Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Subcommittee No. 1 on Education

I'm going to call Senate Budget Subcommitee one on Education to order, and we are going to begin as a Subcommitee. And we really ask our Members to report. We have at least one Member that has to leave at 2:15 and another at 3:00. And we want to make sure that we allow adequate time for the issues because we have a meeting agenda today. We continue to welcome the public in person and via the teleconference service for individuals wishing to provide public comment today.

The participant number is 877-226-8216. That's 877-226-8216. It's on the screen. And the access code is 621-7161. We're holding our Subcommitee hearing here in swing space, room 2100. And today we have a hearing where we're going to have five different issues. We're going to talk about the California Collaborative for Education Excellence. Issue number two will be the equity multiplier and accountability proposals. Issue number three will be transitional kindergarten. Issue number four will be the California State preschool program, and issue number five will be special education.

And I know that there will be lots of people that want to comment, and we will gauge the length of the comment based on where we are in the hearing and the fact that we really have to end no later than 3:00 and maybe a little earlier. A quorum has arrived. So I would ask for the roll to be called.

[Roll Call]

Thank you. A quorum has been established. We are going to move to item number one, which is the California Collaborative for Educational Excellence. And I think we wanted to highlight for members of the public and also newer Committee Members what this agency does and what their role is. And our one panelist is Matt Navo, the Executive Director of the California Collaborative for Educational Excellence. And we welcome you to the Committee.

Thank you. Thank you. Good morning, Chair Laird and Members of the Committee. It's a pleasure to be here with you on behalf of the CCEE. Brevity will be important since given the meeting agenda you have.

But I wanted to spend just a moment talking about the California Collaborative for Educational Excellence, why we were created, what we do and how we do it, to give you a sense as to the areas of emphasis that we have in the state. The California Collaborative was created in 2013 under then Governor Brown and Board Chair of the State Board Michael Kirst. We were designed in statute to advise and assist LEAs in accomplishing the LCAP goals that they have identified.

We were not designed as an accountability arm of the state. We were designed to be in partnership with LEAs and county offices about how to do that work well and how to improve and accelerate school transformation. Our work comes to us in two ways. One is through statute, which I just defined, and in that way that we acquire that work, we engage with our partners in the field. We ascertain with them what is it that they need to accomplish those goals.

The other side is the work is what comes from legislation. So, examples of those two pieces that you might be familiar with in legislation, we have the community engagement initiative act that just was reappropriated last year with $100 million that's designed to reach out right now currently to three cohorts, 44 LEAs, to help bridge the gap between the community and the development of their LCAP goals.

The other one is the $50 million Learning Acceleration Systems Grant, which works with three county offices, Lake County, Santa Clara, and San Diego, to develop a professional learning infrastructure across the state to support leas with math, English language development, and literacy. In our statutory work, where we hear from the field, that is the work that really, really is important to us because it's the field telling us we need this. One example would be Monterey County.

They came to us and they said, hey, listen, we need some support around addressing the chronic absenteeism issues that we have in our area. So we developed a network in Monterey County to address those needs. Another one would be our Small School Districts Association came to us and said, our small school district leaders are overwhelmed. There's a lot of plans that they have to manage. Is there anything that you can do to support and build capacity?

So we instituted the Leadership Institute to support 50 plus leaders in small school districts to help them bridge the gap between the state vision and implementation. So, Chair Laird, I know it's very short, but I understand you have a meeting agenda. I'm happy to answer any questions. I'm also happy to go into briefly what we're learning in our school transformation work, if that would be helpful to you.

Believe me, we don't usually have witnesses that care about brevity, so I'm very grateful for that. But I think it would be good since you're here and we have the forum for you to do what you just suggested doing.

Okay. So one of the buckets of work and priorities for us is to support districts through direct technical assistance. The way that comes to us is a county office would be working with an LEA. And so right now, you're probably all aware there are over 600 LEAs identified for differentiated assistance. A county office who has been working with an LEA, for example in Salinas Monterey County was working with Salinas Union. They said we need support. They made official referral to the CCEE to support them.

We engage in collaboration with the county office in the district, in this case Salinas Union High School, to establish transformational change in that district. What we're learning in this work is interesting. One, what we've learned is we can spend a lot of time at the district level and not get a lot accomplished. We really need to be focused on helping teachers teach and helping students learn. I speak to you from our experience at CC. I also speak to you from experience personally.

25 years ago, I walked into a district as a young administrator and the welcome sign to that city said, welcome to Sanger, home of 400 unhappy teachers. So I haven't watched school transformation from the peripheral. I've lived it for the majority of my career and my staff has lived it. So we understand that it requires a sense of depth and quality. It requires deep collaboration and problem solving.

When systems fail, they try to do things a mile wide and an inch deep to solve really difficult problems. And in school transformation, what we're finding is that these districts that we're working with, we're working with a pilot with five districts who originally started with eight schools. Now they're up to 17 schools. And in the packet I gave you, I gave you some quotes, but I'll give you a quote from the Inglewood principal most recently.

I would not be a principal today if it wasn't for this project, because the project is focused on building teacher capacity through a guiding coalition of teachers that define what it is that students need to know and be able to do. How will they know when they learned it? What will they do when students don't learn it? And what will they do for students who already have? And that focused conversation for us is the way that we're approaching direct technical assistance right now in our districts.

We are at the district level. We can't ignore the systems that are plaguing districts, but we are focusing our efforts now at the classroom level. And we heard from our CTA partners that they really, really needed something that was going to impact immediately the teacher's ability to make an impact. And so that's what we've learned.

The things that get in districts' way, if you have three dysfunctions, dysfunctional board, dysfunctional leadership, and dysfunctional teacher leadership, all those things coming together really, really make it difficult for districts to improve because they are tethered down very tightly to practices that impede their ability to move efficiently and effectively for students. I'll give you an example. A district that says I need to address chronic absenteeism. We need to overhaul the way that we engage with our families. We need to overhaul the way we send notification.

We need to overhaul the way we categorize unexcused absences. That might be some low hanging fruit for a district that they can get to very quickly. But a district that says we have to overhaul early childhood literacy, that is a complete overhaul of curriculum, instruction, professional learning, which would take, at minimum for a medium sized district, three years to do in a thorough way.

That means that they have to train every teacher in the new curriculum in a way that makes them at least proficient enough to deliver the content. Those are the kinds of things that we're finding, is that the low hanging fruit is easy to get to. And with these 600 plus LEAs in differentiated assistance, we have too many people in the emergency room, and they're not all in the same need.

So, for example, you may have somebody in the emergency room has stitches and somebody who has a heart condition. All of the LEAs have an array of needs, and not all of the same. In fact, in 2019, when we promoted the positive outliers report, those districts who are exceeding and excelling, they are now in differentiated assistance. So we have to find a way as a CCE in the state to differentiate it even within differentiated assistance, we have to differentiate. Not all districts are created equal and context matters is what we're learning.

Let me ask a couple of follow up questions just to maybe be illustrative. And one is, we just had an oversight hearing with the Education Policy Committee on teacher recruitment and retention. And what you just mentioned, it was basically that you were helping teachers in the course of this and learn. What do you think teachers might have learned or assistance you might have provided that helps with retention?

Yeah. It's the ability to build collective efficacy around deep collaboration around instructional needs. So when our young teachers get into space and they're doing that work all alone, it's challenging, but sometimes you can do too much in too many ways. So in one district that we were working with, there were over 19 coaches supporting their new teachers. Great idea. Intention is right, but it's too much of a good thing because the new teachers can't keep track of everything.

So what we're finding, Chair Laird, is that when you bring teachers together to do this work together, when they have to do the heavy lifting of trying to meet the social, emotional, and behavioral needs of students. When they have to address the academic needs of students and they're not doing that alone, then we feel like we're in a situation where they're more likely to stay because they're not in a siloed island trying to address the needs of students by themselves.

And the guiding coalition of teachers that are formed seems to be the way in which teachers are energized around doing their work. Because it's not administrators, no offense to administrators telling them what to do, it's teachers telling administrators what we need to do, what you need us to do. And that's a shift.

And then I was going to throw you a curveball. And that is just that you said you studied one school in Vallejo. What school was it?

That was Federal Terrace.

Oh, okay.

Yeah. Well, in all schools in Vallejo, Federal Terrace is the school that's in this intensive program. And in this intensive program, the teachers at Federal Terrace have an expert lead for math, language arts, English language development, leadership and collaboration. We have basically wrapped them around for three years, 50 days a year, over 150 days of elbow to elbow time with an expert, including their principal. The goal is, in three years, Federal Terrace will be a model, national model school.

And then they will be able to share with the schools in their district how they did that. And they will be able to support direct technical assistance for other districts who are in the same boat to say, how did you do what you're doing? There are only 30 national model schools for collaboration in the State of California and there's only one district who has been recognized as a national model school.

I think Fillmore Unified has the potential to be the second national model school when it comes to collaboration. That means that these schools have prioritized collaboration in their schools. They have identified it through their negotiation process that there is a certain amount of time dedicated and they dedicate that time to teaching and learning around those four questions I gave you.

Thank you very much. And I'm impressed that you knew the school in Vallejo. But where were you a few decades ago when I was attending the Vallejo public school? And I noticed you did not mention when you said the problems, you said dysfunctional, but they're in receivership. You did not mention that as a thing that might be a problem that you were considering.

No, because they do come to us in receivership and they are scheduled to come out in '24, but they're with us because of the academic needs of their students and the Superintendent there, Bill Spalding, recognizes that there is a need for academic support, and our ability to be in with them in partnership, in a quality, and in a deep collaboration way is really uniquely different than the way that differentiated assistance gets done right now.

If every county tried to do that, we run out of human capital. The state system gets bookmarked by two barriers. One is human capital and resources. The other one is professional learning time.

So when you talk to superintendents about how much time can you devote to what the state just told you to do, they will say, well, if I have a teacher who gets 10 days of sick leave and I devote five days to professional development, that means that that teacher is missing that child's class 15 days a year, and that's a real struggle for them. So it's a balancing act to try and bridge that gap. And that's what our charge is to do, is to help districts think through those things.

Yes, and I appreciate, because if it was every district, we would not be focusing on the ones that uniquely needed or could benefit the most. This has been very helpful because I think we really wanted for at least new Members, but this was a great refresher to understand what you do so they're aware of this as a resource. So before we move on, let me just ask if there's any other questions or comments from Committee Members. Senator Smallwood-Cuevas.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you for clarifying your roles and responsibilities in terms of direct support, technical assistance for our teachers and classrooms. You mentioned in your statement, opening statement, about that you're not about accountability. And then I heard more about what you do specialize in. But my question kind of goes to what the Chair asked about the retention.

What is the accountability on CCEE in terms of how do you evaluate and measure whether what you're doing is in fact retaining teachers, or how do you all correspond with, is it corresponding with the county agency that refers you to sort of measure and document, monitor how your direct technical assistance is yielding the results?

I just had a question about the accountability piece, and then my follow up question is, we've been talking a lot about equity, and we've been talking about the different indicators and how do you get to those students who need the most support and help. And so I'm just curious about what kind of assistance does the collaborative provide to those kinds of student populations that sort of fall into that disparity column and so often don't get really captured anywhere except in sort of the deficit.

Right. But not in terms of intentional resources and I'm thinking about black student achievement, for example. So just wondering, how do you close those kinds of equity gaps? So, two questions.

Okay, I'll do my best to answer both of those. The teacher retention issue. Although what we're seeing in our work of bringing teachers together gives them the collective efficacy and commitment to the project and is less likely to show teacher attrition, we deal with that in virtually every situation we have. So in every space that we are in, our supports are targeted in three ways. Universal support. So one of the many initiatives we have are either universal, targeted, or intensive.

The intensive layer in our mind is what would be direct technical assistance and the supplemental targeted would be the other. We work with, to your point, the county offices, the geographic leads, are in space with their LEAs, but they are addressing huge labor issues. There's a shortage of classified staff as well, in addition to teachers, most often in our rural communities. So I'll give you an example. We had a school that wanted to be part of our CEI grant, had great intentions.

The person that they could send to our trainings would be the cook because they were short on staff. They just didn't have enough. So as we deal with the counties and the geographic leads, our goal is to try and figure out what is it about the school system that is creating the attrition and movement around for teachers. Is it a cultural issue that teachers don't feel supported? Is there an issue of geographic barriers? Sometimes it's just a matter of the travel that teachers have to do.

But I would say that our work as a CC organization is through the geographically, through the county offices to the LEAs to find ways to support their various needs. And I'll be honest with you, we run up into a barrier of we can't produce the human capital at the rate that they need it. I will say what's happening is the county offices are very in tune when they post a position. They know that position is coming from the LEAs who already are short staffed.

Before you go to the second question, I just maybe want to maybe clarify my question. Once you provide that intensive, what is the evidence that it has made a difference and how is that evaluated and who evaluates that?

Yeah, so you're talking for direct technicians or just for direct technical?

Direct technical.

So every quarter we evaluate the progress, and we posted just recently our third quarter progress of every district, and it has their student achievement there as well. So it identifies what they're working on, what challenges they have, and then it shows their progress, their student progress. In almost every district that we're in right now, they're showing some level of progress and improvement, and that is positive. In the districts where I describe the intensive work that we're doing, they're even showing more. So we track it every quarter and annually.

So there is accountability in that process. Okay. And then the question on equity that I had, how do you close the equity gap? Those hard to reach populations.

So in all of the differentiated assistance work that counties are doing in supporting those LEAs, the targeted subgroups that you have identified, African American, or whether that be students with disabilities, social, virtually, those are the three that are coming up as the primary targets. So the work is identifying primarily around those three targeted groups: students with disabilities, socioeconomically disadvantaged, and in some cases, you'll have also foster, homeless African American shows up in virtually every district that we look at.

And so that differentiated assistance that supported is provided in different ways. We come in and what we can do with those county offices is assess whether or not the quality of the differential systems is meeting their needs and we can link them up with experts to provide greater support for them. Did that answer the question? I'm not sure I did, but if I didn't, I'm happy to go further.

