Assembly Budget Subcommittee No. 2 on Education Finance

Okay, good morning. We will start with a Subcommittee of the Subcommittee. Right, Mr. Fong? Okay, today is our hearing on the 23-24 Budget on Prop. 98, our workforce, student health, and literacy. Today's hearing will dive into a few of the Governor's January Proposals, as well as provide oversight on recent prior-year investments. We'll hear the January proposal on the educator workforce shortage and continue again our oversight on prior year allocations.

We'll also hear about a new proposal on drug overdoses in our public schools as well as literacy proposals. Though these two issues are warranted further policy consideration, we need to evaluate it regarding whether we see May revenue revised projections come in at the level that will allow us to focus on these pieces. As well as we will have public comment at the end of the hearing. We'll start with issue number one, the Golden State Teacher Grant Program.

We'll have up Department of Finance, LAO, and the Student Aid Commission. Okay, please begin.

Good morning, Mr. Chair and Members of the Subcommittee. Jack Zwald, Department of Finance. The Golden State Teacher Grant Program administered by CSA Commission was included as part of the 2021-22 Budget Act and was intended to draw future candidates into high-need fields like STEM and special education among other areas. This initial version of the program was funded with $15 million in one-time federal funds. [Inaudible]. 500 million General Fund with 100 million available over each year over a five-year period as part of the 2021-22 Budget Act.

Along with that funding came significant changes to who is eligible for the program. Under current law, teacher candidates and persons seeking a Pupil Services Credential are eligible for an award of up to $20,000 to cover costs associated with their credential program if they commit to teach at a high-need school for four years. We have observed growth in applications to the program as it became better known and after the expansion of eligibility criteria at the last budget act.

As noted in your agenda, it is possible that the program expends the 98 million available for grants in the current year and may even expend available resources from the past year to issue grants. Even so, the Administration believes that additional changes are warranted.

As part of the 2023-24 Governor's Budget Proposal, we have drafted trailer bill language that would remove the high-need school requirement, lower the service requirement for educators at priority schools to three years while maintaining it at four years for educators who teach at other schools, and create eligibility for those seeking certain types of early education credentials. Our goal is to ensure that this program remains fully subscribed and to address workforce concerns in the early education sphere.

This will also address concerns among some applicants that they may not be able to fulfill their entire service requirement at a priority school. This program is still relatively young, and although demand may be robust now, our proposal will secure a healthy level of interest moving forward. So again, thank you for the opportunity to discuss this issue with you this morning, and I'm ready to answer any questions the Subcommittee may have at the appropriate time. Thank you.

Thank you. Next, LAO.

Jackie Barocia, Legislative Analyst Office. As the Administration noted, the proposed trailer Bill includes various changes to the service requirements and also proposes to expand eligibility. Overall, we recommend rejecting these proposed changes for the following reasons. One, expanding the service requirement to include non-priority schools we view undermines the primary program objective of supporting priority schools facing the most acute teacher shortages.

Additionally, expanding eligibility does not seem to be needed given that CSAC projects that the demand likely is sufficient under current program structure to fully spend the grant funds by the expenditure deadline, if not possibly sooner. With regards to expanding eligibility to certain child development permits, it is not likely to be an effective way to address the early educator workforce issues. Specifically, the proposal one excludes individuals seeking the entry-level teacher permits to teach in state preschool setting.

The teacher permits that are included in the trailer Bill primarily are for the more supervisor manager program Director permits. Additionally, the proposed changes requires recipients to also be concurrently enrolled in a bachelor's degree program, meaning that current teachers who would be interested in receiving a permit would be excluded from the proposal.

Lastly, we've also heard from CSAC that the continuous changes to the program just may increase the administrative burden of the program, and then also changing the program midstream for recipients could just make it difficult to market the program. For the early education workforce issues, acknowledging that that is an issue that we've been hearing.

A more direct intervention that the Legislature could explore is to ask the Administration and departments for an update on other state initiatives that we've done in the space to increase the number of high-quality TK and state preschool teachers and whether those initiatives have been effective. And if they are producing positive program outcomes, then consider if further investments in those types of initiatives are warranted. Thank you.

Okay, thank you. Student Aid Commission?

Good morning. Chair McCarty and Subcommittee Members. I'm Jake Bremner, Deputy Director for Policy and Public Affairs at the California Student Aid Commission. We're, of course, the state agency responsible for administering the very generous and large financial aid portfolio. Over $3 billion now that we're investing in California students, primarily undergraduates, but also, in this case, a program that's also serving students who may already have a baccalaureate degree.

Now, given our responsibility and our role as administrator of the program in bringing these resources through the Golden State Teacher Grant Program, I can comment on how these proposed changes might impact that work. However, you will have other panelists here today who will be better suited to answering the broader questions about the importance of expanding these resources to these professional programs. As you've heard from our colleagues at Department of Finance and LAO, we have seen a significant increase in the number of individuals seeking these grants.

Some Members may recall that at a November Budget Committee oversight hearing, I shared that CSAC was on pace to not only expend the full amount that we had targeted for this year, but to also expend the funds that had not been utilized in year one of the $500 million appropriation that significantly expanded eligibility. Now, several months later, I'm pleased to share some good news.

Within the current eligibility parameters, we're not only on pace to expend all of those funds that I just referenced, but actually at the current trajectory. As noted in prior comments, we would exhaust these funds ahead of schedule. Ahead of that June 30, 2026, end date. Our current forecast would estimate that we would exhaust all funds through awards to students sometime in the 24-25 academic year within this current set of eligibility requirements that you just modified through budget action last year.

Of course, if we were to further expand programmatic eligibility for recipients, very likely that we'll exhaust those funds even more quickly. From an implementation perspective, I will also note that each year of this program there have been changes through the budget process to change program requirements. This creates two considerations for us at the Student Aid Commission. One is around communications, which is challenging to make simple for potential grant recipients when there are so many ongoing changes.

The second is for implementation and workload at the Student Aid Commission. Each round of changes brings a new workload that we need to adjust program requirements and implementation toward. There have been no new resources or staffing considerations made to support that workload. Additionally, this proposal would significantly expand the number of sites that CSAC would need to be prepared to account for and how we assess that students are completing their service requirement.

That also complicates how we think about Administration for a program with a significantly lengthy runway, which I'll get into in just a moment. As I noted last year, we have a significant staffing and workload challenge at the Student Aid Commission resulting from really great and really important expansions that were made from 2021 and since then across a number of programs that were established or expanded.

And because this program in particular, it's a one-time program but allows individuals to complete their service over an eight-year period, we're still in year two of making awards. So if we're still offering awards to students in that 24-25 year, it's still an eight-year period after that point in time that we need to be able to track participant compliance with their service expectations. So we foresee a lengthy runway here.

Finally, I'll note that there are some technical issues that we would need to address with the Legislature and Administration if we wanted to pursue this proposed expansion. For example, within the trailer Bill Language, we would need to address how the Student Aid Commission is expected to assess students' compliance with those service expectations as we've broadened to include both priority and nonpriority schools.

So, for example, if an individual starts serving at a priority school for two years and then they exit to a nonpriority school, how many more years of service requirement do they need to complete? We, of course, stand ready to work with the Administration and Legislature to implement this proposed expansion, but ask that the Administration and Legislature hold in mind these considerations as we identify the necessary resources to carry this out and our collective expectations around the availability of those funds in the out years.

Thank you.

Okay. Thank you. Questions for this panel? Mr. Alvarez.

Thank you. This is probably to multiple folks, but on the recommendation for a budget solution of discontinuing the program and removing the remaining funds, this was in the LAO's recommendation. I think I heard two conflicting things from CSAC's perspective, that you're on track to utilize all the funds that were already budgeted.

But then I believe, and please correct me if I'm wrong, that you also said that scaling up this program in some way would be a challenge given the personnel crisis that is happening everywhere. Are those two things accurate?

Assembly Member Alvarez this occurs all the time. We have two programs that start with Golden State. We have an education and training grant program that I think you may be speaking to, and I believe we'll be covering at our hearing next week. The teacher grant program was established in that same budget year, also starts with Golden State. So I think that that might be the, you may just be ahead.

But on the teacher state grant program, what you did mention earlier was this potentially challenge that you might have ahead of yourself. If their expectation is for this program to grow. Is that accurate?

It does create workload challenges for us, as well as communication challenges and how we try to really simplify the message to prospective candidates. That's what we see as the challenge with this or a consideration, I should say, with this trailer Bill proposal.

Okay. Thank you for that. I also heard you say something that the Legislature might want to weigh in on, which is the folks who start at those priority schools and then move on to other schools. I would just say from my standpoint for everybody here, I think the Legislature was wise in focusing this on priority schools, and I think we should continue to do that. And to the extent the recipients are meeting that end of the bargain, obviously, we want to meet that commitment.

But if folks are entering and using the system as a way to enter and then go somewhere else, then it's not positively impacting our priority schools. I think that needs to be revisited. So I don't know if anybody from any of the folks at the table have any thoughts on that or if there's been thought given to that.

Yes. So when the program was created, it was pretty much restricted to STEM, bilingual education, special education. We provided additional funding to expand the program. Then there was an additional expansion of eligibility in the last budget act done through trailer bill language that allowed for eliminated the high-need field requirement.

