they relate to cradle to career. You may recall that AB 22, which was enacted last year, requires the CDE to collect data on children and educators enrolled in the CSPP, similar to how data is collected for children enrolled in TK 12 through calpads.

We are required to start collecting this data by July 12024. This Bill also created a much needed pathway to establish unique child ids for the California State Preschool program, which do not currently exist. As enacted, this data collection is limited to California State preschool programs, which I'll refer to hereafter as CSPPs, operated by.

So it's limited to leas that the Bill is, which means a little more than 40% of CSPP programs and about 31 and a half percent of children are not included because AB 22 is not inclusive of our community based organizations to implement the Bill, the CDE began working with the California Department of Technology last year and took a few steps to begin implementing, including releasing a request for information from potential vendors in October 22 and then submitting stage one business analysis, which is the first step in the east in the state's IT procurement process the following month, in October or I'm sorry, November 22.

We continue to work with CDT and we're preparing to release a request for offer. However, during a recent meeting with CDT and their oversight partners, the group raised some concerns around the difficulty with moving as fast as the Bill contemplates while also abiding by the state's procurement rules. We've learned that either the timeline needs to be pushed out from July 12024 to a later date, or this project needs to be exempted from some of the procurement process requirements.

We're happy to go into further detail if asked, or work with the chair staff to clarify the need regarding AB 22 and the broader ECE folks I mentioned. I highlighted leas as being called out specifically in AB 22 and how community based organizations are not so as we look at those requirements and what it means for broader ECE.

The Bill itself does not allow CDE to fully meet the cradle to career requirements for the California State Preschool program, as those requirements would require us to include California State preschool programs operated by community based organizations as well. To fully meet the cradle to career requirements, CDE would need additional support and authority to integrate community based state preschools into the data system solution for AB 22, which is being designed to produce those unique child ids to support integration of data into cradle to career.

Leas currently have relationships with county offices of Education, which is one of the things that made sense with AB 22. There's support there existing with resolving situations around potential multiple child identification across leas. However, there's no existing relationship between community based organizations, state preschools, and county offices of education.

For those potential duplications which would need to be resolved in order to bring our cbos into such a data solution, we'd be happy to follow up on the additional support and language needed to include all state preschools in the data system. And that concludes my comments and I'm available for questions at the appropriate time.

Thank you so much Mr. Chair. And thank you everyone for the presentation here. I heard that 80% will be utilizing program and I think in a year or two. How many students are currently utilizing program now? The CCGI?

Hi, we're presently well, so for fall 23, we expect to have about 60% of the 6th through 12th grade students in the state. It's the small districts of which there are many that have very small number of students.

There's barriers to entry for them for exactly the reasons you guys were discussing this morning about people doing multiple jobs and so getting a data sharing agreement or uploading data, that kind of thing can be very burdensome and difficult for them, which is why the scaling plan relies on the Department where they're already uploading their data.

Thank you for that. I think anything we can do to continue to expedite that process, to scale it up for all students in California is critical as we look at having that pathway into college and here in California. So appreciate the comments and thank you for your working efforts on this.

Thank you.

Thank you. I missed the first part of it, but I appreciate coming at the end hearing from CDE and implementation of AB 22 and that is critical as we begin to implement our universal pre k program versus via UTK in California. So thank you. No further questions on this. We will hold the issue open. Issue number five, the k 12 high speed network. We have Dos, Lao and TDE. Thank you Mr. Chair. Alex Chop again with the Department of Finance.

The Governor's Budget provides 3,787,000 ongoing Prop 98 General Fund for the K 12 high speed network to maintain operations as it provides broadband solutions and support to local educational agencies across the state. The total authority provided for K 12 HSN in the budget is 18,862,000, which includes a combination of existing funding from the Broadband Infrastructure Improvement grant 1.0 and 2.0 programs, federal and state subsidies, and operational reserves.