It was helpful to at least how do you actually get connected to that student population? That was helpful. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other questions from Committee Members? Then let me just thank you very much. And we just appreciate the resource you are. And this was a great exchange just to prove that. And we look forward to still continuing to get the results of your different efforts and making sure that they inform our deliberations.

Thank you.

Thank you very much. That sort of, in part one of the questions tees up the next item. We're going to move to issue two, which is the equity multiplier and accountability proposals. And the panelists can come up to the table. And we will have Lina Grant from the Department of Finance. On the equity multiplier, we'll have Michael Alferes from the Legislative Analyst Office. And on the accountability piece, we have Sarah Cortez, and then we have Malia. Is it Villa or Bella?

Well, Malia from the Department of Education. And we have Blake Johnson here, also from the Department of Education. And before we go to the panelists, let me just say the Administration has made this proposal and they have added detail, and we will hear both a little about the proposal and people's analysis of it and then go to questions and discussion.

But I would remind everybody this is one of those classic times when we're at the beginning of the budget process, so it's very important that what our concerns are get aired in a way that they can be considered as this moves on. So with that, let's move to the Department of Finance. Welcome.

Thank you. I hope you can hear me. Good morning, Chair and Members. Lina Grant with the Department of Finance. I'll be providing an overview of, first, our accountability proposals, and then I'll move to the equity multiplier proposals--proposal. Singular. So just a little bit of background. Since the inception of the LCFF, the Local Control Funding Formula and the related accountability system, we've engaged in a continuous improvement process to make iterative changes that take in feedback and experience.

And we've worked really hard to support effective implementation while maintaining a commitment to core principles of equity, local engagement and governance. And in that spirit, and to make sure that the LCFF Local Control Funding Formula, I'll eventually just say LCFF.

No, no, I really appreciate it. Define it once and then go into acronym yeah.

LCFF funding is more transparently and purposefully allocated based on student needs. We've put forth trailer Bill Language amendments that strengthen the ties between the three elements of California's accountability system, and those are the Local Control and Accountability Plan, LCAP, as I'll say from here on out, the California School Dashboard and then the statewide system of support.

So we view our trailer Bill language amendments around the accountability system changes as kind of in three different buckets, and I'll go into each bucket and provide a description of what is entailed in each kind of bucket or category of changes. So the first is around improving planning and transparency in the LCAP process. That includes a few different things. The first is holding a mid year and in statute in our amendments.

It's February 28 of every year, a public discussion on the annual update to make sure that there's an improved understanding of the current year implementation and associated gains in student outcomes, and to make sure that educational partners have the relevant information to engage in the LCAP development process. We also add specificity through the addition of you've read about it probably in the agenda, the focused goals.

Those would be required in two instances, one in any instance of an indicator in the lowest performance level, which is red on the California school dashboard, or two for any LEA local educational agency that is receiving the equity multiplier funding, which I'll talk about towards the end. And then we also clarify in that first bucket of changes that the role of the LCAP is specifically to address disparities in student outcomes using metrics that focus on closing those gaps.

We also add long-term English learner as a unique student group. The second category of changes is around addressing the impact of LCAP goals and actions through a continuous improvement approach, and there's a few relevant changes here. The first is we clarify that actions have to be changed when they're not achieving the intended outcomes after a period of three years. So if you have an action that's proven ineffective over three years now, the proposed amendment would be that you have to make a change.

We add some specificity for the measurement of district wide contributing actions, and we establish a stronger connection between the continuous improvement processes occurring through technical assistance and the LCAP. So we create a clear nexus between differentiated assistance and the LCAP. Right now, it's not as clear this additional language would really make that nexus clear.

We also create additional assurances during the LCAP review and approval processes to check that plans are addressing identified student needs and the work underway in technical assistance for LEAs that are eligible for differentiated assistance. The final bucket of kind of trailer Bill Language changes is around strengthening support for LEAs through technical assistance, and that category captures a few proposed changes.

First, we strengthen the safety net of the statewide system of support to better respond to ongoing challenges and disparities in student group performance. It establishes equity leads within the state system of support, and then we lengthen the differentiated assistance eligibility timeline from the current one year eligibility to two years to allow more time for implementation of those identified problem areas.

And then finally, we shift the dashboard reporting timeline to October over a period of four years to allow for earlier insight into the data for LCAP planning and for technical assistance. And then I'll move on to the equity multiplier proposal.

In addition to those amendments that I just went over in those three different buckets, we're also proposing 300 million ongoing Proposition 98 General Fund to establish an equity multiplier add on to the LCFF, so outside of the LCFF, to accelerate gains in closing opportunity and outcome gaps. And those funds would be allocated to leas with schools serving high concentrations of students eligible for free meals, so distinct from free and reduced, just free meals.

Specifically, funding would be generated by schools with 90% or more free meal eligibility for elementary and middle schools and 85% or more free eligibility for high schools. And under that proposal, LEAs with eligible schools would receive significant additional resources and would be required to use the funding on services and supports that directly benefit the eligible schools. So, in closing, while the equity multiplier proposal includes that additional 300 million in ongoing funds for eligible schools.

Our proposed refinements to the accountability system seek to leverage the over $80 billion in LCFF funding that districts receive to better ensure that resources are actually being allocated based on student needs. With the addition of the equity multiplier, the proposal recognizes that beyond the current 13.4 billion in supplemental and concentration grants, that's estimated for 23-24, school sites that serve high concentrations of low income families need additional resources regardless of district wide demographics.

Together, our proposed changes would strengthen the ties between the various different components of California's accountability system that ensure that resources are being allocated based on student needs and that related actions and services are effective in closing the persistent opportunity and outcome gaps. This concludes my presentation and I'm really happy to take any questions at the appropriate time.

Thank you very much. And we're going to do questions when we're through. All panelists, and just remind everybody we're going to do public comment for all issues after the five issues. And so now we'll move to the Legislative Analyst Office. And let me just say, it just occurs to me that some of you have been testifying. This is the third year that I've been Chair and this is the first time you've ever been in person. So welcome to the Committee. Great to see you. And I know you have divided it by subject, so I'll let you decide in what order and how you're going to present from the Legislative Analyst.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Michael Alferes with the Legislative Analyst Office, and good afternoon to all the Members of the Committee as well. Nice to see you all. I'll be covering our comments today on the equity multiplier proposal and the proposed changes to LCAPs, which my colleague here from Department of Finance defined as Local Control and Accountability Plans. And then I will turn things over to Sarah Cortez my colleague, to discuss our comments on the statewide system of support changes.

Our comments are included in your agenda in more detail on starting on page 14. We'll keep our presentation here more at a high level. So, regarding the equity multiplier proposal, we think that the Administration has identified a key issue. We think that bringing greater attention to school sites and low performing subgroups is warranted. Initial studies have shown that LCFF has resulted in gains across the board and student outcomes, but gaps have continued to persist between school sites and student subgroups within districts.

However, we think that the key issue here is not a lack of funding. We were recommending the Legislature reject the $300 million in the equity multiplier proposal and instead consider options to provide greater transparency on how LCFF funding is spent across school sites. So, for the equity multiplier, the 300 million proposed is relatively small compared with the $13 billion that this state will be providing in the current year for English learners and low income students from supplemental and concentration grants through LCFF.

And districts are already expected to use this supplemental concentration grant funding to target high poverty schools within their district. We estimate that 98% of equity multiplier schools are in districts that receive concentration grant funding, meaning that the share of their students that are English learners or low income are more than 55%. So it is not clear how the additional funding from the equity multiplier would address any specific issues that wouldn't be able to be addressed with their existing LCFF funding.

So rather than provide additional funding, we think that the state can take steps to provide greater transparency regarding how funding is spent across school sites. Ensuring consistency in fiscal reporting across school sites can be challenging. So instead of using spending data to increase transparency, we are recommending focusing on how staff are allocated across school sites, since most school spending is related to staff compensation.

Specifically, we recommend the state require districts to publicly report outside of their LCAPs three data points for each of their school sites, the first being the share of teachers that are fully credentialed and properly assigned, the second the share of teachers with less than three years of experience across all school sites, and the third is the student to teacher ratios at each school site.

This is all information that the state collects in some shape, way or form, but is not in a format that's easily accessible for families to look at and compare between schools within their district. Having this information would give the public in the state a good sense of how total funding is spread across schools, not just supplemental and concentration grant funding, and whether a district has significant disparities in their staffing across the district.

So regarding the proposed LCAP changes, we found them to be positive as they encourage districts to bring greater attention to lower performing schools and subgroups. We are recommending the Legislature adopt all of the LCAP changes with just a few modifications. Our recommendations on these are more covered in detail on page 15 of the agenda.

One particular one that I'll highlight here today is regarding the focus goals that's required for all schools that would receive equity multiplier funding, as well as having schools or subgroups that are on the lowest performance indicator on the school dashboard as proposed, only the focus goals for the equity multiplier proposal equity multiplier schools schools that receive the funding would be required to review whether they have any disparities within their staffing and then take actions to address those within their focus goals.

So we're recommending that this requirement be extended to all the focus goals and that districts would be able to use the three data points that we were recommending that I just described. And we also make minor modifications recommendations for modifications to provide greater clarity on the mid year update on the LCAPs, as well as exploring ways that the state could make LCAPs shorter, as these are documents that are 200 or plus pages often.

Lastly, on my piece, we think that clarity is needed on whether spending supplemental and concentration grant funding on low performing racial subgroups is allowable under current law. In our conversations with districts and county offices of education, we've heard differing opinions. We think that funding activities to support low performing racial subgroups is consistent with the intent of LCFF to close achievement gaps.

And at this time, we do not think that statutory changes are required to make this allowable, but rather the state can provide additional clarity to districts to ensure that they're able to do this. That concludes my portion of the presentation, so I'll turn it over to my colleague, Sarah Cortez.

Hi, good afternoon. Sarah Cortez, LAO, so I'll speak on the system of support proposals. So generally, we think the system of support proposals are an improvement over current practice. Specifically, current law doesn't specify when other system of support entities are to provide additional assistance, and while the proposed changes help to ensure that LEAs receive support from these entities, other entities involved in the system, which we think is particularly important in cases where little to no improvement has occurred.

We do think there needs to be some clarity around the type of support geographic leads will provide once an LEA is in differentiated assistance for three or more years. There's two specific things we're recommending. The first is that the assistance be more intensive compared to differentiated assistance provided by the COE, and the second is that the support take into consideration the strategies that the LEAs have already implemented with regard to the proposed equity leads, we think the role of the equity lead is duplicative of other system of support entities with the added task of providing support that addresses racial disparities.

We question how the support equity leads will provide will be different or more effective than other support provided through system of support entities. I also want to highlight that focusing on racial disparities should be a central part of differentiated assistance, since many districts are identified for having performance issues among specific racial groups. If the Legislature adopts a proposal to create equity leads, we recommend the state have a clearer and narrower objective for these entities to avoid the duplicative work.

For example, the Legislature could specify that the equity leave is tasked with providing training to COEs to ensure equity is at the center of differentiated assistance and incorporated into all improvement activity initiatives.

The other thing we recommend is that the Legislature clarify that all entities within the system of support, not just the equity leads, should support districts in addressing racial disparities. And that concludes my remarks. Thank you.

Thank you very much. And then we're going to move on to the Department of Education. There we go.

Perfect. Good morning. Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and Members. Good to see you all in person. Blake Johnson from the California Department of Education on behalf of Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tony Thurman. CDE California Department of Education is committed to accelerating learning gains and closing opportunity gaps. Our black students, American Indian students, homeless youth, and students with disabilities have a chronic absenteeism rate over 40% compared with the state rate of 30%. Many of these students also fall into high need schools in our state.

The governor's proposed equity multiplier would provide additional funding for the highest poverty schools in our state. The 300 million ongoing funding is intended to augment resources to support the highest need schools in the state and highlight the importance of equitable allocation of resources by LEAs or local education agencies. This important proposal will create a new supplemental grant to the Local Control Funding Formula, LCFF, funding the state's poorest schools and targeting racial disparities statewide.

These dollars can help close the achievement gap in our black, American Indian, and students with disabilities and students with the lowest performing student outcomes. Key to this proposal is the ongoing funding. Over the past few years, the state has launched several budget programs with the goal of enhancing outcomes for diverse student populations. However, these programs have been using one-time funding, which poses a significant obstacle to effective long term planning.

We continue to support programs that deliver ongoing funding to LEAs, which will allow them to focus consistent assistance in students in low performing subgroups. We know that factors such as low graduation rates, chronic absenteeism, and high suspension rates can lead to lower academic performance. As a result, we must prioritize funding for our highest need schools to help our highest need students succeed.

The equity multiplier proposal also establishes an accountability framework that will ensure that LEAs must demonstrate their commitment to using these funds effectively to improve the academic performance of their students. The Governor's Budget also proposes several changes to the LCAP, including focused goals for schools receiving these funds and specific requirements in the system of support aimed at addressing the needs of low performing LEAs, schools, and student subgroups.

CDE is supportive of most of the proposed changes and is working with the Department of Finance and legislative partners to make sure these modifications are implementable and practical for our districts. It is imperative that we deliver the intent of equitable education opportunity through the LCFF. The $300 million is a good start in providing additional funding to our lowest performing student subgroups. To deliver on the promises made, we must address the inequities that exist and close the opportunity gap. The superintendent places equity and opportunity for all students at the center of his agenda and this aligns with that charge. Thank you.

Thank you. And does that complete the CDE, the Department of Education presentation? And I want to throw a question for everybody, but let me just follow up, because you said you support most of the proposals. Are you free to comment on where you think there needs to be improvement that's not in the category of most?

No. In terms of most, I guess I won't say you misspoke, but in terms of the spirit of that comment was more so that we look forward to further engagement with the Department of Finance and the Legislature as it navigates with the process.

Great. Thank you. And then one of the interesting things that came up, just one question, then I'll go to Members, is the relationship of the equity multiplier and accountability to other programs. And that's why it's sort of an ethereal question. I mean, what does it build on or what does it draw out in other programs that wouldn't be drawn out if it weren't for this being added onto it?