So although we may currently observe interest in the program that meets or potentially exceeds current resources, this is essentially designed to, one, ensure that should we ever have a decline in interested persons who would want to teach at a priority school, we essentially have a way to continue to get teachers into the pipeline. We have a crisis or we have a lack of teachers in our state, both at priority schools and nonpriority schools.

So the goal here is to get as many teachers into the profession as possible. And additionally, we have heard concerns from the field that some applicants are concerned that if they're unable to complete their entire service requirement at a priority school, that they might be on the hook for repaying some or all of this funding. So this gives greater certainty to program participants that they'll be able to meet that requirement and not be financially liable.

Thank you. That's illuminating. Appreciate that. I would again, just make my own thoughts known that the commitment to priority schools is important. And again, I think the Legislature was wise in doing that a few years ago when this was done, or last year. And a commitment is a commitment. And while we need teachers, of course, we need folks in every, it seems like every field these days. This is a commitment that I think we need to keep.

And I'd like to have a conversation about making sure that if someone enters this program is committed, I don't want to see the schools that are already struggling continue to struggle with turnover of teachers. That doesn't help create stability and strengthen schools and so if it's being utilized as a tool to get some financial incentive, but then that commitment doesn't continue. I don't know how I feel about making sure that our end of the bargain is met, but their end of the bargain is not.

So I just share my thoughts on that and that'll be it. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Okay, thank you. Mr. Fong.

Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. And thank you to everyone for the presentation. Just to echo my colleague's comments, really concerned about the priority schools and really making sure that we continue to amplify folks that want to work and their commitment at priority schools as well. And this question is, I know we have a very challenging teacher workforce shortage, and to LAO, thank you for addressing that as well in terms of early educators.

I wanted to get a sense from folks at the table as to how this program has so far impacted the teacher shortage at different levels.

I'm sure CSAC can elaborate further if needed. But as CSAC mentioned in their initial comments, we still don't know the program impact, because not only are people still going through the program, but then also after they complete their program, they have eight years to complete the service requirement. So in terms of when we would actually start seeing an impact, it might be like five years from now is when we would probably be able to get even the initial information.

Okay, thank you. As we continue to track this information and data, it's important to find out where we are in terms of how we're addressing a teacher workforce shortage. So really appreciate any updates there to myself and the Committee. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you. I have a couple of questions. So first, this is a worthy program, and we talked about this at our informational hearing last week in Education Committee as well. You know, one of the most effective programs to deal with a teacher shortage with both recruitment and retention. So my first question is the Department of Finance, a lot of times you're playing in the dark, not knowing revenues coming in, expenditures going out. So you usually craft the budget in the fall.

You have to wrap it up just before Christmas, usually to be in print by the 10th of January. So at that time, we had more money than was going out. And so in the last month, the Student Aid Commission reported that it's kind of flipped. So do you think that that warrants us to reevaluate the proposal you had in the January 10 budget?

No, I don't think the revenue picture has changed the Administration's intent with this proposal at all. Understanding that we do have increased demand over the past year. That is correct. But again, this program has multiple years in the future, and that assumes it isn't continued to be funded past its five-year span. And if that's the case, having these changes means that we're going to have a wider pool to draw from so that we're continuing to fire at that near 100% rate.

So maybe back to LAO. In your recommendation, you talked about not supporting this proposal, maybe even more so since we have the information from the Student Aid Commission as far as it's working so much in the shortage areas plus the shortage schools. So you're saying that we should go back to not just the shortage schools, but the shortage schools plus shortage areas.

Our recommendations are mainly don't make further changes just due to the concerns we heard from CSAC around doing even further changes to even maybe further restrict the scope. There are benefits to that, maybe further targeting the program. But then there are also trade-offs, administrative trade-offs, and also the communication trade-offs for prospective applicants, but also applicants that are currently going through the program.

Are they going to be grandfathered in with the old eligibility rules, or would they also need to rethink their plans of how they were going to complete the service requirement?

Got you. And then what happens to people who unfortunately drop out? Does the money revert back to the fund, to others, or does it go back to a General Fund?

So it depends at which point the participant elects to discontinue their participation. In some instances, we've had grant recipients forego receiving their award, and that comes back to the Student Aid Commission, and we can try to work to reward that to the next student.

In instances where the individual may have already completed their credential program and they've gone into the teaching profession and perhaps they don't complete that four years of service, we've not yet to see this and to have data, as the LAO was pointing out, just because we're too early in the program and we have that eight-year period. So we don't know the percentage yet, but there will likely be a share of these grant recipients who the Student Aid Commission will have the unhappy job of going back to and collecting that as a loan.

That's what happens if you don't complete your service requirement for the percentage of time you didn't complete, that percentage of your grant award becomes a loan. So we don't know what percentage that'll be yet or candidly, what that workload will look like for the Student Aid Commission because that is certainly outside the scope of what we normally do, which is trying to provide grant aid to students and not collections.

Yeah, and then maybe back to the LAO. So, you know, we have a teacher shortage, and as we saw in our informational hearing last week, you know, the emergency credential teachers in California that are in classrooms, unfortunately, a lot, as Mr. Alvarez said, in schools that don't have a lot of resources. So we're doing two things, trying to get people into the profession and then deal with people, unfortunately, who leave after the first couple of years.

So with these monies that we're providing to tackle this, should we be doing both getting people in and helping people that are currently there, remain there and not drop out? So we have to go get somebody else there? How should we be thinking about these kind of dual issues?

Definitely, it's a multipronged issue. It's the recruitment, but then also the retention, but also what we've heard in certain schools, it's the high turnover, and that definitely is the lack of stability of the teacher workforce in those schools is definitely a problem. So doing the multipronged approach. Yes.

Mr. Chair, if I may? One consideration that you and the Subcommittee may want to hold in mind about how we've structured this program right now as grant aid that goes to individuals who are in credential programs, is that that's considered financial aid and financial assistance. There are different tax implications for how we would give a benefit to an individual who perhaps already has student loan debt. They're already working as a teacher, and we want to support them. That becomes a taxable benefit.

It also, to go back to that workload point would be a different way of implementing this program that from our experience in implementing past loan benefit programs, is more workload intensive than working with our institutional partners and other credential programs approved by the Commission on Teacher Credentialing, where we can establish partnership and how we bring these awards to eligible recipients.

Yeah. So people who leave the workforce, and I'm not a teacher, but they leave for a number of reasons. Job is stressful, too many kids in the classroom, Low pay, mounting student debt, where they can get more money elsewhere. Do we really have an understanding as far as the top reasons and where money is in the equation as far as potential help with their student debt load?

Hi. Edgar Cabral with the Legislative Analyst Office. I don't know that I can speak to high level, what's the one thing. I think, in terms of what we have seen when we try to look at research of getting candidates in the pipeline and getting them into the profession, we do think like entry-level pay is an important factor.

So to the extent that pay is higher, you'll have more individuals who are interested in joining because I think to your point, Assembly McCarty, they're comparing the teaching profession with other possibilities they might have after they're coming out of college. When it comes to individuals that are already employed as teachers in the public school system, one of the factors that we hear that's important is their working conditions in the school.

And so this is, I think, one of the challenges for the state in that so much of that really is now down to the local level in terms of providing that support for new teachers to feel like they're ready. We do require teachers to complete an induction program, and so that's essentially what the state sets, is to have an induction program. But in terms of exactly what schools need to do to support their new teachers, that's something that varies locally.

Similarly, pay is something that is obviously collectively bargained at school districts. How they are determining that pay happens locally, and there are some districts who maybe will offer additional stipends in some shortage areas. But by and large, pay is determined by collective bargaining agreements, which often will mean that somebody who's in a priority school and somebody who's in a nonpriority school are getting the same level of pay, even if the situation is different.

Thank you. More questions? Seeing none, we will hold this issue open. Again, these are one of the issues that we're going to have to evaluate based upon what our revenue picture looks like. Okay. Issue number two. This is an oversight issue, not necessarily a budget issue. This is on the educator shortage issue. And we have Department of Education, the Commission on Teacher Credentialing, as well as the LAO.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, members of the committee. The real star today is Cheryl Cotton, our deputy Superintendent, who has served as both a classroom teacher, an award winning principal, school administrator, and we're honored to have served as our deputy superintendent. And she's going to tell you about a lot of the great stuff about the various programs that are in place to support our educators. I would just like to share a few high level kind of thoughts.

We're deeply interested in the subject of the educated workforce, even though it is not a role that traditionally the California Department of Education has played a lead role in, in recruitment. But because we hear from educators like you hear from educators, we've been impacted by how they're impacted, and it's heartbreaking, quite frankly. I appreciated the spirited conversation that you all just had. What we hear and what we've seen in the research is that the number one reason that teachers leave the profession are the working conditions.

And while there's no question that teachers deserve to earn more money and should earn more money, there are many factors that have been at play. We've also seen that the research shows us that teachers who get a credential stay longer than those who don't. That's why California has invested in programs like our residency programs, so that you can get a stipend while you're learning, while you're experiencing, while you're being coached and mentored by a veteran teacher.