In addition to the proposed state augmentation, as noted in the agenda, K 12 HSM previously received ongoing funding in the annual Budget Act. However, beginning 201718 it was directed to utilize remaining BiIg balances and reserves to cover its operational costs. Given that BIIG balances are depleting, additional ongoing funding is now needed to support K 12 HSN's operations. That concludes my remarks and happy to take any questions. Okay, thank you LAO Jackie Barossa with.

The Legislative Analyst Office. No concerns, but again would note that this backfill is one time, meaning that the Legislature would have to revisit the issue next year. But additionally, the size of the backfill likely will increase in future years as additional funds begin to ramp down.

Thank you. CDE, good morning. My name is Jeff Bellow. I'm speaking on behalf of the Department of Education and the state Superintendent. As finance noted, this program has been very successful, and we want to first express our appreciation for the support of the program. It has been funded with BIIG funds over the last few years. And as LA just noted, next year will be requested to be fully funded going forward. There is not a proposal to shrink capacity, especially at this time.

On the second question relating to a bond. Facility bond, this is more of a service project. And so if there's anything that the pandemic and recent experienced schools have shown is that it's a critical aspect of what's going on in schools today. Happy to take any questions you have at appropriate time.

Okay, thank you. Questions? Mr. Muratsuchi.

Thank you. So, I need to refresh my memory on some of the history and the background of the K 12 high speed network. I'm reading the analysis here. It seems like the original intent was primarily to assist schools that didn't have sufficient Internet connectivity to conduct our casp testing program. Is that correct?

That was the intent of the BIIG program, as it's commonly referred to? Yes. That was $77 million, I believe, in 16 and 17. That was the funding that that was used for. I believe we connected over 450 schools, upgraded their connection with high speed broadband, both wireless and fiber.

Okay, so I lost the connection. What is the connection between the BIIg and the K 12 High speed Network program?

The K 12 high speed network program has been around since 2006, I believe. I've only been working with it since about 2015. And its primary purpose is providing connectivity through our county offices, through Cal Ren and the Cal Ren network, and scenic. Through the county offices, to our school districts and to the schools. All the county offices are connected to it, and I believe we're.

Almost 90% of our schools utilize the high speed network. Okay, so it's primarily through our County Office of Education and through the scenic network. Yeah, that's the topology that it's delivered. A school connects to its district, district connects to county, and the county connects through each other through Cal Ren and scenic. Okay. On average, how does that translate into student access to high speed Internet connectivity at school sites? Prior to.

I mean, going back, it was all in computer labs, if you want to think of that. In the old school days, up into the pandemic, there were some students using carts and WiFi and using federal and state subsidies. Since the pandemic, when there's so many student devices, the schools used a lot of their federal dollars to upgrade their infrastructure because all those students are coming back to school with their devices, connecting to wiFi, doing their learning and accessing their learning.

So that's the increase of traffic is there's more kids at school connecting out and experiencing learning at school with their devices. Okay, so more devices, more people trying to log on. Absolutely. But you said that more than 90% of what county offices are education? All of our counties county offices are on the high speed network. And it's about 90% of our schools. 90% of schools. Okay, so 90% of school sites. Yeah, school sites, school district and school sites. There's some that just have found other options.

Okay. And it's a service that's provided, it's not required. Okay. Sorry. So Ms. Dahle is not here, but I'm going to speak for Ms. Dahle. Her districts up in Shasta county are benefiting from this k 12 high speed Network. Yeah, no, if you look at the list of Biig sites, the ones have been upgraded and all those ones both. And the high speed network, most of the focus has been out there in Shasta county and the rural parts of California. Okay. And the appreciation is great.

When you see an Internet connection at a school like that, kids like, they think it's day. A day at know. A couple of years ago, I introduced a statewide broadband bond Bill, and we always talked about the two kids sitting outside at Taco Bell to access Wifi, do their homework. If they had gone to their school site or 90% of school sites in the State of California, they would have been able to access high speed Internet? Well, yeah, a lot of schools did do that.

They were open well past the end of the day for kids to continue and learn and kids would go at school. But that's, of course, not ideal, but that's a whole separate can of worms. Okay. But just in terms of what progress we've made, as well as how much more work we need to do to close the digital divide, you're saying that at the current state, the k 12 high speed network, if they go to a school site, there may be issues in terms.