I'm looking for more the fit together because I think a lot of the analysis and discussion has been to look at it separately rather than understand how it might be drawing things out of other programs. And I'll start with the Department of Finance.

Thank you. Lena Grant, Department of Finance. So we see this equity multiplier proposal fitting in neatly within our existing accountability system. And so there are certain parts of the equity multiplier that are tailored into the trailer Bill Language, changes we made to parts of the accountability language and ed code. So, for example, the required focused goals is a good example. We require focused goals in two instances.

One, if there is a red indicator or lowest performance for that LEA, and two is if they're receiving the equity multiplier funding. So we directly link it, and then the equity leads are also part of the system of support, and that is a built in component of the equity multiplier.

But the implication is that it will have some results that wouldn't happen without its addition to do that with the leads.

Yes, we see that as an extension of the accountability system that we already have in place. The equity multiplier would provide further resources to the most in need districts. I think we see the funding going to those districts that have the lowest performing. We see that as one to one. Even though the funding formula for the equity multiplier is allocated based on the free meal eligibility thresholds that we set in statute, we see there being a great overlap with the lower performing student subgroups.

Yeah, I worked last year to save a hospital in a disadvantaged community. And you just say disadvantaged. Well, it's now flooded, but you just say disadvantage and nobody gets it. But when I could say the percentage of free and reduced meals, then it sort of targeted where they were. Does the LAO have any comments on sort of how my original question about how this might draw out in other programs or add to it?

Yeah. I will say when we did look at these changes, we are looking at them as kind of what is the proposal specifically to the system of support, and what is the proposal to provide these equity leads? I'll say that our recommendations here on the equity leads are recommending, saying that it's duplicative and kind of recommending different changes to this role don't necessarily have to go in align with the equity multiplier funding.

We think that that stands on its own, kind of aside the point, there's improvements to the system, it would kind of live within that system without kind of the multiplier funding and the multiplier criteria for that funding.

And I'll just add for the proposed focus goals, that's one of our recommendations is that the specific requirement to address staffing disparities that only exists for the equity multiplier schools, that would be extended to the focus goals for schools or districts that are having low performance indicators on the school dashboard. So, in effect, that piece wouldn't necessarily be tied to equity multiplier funding.

But if a school district had specific schools or subgroups within the district that are in the red on the school dashboard or lowest performance indicator, that they would have to be flagged and develop goals and specific actions to address their students. And with our recommendations, the equity multiplier requirements would apply to those focus goals as well. So it kind of live on its own, if that makes sense.

Thank you very much. Department of Education, any comments?

Thank you, Chair. Our views align with the comments made by the Department of Finance.

That's a fascinating moment. Then I'll go to members of the Committee and ask Senator Ochoa Bogh.

Let me just begin by just making some comments that I was reviewing this, and I was very excited to see some of the changes with the Department of Finance with regards to requiring a change of actions if the programs are not effective after three year period. I remember my very first year here in this Committee having asked specifically how long should we give a program to exist before we evaluate on whether or not it's an effective program or not.

And I remember at the time, there was no answer. They could not answer the question. So the fact that you folks have put this in this proposal as given a program three years to ensure that it is effective, I thought was very exciting.

And I also really appreciated the fact that the funding is ongoing, that you're allocating a specific amount of money that is ongoing because it is very difficult for educational systems to be able to budget on a yearly basis and be able to meet those needs. So kudos on that end. There were a lot of new things here that you folks added that were very exciting for me in order to help improve our lowest performing schools.

In that I did have a question just for clarifications and for the record, as far as I know that the LAO had some concerns with duplicative work, which I'm not sure which one would like to take the lead on the answering the question. But with regards to in this additional funding for our lowest performing schools, what do you foresee besides what's on here, but what do you foresee adding to support our students or the schools in order to help improve that performance with this funding?

Who are you directing your question?

Either one of them. Who would ever like to take the lead?

Yeah, I can start on our comment, and I want to clarify that our comment about duplicative work was specifically with regard to the proposed equity leads. So we have this system of support, where there's county offices of education and there's regional leads and there's SELPA leads.

All of these entities are intended to support districts that are identified for differentiated assistance in some capacity. And so what we're saying is that if a district is identified for having performance issues for specific racial subgroups, and everybody should be supporting the district in improving academic performance, or performance for those racial subgroups.

So having an equity lead kind of do that, kind of be tasked with that work could be duplicative of the work that everybody is supposed to do. So we're just saying to clarify exactly what they're supposed to do, so it isn't duplicative. It's more narrow and specific for these entities. If this is a place that you wanted to adopt their proposal for those creating those equity leads. Thank you.

And I can address her comments as well. We do concur. We don't disagree that the other leads should be focused on equity as well. We are specifically interested in equity leads bringing in their expertise to those areas where to those LEAs that need the extra help on closing those subgroup disparities, the different disparities that exist on the lowest performing LEAs.

And so we agree that geographic leads should have that as a natural built in focus as well when they're providing their assistance on differentiated assistance or whatever it is. But we feel that the equity leads would specifically serve an expert kind of purpose for bridging the equity gap, if one exists, in particular LEA persists.

Okay, well, thank you very much. And excited to see some of these changes of accountability in there as well. And I think that's going to be very helpful. I'm optimistic, actually, on that front. So thank you very much for including those thoughtful modifications.

So I wanted to follow up on the LAO's point, and I think the Chair touched on this. But when I'm looking at the budget from last year, Prop 98 and the LCFF, I think we had $14.5 billion in supplemental concentration and add on grants, and that was almost 20% of all LCFF funding last year. And it's easy to throw another 300 million at a particular problem.

But I guess we face a lot of challenges and we hear about them in other hearings. We have very food and housing insecure community college populations and dollars are scarce this year. And I guess the LAO makes the point that we have a lot, and again, $14.5 billion in funding that is specifically designed and meant to target underperforming or at-risk schools.

And so I guess I just wanted to hear maybe on another level, I think you answered this, Ms. Grant, to some degree that we can target it, but why can't we, to the LAO's point, just restructure some of the existing targets and goals in ways that can reroute that existing money, $14.5 billion or whatever it will be this year, rather than create a new program with maybe a new set of rules and bureaucracy and compliance?

And so I just was hoping that you or the Department of Education might be able to answer that.

Department of Finance. Sure, I could take a stab. I think we see this as existing outside of the LCFF, and there are specific, tighter parameters for this equity multiplier funding that would provide the additional resources that districts in highest need would be able to use. So it is definitely an option to go a different route. But we see this funding as an integral piece in the broader accountability changes we're proposing.

So I think the accountability changes, I would say those amendments would agree with your point that we have all of these existing dollars. Let's tighten the accountability system that we currently have for those funds. And our proposal is to simply add on outside of the LCFF, that additional, tighter, more narrowly defined funding source to address a specific purpose.

And this would come out of the general Prop 98 funding, right?

Yes.

Okay. So, I mean, where would you see this funding coming from? Like, what would be the trade offs? Because at some point we have to take $300 million from somewhere else. Right?

My colleague can answer.

Sure.

Amber Alexander, with the Department of Finance. I'm not sure that it's necessarily an apples for oranges type of switch. I think we review the Proposition 98 package in its entirety and make decisions based on priorities and conversations that have occurred. I think we would see targeting low performing student subgroups as an area of great need, particularly coming off of the pandemic.

And I think we would view the investment in the equity multiplier as well as the related accountability changes, not necessarily as separate from the LCFF funding. I think we wholeheartedly agree that the supplemental and concentration grant funds that are generated through that funding formula should be used to target our lowest performing student groups. But we do recognize that in some areas more is needed.

And I think that's where you see this program coming on to supplement that funding and why you see the intertwining of the accountability provision so that it is not necessarily treated or viewed as a separate investment.

I hear your point. I guess I'd just sort of say that the LAO makes a point, right, which is if we have $14.5 billion, which, generally speaking, could be repurposed, we could take $300 million out of that. Is that correct? And we could repurpose some of that funding with the exact same parameters.

I work on the way we budget. It's not taking it out, it's amending the formula. So, yes, it would be one way you could get those funds, but it wouldn't be a straight--The equity multiplier proposal we have has certain tailored requirements, and so it would be a little bit different in that building it within the LCFF. This is an outside of the LCFF proposal, and I think you're suggesting just upping the supplemental concentration grant.

Again, you are the experts. We just do a little oversight here and there. But, I mean, it strikes me that there's a lot of--

Sometimes it's really in depth and massive.

Well, in the case of Chair Laird. Speaking for myself, it is not in depth or massive, and I don't pretend to be a subject matter expert, but it does strike me that there's a lot of funding there, and $300 million is a very small fraction of the $14.5 billion that we already allocated last year for, again, the general purpose of helping schools leas and students that might need that help more.

And certainly agree to your point that we want to be boosting up schools that have needs, that where you do have large populations of underperforming students, that's got to be a top priority for our education system. But I guess in a down budget year. I'm just curious if this is the best approach, and the LAO very clearly makes a recommendation that this is not.

So that's just something I will think about. I don't know about my fellow Members. I had one, I guess, point I wanted to make as well, or question, really, and I asked this yesterday in a meeting we had, but I just wanted to repeat it. Which is what effect, in the aggregate, do you think that all of this, the accountability proposals and the equity multiplier would have on teacher acquisition and retention?

Because I see that as a top priority throughout the system right now we are facing really a teacher shortage crisis, and I guess that's both a question and a comment. I think that to any degree with which we could modify any of these to try to help that cause of teacher retention and hiring, I would urge you to do that. But curious your general thoughts, LAO and Department of Finance, Department Ed, on how this might affect those goals.

Amber Alexander with the Department of Finance. I'll start, and then others can chime in with their perspectives.

I think we do see this very much furthering that goal, particularly with the emphasis on the focused goals in the areas of any underlying issues, with the credentialing and preparation of teachers, certainly furthering attention at the local level on that conversation, developing a goal that is then tied into the local control accountability plan, which ties into the budget and has some funding behind it to be achieved, and then to the point Senator Ochoa Bogh raised to the extent that that goal is not achieving that outcome, reevaluating it in three years and changing it in some way to make sure that that goal is achieved.

Thank you, Senator, for the question. Just in general, as it relates to your question, the Superintendent, essentially his primary goal has always been to close opportunity gap, and we see his proposals meeting that objective. We're very open to various what the mechanism may be, but he's strictly encouraged to see additional ongoing resources for students that need it most, including black students, American Indian students, and special education students.

So, in short, as it ties into what you say regarding adjusting teacher workforce shortage or whatnot, essentially this funding to whatever mechanism or whatever tool is required to improve that opportunity gap, we're on board for.

Yeah, I'll just kind of reiterate that we think that the LCAP changes proposals and the system support proposals are positive as they provide bring greater attention to student subgroups and schools. With regards to our recommendation on reporting specific teacher data, we see the LCFF as the primary way that districts should be addressing their achievement gaps. And we think that since most of the LCFF funding is spent on teacher salaries and wages, that this would be a good place to focus on.

And that if a school district has, for example, certain subgroups that are lowest performing on the state dashboard, that they would be able to be forced to do this focus goals that would have specific actions and they would need to review their staffing.

And if it found that specific school sites within a district face greater teacher turnover, have higher rates of teacher misassignment, or more than specific concentrations of teachers that are less than three years experience, that districts would need to plan around that and focus more resources to those school sites or come up with strategies on how to better support the school sites, specific school sites that have these kind of additional challenges.

Thank you. I appreciate it. And just to reiterate, I very much appreciate this proposal and the goal of it. So thank you for all your hard work.

Thank you. And just before I recognize Senator Smallwood-Cuevas, let me just briefly comment on one of your earlier questions, because you were really trying to get at what the trade offs and what budgetarily might go in or out, and that is our purview.

And I think we'll just look when it gets to the May revise and see what the, we'll have to project some of the revenues given the tax date, but what the revenues are and what the different things are on the table, and then we will have an opportunity to weigh and make those judgments based on the recommendations. Senator Smallwood-Cuevas.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you so much for the information and helping to clarify these important changes. There was a briefing with the legislative black caucus on these changes yesterday and was very helpful to understand how we make this policy better. And equity is a tough thing. It is, what is it that will help any individual group be able to have a level and fair opportunity and playing field, and it could look very different in terms of what those particular groups need.

And so this idea of focused goals, of really looking at subgroups and investing additional resources, we already know what the funding is and we have made education our priority. But the lack of performance, the disparities that are happening, the long term disparities, and even with announcing the equity multiplier, still even more disparities, particularly as it relates to the share of resources that actually got to schools where there were high densities of black students. So we have to continue to work at it.

And I see this as an effort to do that and to be very intentional about getting those groups of students what they need. And I appreciate the Chair's comment that we can look at this once we see the full budget, but we have to continue to be vigorous about implementing equity, and we know it's hard and it means additional funds. So I just wanted to make that point. My question is about how this additional support that the equity leads will provide.

Someone talked about that there is some level of expertise. If we could expand a little bit about that expertise of the equity leads, our expectations for that. And in what ways will they coordinate with the school districts, with the actual offices of education at the county level, the state system, and then also with the individual teachers and students that have these very specialized needs?

I'm just trying to understand, because we want the leads to be successful, but we don't want to overburden them with all of this interaction with county, state, local, and then the actual work with the students. So can you share a little bit about how that support will look and how will that correlate to these different educational offices and departments?

I can attempt to answer that question. Lina Grant, Department of Finance. So the focus of the equity leads would be to work specifically with the LEAs, and we'd be prioritizing those receiving the equity multiplier funding. And their work would be to analyze their programs and identify any barriers and opportunities, and to implement actions and services that would meet the needs of the identified students.

So I think, I don't have actually the language in front of me, but I think we leave it somewhat open for development and guidance around that. We'll work with CDE in developing that. But broadly, I think what I just described would be the kind of the specific purpose. We anticipate any specific racial or equity barriers to be identified and addressed at the end of the work that's being done.

And we recognize that there are a lot of leads and we want them to work collaboratively and not duplicatively, though I think that on the natural, there will be some overlap in the kind of work that they do. But we anticipate that collaboration alongside the collaborative, which you heard from earlier in the CDE, they provide that targeted support that the LEAs need.