And so we've entered into the conversation about teacher recruitment out of necessity, because we get that with thousands of teachers needed for UTK and other programs that we're helping to implement that if we don't have the teacher candidates, we won't be able to implement those great programs. And so we've cobbled together positions and funding to help us do some things to support recruitment. We've established a public service announcement campaign. We have some award winning teachers who are speaking in that PSA.

We've been promoting the Golden State teacher grant, and we'd like to think that we've had something to do with the increase in the uptake in the applications. There was a period where the applications weren't moving very quickly, and we're beginning to see accelerated growth in that, and we hope to see that resource fully utilized and we will continue to promote it.

We've created a kind of one stop, no wrong door for teacher candidates to go through to get information about how to become a teacher, how to get the scholarship, how to get into a teacher credentialing program. It's daunting. Unless you have the experience of someone like Deputy Superintendent Cotton, it's hard to figure it out. And you've got to go to different places to figure out how to access all these resources.

And so we've created a one stop and a hotline number and an email that people can reach out to when they want information about how to become a teacher. You'll hear more about that in deputy Superintendent Cotton's presentation, but I do want to let you know that we've also sponsored legislation that we think can support some of the current pressure that school districts are experiencing.

One of them is a bill that would create a waiver for retired teachers to be able to continue to be substitute teachers. We'd love to see that bill move with urgency and move now, because, like you, we get calls from principals who say, I need help. Right now, I can't find a principal. We've also introduced legislation or sponsoring legislation that would increase the stipend that residents receive. In some cases, a resident might receive as low as $5,000, as little as $5,000.

That means that they have to work a full time job on top of student teaching and trying to meet their family obligations. And we just think that if we're going to be competitive in a nationwide struggle to attract a workforce, we have to offer more scholarships and residency programs and apprenticeship training programs that give individuals the opportunity to become teachers. If we want to diversify the workforce, we have to be even more thoughtful.

And so for those reasons, we have sponsored legislation that would increase the stipend. You can see there's a study by West Ed that talks about direct recommendations about how the stipend should be increased. In some cases, double. The state sponsored residency programs offer $25,000. But the district has various costs that they have to administer, and so in some cases, by the time the money gets to the resident, it could be as low as $5,000.

And so the other area that I will just mention and then get out of the way for our deputy superintendent to talk about, I know that you will be discussing literacy later, and you'll hear about a robust number of programs that exist. And I know that there's been some question about the literacy roadmap, and I know that there's been some concerns about what is the purpose of the literacy roadmap.

And we think that we hope that you all will take advantage of the entire budget cycle to figure out how to strengthen that proposal. We've been in some discussions with state board staff and others about what the literacy roadmap might do, and to the degree that there is a proposal for some $1.0 million, we think that that is an opportunity to provide professional development to teachers, classroom teachers, reading coaches, principals, and administrators on how to use the ELA ELD framework.

It's a pretty intense document, but it's very important and helpful and robust. But classroom teachers may not get access to it, and we think that it's a great opportunity to support classroom teachers in getting access to what might be considered one of the most important trainings in supporting the development of literacy for our students.

We think so much so that we've organized a webinar for the field on March 23, where we will have one of the original writers of the ELA ELD framework helping to provide presentation on how to use it. We've hired that person as one of our two new co directors of statewide literacy to help us advance the goal of reaching literacy by third grade.

And so just wanted to share a few high level thoughts about teacher recruitment and about literacy as it relates to the roadmap that I know you will be discussing. We stand by to continue working with the members of this committee and the legislature in further developing these budget proposals for the benefit of our 6 million students in the state. Thank you for the opportunity.

Thank you, were you going to proceed?

Well, good morning, Mr. Chair, and thank you, Thurman. The pandemic has brought many early retirements and resignations from teachers, which has intensified the persistent national teacher shortage. Two thirds of California districts have reported having more teacher vacancies and difficulties attracting new teachers this year, we know that. The Learning Policy Institute estimates that California needs to produce 20 to 25,000 teachers annually, but this number is impacted by attrition and new demand. 90% of new demand for California teachers is due to attrition.

New demand is also due to the increased need for educators to support learning recovery, including programs that impact pupil to teacher ratios and implementation of universal TK enrollment numbers. Impact teacher demand, of course, and demand could also decrease once learning recovery programs end and if state programs are reduced. Districts reporting the California Department of to the California Department of Education estimated needing 22,000 teachers as of October 2021. That same year, the state only issued 19,600 preliminary credentials.

The state also issued 12,000 substandard credentials and permits, which is a strong indicator of shortages because these are only issued when districts cannot fill a vacancy with a fully credentialed teacher. The CDE is engaged in several efforts, as our state superintendent has talked about to address this shortfall. For example, we've partnered with the California Volunteers to promote new pathways for California Teacher Service Corps members, and that's a group that has 10,000 service corps members looking for them to become teachers in California's classrooms.

The CDE hosted a virtual career fair led by our state superintendent on February 21 to provide information and assistance to navigate the process and access available funding, including the Golden State Teacher Grant Program for talented corps members who already understand why it's important to give back to society and to our youth.

These career events connect future teacher candidates with schools experiencing shortages and provide prospective applicants with information on how to access scholarships and grants such as the Golden State Teacher Grant Program. As referenced by our state superintendent, we've also created an email and hotline to help prospective teacher candidates.

That hotline number is 916-322-3051 if you want to give it a try, and our email is teachingca@cde.CA.gov. The CDE is also involved in efforts to recruit and retain a teacher workforce that more closely reflects the ethnoracial backgrounds of California students. In 2021, the CDE established the Educator Diversity Advisory Group led by Dr. Travis Bristol from University of California at Berkeley.

This group held several virtual convenings to document from practitioners how they were supporting and retaining the ethno racial diverse educator workforce, barriers faced to deepening the diversity workforce, and bolstering teacher diversity efforts. The information collected through these convenings was turned into a report with the advisories group's recommendations, which is posted on our website. It's also being used within our community of practice that we've created.

So, working with Region 15 Comprehensive center and the San Diego County Office of Education, we have formed this community of practice around diversifying the teacher workforce, and this group is made up of county offices, local education agencies, institutions of higher ed, and professional organizations that are networking to share best practices around diversifying the teacher workforce.

In addition, CDE continues to work towards strengthening the educator pipeline and bolstering capacity of the existing workforce through several ongoing investments which I'd like to update you on now, and those are probably in your notes as well. The Educator Workforce Investment Grant, or the EWIG, consists of three programs that support the English Learner roadmap policy in El Programs, special education, and computer science.

To date, the EWIG for the El roadmap has reached over 61,000 educators the EWIG from Computer Science, which launched last March 2022, has reached over 186 school sites, and during the 2022 calendar year, about 8000 educators participated in activities under the special education portion of the EWIG, with 454 educators specifically trained in universal design for learning principles, including general education, special education teachers, administrators, instructional coaches, school psychologists, and para educators.

Additional investments in the 2022 Budget Act will focus on professional development for teachers and paraprofessionals to support effective language acquisition programs for EL students, universal design for learning, and high quality computer science instruction. This all impacts our retention of educators, train them well, and they stay. The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards Incentive program, which funded $250,000,000 to fund the program over five years, Promotes National Board certification by providing eligible teachers $5,000 per year for five years if they teach at a high priority school.

In addition, the program provides $2,500 subsidy to cover the cost for certification for teachers at high priority schools to initiate and complete the program. More than a decade of research shows that national board certified teachers have a positive impact on students with high needs. I'm pleased to announce that since the program's inception, the number of teachers in California pursuing national board certification in high priority schools increased from 415 in 2020-2021 to 1727 in 21-22. It's a 416% increase.

Again, that's teacher retention and supporting new teachers as they're coming in as well. The Educator Effectiveness Block Grant provides professional learning and promotes educator equity, quality, and effectiveness. LEAs have spent $48 million on the educator effectiveness funds in the 2021-2022 school year. That's the first year of our reporting. The most common use of funds has been to support coaching and mentoring, followed by standards aligned instruction and then practices to promote positive school climate.

LEAs have until June 30, 2026 to spend all of their allocated funds. The 21st Century California School Leadership Academy is dedicated to professional learning and support of California's educational leaders to create a more equitable learning environments that will ultimately improve student success, particularly for underserved students. The 21st CSLA continues, I'm sorry, consists of a center located at the University of California at Berkeley and seven regional academies that are located. They're called geo regions that are located across the state that provide this system of support.

The early math initiative addresses the demand for innovative professional development, communications, and resources to provide mathematics achievement outcomes for students in early childhood and beyond, which becomes even more essential as TK expands. In the initial year of implementation, the California Early Math Initiative successfully achieved its goals to increase the agency's facilitators' awareness of the importance of early math and to build their confidence and capacity to support children's early math learning.

Utilizing a train the trainer approach, the early math initiative coaches provide professional learning and coaching to the agency's facilitators who are then required to provide professional learning and coaching to educators in local communities. Again, this is retention of teachers, training them well, encouraging them to stay, giving them the tools that they need to be successful.

The early education teacher development grants, or EETD, consists of $100 million awarded to 72 awardees that represent a total of 894 LEA statewide, though that dollar figure only covers about two thirds of the amount of those requested by the awardees. This grant program supports increasing the numbers of highly qualified CSPP and TK teachers and bolstering targeted competencies for CSPP, TK and kindergarten teachers.