In terms of the number of devices that are logging on, but by and large, they should have access to high speed, reliable Internet access? Yes, that's correct. That's correct. Okay, thank you.

Okay, thank you. No further questions. This, we will hold this issue open. That concludes. Yes, Mr. Muratsuchi very.

Any of the panelists should. Is there a need? We talked earlier about our school facility bond discussions taking place.

Should the school facility bond discussions be focusing on any unmet needs in terms of making sure that our classrooms, our 21st century connectivity, that we are providing 21st century classroom facilities to support our students 21st century educational needs? I think for me, because this is what was technology used to last a lot longer. I remember teaching in a computer lab when I was still in a computer lab and I had eight or nine year old devices, computers that we were still working.

Technology doesn't quite last that long anymore. The Chromebooks kids are using have a much Shorter ability to be used. And so when I think of a bond and a 30 year bond, that always concerns me that somebody's going to use a bond for a device that will last two or three years and it's pay for it over 30. So that's my only personal perspective on it, because I wasn't quite understanding. Sure.

Actually, I'm more focused on the facilities as opposed to the equipment, making sure that all of our schools throughout the State of California have access to high speed, reliable Internet service. You're saying that over 90% of school sites already have that? And so are you suggesting that any school facility bond doesn't have to devote funds for Internet broadband infrastructure? Okay, yeah, let me go at it. And we were actually on a call, was it last week about this?

With scenic facilities, there are still schools that have a challenge to get the broadband to the front door. Once it's in the door, that's a different thing. There is a quote from a school up in Alpine County with six students and the quote from bast, I believe it was like $20 million to get to that one school for six kids. So it's a balance. So it's not to say that there aren't still that.

With all the much appreciated investment in the Golden State net and the middle mile and all that, it'll be interesting to see what paths are built out and how that changes. That $20 million proposal might be much less going forward. So there are still schools out there that are hard to reach. And we've had some projects that are pretty expensive. I mean, I think of the early Biig school, Fort Ross was over $1.0 million to connect that 20 kids. So those are still there.

So, yeah, I guess I must have misunderstood your question, because the broadband to the front door, we're getting close. But I think also seeing how Golden State net in the middle mile comes, I know a lot of schools are waiting for that because they're going to be really happy to connect to fiber at that time once that is fully deployed. Okay, thank you.

Does the LAO have any additional information in terms of the State of California schools as it relates to the digital divide and broadband infrastructure? Would you concur with the CDE?

No additional information at this time, but in our conversations with CDE, they've shared additional those similar comments.

All right, thank you. Okay, thank you. Again, this issue will be held open public comment. Now please proceed to the front of the room. You have 1 minute or less. 60 seconds or less. Is that on there? We go ahead.

Mr. Chair Members. John Winger here for the California Charter School Association in support of the $30 million going to the charter facility grant program as it was agreed to last year. It's not an increase, it's an agreement from past year. It was mentioned that there's private charters. Just want to clarify that all charter schools are public schools. There's no private charter schools in the state. I would just say that the facilities is always an ongoing issue for us. We don't get adequate supply of bond dollars. We don't get Prop 39 colocations very easily, and surplus property from districts is a lot of times sold off to private developers instead of given to a charter school need.

So charters have to leverage private bond dollars in order to get adequate facility for our students. There's some technical issues around the audit that we are working through, but overall the audit was very positive about the program and even stated that no part of the net earnings from the sale or lease of assets that are held by tax exempt educational entities can benefit a private individual. And so we think there's a lot of protections around that.

We're obviously going to continue to work on AB 164 and just want to make sure there's no unintended consequences from that. In order to leverage those private bond dollars, we do have to ensure that the bondholders are held harmless when there's a dissolution of assets. Those dissolution of assets are all governed under nonprofit law.

Have to go back to a public benefit, but do have to make sure that there's a fair market rate given there so that the bondholders are held harmless and that we can preserve the program. So look forward to continuing the conversations on that, but do support the budget item today. Thank you. Next speaker, please.