Yeah, I'm appreciating the flexibility that's there, and that comes through the collaborative process. That was helpful. So, is there a sense of, particularly for the subgroups, what is the reporting process, the monitoring process, the way to evaluate in real time the contribution and the change that these equity leads are going to be making, so that we know, in fact, that those subgroups are-- we're moving the needle on some of the conditions that those students are facing.

Just how does that reporting process look like, that monitoring and evaluation?

Amber Alexander with the Department of Finance. So we would continue to utilize the California school dashboard reporting results to really guide the areas of performance. And you'll see that reflected in the language, too, with the emphasis on those student groups that are in the lowest performing category on the dashboard. That is a system that comes out every year and really gets updated based on the most recent assessment results and other data that's collected at the state level.

So I think we would anticipate that the equity leads, through their work with the county offices and system of supports, would continuously be monitoring the dashboard results, too, to see if there are improvements in the results. And then to the extent that there are not possibly changing some of their strategies or pulling in other partners to get to that place where there's the meaningful change.

And in terms of, to help maybe visualize how they fit into the structure, I did want to note that in the agenda on page 13 is a diagram of the system of support. And you'll see as part of that diagram the various resource leads and initiatives on kind of that outer ring. So the equity leads would fit in that outer ring.

You would see the expectation that they serve as a resource not only for the districts themselves, but for the counties, for the geographical leads, for the partners through the collaborative and others.

Thank you.

And I think that completes all our questions. And let me just thank you for the help in sort of an in-depth discussion of this. And we know that there have been discussions for a long time that led to this proposal and it being in its current form. And we will just join everyone in talking about this as we move toward the May revise and just appreciate you being here for the discussion today.

And we're going to move on to issue number three, which is transitional kindergarten. We have Jodi Lieberman from the Department of Finance, Sara Cortez from the Legislative Analyst Office. She doesn't have to change seats. Sarah Neville-Morgan from the Department of Education. I think Stephen Propheter is here from the Department of Education as well. And so I think we'll just go directly to the panelists, and we'll start with the Department of Finance.

He's going to help, too, if you just start talking and it's on.

Good afternoon, Chair and Members. Jodi Lieberman with the Department of Finance. I'll be giving an overview of the Governor's transitional kindergarten investments in this year's budget. The Governor's Budget revises estimates for the first year investment of expanding transitional kindergarten from 614,000,000 to approximately 604,000,000 to expand access to all children turning five years old between September 2 and February 2. And revises the first-year estimate to add one additional certificated or classified staff person to every transitional kindergarten class from 383,000,000 to approximately 337,000,000.

These revisions reflect updated enrollment and attendance data. Building upon these first-year investments, the budget includes 690,000,000 to implement the second year of transitional kindergarten expansion, which will increase access to the program to all children turning five years old between September 2 and April 2, which would be approximately 46,000 children.

The budget also provides 165,000,000 to continue the support of one additional staff person in the classroom, and the Proposition 98 guarantee was re-benched in fiscal year 22-23 to include universal transitional kindergarten, and full implementation of universal transitional kindergarten is expected by fiscal year 2025-26. Additionally, the budget proposes several changes to transitional kindergarten. The first proposal would allow children who do not have their fifth birthday during the same school year to be eligible for early admittance transitional kindergarten.

Currently, if a district wants to roll out transitional kindergarten faster than what's in law, law can be read to exclude birthdays after June 30 from being eligible from that school year, even though a student could turn five in July long before the start of the next school year. The change would allow a child who turns five during the school year or not from July 1 to June 30 to be eligible.

So, for example, if a district wants to admit a child who turns five up to July 30, they would not be eligible under current law because they fall after that June 30 cutoff.

According to a survey from the Countywide Planning and Capacity Building Program, 30% of districts plan to serve students whose birthday is after April 3 during the 2023-24 school year, and the CDE estimates that 78,000 more children would be eligible if children with summer birthdays were able to be enrolled in early admittance transitional kindergarten. While these children would not generate ADA, districts could use their pre-kindergarten planning and implementation grant funds to support operating costs, and that could include serving children from early admittance transitional kindergarten.

The second proposal would be to increase qualifications for the second adult in the transitional kindergarten classroom. Currently, there are very few requirements for the adult assigned to a TK classroom and statute does not specify any qualifications other than that they must be 18 years or older, fingerprinted, and an employee of the school district.

The proposal would implement new qualifications for the second adult in the transitional kindergarten classroom starting 2028-29 and this proposal attempts to provide broad pathways with an adequate timeline of five years to meet the requirements. This would be three years after the full implementation of transitional kindergarten.

The pathways would include to be a credentialed teacher, be working towards a teaching credential through any program that requires a clinical practicum experience, hold any level of a child development permit, or be a candidate for the supervised practicum experience for a child development permit, and participate in certain specialized programs such as a regional occupational program with supervision. This concludes my remarks and I'm happy to take questions at the appropriate time.

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

Good afternoon. Sarah Cortez, LAO the Governor's Budget likely overestimates TK cost. Based on data from the first principal portion, which was data just released a few weeks ago, we estimate the state could lower ADA associated with expansion, and by assuming a lower ADA, it would lower the amount the state revenges by 150,000,000 in 22-23 and 200 million in 23-24 compared to the Governor's Budget.

This effectively frees up non-Proposition 98 General Fund and a lower ADA estimate also results in Proposition 98 General Fund savings associated with the cost of maintaining one adult for every 12 students. So we estimate the lower ADA results in roughly 80 million in savings in 22-23 and 110,000,000 in savings in 23-24 compared to the Governor's Budget. With regard to delaying facility funding and maintaining the current staffing ratio, these seem reasonable given the state's budget problem. The policy rationale also seems reasonable for these two proposals.

When we first started the TK expansion conversations, the main barriers that were elevated for implementation issues implementation were facility issues and workforce issues. Based on reports submitted as part of the planning and implementation grant, 75% of school districts report having adequate space to meet projected enrollment of Tk, and the question was specifically about projected enrollment through 25-26. So, based on these reports, facility issues do not appear to be as large of a barrier to implementation as we initially thought.

However, since augmentations for this facility program have been oversubscribed, the Legislature could provide some amount of funds or reevaluate next year based on the state's budget condition. The story is a little bit different on the workforce side, where only 23% of schools reported having enough multiple subject teaching credential holders to meet the need of TK expansion. Therefore, keeping the TK staffing the staff ratio at current levels helps avoid further workforce issues.

We also recommend rejecting the additional staffing requirements proposed in light of staffing challenges, and that concludes my remarks. Thank you.

Thank you very much and we'll go to the Department of Education.

Good afternoon and thank you Chair and Members. Sarah Neville Morgan on behalf of State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond. Universal access to TK, along with targeted universal access for three and fours to our California State preschool program, is key to delivering on the Universal Prekindergarten Promise, or UPK, to provide all children with a strong and early start to education and support equitable opportunities for school readiness through joyful, developmentally informed, rigorous, and inclusive pre-K programs.

We appreciate the administration's commitment to appropriating funding for the next year of expansion, which will support TK enrollment for any child turning five between September 2 and April 2. The increase in the availability of TK will support hundreds of thousands of families across the state and has already begun to help with access to high-quality pre-K. When we look at 2021-22 data, TK was serving over 75,000 children, about 63% of those eligible, while kindergarten served 81%.

While we don't yet have the enrollment data for the current school year, average daily attendance data shows TK increased by about 30,000 children, with nearly 92,000 in fall of 2022, up from just over 61,000 in 2021 at the same time. To assist with the implementation of TK, the CDA has partnered with numerous organizations across the state. We've written extensive guidance, provided a UPK planning and implementation template, and held webinars and technical assistance open office sessions.

CDE also has developed and released communication materials on UPK for local implementers and for families so they can understand the benefits of it and the different options available to meet their needs.

So how is implementation going? From the 500 million total for the UPK planning and implementation grants that were from 2021-22 and from 2022-23. LEAs have been using these funds for costs associated with creating or expanding TK or our California State Preschool Program or to establish and strengthen partnerships with other providers of pre-K within the LEA. Costs have included planning, hiring and recruitment, staff training and professional development, classroom materials and supplies, and classroom operating costs.

Additionally, we have gleaned useful information from the data that has been shared back by LEAs in regards to their UPK planning and implementation grants. Key takeaways include the majority are planning full-day programs, 70%, a good share are having standalone classrooms for TK, 41%.

The majority, 75%, don't raise immediate issues about facilities, 60% of districts and charter schools report they plan on offering TK at all of their sites to ensure greater accessibility for parents and families to access and more than 74% of LEAs are poised or thinking about expanding TK faster than required. Our analysis found that the four largest districts, L.A., San Diego, Fresno, and Long Beach, all are expanding faster than required by law.

In light of this, we think the governor's proposal to expand ETK to include summer birthdays is a reasonable approach since it will not cost the state any additional funds and gives districts additional flexibility to meet their implementation needs. Additionally, school districts and charter schools planning for UPK also reported extensive parent engagement as part of their planning and implementation. We also have additional planning for UPK via the 18.3 million you approved last year for the UPK Mixed Delivery Grant.

Overall, the grantees are local childcare planning councils aligning with their LPC role in the county, with two childcare resource and referral agencies acting as grantees as well. Several counties have chosen to create consortiums and will submit a regional plan for consideration to their multiple county offices of ED. We'll know more next year after we receive and analyze the data and can report back then. Workforce.

You also may have heard that while leas have begun to support their teachers to meet requirements, many more teachers will be needed by the time UTK is fully implemented in 2025-26. According to a report by the Learning Policy Institute, or LPI, which assumed a ratio of one teacher for every 10 children, California will need more than three times the number of teachers that currently exist in TK, up to 15,000 more lead teachers and 19,700 more assistant teachers or teacher aides by 2025-26.

In addition to the state Superintendent's extensive efforts to support teacher recruitment and our partnership with California Volunteers College Corps, the CDE is working in partnership with the Commission on Teacher Credentialing, or CTC, to address the number of teachers prepared to teach in TK, as well as to support those already teaching to meet the new requirements. Efforts have included extensive investments in workforce development by the Legislature in anticipation of needing more teachers for TK.

The 2022-23 budget permitted the CTC to issue and renew a one-year emergency specialist teaching permit in early childhood education that authorizes teaching in a TK general education classroom. CTC also is working on issuing regulations for a PK third specialist instructional credential, which is grounded in child development, the science of learning development, and preschool to third-grade pedagogy.

While we know we have workforce challenges ahead, we also know from research how the benefits of UPK are only fully leveraged when the programs are intentionally designed with quality and the science of learning and development in mind.

This includes having well-prepared teachers who understand child development as well as well-prepared aides operating in a classroom with a low adult-to-child ratio, as well as looking at investments in TK through a preschool to third-grade frame to ensure that those investments made in the early years consecutively build on one another through a coherent, aligned approach. With that in mind, we are truly thankful for the 100 million for the Early Education Teacher Development Grant from 2021-22.

CDE received requests totaling 152,000,000 and awarded all of the funds to 72 LEAs, representing nearly 900 LEAs statewide. Grantees shared that they plan to use these funds to work with institutes of higher ED, help teacher candidates obtain multiple subject teaching credentials, assist current TK teachers to meet the 24 units of early childhood education, and support teacher candidates through various activities such as financial assistance, mentoring, cohort models, and various teacher pipeline activities.

In addition, the Classified School Employee Teacher Credentialing Program and the Teacher Residency Program are funding sources that can help LEAs recruit the second adult for TK classrooms while also building the full TK teacher workforce. The Classified School Employee Teacher Credentialing Grant Program or Classified Program managed by the CTC, provides the leas to recruit classified school employees into teaching careers and support their undergraduate education, professional teacher preparation, and certification as credentialed teachers.

LEAs could use this funding to seek programs that target hiring and support of the second adult in a TK classroom while they complete their degrees and credential programs. The Teacher Residency grant program managed by CTC provides funding to LEAs who partner with a CTC-approved teacher ed program, enabling the placement of a resident teacher in the classroom of an experienced teacher for one year while they complete their program, also then providing for a second adult.

Together, these grant programs are ideally suited to support LEAs in recruiting a second adult for their TK classrooms and simultaneously building their teaching workforce. In closing, the promise of UPK is a promise of opportunity for all and a key part of the vision for transforming California's schools.

Through the creation of UPK and expansion of both TK and the California State Preschool Program, California has taken the first big step to ensure all children have access to a high-quality early education program in the year before kindergarten that supports the whole child and family. We greatly appreciate your engagement in this issue and I have with me Director Stephen Proffer to assist in answering questions at the appropriate time.

Thank you very much. We're going to move to Committee comments and questions and I have a couple to lead off and I was just going to ask the Finance Department. The legislative analysts commented on their estimate of lower attendance rates and additional revenue that might be available from that. Have you had a chance to analyze their analysis to decide how you feel about that?

We've looked at their analysis, but for May revision we will be updating our estimates based off of our demographic units analysis of ADA trends, and it'll factor in P1 data at that time.

Okay, thank you. So we'll eventually get there. I appreciate that. And then just a more global question. All of you spoke in different ways. It seems that while facilities is going to be discussed at another hearing or another time, people did discuss it. And last year we thought both facilities and staffing were going to be the issue. Heading into this year, there was a comment, particularly the Department of Education just laid out extensively what efforts are being made to try to educate or bring staff.

How do you actually feel that's matching the needs? Do you think this is going to lead to there being enough staffing or there going to have to be some of the different changes that either were proposed or not proposed to address this? And I don't know, maybe I'll start with the Department of Finance.

I'm so sorry. Could you clarify the question?

What I'm trying to ask about is staffing. Everybody's talking about what's being done to augment staffing. Do you really think it's going to end up providing enough staffing to deal with the shortage that has been talked about?

I think that the proposal is really aimed at trying to provide a quality experience for universal transitional kindergarten and it's trying to create broad pathways for the second adult in the transitional kindergarten classroom to have experience and provide those students with a quality experience.