I apologize you guys for this long update, but I think it's important for us to note the large number of programs, which is by no means exhaustive. It's reflective of the level of need that exists. I also want to highlight that LEAs are braiding funding amongst these grant sources to support that need.

For example, 79% of all EETD or the early education teacher development grant recipients specifically discussed braiding EETD with other grant sources to help develop and support their UPK teacher pipeline, including those from CDE, from CTC, quality counts California, first five, and others. I will close by saying that there are opportunities to build from these existing workforce programs and we look forward to assisting the administration, legislature, CTC and other relevant entities to address the teacher shortage. With me today. There are several of our CDE directors who administer these programs and we are all happy to answer questions at the appropriate time. Thank you.

Thank you. Next we'll hear from CTC, then our LAO.

Good morning chair McCarty and members of the committee. My name is David DeGuire and I'm the Director of the Professional Services Division at the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing. Our division is responsible for all things related to the preparation of educators in California, including the administration of some of the state's investments in teacher workforce grant programs. I'd like to provide you some updates on our grant programs that directly address identified shortage areas.

We have awarded just over $1.1 million to all seven eligible local education agencies who applied for the Computer Science Supplementary Authorization Incentive grant program. Two charter schools applied, but they are not eligible under the authorizing legislation for this program.

Possible reasons for the smaller number of applications for this grant program are that one, a number of credentials already authorized departmental instruction in computer science, including the single subject areas of business, industrial, and technology education, and mathematics, as well as the designated subject career technical education credentials in business and finance and information and communication technologies. A second reason is that as districts came out of the pandemic, computer science may not have been a top priority for them.

We plan to offer two application windows per year until all grant funds are awarded. We will be working with code to help raise awareness about this grant program, and we are collecting information from colleges and universities regarding which of them have the required coursework to earn the authorization so that local education agencies can more easily identify higher education resources for their teachers. We are currently dispersing the final funding for the local solutions to the shortage of special education teacher grants.

These grants ended up focusing more on retaining special education teachers than training and hiring new teachers. Grantees reported that funding for debt relief seemed to have the greatest impact on teachers, allowing new energy and focus, and that retention efforts positively impacted relationships teachers have with students and families. Regarding the reading and literacy supplemental authorization incentive grant program, we have been working with the California Department of Education to obtain a list of school sites that are eligible to receive priority points as defined by AB 181.

We are exploring the possibility of releasing the RFA before we have the list and then adding priority ranking when the list is ready. Finally, we have some very promising data to report on how the teacher residency grants are helping to address shortage areas. 91% of the first cohort of 300 residents from the 2018 teacher residency grants have earned credentials, including 114 education specialists, 83 in STEM areas, and 76 bilingual authorizations.

All who earned a credential were hired by a California public school, and of these, almost 97% were retained in their second year of teaching. In the second cohort of 342 residents, almost 74% have already earned a credential, including 96 education specialists, 86 in STEM, and 70 bilingual authorizations.

Considering that these results were achieved as grantees were struggling with school closures and reopening, we are optimistic that the 2021 and 2022 investments in residency programs will have strong positive impacts on addressing these shortage areas, especially considering that a new statewide residency technical assistance center will be starting later this year to support grantees in building and maintaining high quality, sustainable programs, and I am ready to answer any questions that you may have.

Okay, thank you. Next, LAO.

We have no comments, but happy to take any questions.

Okay, questions? Yeah, I'll start just with the question I asked. The last one on monies reverted back to the General Fund or to the program. What's the policy?

So for residency grants programs in particular, because that's the one that requires a service, districts are required to collect funds from residents who leave before they complete their service. And that money goes back to the state controller.

Should we think about putting it directly to one of our more effective programs?

The money coming back? Yes, I think that would be a wise choice.

Okay. And then I guess for the LAO, this is the age old question. This has been an issue debated in this subcommitee for a decade, teacher shortage, and it goes in waves, and the impact is greater at certain times, certainly during the pandemic. And we've allocated hundreds of millions of dollars, well over, I think, a couple of $1.0 billion in a variety of programs. And we're not quite certain what's our biggest bang for our buck. We asked this at our hearing last week.

So how could you guide us? Because we don't have unlimited resources. Just like the last panel, we want to help on recruitment and retention, but eventually, sometimes you can only choose one. So how would you guide the state on how we prioritize programs and investments?

So, Edgar Cabral with the LAO, I think there's a couple of things that I would highlight. One is just trying to get as much information as possible on the success of the program and what has happened. I think one of the challenges, though, is, for example, with, say, the Golden State Teacher Grant. How many of those teachers, what has been the impact for the state? Right. Obviously, every teacher who's got $20,000 because of the program has been affected in some way positively by receiving that.

But in terms of, did this program increase the number of teachers in the pipeline? That's a question I think that's very challenging. But so the degree to which we can get additional information in terms of how much this affected our overall number of teachers in the profession, we think that's something that can be helpful. In some cases, like with residency.

We do know that there are other studies that show, for example, that overall teachers who go through a residency program tend to stay in the profession longer. So I think in that case, you're sort of already targeting a program that we have some research based to know it's more effective. So one is trying to assess that.

The other thing I would highlight is I think this is partly why whenever the shortage issue comes up from our perspective, we always try to focus on the sort of consistently shortage areas. Right. When you talk about something like the multiple subject credential that tends to be a shortage during times when districts have growth, additional funding to spend to hire new teachers. But that demand can go up and down with something like math, science, special education, teachers in higher poverty schools. That's a persistent shortage area.

And so I think one thing that we recommend to the legislature is to, when it comes to spending on these funds over a long period of time, to prioritize those areas so that regardless of when teachers come out of those programs, we know that there's a lot of demand for them and that it's going to be addressing a shortage area.

We always pride ourselves on local control, whether it's local government and certainly with our school funding. So part of our local solutions grants, we do just that. We allow people to pick and choose. Do we think that's the best approach for 1000 school districts or should we start prioritizing, especially if we have limited resources?

Yeah, I think that's one option that I think can help in terms of in some cases, if we don't know quite what the best solution will be, it gives locals the ability to take the actions that they think are most helpful and the state can get that information and get a better sense of whether that was effective.

That's one of the things, that's the benefit of that local solutions grant is that we also get that reporting back so we can see what are the kinds of actions that were taken. It seems like based on those actions that then the focusing on retention was one of the key things, not necessarily finding new teachers. And so that could be something that the state could either build on by providing similar. That pot of funding was specifically for special education teachers. So you could consider something that's like that for a broader set of teacher credentials. But you could also imagine building a state program that has some kind of focus on retention.

Chair if I could, I would also offer that. I think it's still a combination of both the fact that the state legislature and the governor have given districts more predictable funding in the LCFF base means that they can make better decisions about compensation for educators, and that's important. But at the same time, what we're seeing is that there is a need for more coordination at the state level in how this works.

And the Commission on Teacher Credentialing is an incredible partner and they are ramping up in their abilities to have more people who can answer the phone when someone calls and says, how do I become a teacher? How do I get the scholarship, how do I get the credential? And so I think it continues to be, let's face it, the shortage was great even before the pandemic and it's not like the challenges have been static, right?

If you look at housing inaffordability in our state, that continues to be a huge threat to our ability to recruit our workforce, the working conditions that we've discussed. But the state, at the state level, there's been action that is making a difference, removing barriers, pausing fees for the applicants and for the candidates. These things require state level leadership and coordination. But at the end of the day, local districts are the ones making the hiring decisions and the salary compensation decisions. And so it continues to be both a local and statewide coordinated effort.

Okay, Ms. Cervantes.

Thank you so much to all the panelists today for your participation. It is clear that teacher recruitment is a priority. And I want to start off by thanking our Superintendent, Tony Thurman, for your efforts and launching this first time statewide program, ensuring that we get this information out there to all of our communities. And we also have to continue to look at innovative ways to attract new educators, whether that's paying off student loans, talking about building housing. Let's also discuss those different bonuses that are opportunities that we can't miss.

We have to look at every way that we could attract teachers in every part of our state and also looking at the data that will come with that and the data that will be generated that will be insightful for us as we move forward in how we continue to address the teacher shortage. And so I just thank each of you for the opportunity to learn and to hear what is happening.

And I was visiting the CTC website just right now, navigating it myself, because as we ask people to go to these websites, I want to know that it is easy to find what we're telling folks to go visit the website, find these grant opportunities. And so I just want to thank the work that has been done as well on the CTC website for folks to navigate easily.

And one thing that we really appreciate from the legislature is funding for eight career counselor positions at the commission. And these positions are designed to do very support the work that the California Department of Education is doing. So that when people express an interest in becoming a teacher, we can have someone personally answer their questions, because there's a big difference from, say 25-30 years ago when there was one way to get a credential.

You got your bachelor's degree, you did your fifth year program, you took the CBEs, you took the CSET, and you passed Rica. But now, since we've created so many different options and flexibilities, pathways to meet the interests and really where people are at in their lives. It takes really some talking to the person who's interested to understand what they already have, what experience they have, what kind of teacher they want to become, and then we can lay out for them. Well, here are your options and here's the awesome funding that's available from the state.

Thank you, Mr. Fong.