Elizabeth Esquivel, California Association of School Business Officials. We appreciate the conversation that happened with the ELA program, and we were able to hear directly about the staffing challenges and the need to help build up those programs. And so for us specifically, we do support and we want to recommend carrying over the 20222023 funds to 2324 and in future years allow the unspent ELOP funds to be retained by districts to be used for their intended purposes.

We're also very appreciative and acknowledge the need for the facilities funding and appreciate. Assembly Member Martucci Casbo is definitely a strong support and Assembly Member Fong, thank you for your leadership in leading those efforts for AB 247. Casual is a strong support of that.

Thank you.

Hi, good morning, Rebecca Colleen, on behalf of the coalition, prodigy School Housing and the county School Facilities Consortium, we oppose the delay of the $550,000,000 for the TK and the preschool facilities. We urge you to maintain the prior budget commitments for those purposes. Otherwise, our backlog of projects will continue to grow.

Given the expansive need for our core new construction and modernization programs and the school facility program, we know that the bond is critically important, but it's not going to be able to cover all those core needs as well as the substantial needs that we have for the TK and preschool facilities. You heard that our current round for the TK facilities funding is well oversubscribed. With $1.5 billion in applications, only $350,000,000 available. We can't plug that gap with the future bond and all the other competing needs in the state. So thank you very much.

Thank you.

Laura Kerr with the Charter School Development center. There's a structural inequity with charter school facilities. You can get a charter, but no one gives you money for facilities. So you have to scrape together solutions. None of them are perfect. SB 740 is a lifeline for schools that are serving mostly Low income students, mostly in urban areas. So we really support that $30 million and hope that it will stay in the budget.

Thank you.

Good morning. Jen Diesrich with the Partnership for Children and Youth and the California after school Advocacy alliance really want to appreciate the discussion this morning issue one about expanded learning and wanted to respond to a couple of the Member questions that were raised. Yes, we need a lot of data about what's happening with expanded learning right now, but our organization did a report on the first summer of ElOp. What we're seeing around the districts, what themes are we seeing?

And we've seen more kids being served, Shorter wait lists, more sites available for families, and a higher quality of programming. They get field trips for the first time in a long time, and we can send you the report with the details.

And secondly, and totally agree with the speakers that staffing is the number one challenge right now due to rising costs to operate and there are higher wages out there and we're competing for young workers and it was hard to recruit and retain staff before the pandemic. So we really appreciate anything that can be done in this budget to provide an equitable COLA for asus and 21st century programs that may be the only categorical that are left out of the proposed COLA this year.

And then lastly, just want to say that Elop goes to all school districts that have elementary schools and there are over 70 school districts that are high school districts that don't receive any elop funding. And so really appreciate your discussion and thinking about middle and high school students who also need and deserve this opportunity. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Good morning, Members and staff. I have a handout of La Unified. Martha Alvarez from La Unified School District. I'll be brief. The great thing about being the last one you've heard others people say, my comments all I land LA unified's comments with Caspo regarding the Elo funding on two fronts. One, we also support the expansion or extension of the carryover funds from the 21-22 and 22-23 school year, and we also kindly request consideration for ongoing flexibility on the use of the ELO funds.

At La Unified, we're leveraging the funds for a cultural arts passport, trying to expand enrichment opportunities for students to museums, art centers and other entertainment venues. We want to be able to expand online tutoring for kids to have access at home, not just in the school setting. So there's many other ways we would love to be able to meet students'needs beyond what elope is currently allowing us to use the funds for.

Secondly, we align our comments with cash and others around the school bond, greatly support Member Maratsuchi, Mr. Fong and others working on that effort. And then last but not least, on the digital divide and connectivity. We urge your involvement in supporting LA Unified at the federal level in asking Congress to extend the emergency connectivity Fund that expires in December of 2023.

It allows school districts to provide during COVID and since COVID connectivity at home for kids who do not have access to high speed Internet, and that's a federal funding source. I will be sunsetting this December. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you very much. With that, that will conclude today's hearing us right? A couple of them kind of edge build, but they were.