I get that they'll provide a quality experience. Will there be anybody there to provide the quality experience is my question.

We think that this gets people in the door and it provides a career ladder for them. I think that's really all I can speak to.

Okay. I would just comment, although I want LAO and the Department of Education. I mean, I think we identified last year that facilities and staffing were going to be a real issue in getting this done. And now it seems like the staffing really is an issue in getting it done. And the question is sort of whether we're doing enough or next year we'll be talking about how we don't have enough staff and whether or not these efforts will really target or be successful.

Sarah Cortez, LAO, so I did want to highlight that we do recommend rejecting those additional staffing requirements in light of the staffing challenges. And essentially, we're trying to say don't do anything to make hiring people even more difficult. But to your specific question is what we put out kind of is that going to meet the needs of staffing?

It's not something that we've looked at specifically as we were analyzing the Governor's Budget proposal because we were more in the responsive of what they were proposing, but happy to work with staff to evaluate that further.

I think we'd like to do that because that's a central question, and we had an interesting time in last week's hearing.

I managed to meet the guy from the Department of Finance at a reception last night and told him that he was a good guy after. I'm sure last week he thought he was really pushed in the hearing because last week there was a question about student aide staffing and the Department of Finance had only recommended two of 17 positions, and we were looking for analysis about whether or not what was going to meet the need.

And because there was only two, the LAO only analyzed the two because that was the proposal and that's what Finance did. And nobody looked at what not having limited term made permanent and the positions three to 17 were. And so, yes, I think we would love to work with you on that because that is the central question, is whether we're going to have enough staff to do this. Is there a comment from the Department of Education?

There is. So from the Department of Ed. I just want to reiterate that in the request for the 100 million that we had available for the Early Ed Teacher Development Grant, we had 152,000,000 in requests. So I think there is still need to support our LEAs in this.

But we also have heard from TK teachers directly that one of the things that would really help them and make sure that they're retained as well as getting more people wanting to do TK, is that ratio. That having a one to 12 still is a lot, and that teacher burnout dealing with a lot of the social-emotional issues that children are bringing into classrooms after Covid means that a lower adult-to-child really helps them in both the teacher part of themselves and getting the teacher there and ensuring the quality is there for the children.

Thank you. I'll go to other Committee Members to see if there are any questions. Senator Smallwood-Cuevas.

I think my question. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And it aligns with your earlier question, and that's what I was wondering, from the Administration standpoint, how many additional qualifying instructional aides would be necessary to meet the goal? Do we have a number, kind of a forecast of what that number looks like?

We don't have a number, but I would highlight that the proposal wouldn't take effect until 2028-29. The goal was to give whoever is in the classroom five years to meet these new requirements.

But there isn't sort of a sense of what the impact of these changes will be in terms of how many more workers are needed who help to meet the goal of this additional certification or requirements. There's not a sense of how, given the ratio numbers and the new requirements, is there a sense of what the need is? Because I feel like the Chair was talking about, it was facilities or staffing.

In my experience of doing community-based pre-apprenticeship training, for example, there's a sense of, okay, the employer is going to need X amount of folks who have these criteria by now. So then we start the process, right, of building those training programs during the recruitment assessment to help meet that goal.

So is there a sense of, from the Administration's point of view, how many new aides are needed who will have this additional requirement?

I would defer to CDE for that level of detail.

So we have our projections from the Learning Policy Institute, and they project, if you're at the one to 10 ratio, that we would need 16 to 19,700 additional teacher aides or second adults in the classroom.

Thank you. Any other questions? Senator Min.

Just to follow up on that point, I know that the LAO has recommended not adopting the Governor's proposed additional qualifications. I guess this is a question for Department of Finance or Department of Ed. Do you feel like there's a tension here between trying to ramp up and hire all of these instructional aides and also at the same time, demanding or not demanding, requiring additional qualifications that might limit the pool of potential hirees?

So, like I said earlier, the requirements would take place in 28-29 which gives them three years after the full implementation of universal transitional kindergarten five years from now. I'd also highlight that one of the proposals, the pathways to get the qualifications needed could be as little as getting six units of ECE, and you could also be participating in a practicum towards that.

I would just hearken back. My mom was, after she retired, decided to be an instructional aide at her high school. Now, it's not the same thing, not TK, but I know there's a pool of retirees. I live in the University community, and I know from talking to people that there are retired professors or professors emeritus that I think would be interested in these types of roles. So I guess I'm not sure that those types of potential instructors would be interested in taking on additional education.

So I do think this is creating a barrier. And so I guess I'd ask you to respond to that. Even if it takes place in 28-29 wouldn't this act as a barrier to a loss of pools of potential hires?

We understand that, the Administration understands that we're in a workforce shortage, but we would highlight that, as I said earlier, we want to provide a universal, transitional quality program. A really big part of providing quality experiences to young children is the interactions that they have with their children, sorry, with their teacher, even more so to vulnerable children, for dual language learners, for children with behavioral needs, children who are less well-resourced than other children, it's really important for them to have access to that.

So that's what we're trying to do with this proposal.

Thank you. Department of Education, or LAO?

So for the Department of Ed, we would agree with the Department of Finance. We really deeply feel that that second adult also needs some grounding in child development and instructional pedagogy to work with the children. So it's not that the adult is just in the classroom. They're actually engaging with individual and small groups of children. And so having some background in child development and the learning of science and development is important.

There also is a lot of research that shows that when teachers have better education and understanding, they actually tend to do better and stay. Like there's a higher retention rate by those who have grounding. There's also, it's not just the immediate, but how are we looking at the long-term solution? So with Department of Finance proposing that this is multiple years out, there's ways to get there.

Our community colleges are poised across this state with lots of classes and coursework in child development that would be readily accessible.

Okay. Senator Ochoa Bogh.

So I do understand your perspective with my colleague from Orange County, but I do want to emphasize how much I do appreciate wanting to provide a quality preschool experience with the interaction. As someone who went through teaching credential classes and was able and had the privilege to have parenting classes and in fact, parenting preschool program participation classes, I learned a lot as far as child development, how to communicate with a child, and how to best create a positive discipline environment on that.

So even as someone who had gone through those courses, I still learned more about child development. So there is a benefit to learning how children develop, how their brain thinks and how they process information, how to best communicate with them. I think everyone in the life of a child would benefit from training on how do children develop and understand the world, because they certainly don't understand the way that we do it. So I appreciate that.

Having said that, I do have a couple of questions and concerns with regards to the requirements of having these teacher-to-student ratios and the implementation of it. One of the concerns I had originally was whether or not schools were penalized for not having adequate staffing in place or the required staffing in place. And I've been made aware that according to the CDE website, they are monetary penalties for not meeting class size, adult-to-student ratios, and credentialing requirements.

In light of the fact that we don't have enough qualified or staff to meet the needs of these staffing requirements, have you folks considered not holding liable these school districts that don't have access to people who are currently or the LEAs that don't have the ability to hire people to meet these staffing requirements? Because the last thing I want to see is having a requirement to have these teaching staffing ratios and yet not have the ability to staff them and then penalize them for that.

Have you folks had any discussions with regards on this accountability?

We don't have anything like that currently in our proposal. But for further information on how the apportionment and penalties work, I would defer to CDE.

So, this is CDE, I would think that the apportionment, because it's part of apportionment, there are penalties. It's not a full penalty based on what the ADA is for the child, but there is a penalty if they're not meeting the requirements and education code for that funding stream. And I think it's that pull of wanting to make sure that people aren't just deciding not to do it. Right, so walking away, but there truly is another need.

So it wouldn't take away all of the ADA that the school would be generating for that child, but there would be some sort of fiscal penalty.

And we have had somebody materialize at the microphone that I think is ready to make a comment.

I will always refer to Department of Finance Chris Ferguson.

Chris Ferguson with Finance. The way the penalty is structured in law, it's specific to the additional funding that a district is receiving to hire that additional aide for their classroom. And it's proportional to the amount of non-compliance. So they would be returning the, in essence, it's returning the funds to the state that go unused for the purpose that you received it for. So it's not a true penalty of sorts.

Rather, it's a return of the funding that was provided for a specific purpose that went unused.

And given the fact we have a few former school board members up here, I suspect that sometimes they got used and then had to be returned. But thank you. We appreciate your comments. Anything else in answer to that question?

Grateful to hear that.

Okay. Did that complete your questions?

Yes, as long as they're not being penalized for not being meeting the requirements because of the shortage. I'm good with that. I understand the logic behind what you just mentioned, and I'm good with that.

There's been an additional materialization at the microphone.

The most important materialization. For the record, my name is Chris Ferguson. I'm with the California Department of Finance.

Well, thank you. Some of us knew that, but maybe in the listening public they thought you were anonymous. So Senator Smallwood-Cuevas had a last question.

I didn't, and it's just a follow-up. And because Ms. Morgan was so thorough, I felt like I really should have asked this question. You mentioned that there were 16 to 19,000 sort of forecast need for these instructional aids, and I wondered how that might compare to maybe there's some analysis of how many qualified folks are out there in the state who could meet these qualifications.

It kind of goes back to Senator Min's point about do these requirements create barriers for folks who certainly could step in and have been stepping in to do this work. So that's why I wanted to get a sense of how many folks do we project are actually in our labor market who could actually qualify for these positions.

Yeah, unfortunately, Department of Education, that is not information that we do have.

Is there some analysis to kind of see in terms of moving, being in support of these new requirements and ratios? Is there a way to get that information to kind of decide? I know it's a long ramp. Right. In terms of these being in effect, but at the same time, just the feasibility of moving forward with the policy at this moment, given how many folks are actually qualified to step in.

We could add a question to our UPK Planning Implementation Grants to understand in the LEA level what they think. But I don't have a way, and I don't think there's a study right now that captures that second adult, I wouldn't say as we think of barriers. It's not that they're having to get a teaching credential. So it's not a multiple. To get a child development permit, and I think you said it's any level, it's six units of early childhood education. That's two courses at a community college.

So it's not an extensive requirement that would be there for people to meet.

Yeah, I just know in other hearings talked about enrollment and some of the challenges that our community colleges are having, mainly because of COVID because of scheduling and availability of classes, though just a small number of units, it could take an extended amount of time and a lot of effort. And certainly, there are workers who are doing that work now and are doing a great job of it who don't have these certifications.

And so I think it's just something to weigh to find that analysis to see. Is this the right time and moment when vacancies are so high the workforce is not available? And certainly, it sounds like there are folks who can do this work and help us meet our goals and are helping us meet our goals now. So thank you for that.

And Senator, thank you. And Senator Ochoa Bogh had a follow-up question.

So to my colleagues comments, did I understand correctly here that you do have an emergency credential potential or possibility in pursuing this credential while working? I know that in some aspects when we've had severe shortages, such as in the late '90s, you had emergency credential programs where teachers who were not necessarily fully credentialed could be in the classroom as long as they were fulfilling their course requirements during that period of time.

And I know because I was one of those teachers that was blessed to have that opportunity. So did I understand correctly here that I saw that that is still a possibility?

We have it for, Department of Education again, in the current fiscal budget year. So in anticipation for this TK need, what was approved in the 2022-23 budget was for the Commission on Teacher Credentialing to issue and renew one-year emergency specialist teaching permits in early childhood education that would authorize teaching in a TK classroom.

So that was a way to bring people in who might have, let's say, a child development background but not have a full teaching credential and be able to teach for that one year.

So not necessarily for the second adult, just for the primary.

That's correct.

Is there something similar that we could have in the process for the second adult? Has there been any discussions?

Sorry, Jodie Lieberman with the Department of Finance. So for the second adult, one of the pathways is to be working on your teaching credentials. So ou don't have to be credentialed, but just in a program working towards a credential, any program that requires clinical practicum experience. You could be doing both of them. So getting your credential and also being a second adult in the classroom.

I think that your level of quizzicalness implies you have an additional comment.

I think we're thinking the same.

What I'm hearing you say that is for that 24 units, is there a way to sort of, there's an emergency when we don't have the workforce with that criteria? Is there a waiver or a process? I don't know if it would be an emergency credential, but a process of just allowing those folks who are doing that work now to continue to do that work. And there could be a waiver or a phase in process, potentially.

So the equivalent of what the primary does. Sorry.

How about, Senator Ochoa Bogh? Do you have a comment?

Apologize. Just eager. I think what we're all thinking is whether or not we can have something similar to the Emergency Credential Program for teachers for their primary to be there for the second one, not necessarily for the ones that are currently wanting to be a teacher, although we would encourage that. But there are some individuals who would just want to stay in that preschool, no TK program, but not necessarily pursue a credential, teaching credential. So the ability to pursue those second adult in the classroom.

What's the formal title for the second adult?

Instructional aide.

Instructional aide. So basically the equivalent of an emergency certification for an aide.

Jodie Lieberman with the Department of Finance. At this time, there is nothing like that in the proposal. But again, I would note that this proposal will not take effect until 2028-2029. So there is a five-year pause on this occurring. And again, for the child development permit, you can be working towards it while being the second one. Yes.

Senator Min, did you have a question?

I just had a comment, which is I appreciate the goals of the requirements here, and they are laudable. That being said, the context of this is we're trying to stand up a transitional kindergarten program throughout the state. We're facing a massive teacher shortage generally. I'm not clear from talking to people in my district how many people are actively pursuing teacher's credentials, but it's a hard job. My youngest right now is seven years old. TK is much harder than teaching elementary school.

You're talking about kids who will have accidents. Like they will pee their pants and have accidents. They'll make messes. It's a tough, tough job at that age. And my personal view is hearing this debate, not knowing that there's no data on the labor market at this point. It seems premature to be talking about requirements when we really don't even know if we'll have enough of a labor demand for this, to begin with. So that's kind of my two cents.

A waiver might be great, but I just don't know that we're there until we have a sense we have to stand this up. The first and foremost priority of the Administration of the Legislature, in my view, should be making sure that the TK program writ large is successful and not creating artificial barriers to labor. When we know there's a general shortage in this area.