Thank you so much. Mr. Chairman. Just wanted to thank the superintendent for his leadership and efforts and team for really all the work around teacher recruitment efforts. And thank you for that informational flyer as well that we're getting out to the public in the community. So I definitely want to amplify my colleagues, Mr. Bontas' comments about how we can continue to amplify the resources out there available for folks in teacher recruitment.

Anybody who's interested in becoming a teacher, please send an email to teachingcalifornia@cde.CA.gov. But anything that we continue to amplify those partnerships going forward, know that we're here to support the those efforts. Thank you, Superintendent.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you. This informational item. Thank you for your participation. Next item is issue number three, opioid response in public schools. Thank.

Thank you. We'll start with the Department of Finance and then LAO and then here in CDE.

Good morning Chair and Members Melissa Ing with the Department of Finance. I'll try to be brief since the agenda has already laid out this proposal in detail. The Governor's Budget proposes $3.5 million ongoing Proposition 98 General Fund to provide leas resources to stock, at a minimum, two doses of naloxone hydrochloride or another emergency opioid antagonist on all middle school and high school campuses.

The Department of Education would allocate funds to LEAs based on the number of middle school and high school sites within an LEA, student enrollment at those sites, and any other relevant factors to be determined by the Department. LEAs receiving the funds would be required to obtain a standing order from the Department of Public Health for the Administration and distribution of this medication, and would also purchase the medication directly from the naloxone or other opioid antagonist manufacturer.

Lastly, the LEAs would be required to ensure school staff on campus have reviewed the training materials and resources available on the California Department of Public Health website. That concludes my remarks, and I'm happy to answer any questions at appropriate time. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you LAO.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good morning, chair Members. We're recommending the Legislature provide lower amount of funding than the proposed $3.5 million. This is due to two specific concerns that we have. The first is that the funding is not aligned with the specific requirements. Although the proposed trailer bill language requires middle and high schools to carry two doses of an emergency opioid antagonist, our understanding is that the administration's cost estimate of three and a half million sorry assumes that every middle school and high school annually purchase 12 doses.

The Administration indicates this is because naloxone is sold in packages of 12. Most schools, however, are part of a multi school district that would be making purchases on behalf of all of their schools. Charter schools and school districts with a small number of schools could make bulk purchases by pulling together resources with smaller entities. Assuming schools only purchase two doses of nalaxone annually aligned with the requirements, we estimate the cost would be about $550,000.

The second concern is that the funding would be distributed annually while the medication has a longer shelf life of around two to three years. As a result, schools would not be required to replace medication on an annual basis. They would only need to replace the medication that was administered to reverse an overdose or once the medication has expired. So overdoses that are not used in one school year can likely be used for the second or third school year.

Given these issues, we think $1 million would be sufficient to fulfill the requirements of the proposal. This would provide sufficient funding for the cost of the minimum required medication, while also setting aside additional funding to reflect cost of maintaining a larger number of doses at larger schools or for replacing the medication that was used to administer to reverse an overdose. The Legislature could revisit the funding level in future years if changes in medication or other factors result in higher than anticipated costs. That concludes our comments.

Happy to answer any questions at the appropriate time.

Okay yeah, good question.

Malia Vella on behalf of State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurman the California Department of Public Health reported that there were over 6500 opioid related overdose deaths in California in 2021. Over 5500 of these deaths were related to fentanyl, and over 200 overdoses were among teens ages 15 to 19 years old. Fentanyl deaths accounted for more than 80% of all drug related deaths among California's young people in 2021.

Fentanyl, which we all know is 50 times stronger than heroin, is almost entirely responsible for the spike in youth related overdoses in our state. Medications such as Nalaxone work to immediately reverse an opioid overdose with very few adverse effects and almost zero potential for abuse. We believe that it is vital that California middle and high schools have access to this type of medication to help save our young people's lives.

SB 3667 was passed last legislative session to require all community colleges and CSU campus health centers to have approved opioid overdose reversal medication available. The same needs to be available for California middle and high schools. Last fall, state Superintendent Tony Thurman convened a number of webinars that were well attended by our leas. Two of our webinars that we had actually maxed out at the 500 mark. So we had a third webinar. Our leas are clamoring for more tools to address the fentanyl crisis.

In fact, we also produced guidance and shared the CDPH toolkit, much of which has been utilized already by our LEAs. Our webinars featured panels of experts that spoke about strategies to combat the opioid crisis, which is, as I mentioned earlier, the fastest growing cause of death in California.

Our webinars were open to all educators and parents, featured subject matter experts from the US Drug Enforcement Administration, California Health and Human Services, our LEAs who are showing best practices and guidance to their peers, the California Department of Education and the California Department of Public Health. The Superintendent and participants discussed ways to work together to educate, prevent, intervene, and support our students having access to medications such as Nalaxone was discussed.

And in fact, following our webinars, we saw many of our LEAs put in requests to place Nalaxone at their school. Last year, LAUSD placed Nalaxone at all of their school sites and this year have already administered it over 12 times. 12 times since 2023. School districts, County Office of Education and Charter schools have been authorized to obtain FDA approved opioid antagonists to administer an opioid overdose. To administer in an opioid overdose.

We are working with our districts to develop and implement policies and practices at their local schools. Schools should train staff on how to identify signs of an opioid overdose, as well as how to safely store and administer Narcan. We also encourage schools to provide peer to peer resources and parent engagement opportunities. And many of our LEAs have done the training and put in the request as part of the Nalaxone distribution project. But there were delays in getting supplies delivered several months.

In fact, many LEAs have reported positive outcomes when they offer substance abuse intervention services in partnership with community based organizations. And CDE has partnered with the Department of Health Care Services to launch the Children and Youth Behavioral Health Initiative, which will offer unprecedented levels of family, mental health and wellness services on campus through several different components. We are hopeful that the combination of social and emotional support, health education, and preventive measures, in addition to having life saving medication on campus, will help save our children.

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

Okay, thank you. CDE, that's you. Gotcha. Few questions. So, number one, it's unfortunate reality that we're having this conversation, but it's warranted. I'm glad we're having the attention. We have a bipartisan push for legislation in the Assembly by Mr. Patterson, Joe Patterson in the Senate. I think Mr. Portantino and Cortese. So lot of focus on this. Having this in our public schools is a good idea. And it's frightening that you just said in LA USD, it's already this year been utilized 12 times.

I guess that's 12 lives that were saved. So that's the upside. There just a couple of technical issues. Should this be funded through Prop 98? It's not really education related. It's $3.5 million. Not going to break the bank either way. But is this a precedent and is this appropriate? Should we look at other funding sources we had that we're working on? I'm not sure if it's finalized yet. The massive settlement from the drug manufacturers who helped contribute to this problem. So should we utilize that money?

Yeah, we don't think there's any particular reason that it has to be Prop 90. This would be one where I guess we would say that there are some cases where we think the Legislature has discretion in deciding and it's not something that's directly related to instruction. So I think that if the Legislature wanted to consider nonprofit General Fund, we think that would be allowable.

I think it's just a matter of perhaps it being administered through a different agency or in the way that it's distributed, not going directly to school districts, but say districts having access to that medication through a different means.

Okay. And then as far as the administering it, we had the program through the Department of Healthcare Services where districts can apply to do that. So is this utilizing that same approach or is this kind of creating a new path? What's the most efficient way and appropriate way.

So the Naloxone Distribution Project is administered by the Department of Healthcare Services. So currently, schools are eligible entities to apply through that program. But I just also want to note that the program is kind of a first come, first serve. It also serves various entities, which includes universities, schools, first responders, law enforcement and other community organizations.

So to the extent that the program is fully funded to meet the need directing schools to apply through the program, there may be a cost pressure on the General Fund side to support this program.

I get that. But if we put the three and a half million in there to fund all schools like is being proposed, would this go through Department of Healthcare Services? How would it be administered?

Well, currently this program is administered by Department of. You know, this would create cost pressures on the General Fund to include this funding as part of that program. There would also need to be some, I guess, work because currently there is no priorities for schools specifically for that program. So it's a first come, first serve kind of program.

Yeah. Okay, maybe I'm miss focusing on the wrong issue. If we do this, as Governor proposes, 3.5 from Prop 98 to give, I guess it's a couple doses, at least two doses per campus. Is the money from Prop 98 going through Department of Healthcare services, then the schools.

Oh, sorry, I misunderstood your original question. So the Governor's Budget proposal would provide funding directly to schools to purchase directly from the manufacturer. It wouldn't be going through the.

And what about the whole training and pieces? That's a key component as well.

Yeah.

So we are directing schools to utilize the training materials that are available on the Department of Public Health website, since those are the training materials that are provided to applicants of the Naloxone Distribution Project. Just so we're not creating duplicate requirements, especially for schools that already accessing the medication through that program.

Okay. Questions, Mr. Muratsuchi?

So to Department of mean, what the LAO is proposing seems to make common sense. You have bulk purchasing, you have an agency that can coordinate the purchasing and the distribution of the naluxone. Why is the Department of Finance proposing that individual school districts, our thousand school districts, do that rather than having a smarter, coordinated statewide effort?

So this funding is part of the larger package in response to the growing crisis. So providing funding directly to schools to purchase the medication was intended to fill that gap in the need. So there's kind of no size fits all, no one size fits all for our schools.

And through this proposal, schools would have control over the use of the funding allocated to them to purchase directly from the manufacturer the amount of medication that they feel is necessary for their school, as long as they meet the minimum requirement of two doses at the specified site. And the intent is for schools to stack this medication is why we are recommending Proposition 98 General Fund to support this effort.

So requiring schools to apply through the Department of Healthcare Services, through the Naloxone Distribution Project would increase cost pressures on the non Proposition 98 General Fund side.

But again, well, according to the LAO, they're saying it won't cost $3.5 million, it'll cost only $550,000. That seems to be a significant cost savings.

Yeah. So while the two doses is the minimum requirement that we're proposing in language for middle school and high school sites, our understanding is that while that might be sufficient for some schools, other schools may require more than the minimum amount of doses just based on the size of the school or kind of the community where the school is located, maybe more highly impacted by the crisis.

Additionally, while it's not required, LEAs could stock medication at school sites serving K-5, in addition to schools serving grades 6-12. However, the polls is targeting middle and high schools because the overdose deaths for those under 14 was less than 20 in 2021 and has been growing in the 15 to 19 range report over 200 deaths related to overdose in those grade ranges.

Okay, well, I'm not hearing a good reason why we shouldn't have a coordinated effort. It seems like if DHCS was the central procurement as well as distribution agency, where school districts can one, we can make sure that sufficient dollars and doses are reserved for school districts so that other first responders and others wouldn't have, there'd be a reserved portion, but also that school districts can apply for more medication if necessary.

I would just urge the Department of Finance to look at what the LAO is proposing because it seems to make good sense to me.

Thank you, Senate Member Dahle.

Yeah, so I agree. I'm thinking about my small schools, and if every site secretary who, this will now be a burden. This is very important. I totally agree that we need these on our campuses for the protection of our children, but for our small schools with maybe 100 less students in a school, so that site secretary now has to go in, apply for the funds, go through this whole, we're burdening our schools with another process.

So would it be possible for just to send two doses to every school campus in a bulk. Instead of going through every single school having to go through this process.

I think that's certainly an option that we can consider. Governor's Budget is the starting point for conversation. Intent is to ensure that our schools are prepared. I think it was just a balance between funding General Fund versus Prop 98 funding, which goes to schools directly.

So again, a base could go that two to every school site statewide. And then if a school wanted to apply for more doses, then they could do that separately. Is that something we can work on?

I think we can do discussions on this to work through. It's kind of the best past word.

Okay. Thank you.

Mr. Fong.

Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. Thank you so much for everyone for this presentation. And I think to Echo to Department of Finance questions that I had is similar to Ms. Dahle and Mr. Muratsuchi Just how we can just get these doses to every school. But secondly, there's some law schools in urban districts and other places that are much larger in size. How is the determination made that each school gets two doses? And then secondly, should the number of doses be based on the size of a school?

I think for the current Governor's Budget proposal, the allocation of funds is, we are asking the Department of Education to take in consideration the number of school sites served and the number of students served as part of the allocation process for the 3.5 million.

Thank you. But in terms of the allocation model and distribution, is this something that we can also look to make it easier administratively for our school districts? We just had a Small School Districts Association event not too far from here, and there's a lot of schools there, as Ms. Dahle has referenced, that it's administrative burden, but anything we can do as a state to make this easier for our school districts, I think is critical. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Alvarez.

I'll just echo all that. I think one, every school site has a different need. It'd be great to hear how the allocation was made. It seems like at least we haven't heard how we decided how many doses per school. And I think there's schools that perhaps might need more and there's schools that perhaps two is more than sufficient. But also that and Ms. Dahle's point of automatically we got to find a system to just get these to the schools.

This idea of them applying and back and forth. We know where our school sites are. The Department knows that we should just get them the dosage. And if there's a need for more than two, and that's why the ask is 3.5 million and not the lower number, I think I'd like to see how that model, as Mr. Fong just mentioned, was created and how we determine that a school needs more those two pieces of information would be critical as this moves forward. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you. Certainly, this is an issue that's got our attention, and I'm certain there'll be some sort of action in the budget and through legislation this year on these topics, but we will hold it open for now. Issue number four is the governor's proposal regarding literacy. Issue number four, we'll hear from the Department of Finance. LAO and CDE yes, please proceed.

Thank you. Good morning. Lena Grant, Department of Finance I'll be talking through the Governor's Budget proposals on Literacy. So the Governor's Budget includes 250,000,000, 1 time Proposition 98 funding for the literacy coaches and reading specialists grant program to be available over five years with a minimum grant of 450,000 per qualifying LEA. This funding builds on the 250,000,000 investment in this program that was included in the 2022 Budget Act.

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

Additionally, the Governor's Budget includes 1 million General Fund for a literacy roadmap for schools statewide. This roadmap would provide educators, site leaders, and LEA administrators clear and practical direction for literacy instruction and intervention in alignment with the state adopted ELA and English language development standards and frameworks, in addition to current reading research for all students, including English learners, students with disabilities, students struggling with reading, and the state's earliest learners.

I can speak more to the specifics of each proposal, but that concludes my remarks for now, and I can take questions at the appropriate time.

Thank you. LAO.

Jackie Boracio, LAO, as was mentioned, the literacy proposals include 1 million non-prop 98 for a General Fund for the literacy roadmap and then the other 250,000,000 Prop 98 to further support literacy activities that were included in the budget last year, specifically on the 250,000,000 Prop 98.

Something that we would want to flag more broadly in terms of the Prop 98 budget construct is essentially the Governor freed up one time funds within Prop 98 for these and other one time initiatives by reducing the Arts, Music, and Instructional Materials Discretionary Block Grant by $1.2 billion. So with that in mind, we recommend that the Legislature reject the majority of the $250,000,000 Prop 98

funding request for the literacy program, again, primarily because this would come at the expense of creating program disruptions for districts, as many of them have already planned on how to use the Arts, Music, and Instructional Materials Discretionary Block Grant but in terms of the Literacy Program specifically, the initial funding that was provided last year has barely gone out to school districts within the last month. So we don't have any information on whether or not this intervention will be effective in increasing literacy rates.

So it may just be too premature to provide an augmentation right now. However, the governor's proposal does include awarding $500,000 for an independent evaluation study. We believe that the Legislature could adopt that independent study so that we are able to collect the necessary information to determine whether or not this initiative was effective and then, at a future date, consider providing program augmentations if merited. Thank you.

Okay, thank you. CDE

Good Morning, Mr. Chair and Members of the Committee. 2015 marked the first time statewide tests were conducted to measure the percentage of students meeting grade level standards in English language arts. The results showed the need for much to be done, as 44% of students met that standard in 2019 that had raised to 51% of all students.

While that is an improvement, the state clearly has a long way to go, particularly since we live in a diverse state where 43% of students come from homes where their first language is not English. This is why we're pleased to see the governor's continued investment in literacy coaches and reading specialists, which was authorized by last year's budget and which provides funding to employ and train literacy coaches and reading literacy specialists statewide for those schools that need it the most.

The sum of $250,000,000 was appropriated for this grant program in 2023. The CDE released $225,000,000 to 376 eligible school sites in 124 local education agencies to develop school literacy programs, employ and train literacy coaches and reading and literacy specialists, and develop implementation interventions for students in need of targeted literacy support. Of these funds, only 10 school sites opted out of receiving funding, with an additional four school sites ineligible due to closed status in the current year.

We have since polled recipients and found that the respondents were planning to hire or already had hired a literacy coach or were planning to hire literacy coaches and or reading specialists. Additionally, most indicated that they did not already have school literacy plans nor family literacy initiatives in place, but were planning to develop them as a result of receiving these funds. The continued funding proposed in the Governor's Budget will allow for hundreds of new school sites to also benefit from this funding.

Additionally, the change in the definition of an eligible school site from an elementary school with an unduplicated pupil percentage of 97% to now 95% allows a greater number of schools to qualify, and we're happy to see the addition of an evaluator of the program which benefits the state by ensuring that the investments being made are having their intended effect.

Additionally, of the funds appropriated last year, $25 million is available through a competitive process for County Office of Education to develop and provide training for educators to become literacy coaches and reading and literacy specialists. The CDE will advertise the request for applications this spring with plans for the County Office of Education to begin work in the summer when LEAs begin planning for the following year. Now, let me be clear. This funding is contributing to what we know to be effective practice.

Research shows that ongoing and sustained literacy coaching is more effective than isolated professional development, training, and workshops alone. To truly sustain teacher practice, professional learning must be active and collaborative and provide teachers with ample time to learn, practice, implement, and reflect on new strategies. With the current teacher shortage we have already covered today, uplifting new and existing teacher leaders is important to raising our educational system. Research also shows that the use of coaches is particularly effective in improving teacher practice and student achievement.

Establishing coaching models is important because onetime workshops can be effective in teacher awareness of literacy practices but are insufficient if the goal is sustained. Use of evidencebased literacy practice and coaching provides ongoing job embedded support for teachers that allows teachers to practice skills in the classroom and receive feedback from a coach.