I think that's the perfect close. But of course, we're talking about academics that probably needs to be restated because it really is. What I sense from Members of the Committee is they do really support this, but we've got a teacher shortage anyway. There's a dramatic need for instructional aides. There's pieces of the data that we just don't think are totally available. And this is not an easy job. So we get that there were lots of proposals on the table.

It's the reason why we were asking whether we thought they were going to result in something. But we have time between now and the May revise and the various proposals that if in fact the attendance is lower and there's a little more money available, maybe it can be put to this. And the fact that the Legislative Analyst is talking about the ratios in a way that isn't going to make it harder to staff.

This is a good thing, and we would just hope you would take all these comments and questions seriously in how you work toward May, because we really want this to work and it's clear there's a lot of work to be done. So we appreciate you participating in this discussion, but miraculously, we're going to move to issue number four, which is the California State Preschool Program, and nobody's going to move. It's all the same people. So we'll just go right into it. And we'll start with the Department of Finance.

Jody Lieberman with the Department of Finance. I will be giving an overview of the Governor's investments in the preschool budget for this fiscal year. The first investment is a continuation of the inclusivity adjustments that were included in the 2022 Budget Act. The 2022 Budget Act provided increased adjustment factors to students with disabilities.

These increases were paired with requirements for the California State Preschool Providers to incrementally ramp up their enrollment to at least 10% of students with disabilities by July 1 of 2024. Consistent with the 2022 Budget Act, the Governor's Budget includes 64.5 million Proposition 98 General Fund and 51.8 million General Fund to continue a multiyear plan to ramp up the inclusivity adjustments for the California State Preschool Program.

The 2023-2024 year will be the second year of the three-year ramp-up process and students with disabilities will be required to make up 7.5% of state preschool program providers' enrollment. Next, the Governor's Budget includes approximately 63.3 million General Fund and 112,000,000 Proposition 98 General Fund to support an 8.13% statutory cost of living adjustment for the California State Preschool Program.

Next, the Governor's Budget includes a proposal that will allow a child to attend a California State preschool program that is in a free and reduced-price meal boundary if their parent is also employed in that boundary. The intent is to allow working families and commuters to drop off and pick up their child at a location that is closer to their workplace. The change will be both full-day and to part-day preschool. This enrollment flexibility aligns with transitional kindergarten.

Next, the Governor's Budget includes 1.7 million and 3 ongoing positions to support the implementation of the Classroom Assessment Scoring System or CLASS, to be used in all CSPP or California State Preschool Program classrooms. This funding is split to be 763,000 Proposition 98 General Fund and 957,000 non-Proposition 98 General Fund to support the preschool class. The CLASS is a tool for observing and assessing the effectiveness of interactions among teachers and students in classrooms.

It measures the level of emotional support, classroom organization, and instructional support provided to teachers aligned with strategies and activities that have been linked through research to children's social, developmental, and academic achievement. It is also required as part of the Head Start Federal Monitoring System. This proposal would provide resources and three staff to implement the class for all CSPP providers and provide support and training to the class to all CSPPs. Thank you and I'm happy to take questions at the appropriate time.

Thank you very much. We'll move to the legislative analysts.

Sarah Cortez, LAO. The Legislature could reduce costs by 196,000,000 and maintain the preschool program as it currently operates and with these additional funds, the Legislature could use as budget solutions could use these funds as a budget solution to increase funding in other areas of the state preschool program or increase funding for priorities outside of the preschool program. The bulk of these funds come from an overestimate of the cost of living adjustment.

The Governor's cost of living adjustment estimate reflects the cost of providing an 8.13% to all providers where a statute only provides a COLA for those providers with rates based on the SRR. We would note that providing the COLA in this way does not address inflationary cost pressures for providers that have rates based on the RMR. Some of these funds are associated with the cost of the rate increase being lower than expected, and there's also an extra $29 million in Proposition 98 due to unawarded slots.

I'd also like to comment on temporary policies. So as a reminder, the Governor's Budget does not extend temporary provisions, and the first one is to provide reimbursement flexibility and the second is to provide family fee waivers so without additional action, these provisions will expire. We do recommend allowing the reimbursement flexibility to sunset. So this flexibility allowed providers to receive their full contract amounts regardless of how many children were served, and contracts were generally based on pre-pandemic enrollments.

And we know enrollment has significantly declined since the pandemic. So we think ending the flexibility would help incentivize providers to return to pre-pandemic enrollment levels if a provider can no longer serve its pre-pandemic enrollment levels, which is either due to local demand from families or for workforce issues. Ending the reimbursement flexibility allows the state to either redistribute funds to other state preschool providers that do have the demand to expand redirect the funding to other priorities or to achieve budget savings.

Also, if funding priorities allowed, the Legislature may want to consider eliminating family fees for full-day state preschool to have parity with TK and part-day state preschool. This action would eliminate the fiscal incentives for families to enroll in a program without a fee and allows families instead to focus on other aspects of the preschool program when choosing to enroll. And with that, that concludes my remark. Thank you.

Thank you. The Department of Education. You'll get there. I think he'll help you with the sound. I think you're going to have to press it again because he can't turn it up apparently.

No, we're going to give you another mic. We want you to be heard for people that aren't in the room.

Thank you. So thank you, chair and Members, good afternoon. Stephen Propheter, the Director of the Early Education Division at the California Department of Education, on behalf of the Superintendent of Public Instruction.

There we go.

To provide a little bit of context on the California State preschool program. Like to describe a little bit who our programs are? Many. Our programs are operated by both local educational agencies as well as community based organizations serving 3 and 4 year old children in part day and full day settings.

With the expansion of transitional kindergarten, this creates an opportunity for the California State preschool program to provide two years of high quality preschool education for more children, including children from Low income families, children with disabilities, and children who are multilingual learners. As we recognize the expansion of transitional kindergarten means more four year old children will be moving to transitional kindergarten. The California Department of Education held focus groups with our contractors on serving more three year old children this last fall.

What came out of those focus groups are some findings or some recommendations around some barriers at enrolling three year old children. So first, I'd highlight that currently in statute, the education code prioritizes four year old children over three year old children for the state preschool program. So that means as more four year old children move to transitional kindergarten, our state preschool programs have to do more work to kind of exhaust the list of four year old children before they can enroll three year old children.

Additionally, our programs receive more funding to support the additional needs of a four year old child, say, compared to a three year old child. So such as a four year old child with a disability, a program receives more in reimbursement for that child than say it would for a three year old child with a disability when considering the adjustment factors that the Legislature enacted last year as part of this year's budget.

Finally, school districts have shared that as they pivot to serving more three year old children, the existing community care licensing requirements around health and safety duplicate existing school rules around health and safety, and that also creates barriers for including children with disabilities in General education settings. Speaking of serving more children with disabilities in the California State preschool program, we appreciate the significant investments the Legislature included in last year's budget and the continued focus on inclusion of children with disabilities in this year's budget.

Research demonstrates that inclusive programs benefit all children, not just children with disabilities. We released initial guidance on the new requirement that a certain percentage of funded enrollment be set aside in our state preschools for children with disabilities this last summer and we released more comprehensive guidance this past February. As of about a week ago.

As we looked at our enrollment data, we see that approximately 20% of our state preschool programs are projected to meet or exceed this year's requirement of setting aside 5% of enrollment for children with disabilities. However, we see that our state preschool programs are ramping up enrollment of children with disabilities as they're learning about how to implement this new requirement, and this also highlights the need for more supports for our community based organizations to enroll children with disabilities.

As we look at some of our data which shows that more of our leas are currently enrolling children with disabilities in state preschool than our community based organizations. Speaking of a support that the Legislature invested in last year, the inclusive Early Education Expansion program, which provides 250,000,000 in the current year budget to provide resources for our state preschool programs and early learning and care programs to offer inclusive settings for children with disabilities.

We're working to implement the three different facets associated with this funding, so there's approximately, I'd say at least 198,000,000 available for direct grants to leas for inclusive early education expansion, investment in evaluation as well as investment of 50 million in statewide capacity building to reach far more programs serving children with disabilities. We anticipate releasing the RFA for direct grants this spring, as well as finalizing the investments for the 50 million in statewide capacity building this spring as well.

We'd also note that because the inclusive early education Expansion program is funded through Proposition 98, which means it's only available to leas as direct grants. While we're trying to incentivize leas to partner with community based organizations that our community based organizations cannot access the funds directly.

We know that this program from the previous iteration, it's a very important support for professional development, adaptive equipment and modifications for serving children with disabilities, I'll touch a little bit on the expansion that the Legislature appropriated in 21-22 CDE was able to of the 130,000,000 that was available, CDE was able to award 101,000,000 for a total of 6304 slots. 24% of the new contractors were brand new. They'd never had a state preschool program before.

We plan on issuing an RFA this year to award the balance of 29 million. My colleague, deputy Sever and Neville Morgan touched on data from our UPK planning and implementation grants. A data point from that we have 286. Leas said they are interested in operating or expanding their state preschool program in the coming years. We also hear there's broad interest in expanding state preschool at our community based organizations, so would need nonproposition 98 funding to be able to do that.

And as we talk about an expansion, it's incredibly important to also talk about reimbursement rates for the California State preschool program. Higher rates allow our programs to pay teachers more. Unless rates can be addressed, programs will continue to see staff leaving the profession for higher paying jobs elsewhere, and addressing rates addresses access.

Our contractors have shared that Low rates impact their ability to recruit and retain enough staff to keep all of their classrooms open, and programs have cited a lack of staff as one reason enrollment in the California State preschool program has not fully recovered to pre pandemic levels. One final note on rates the Governor's Budget identifies funds for a cost of living adjustment, which the CDE appreciates, and we would urge you to carefully consider the Leo's recommendation about this use of the cost of living adjustment.

So last year's COLA only went to low cost counties, and over half of our state preschool programs did not get an increase in a year with high inflation. The Governor's Budget proposal to continue this approach deepens those inequities. I'll touch on the proposal for expanding eligibility for free and reduced price meals.

We acknowledge that the proposed trailer Bill language around this would provide eligibility for the California State preschool program to families who work in the boundary of an elementary or school district with high, free or reduced price meals, and that would include them in the priority for eligibility for the state preschool program while still prioritizing lower income families. First, research suggests that all children can benefit from universal or mixed income programs, but mixed income programs seem to benefit children from lower incomes the most.

Finally, on the classroom assessment scoring system, we appreciate the administration's proposal to support the class as it's called, in addition to replacing a tool that is dated, the current tool we use and is not supported by the author. This investment in class will go beyond and align our state preschools with Head Start and quality counts California, thus reducing administrative burden and improving on measuring quality.

This is especially helpful for many of our state preschool programs who also hold Head Start grants, and I will conclude with that. And I have with me Deputy Superintendent Sarah Neville Morgan to assist in answering questions at the appropriate time.

Thank you very much. That was a good presentation by all of you. We'll just ask if there are any questions from the Committee or comments. You've apparently wowed the Committee and I think it's really helpful and we will just keep looking at this as we head to the May revise. But we thank you for your help on both items. So we are going to move to item number five, which is special education.

And we have Liz Mai from the Department of Finance, who is on Zoom, and then Sarah Cortez from the Legislative Analyst and Sarah Neville Morgan from the Department of Education. And I believe, are you heather from the Department of Education. Great. Ok, so we are going to move to special education, and we're going to begin with the Department of Finance, and Liz Mai is on to Zoom.

Hi. Good afternoon. Chair Laird and Members Liz Mai, Department of Finance so the Administration has been committed to special education reform over the last four years, supporting funding and programmatic improvements that increased budgetary transparency, improved services provided to students and parents, and promoted inclusive local planning and cohesion between special education and General education.

Building upon these efforts, the Governor's Budget proposes stabilizing current special education local plan area, or SELPA membership by extending the moratorium on the creation of new single district SELPAs by two years, increasing fiscal transparency by requiring the California Department of Education to post each SELPA's annual local plan, including their governance budget and service plans, on its website, and limiting the amount of additional funding that SELPAs are allowed to retain for nondirect student services before allocating special education based funding to their Member local educational agencies.

That last proposal functionally directs SELPA to at minimum, allocate the total amount of funding to its Member leas that it did in 22-23 adjusted for the COLA in 23-24. We have received feedback from some in the field who have run simulations and have found that because of their specific cases of severe declining enrollment, they will be unable to comply with the proposed changes. So we have been performing data runs for different scenarios in anticipation of addressing these concerns as we head into May revise. That concludes my presentation, and I'm happy to answer questions at the appropriate time.

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

Sarah Cortez LAO so we do recommend rejecting the proposed SELPA allocation requirements of the last requirement that was just described by the Department of Finance. Also on page 26, the first bullet in your agenda, and specifically because some SELPAs wouldn't be able to comply with this requirement as proposed, specifically, selpas with declining attendance that set aside relatively small shares of funding for SELPA level services. We do also question the rationale for this proposal.

If the Legislature is interested in creating a requirement regarding how much SELPA Members receive from their SELPA, we do suggest modifying the proposal. Thank you.

Great, and we'll move to the Department of Education.

Good afternoon. Heather Calomese, Director of the Special Education Division at the California Department of Education, on behalf of the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tony Thurman. The California Department of Education appreciates the continued commitment by the Administration and Legislature to special education and the significant investments to encourage conversations around the state, across the state, regarding governance, funding, and accountability.

The recent investments and increased funding for special education has brought much needed relief in our long journey towards one system for all students and improved outcomes for students with disabilities. The commitment to ensure fair and equitable systems that truly serve students with disabilities across the state is astounding and unprecedented.

While there is no silver bullet to address the deep systemic issues that special education faces, we know that the significant resources that the Administration and Legislature have devoted are having a positive impact to improving how we support students, families, and communities within highly complex systems in extremely challenging times. This year's budget proposal firmly centers issues that have surfaced in the 2021 special education governance and Accountability and I'll call it sega study from here on out.

And in short, that study focused on addressing the less than desirable outcomes for students with an IEP in California and also removing barriers to inclusive practices to improve those outcomes. Also supporting the accountability structures established by the Local Control Funding Formula, as well as increasing transparency for parents and other educational partners across the state. Students with disabilities or students with an IEP are included in and explicitly addressed in California's General education governance and accountability structures.