In addition to the positive impacts on teacher instruction, research has found that literacy coaching positively influences students and specifically multilingual learners across the content areas, particularly when reading, language skills, vocabulary, and subject area comprehension were integrated into the effort. A meta-analysis of 60 causal studies that examined the impact of coaching in K12 schools, including literacy coaching, found large positive effects on teacher instruction and smaller but still positive effects on student achievement.

Conversely, impact studies of literacy professional development trainings and workshops without coaching typically fail to change teacher practice or student achievement. The current and future funding of literacy coaches and reading specialist program will work in tandem with the governor's proposed funding for the literacy roadmap. California's English language arts English language development Curriculum framework still stands as a foundational resource for California's educators and remains on the forefront of guidance for literacy instruction across the nation.

The literacy roadmap will provide the funding necessary to take a deep, rich, and lengthy document and craft a roadmap for classroom teachers to apply the framework to their instruction as well as navigate the myriad of resources and professional learning opportunities available throughout the state. The newly updated literacy standards and teaching performance expectations from the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing is grounded in the ELA ELD framework.

So an explicit roadmap developed by the CDE and with the support and input of literacy experts and practitioners across the state, will ensure that new teachers and newly hired literacy coaches have the practical guidance they need to be effective teachers and supporters of teachers. The literacy roadmap will be the one stop the California educators need to ensure their instruction is rooted in evidence based practices found in the ELA ELD framework.

This is so critical in a local control state, where an abundance of resources can sometimes be overwhelming. Having a singular resource produced by the CDE will be the authoritative stance the CDE needs to take in supporting evidence based instruction. Founded upon CDE guidance and informed by the latest research, we are excited to begin work on this critical document again. We're pleased to see the governor's literacy proposal, especially as it supports state Superintendent Thurman's statewide literacy and biliteracy campaign and his focus on reading by third grade.

In May 2022. I apologize more than 550 districts and charters were represented at the calling all schools, the plan to ensure all students learn to read by third grade. That event was hosted by State Superintendent Thurman, where they signed a pledge to commit towards helping the third grade literacy by literacy goal by 2026.

In August of 2022, State Superintendent Thurman also partnered with Footsteps to Brilliance, an early literacy and biliteracy solution to provide California children and families free access to interactive digital ebooks, songs and games in English and Spanish.

The CDE continues with literacy programs, including the Comprehensive Literacy State Development grant, a federally funded grant established in 2019 with seven County Office of Education local literacy lead agencies, and a total investment of $37 million for students from birth to grade 12 the Early Literacy Support Block Grant, a state funded grant established in 2020 with one County Office of Education expert lead in literacy and 72 participating schools representing 34 districts and a total investment investment of $50 million in kindergarten to third grade the California Dyslexia Initiative established in 2020, which allocated $4 million to build a statewide capacity to provide early intervention services and supports for students with specific learning disabilities such as dyslexia the Reading Instruction and Intervention Grant, an additional state funded grant established in 2022, which Contra Costa County Office of ED as the lead agency and a $10 million investment anticipated to start this spring to support kindergarten through grade 12, as well as our dual language immersion grant awarded $10 million in the form of 27 grants to support local education agencies who are establishing or expanding dual language immersion programs.

In closing, we greatly appreciate the investment in literacy coaches and reading specialists as this process moves forward. We are more than happy to provide technical assistance to DOF and the Legislature on specific points related to these proposals. I'm happy to answer any questions at the appropriate time or phone a friend to get the info requested. Thank you.

Okay, questions for this panel. Mr. Alvarez.

Since I'm new and really for anybody but learning about the state literacy plan, which award came in a couple of years ago, I think the plan has been implemented. My understanding is that the plan has been adopted. Now. We have a plan adopted by the State Board of Education. Am I correct? Up until then?

Are you referring to the comprehensive literacy state development grant and that plan that was developed through.

Yes. So the plan that we're referring to in today's conversation, is that a different plan then? It's not the same plan.

So we also have our ELA ELD frameworks, and those are connected to our Common Core state standards. So there are a number of large, comprehensive documents that we have created to establish how literacy is taught across the state. The literacy roadmap is taking those large bodies of work and creating a document that is something that is manageable and understandable and very clear and concise for classroom teachers, for parents, for the public to be able to fully access and understand.

So the $37.5 million grant that was used for the comprehensive state literacy plan did not develop those more localized focus plans that you're hoping to develop now with this year's budget allocation of $1.0 million.

It did not.

Are we, what I've read here is that the Department distributed funds through a grant process to County Office of Education throughout the state to be the lead agencies, and that there's work being done through those essentially pilot programs. Is that correct?

That is correct. That is focused on particular communities within those areas, really building evidence based practices, best practices. So it may look different across seven. Those seven lead, eight lead literacy agencies, but they're not necessarily working on a plan. They're working within their communities in specific areas that does focus on literacy.

Okay, I'll leave that there. And now talk about the literacy coaches, which is being implemented essentially as we speak, and people are preparing for the real first full year implementation next school year. That's correct, I guess. Thank you. I appreciate you answering those questions. I think my comments will be, as I've learned from the chair, that's the point of these hearings for us to express our thinking?

One is, I am concerned generally, I'll probably say this again in the future, about the arts education money being taken out of the budget. I think that's something that we should reconsider, and we should not eliminate that funding for that programming that's now being programmed, and two, as new programs get implemented, and, for example, there's a $500,000 in this budget for a study to be conducted in five years from when this funding went out.

And so for five years, we really won't really know whether this is effective or not. I'd be more interested in funding more towards a study to get more real time data as to the effectiveness of the literacy coaches or literacy program to see whether that investment has been given the dividends that we'd expect and prior to appropriating, especially in years like this year, more money to a program that we still don't have results for.

And that's just because of the function of the year that we're in, not because we shouldn't spend more resources on literacy. We absolutely should. But expanding a program at this moment, really, when we don't have any concrete data, and we had a plan from a few years ago and now developing an additional plan, and a year like this doesn't really seem like, might be the right time to do so.

And I feel like there's been not just this program, but others that are in the same boat that we've put money out. We don't really know what it's giving us, but now we want to continue to fund it or grow those programs. And again, in a year like this one, I'm not sure that really makes sense for us in our state, but those are my comments.

Yes. Any response?

Just one response. There are reporting requirements for the districts that are receiving the funding, for the literacy coaches and reading specialists that would be outside of the external evaluator that would be doing a more role.

Can you talk to the mic?

I'm sorry. Yes. It's hard to.

You don't have to look. It's okay. Give me your back. That's all right.

You can look at her.

Hey, there. There are reporting requirements, and so we are working to ensure that districts who have received those funds are providing those reporting on an annual basis. So we will have some information in terms of a robust evaluation of this program. That would be the external evaluator, but we will be gathering data as we go. As you've seen in what I presented as well, we've surveyed our districts who are receiving those funds and have asked, how are you using this? What are you doing?

Okay.

What are your plans? So we have gone through ways to, there are ways to pull information and get an idea of how things are going. And we do want to continue to test that and see how folks are doing with that, what type of support CDE should be offering. The county office that's awarded should be offering as well. And so there are opportunities for that.

And I'll just acknowledge as a non-educator, but with two children in the system and being a volunteer at my schools, it takes some time for programs to really come together and for an Administration and also the staff teachers to buy into it. And so I get that.

But I also think we should be making sure that student achievement is ultimately what's coming, the output, the outcome on that, and to the extent that the evaluator can somehow provide us not just raw data, but whether or not the programs are effective to make interventions earlier rather than after five years, that's what I'd be interested in seeing, and seeing if we can grow the scope of that evaluation in order to accomplish that. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you, Mr. Muratsuchi.

Thank you. Just following Mr. Alvarez. While I always appreciate having evidence based approaches, rather than just throwing money at a problem and say that we're doing something about it, I want to ask the Department of Education, I'm looking at an article here. I wanted to confirm if this information is correct. California has the worst literacy rate in the entire country.

I don't believe that is true.

Okay. This article doesn't cite a source, although it does cite the five best literacy rates and the five worst literary states, and it shows that California is the worst. But, yeah, I'll have to get back on that. I wanted to cite that.

I know that our state testing, as you cited earlier, showed that clearly the state Superintendent has identified the importance of getting as many kids to be able to read, especially by grade three, because you would agree that there's plenty of evidence that shows that that is one of the most critical foundations not only of education, but of life's success. And that's why the Department of Education has prioritized. So to that end, you're calling for more support for literacy programs, the literacy coaches, the literacy specialists.

And I want to ask you to clarify, this is on top of all the other programs, the expanded learning opportunity programs, the summer school programs, all of these programs are designed to address too many kids not being able to read. Is that correct?

Yes, that is correct. This is an additional strategy that we know through research is effective in terms of providing coaching and support for teachers who are teaching reading. Some of our other programs are specifically geared towards supporting students in the classroom. This kind of does both. It works to support and encourage districts to our schools to put together their clear literacy plan. What are they doing? Based on their data and their information and their context, how are they addressing that?

Supporting family engagement as well, but also hiring literacy coaches to support teachers in their understanding of how to teach reading, how to support and engage. This is ongoing professional development, not a one time thing, and I think that it is most effective. It is one of our most effective strategies around coaching and providing literacy specialists in classrooms to work side by side with teachers to make sure that their instruction is making the impact that we all want it to make for our California's kids.