However, California also has both separate and overlapping special education governance and accountability structures. This study, consistent with the charge in the budget language, proposed an alignment of systems where there was no evidence, where those systems provided additional benefit to students related to the study priorities as well the variance in Celpa structures across the state. The CDE would need to further determine the impact of the current proposal regarding the cap on fees.

Some structures include, currently across the state, a billback service, for instance, some direct charge, and some pay to play, if you will. In addition, non direct student costs vary because of the type of programming that's being provided at the SElPA level. Through a review of the local plans that CDE receives each year, the CDE has not seen widespread changes in programs being provided or the administrative fees across the state from year to year to address the declining enrollment.

The CDE does believe an adjustment factor would help minimize the impact to programs. However, the CDE also believes additional data collection and analysis is needed to fully determine the impact on the cap on fees, which could be captured in the local planning development process in the coming year.

Declining enrollment, which has been significant across the state for the overall student population, and interestingly enough, the population of students with disabilities is increasing over time, again, would merit further discussion and forecasting and modeling across the state to determine how the cap would impact SOPA operations. And again, the CDE wants to reiterate its commitment to working collaboratively with the Administration and Legislature, along with our educational partners, to better understand governance and accountability structures that exist.

And this proposal provides an opportunity for deep and meaningful interrogation of our current system, and we hope these conversations again bring forth increased transparency and improved outcomes as well. Thank you. This concludes my remarks, and I, along with Deputy Superintendent Sarah Nova Morgan, are available for questions at the appropriate time.

Thank you very much. We're going to move to questions, and let me just ask the Department of Finance. Just based on what we've heard, it seems that the population of people eligible for SELPA services is growing, but the average daily attendance is gradually dropping. And yet the proposal links the money for SELPAs to average daily attendance, which is not necessarily an indicator of the number of people requiring services under SELPA. Do you see a need to address that in a proposal other than what we have in front of us?

Hi, Liz Mai, Department of Finance. I think what you're asking, I guess, is about. So to back up, California special education is currently based on census level data for allocation. I think there are different ways that different states can allocate funds, and some have allocated it based on counts of students with disability in the prior year. I guess there are lots of pros and cons to those different systems.

I think when the census based allocation methodology was put into place, it was kind of a reaction to worries and concerns that leas might be identifying students with disabilities when they didn't necessarily need services. So I guess some perverse incentive, I suppose so. I think that would require more review. And questioning of both our priorities and.

I guess the goals of both the Administration and the Legislature.

Does LAO want to comment?

If I can clarify? So the proposal is about limiting. The proposal is requiring that SELPAs allocate the same amount as they did the prior year, adjusted for COLA. So it's not based on ADA specifically. And that is the problem. There are some scenarios where SELPAs won't actually be able to allocate to their Members the same amount that they did in the prior year because they do have some declining enrollment. So that's the problem that we're highlighting with the governor's proposal.

What was what I was just trying to ask about, and I won't characterize the answer. So, do you have an alternative other than rejecting?

So we offer reject, but we do have options for modifying the Legislature or for modifying the administration's proposal. And the first is to include an adjustment for ADA, so to include capture in declining enrollment. So the amount that SELPAs would be required to provide to SELPAs would actually align with the amount of funding that they are receiving. The second thing that we do for an option for modifying the proposed allocation, because the rationale we were provided was that this would provide stability to SELPA Members.

So the second piece that the option that we are putting forth is that the amount be specifically targeted towards what the Member received, not in total of how much the SELPA provided to the Members currently.

And describe what you mean by what the member recieves.

So it's an aggregate amount. So the SELPA Member will have the total amount of funding, and we're looking at the total amount that it would have to provide to all of its members, but not necessarily saying this member gets this, this member gets that. That can change in the governor's proposal. And we're saying that it should be based on what the SELPA member received in the prior year, and that would kind of lean towards providing the SELPA member stability.

You unfortunately have the mic. Now let me ask a follow up question. Are we just dealing with various trends that are in conflict and how we're dealing with this, which is the funding might be based on attendance, but the services delivered to SELPA recipients depend totally on the number of recipients and the level of services, and those don't necessarily align in the same direction.

I think that's a fair characterization, but I also want to highlight what CDE mentioned of there's just different models of the amount of funding that a SELPA will keep for SELPA level services versus the amount that they would provide directly to the SELPA Members. There's various models in terms of exactly what's going on. So it's really hard to describe the impact of kind of a cap like this.

But we do would note that there are certain scenarios where a SELPA provides a small share, that it keeps a small share for SELPA level services and has declining enrollment within its SELPA members that wouldn't actually even be able to comply with this requirement as proposed at all.

I have a sneaking suspicion. Department of Education has a comment.

Heather Calomese, California Department of Education, I think, you know, one way to sort of look at sort of the overall structure of SELPAs across the state is really to sort of see it as a factorial. Right, there are just many different sort of combinations across the state, across the roughly 134 SELPAs that we have in terms of the supports and services they're providing. Right, and those non-direct student costs can range from program staff to utilization of building space to associated program costs.

And some even keep emergency funds on hand for LEA distribution should they need it as well. And so I think just to reiterate though, the notion, and again, centering transparency, I think is certainly important for not only members and certainly for students and families and really for our community as well, to ensure that these, again, significant investments are going towards the supports and services that our children deserve and need.

And maybe there'll be other comments or questions from members when we get to them in a second, but it just seems like that's what we have to work on between now and May is how to address that in a fair way.

And just over time, some of these improvements that have come in recent years have lessened some of the pushback from local districts, although I can only imagine that if enrollment is declining and they have to do certain things, we get back to people complaining about carve outs and the other things for the program. So I would just hope that we have just identified the problems very clearly and we will try to figure out how to address these between now and may.

Are there other questions or comments? Senator Min and then we'll get to Senator Ochoa Bogh.

I just thought this was a very instructive debate for me or discussion, and I would echo the comments of the chair here about how we ensure a fair funding formula. I just wanted to highlight the comments made by Department of Education about breaking down barriers to inclusivity.

Thank you, Senator Ochoa Bogh.

I think it was something along the lines of what you said, and my seven year old has an IEP special needs, and it was extraordinarily difficult for us to navigate the process. So I think these measures are a great first step in just trying to improve awareness and ease access into these. It's tough when you have a special needs kid, and I would applaud all efforts, including the ones you suggested, to try to make that easier.

I was trying to find, and maybe it was an oversight on my part, but does the proposed budget allocation, does it have specific amounts as to how much of that money is towards administrative costs and how much of that money is supposed to be directed specifically to that child? For the Department of Finance,

We'll start with the Department of Finance.

Hi, Department of Finance. So, to clarify, to make sure that I'm understanding your question correctly, you're asking if current law specifies if certain percentage of funding for special education should go towards direct services or, say, Administration, correct?

Yes. If there's a cap for cost. Yes. So, a cap for administrative services versus student services?

No, no cap currently exists in law for that.

Is there a reason why we don't have an allocation specific for administrative purposes and another one for student services?

There is a specific set aside within the special education allocation formula for program specialists in administration of regionalized operations and services, which I think covers what you are referring to. But I think the issue that we are trying to get to is that funding outside of that specific allocation has also been used for administrative services and not necessarily for direct student services.

One more time, can you.

Sorry. So within the special education allocation, there are portions specific for program specialists and those regionalized operations costs.

And it's a small part of the entire special education allocation. And then there are other portions, some that are. The largest part is just for, it's called the base funding and that is going towards student services. But depending on the SELPA, some SELPAs retain more of that base funding for their operational costs than others. So what our proposal is getting at is trying to kind of limit that off the top taking from that base funding. Does that make sense?

But that still is a cap of some sort, then that's being recommended?

Oh, yes. What we are recommending for this budget is this cap for a year.

Just for this year and not for going forward?

So my biggest concern is I just want to make sure that we are allocating as much of this funding towards services for the student, whether it's paying for the programs, the staff, versus what's going towards administration of the funding, because I've been made aware of some of the concerns with some of my constituents in my district, that there are many services are being denied to these students.

Yes. As it currently stands, it is just for the 2023-24 fiscal year.

I just want to make sure that we have a reasonable amount that is allocated towards administrative costs, but assuring that the funding really is being aimed towards services for the students that have a need, I hope that conveys my intent of the questioning that I have.

Thank you. Well, actually, before we leave, does the legislative and Department of Education have any comment on the exchange that just happened between Senator Ochoa Bogh and the Finance Department?

Sure.

Heather Calomese, CDE I think in terms of this, you know, I think it's the start of the think, you know, certainly from the CDE lens and the work that we do in terms of reviewing and approving the local plans that so far are required to submit to CDE every year, I think that there is an opportunity here to really dig in over the course of the year and analyze and through such things as the annual sort of budget plan and the service plans that describes those supports and services that are provided to the member districts.

We're certainly willing to sort of dig in further around that this year to, I think, learn more in relation to this proposal and assure that those fees obviously are getting to the students as they should as well.

Any further comments? Okay, well, then I'm going to steal that characterization. I'm just going to refer to these hearings as the start of a journey, and we'll try to take what we've learned and see how we work on that journey to May 15. Let me thank you for participating in this panel, because it is a subject that all of us hear from our constituents and constituent school districts about many times.

And I think we will want to continue to have these discussions before we get to the final decisions on the budget, just to make sure that these trends are integrated in the right way. So thank you for being with us today. That completes the discussion of five issues. But we still have public comment, and we need to be done in about a half hour if we're still going. And so let's go to comments. I'm not going to limit them dramatically.

Take a minute at the outside, but I may limit them depending on how many people are on the phone. So we'll take comments in the room. Welcome to the Committee.

Great. Thank you so much. Michelle Underwood, on behalf of the Coalition for Adequate Funding for Special Education, want to jump at the front of the line, since we are just on this topic. I think the one thing for us to remember is that the allocation of funds within a SELPA is determined by the school district. So they determine how much goes to the member district, how much stays to the SELPA.

So the governor's proposal, which we oppose and we support the LAO's recommendation to reject, jumps in between that relationship of the local members and their SELPA. To give some examples of just the inability, even if this proposal were adopted, districts and SELPAs just won't have the money. So in North Santa Cruz County, when you look year over year.

Just to pick a random.

I got a couple of really random statistics here. So year over year, they would not be able to comply by $1.0 million. So in Monterey County, it's a half $1.0 million. In Antelope Valley, it's $4 million they're just not going to get because of declining enrollment. So I appreciate that the LAO is looking for ways to address declining enrollment, but we fundamentally don't think that the state should jump in, in that relationship.

I wanted to let you go, but if everybody took amount of time, you just did, we will not have time for anywhere near the number of people that are ready to talk.

I had to pause for the laugh line.

Okay. Thank you. Welcome to the Committee.

Mr. Chair, Members, Brendan Twohig. On behalf of EdVoice, we support the proposed equity multiplier, and in addition to the targeted funding, we particularly appreciate the requirement that funds actually be spent at the school site, which will help ensure they maximize impact on the students that need it most. And then we also support the governor's proposed improvements to the LCAPs as well as the statewide system of supports. We provided a letter to the Committee which provides further detailed comments on all of these proposals. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you very much. And I was going to say at the end, but if anybody wishes to submit written comments in addition to what they say at the podium or on the teleconference system, we would really welcome it. So thank you, welcome to the Committee.

Good afternoon. I'm Raya Romo, coming with Childcare Research Center, CCRC. We are one of the largest family and childcare service nonprofits in the state. We are proud Members of the ECE coalition, and we stand in full alignment with the coalition's budgetary asks. I want to address a couple of the comments and questions around workforce and barriers. I want to provide some additional thoughts. Childcare providers are ECU workers and they are teachers.

Therefore, they provide highly skilled and critical labor that is foundational to the economy and the lives of families across the state, and they deserve a livable wage. It is disrespectful that so many providers earn so little from providing essential care and education to the children, to our children, that they must rely on other public subsidies to try and make ends meet. The Legislature and Administration have debated moving to a single rate system for over 10 years and we need to implement.

I'm really sorry, but if you could do about one more sentence, I'd have one more sentence. Okay.

We need to implement an enrollment based system that does not charge family fees. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Next, Speaker

Adenae Mac with Children Now, we have some grave concerns with the governor's proposal around the equity multiplier. We believe it's an inefficient proposal as it relates to the discussions around AB 2774 and addressing the needs of our lowest performing students, which at this time happen to be our African American students.

Thank you very much.

We believe that there's a better proposal focused on the school dashboard and indicators on the dashboard which we have submitted in our letter and hope that you will adopt that language as it relates to the equity and multiplier moving forward. Thank you.

Good afternoon, chair. This is Derick Lennox. On behalf of the California County Superintendents representing 58 county superintendents of schools, I'll cabin my comments to just around the equity multiplier because we had a lot of talk about county offices and our role in the system. So that's very important to us to get this right as we reflect on how to improve the LCFF. Coming up on the 10 year anniversary, three quick comments.

The first is a deep appreciation for the administration's willingness to try something different and to do something different to make sure that the money, the supports and funding is getting to the students at the school site level. The second is the fact that 300 million is nothing to sneeze at, but the funding is necessary but not sufficient.

The real work happens when, just like Executive Director Nava was talking about, the money is there and you're working in collaboration with the community to make sure that we have ongoing, sustainable changes. That's the process of differentiated assistance. And we know that it's a really tough nut to crack, but that's the same thing that has to happen at the school sites. So we are really looking forward to continue.

Thank you very much. We appreciate it. Next comment.

Then I'll stop there. Thank you very much.

And Mr. Lennox, you might have to write down your third one and send it to us because you've gone over a minute.

Hi, Senators. Thank you so much for your support of the ECE community. My name is Justina Erpelding and I'm with EveryChild California, and we are proud Members of the ECE coalition. On behalf of the ECE providers, we ask that you approve a 25% increase to their reimbursement rate, which may sound like a large number, but when you take into consideration that they have not received a rate increase in many years, it truly is a legitimate number.

And it takes into account the high inflation rates and the high cost of care. The low pay has led teachers to leave the field that they love, to find higher paying jobs to take care of their families. This snowballs into agencies not being able to accept families due to lack of staff and then in turn not earning their contracts, which unfortunately leads to providers having to close their doors. This disproportionately affects women of color in California.

If you could do one more sentence, we'd appreciate.

Yes, family fees is going to start in effect in July, and this is going to affect a lot of the families that are in the system, and it's going to be too much for them.

I think this is a run on sentence.

It might be. So I'll send my information.

Thank you very much. We appreciate your comments. Welcome.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair. Rosanna Carvaco Elliot, here on behalf of the Early Care and Education Consortium, which is an Association of multistate, multisite, high quality childcare providers. They've got over 450 centers here in California with the ability to serve 66,000 students. Want to talk about the transitional kindergarten proposals, specifically the additional expansion? I do think our ECEC thinks it is too early to be doing another expansion of transitional kindergarten, even if it is just the summer birthdays.

We have not even addressed the impact of transitional kindergarten on our care providers and the devastating impact that they are facing with the loss of four year olds. And then in addition to that, as you know, Senator, the Senate fought hard for a mixed delivery workgroup last year, and that workgroup's recommendations to create a true mixed delivery system won't even come out till 2024. So, unfortunately, we have to oppose the governor's proposed expansion of the summer birthdays for TK. Thank you.

Thank you for your comments. Next.

Good afternoon, Song Nor with the California School Employees Association. I will try to keep it short. It's on the TK proposal for the second adult in the classroom. I just want to emphasize that the second adult, or pair educator, instructional assistant, whatever you call them, they are educators as well. They're just not anybody that we're pulling off the street putting into a TK classroom. These are highly qualified educators in which the district has screened to meet the qualifications of the job.

So we want to treat them as educators. We don't want to create barriers for them to have to go back to school on their own time to get these credentials or these certificates in which the lead teacher, the credential teacher, already has. And so we're asking that you don't create additional barriers for our members who are doing the job right now, but in a few years, they're no longer able to do the same job that they have been doing.

So we ask that when the time comes, you reject their proposal.

Thank you very much. Next speaker

Hi, good afternoon. Senator Laird, Erin Apte with Public Advocates. We strongly support the governor's proposals to strengthen the LCFF accountability system. The LCFF Equity Coalition did submit a letter with detailed recommendations for improvement, and Public Advocates in the ACLU of Southern California also published a report with findings on our review of 72 LCAPs that offers additional recommendations to strengthen the LCAP and the system of support.

We support creating and requiring all LEA's to create focus goals for low performing student groups at the district or school level. We believe this has the potential to be the most transformative of the accountability improvements. We also support expanding the focus goals to address school level performance. We would like to see more robust efforts to address black student achievement, a clear emphasis on closing racial and ethnic performance gaps, and strengthen the community engagement. I'll wrap up quickly to address inconsistent County Office of Education Accountability.

We would like to see improved oversight by CDE, such as audits and review of training materials. And we would want to echo the LAO's recommendations in requiring all student groups at the school and district level to have focus goals that address underlying teacher credentialing issues. Thanks.

Thank you very much. Next speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Jonathan Munoz of California Strategies and Advocacy on behalf of First Five Los Angeles, First Five LA would also like to align themselves with the Easy to Eat Coalition and request a 25% increase to the rate system right now for immediate relief, as well as the allocation of all 20,000 childcare spaces scheduled for release in 2023-2024.

And lastly, because I know you want us to be brief, the early care and education system is fundamentally necessary for children, families in California's economy to grow and thrive. Without a childcare system, our parents cannot work. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much. Appreciate your comments.

Good afternoon, Chair and Members, Romel Antoine with the Black in School Coalition. The Black and School Coalition is a 17 Member advocacy coalition related to the advocacy for black students in education. Want to remind folks that the equity multiplier was created in direct response to AB 2774 which sought to add California's 80,000 unfunded black students to the LCFF. That Bill was unanimously supported in both houses, which you also did earlier.

And we put forward that 5% which students would get under the equity multiplier of black students, rather, is not enough. And so we've put forward alternative proposal that would consider students who perform lower than the state's all students group in at least two areas to increase that funding for black students, which, in rhetoric, is what the Governor has sought to do. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Next comment.

Mr. Chair Members, John Winger here on behalf of the California Charter School Association. We appreciate the discussion on the proposals to increase focus on site based accountability and the LEO's recommendations to simplify the LCAP. One accountability issue that has not been discussed is how the data gaps caused by the pandemic will impact upcoming charter school renewals. While charter schools participate in the state dashboard and the intervention systems discussed today, the pandemic has caused gaps in the data necessary to act on these periodic charter school renewals in accordance with the existing statutory construct under AB 155.

Thank you very much. That completes the testimony that's in person in the room. And we thank everybody that testified because we know that they were waiting through the hearing to do that.

So further, at this moment, we think that school districts and charter schools should both be focused on recovery. And so we would ask that the education Trailer Bill Language include a two year extension on charter school ordinals. Thank you.

Now we're going to go on to anyone that wishes to provide public comment through the teleconference system. And I'll remind everyone that the participant number is 877-226-8216 and the access code is 621-7161 and moderator welcome to the Committee, and I'll make a judgment about how we're going to do this by based on how many people are in line.

Sounds good. Thank you, Mr. Chair. If you would like to provide public comment today, you can do so by pressing one, then zero that command again. One, then zero. And so far it looks like we have 10 people queuing up.

Okay, then we have to end no later than a quarter of three. So we'll try with the minute. And if many more people start to line up, we might limit it a little more. So. Moderator first speaker

And first, we'll hear from line 34.

Thank you so much. Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and Senators. This is Grace Eco. On behalf of the California Alternative Payment Program Association, or CAPPA, we'd like to underscore the need to revisit, resourcing and blending our public and private TK system that supports both the education needs of children as well as the real working needs of parents.

When parents are working 8 hours or more per shift outside of the operating hours of TK, we need to recognize that they should have the ability to choose what type of childcare works best for their working needs. Parents are unable to utilize their subsidized childcare vouchers during the operational hours of TK. And if that's the case, we're seeing more and more parents, predominantly women and women of color, leaving the workforce secure for their children.

Our mission is to uplift families and give them the resources they need to be successful. And one way to do that is to empower parents with the choice of childcare that's right for them and their children. Finally, I want to close by saying that we are aligned with the ECE Coalition. Thank you very much.

Line 42.

Thank you very much. You were right at a minute. Moderator next caller.

Karina Laigo, Childcare Law Center we are a proud Member of the Early Care and Education Coalition, and our line of budget asks we oppose the proposal to eliminate Title 22 protections for LE based preschools for three year olds. Title five, unlike Title 22, doesn't guarantee comparable strong transparency rights for parents, and health and safety standards like no guarantees for toilet or diaper assistance for three year olds or no annual unannounced inspections for all programs.

We have been informed by the staff of the corresponding Policy Bill, AB 555, that the member is striking the license exempt provision for three year olds in the Bill after learning about advocates concerns. We additionally support the elimination of family fees from full day preschool programs and supports implementation of an equitable family fee schedule for other childcare programs. We want to thank the Legislature for their previous investments during the pandemic.

Childcare is a public good, and our leaders can honor that by paying childcare providers fair rates. We will be sending a follow up letter. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Moderator next caller,

Line 38.

Good afternoon. I'm Patrick McGrew, representing the Yolo County SELPA, where we support our districts and County Office of Education to ensure that all students with disabilities in Yolo County have equitable access to special education programs, services and supports. In terms of the proposed budget for special education, we support the COLA for special education and the transparency proposal to require the CDE to post our SELPA plans.

However, we are in strong opposition to the SELPA administrative fee cap in this case. The administration's proposal will obstruct the relationship between SELPAs and our Member LEAs. We strongly support the LAO's recommendation to reject this Trailer Bill language that would force funds from SELPAs to LEAs regardless of existing local funding allocation plans, declining enrollment in funding and other local circumstances. If enacted as written, the current proposal would create a $1.1 million deficit for the Yolo SELPA based on our most recent estimates.

Thank you very much. We appreciate your comments. Next caller.

Line 33.

Yes, thank you, Serena Lynn, I'm going to start with my recommendation and explain why the extension of the reimbursement flexibility is necessary for children, families and the early educator work. The state subsidized mixed delivery system, Alternative Payment Family Childcare Home center based direct service programs were created to provide quality care and education to at risk, low income children. These quality programs need the reimbursement flexibility to continue providing high quality care and education to children zero to five years of age.

Title five center based California State preschool programs continue to uphold the one to eight quality ratio for children 4 and 5 years of age and uphold the required teaching staff qualifications, all while being funded at half of the transitional kindergarten investment. Let's be honest, what's happening in transitional kindergarten right now. The ratio is one to 12 LEAs and districts are not able to find staff, period, even with the allowance of permitted teachers being allowed to teach without qualifications and aides being allowed to teach.

Just being 18 years of age and fingerprinted for our four year olds.

Line 14.

I let you go on for a little extra. Thank you very much. We appreciate your comments. Next caller.

Good afternoon. My name is Celine Crimson and I'm the President of Educational Enrichment Systems in San Diego. We have 19 childcare programs in San Diego, and we serve infants to five part day and full day, 248 days a year. I first want to thank you for supporting recent investments and wanted to say that we're all dealing with the residue of the pandemic. I've been on the phone listening to this hearing since you started today, and I'm hearing it loud and clear.

While families continue to work and return to work their essential jobs, please do not pull the rug underneath their feet by making them choose between the family essential needs like groceries and rent and childcare, please move forward with excluding the family fees for our most vulnerable working families. Excluding these fees also maintains and increases equal access to quality programs. These programs also need reimbursement flexibilities. Our parents need quality childcare for their children so they can go to work. Our state should be proud of our program.

Our programs are providing learning opportunities with quality staff, early education, coursework, child development permits, college degree, while our parents go to work and sometimes continue their education. The reality is.

Thank you very much. We appreciate your comments. Moderator next caller

And next, we will hear from line 43.

Good afternoon. My name is Dina Parker, and I'm speaking on behalf of the Beverly Hills, Culver City and Santa Monica, Malibu Unified School District. We support the COLA for special education, but we must strongly oppose the administration's proposal to obstruct the relationship between our districts and our SELPA and essentially removing our ability for local control. Our SELPA provides many critical services directly to students with very little administrative costs and still exceeds the regionalized program specialist budget that the Department of Finance noted. Please, reject this proposal. Thank you very much.

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

Line 30

Good afternoon, my name is Aaron Benton, and I'm the Director of the Butte County SELPA and its 14 districts, and I'm glad to be here. I thank you for addressing special education funding today. In spite of declining enrollment, the percentage of students with disabilities in Butte County has significantly increased in better economic years. We'd be advocating for additional funding to support that reality.

In the meantime, we support the COLA for special education and the proposal that the CDE post our SELPA local plans. We strongly oppose the administration's attempt to insert itself in the local decision making of SELPA governing boards of superintendents in their allocation process. We support the LAO's recommendation to reject the Trailer Bill Language that freezes SELPA dollars and overrides the wishes of superintendents regarding their allocation model. The proposal is impossible for us to even comply with given our declining enrollment situation.

Lastly, we urge you to intervene to block the scheduled shift of mental health services dollars from SELPA's to LEA's, yet another example of administration interference with the local control that superintendents require to provide high quality services in an equitable manner across California. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Moderator next caller

Line 44.

Good afternoon, Chair, Members.

My name is Veronica Coates, and I'm speaking on behalf of the 13 Districts and County Office in Tahema County. I thank you for discussing special education. We absolutely support the COLA as costs continue to rise for our students with disabilities. However, like most of my colleagues, I would like to align myself with we oppose the administration's proposal to obstruct the relationship between our SELPA and Member LEA's.

We support LAO's recommendation to reject the trailer build language that would force funds from SELPA's to LEA's, regardless of existing local funding allocation plans. And I appreciated the discussion and response from Senator Ochoa Bogh about transparency and services. And I wonder if there's opportunity to figure out really what the problem is we're trying to solve, and really solve that as SELPA's and LEA's continue to have many more mandates and unfunded mandates based on them to support their districts and students.

So what's the problem are we really trying to solve? Is it legal fees? Is it administration costs? And let's solve that instead of taking money away from the supports and services that we're required to do on behalf of our students. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Moderator next caller

Line 39.

Hello. My name is Rita Fernandez-Loof, and I am a Member of the San Bernardino County Board of Education, Area B, representing the West end in San Bernardino. County. I strongly support the governor's proposal for special education to limit the amount of funding that SELPA's are allowed to retain for non-direct student services.

The special education community in the West End SELPA, has been harmed by the excessive expenditures and legal fees to the tune of $3 million a year to litigate against students with disabilities to deny them needed services. We wholeheartedly support restricting the use of special education dollars for services to help students rather than to fund lawyers. We support education, not litigation. Thank you.

Moderator next caller.

Line 18.

Hello. My name is Jessica Martinez, and I am the area trustee for the Alhambra School District. My comments are on issue number five for special education. We support the governor's proposal to improve accountability on how special education funds are used by SELPA's. We have heard from many parents in the West End SELPA how millions of dollars are being used to take special education students to court. Education dollars should be used for education, not litigation.

We do not support the Legislative Analyst proposal to keep the status quo. The system is not working for students, and more accountability is needed. We cannot simply hand money over to SELPA's hoping that they will do the right thing for families. Therefore, we ask your Committee to reject the Legislative Analysis proposal and support the Governor's recommendation as we believe it will improve the special education system in California. Thank you.

Thank you very much. And. Moderator is the next one, the last caller

We actually have no further comments at this time.

Well, then let me thank you very much, both for your patience in us getting to that and your service today. So that completes our business, and I want to thank all the individuals who participated in public testimony today. If you're not able to testify, please submit your comments or suggestions and write to the budget and fiscal review Committee or visit our website.

Your comments and suggestions are important. We thank everybody for their participation and cooperation. We've concluded the agenda. The Senate Budget Subcommitee one on education is adjourned.