When you say that there's plenty of research to show the effectiveness of literacy coaches, what type of evidence are you referring to?

I can provide some of that for you if you'd like. I know we talked about it a little bit in this, but I can definitely provide that for you as well as if you're looking for kind of California's ranking, we can provide that.

Okay. I wonder if the LAO has any information on where California ranks in terms of literacy rates in the country.

No, we can go back, and I agree with Ms. Cotton. I do not believe we have. If you're talking about where the state ranks in terms of, say, third grade reading levels, like on federal, I don't think we're last.

Not knowing what resources you were looking at, part of me wonders if that was specifically related to adult. You know, in California, since we do have a high immigrant population, we might have a higher percentage of adults who don't speak English, for example, and therefore would not have high literacy rates. But we can get you the specific information in terms of where California ranks in some of the federal testing data that we have.

Okay.

Yeah, actually, I'm looking at this article. It does look like it is talking about adults. So, yeah, of course, adults being a reflection of their education as children. In terms of the. Going back to the first topic that we were talking about in terms of workforce shortage, are there issues in terms of workforce shortage for literacy coaches and what kind of requirements, professional requirements exist for literacy coaches?

Literacy coaches can be grown from within. So it's finding a teacher who has shown some exemplary work around making sure their kids are reading and then pursuing additional training and support for them. There is a reading specialist credentialing process as well, which is why it's literacy coaches or reading specialists and or reading specialists that can be hired for this role. Both require some type of training and support. Definitely those with a credential would have had a much more robust preparation program for that role.

However, there's excellent trainings that are going on across the state for our literacy coaches as well. So that will be provided for those folks. I think that it also, as we talk about recruitment, retention, it also serves as a retention piece as well, where you've got teachers who are ready to step into leadership roles. Them stepping into those roles allows them to stay in the profession, but allows them also to use their expertise to support other teachers, particularly new teachers.

So, yeah, I get how that's additional support to address the burnout issues, the retention issues that we often hear about. But what does it look like in terms of the availability of teacher coaches and specialists? Are we training and educating enough?

I think that we are. Of the almost 400 districts that were eligible, there were only 10 who opted out. And in our kind of survey of those 10, they were concerned about being able to fully fill those positions. But of the 376 who remained, they're ready to go. And again, growing within, bringing teachers up, not necessarily reaching out and hiring others, but growing within and then hiring folks to kind of backfill those positions, I think, is the way that most of our districts are moving.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, thank you. Overall, this, as Mr. Muratsuchi noted, with literacy rates in California not among the best of our 50 states, an important topic. I'm not sure if there's a silver bullet solution to solving third grade reading scores and the fact that if you don't read by third grade, your academic prospects are very slim. So obviously, this is an important issue to focus on. I don't think there's one piece. So having a roadmap from CDE, that's certainly helpful.

Just one thing in this is that, like the other proposals, this is kind of, as Department of Finance said, as Jack, wherever he is, talks about other things. This is a status quo budget. We're not doing a lot of new stuff in the whole state budget because lots of uncertainty, we actually have some potential reductions. And so this kind of pops up because it's new. So we need to evaluate where our money is.

That being said, there are some things that we know are super popular, doing well, like the Golden State Teacher money we talked about an hour ago, there's not enough money for that. And this money, the initial round of money, hasn't even gone out yet. So while it's an important topic, why are we putting more money on top of money hasn't gone out when we have over here, a huge issue with our teacher shortage. It's underfunded with one time money.

Lena Grant, Department of Finance wasn't sure if that was a rhetorical or question question.

A little bit of both, but go ahead.

So if you recall, last year this time we had proposed, I think, 450,000,000 for this exact program. So I think 250,000,000 was the kind of negotiated amount in the budget that was included in the end. And so we feel strongly that literacy is a priority and has so many connected outcomes. And so our investment in this would fund a distinct group of LEAs, distinct from the first round of funding, which set the UDP cut off at 97. This brings it down to 95.

And specifically in the language we specify that there wouldn't be any duplication of recipients, so there'd be two distinct groups receiving this 248,000,000. I hope that answers your question. I think our funding of this is a reflection of our feeling that literacy is a great priority in education.

And those funds were distributed in January. So they have the $225,000,000 they're all out for districts has gone out? Yes.

Okay. And then what's the confidence level that we'll be able to hire people for this task again? We had a hearing last week. That's the problem. We gave $8 billion for learning loss block grants and we're trying to hire more coaches and tutors. And the star district was, our witnesses couldn't really focus on how many they did in Fresno County. Same with after school programs, our TK expansion, all these pieces, there's a crisis for people.

So what makes us think that this is going to be, I'll sign up and take this job as a job applicant versus all the other things we're trying to fill.

Sure. Lena Grant, Department of Finance I'll echo Ms. Cotton's comments on of the first round of funding, 376 that were eligible did agree to go with this program, and only 10, I think LEAs opted out of due to staffing shortages. Also, the way that the program is written in statute, it allows for gives leas flexibility and staff capacity building to increase the number of highly qualified staff to support literacy for students.

And LEAs that hire reading specialists under this program would be required to hold the appropriate credential or authorization per the CTC, but they would be provided the opportunity for professional learning that may increase their ability to provide high quality literacy instruction and coaching. And given the school staffing shortages that you were just mentioning, this would allow LEAs to hire and build capacity of staff with this goal.

Okay, thank you. Further questions? We'll hold this item open as well. That concludes the four items for today. We will now go to public comment.

Hello, Mr. Chairman and Members. Brendan Twohig. On behalf of EdVoice, we strongly encourage the Committee to maintain the Golden State Teacher Grant Program's focus on addressing the inequitable impact the teacher shortage has on low income, on high need schools. As with most issues facing our public schools, the difficulty of staffing qualified educators is felt most acutely in schools serving children from our low income households.

And so the current grant program requirements help address this inequity by insisting that recipients work in high need schools for at least four years after receiving certification. And as you know, the Budget Trailer Bill proposes to eliminate this requirement and then replace it with only a modest incentive that says if recipients serve in high need schools for three years instead of four. And we don't think that that is really going to have an impact to get recipients into the high need schools.

And so, unfortunately, the likely result will be that recipients will then gravitate towards non-high need schools. And this, in essence, is shifting the funding away from the high need schools to higher income schools. So this fundamentally changes the goal of the program. Any expansion of program eligibility should be limited to applicants that commit to serving high need schools.

We strongly urge you to reject the proposal to eliminate this requirement, and we appreciate the comments from Members, and thank you very much for your time and consideration of my testimony.

Thank you. You got a free ride because I didn't give you the time notification.

That's why I started talking before that would happen.

Yes.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Yes. So, 60 seconds. That's 1 minute.

Thank you.

Good morning, Mr. Chairman, Members. I'm Sarah Lillis, Executive Director for Teach Plus California. Thank you so much for your robust conversation this morning about the educator workforce and how we can really think about having a sustainable ethno-racially and linguistically diverse educator workforce as it relates to item one. I'll just associate my comments with Brendan Twohig from EdVoice as he got all that extra time on item two.

We do really appreciate the thoughtful discussion and exploration of how we think about the impact of the huge list of programs that we've invested in over the last several years. And so we urge all of you to think about how we might have a more comprehensive evaluation, not only of their impact on the workforce in General, but again, on the diversity of the workforce, as well as think about the balance between local and state roles.

What are the infrastructure needs that we might have that would allow for greater oversight and support? I had the privilege of serving on the Superintendent's advisory group on educator diversity, and we heard from county offices and LEAs that they would like opportunity for more collaboration, support oversight. And so I think there's a role, and I would urge you to look at Senator Gibson's AB 694.

Thank you.

Hi, Raquel Morales on behalf of the Education Trust West, with the second year of TK expansion, we wish to see continued investments to support the early educator workforce in alignment with the LAO. We agree a direct approach is needed to increase the number of highly qualified state preschool and TK teachers. We also believe such approaches should not create barriers to the existing workforce of early educators and should be mindful of the need of more bilingual teachers in our classrooms.

As IHEs begin to implement the new PK3 ECE specialist credential, we hope to see targeted financial support for these institutions. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay, we have three on the line. Moderator, can you please launch the public testimony from the phone?

Yes, sir. If you would like to publicly comment, please press one, then zero at this time. We'll first go to line eight. Go ahead.

Good morning, Chair McCarty and Members, this is Raquel Yaffe on behalf of the California Alternative Payment Program Association, thanks so much for having this hearing today specifically on the workforce needs of early educators. Kappa agrees with the input from the LAO that the governor's proposal is not well tailored to early educator workforce issues.

Further, we strongly underscore proceeding with caution on building up the workforce for only school based programs without noting the crisis the expansion has had on the private family childcare home providers and private centers that have supported for decades services to babies through age 13.

We know that there will be a hearing on early education in coming weeks, but just wanted to make sure that at this Committee you also consider the ramifications of supporting workforce that we have seen has drawn childcare workers away from the private sector into the public sector. We ask that the Committee consider these issues together and view them with equal importance so that families have equitable choice to all childcare settings that meet both the working needs of families and the care needs of children.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. Next speaker, please.

Line 11.

Good morning, Christina Salazar of California Together we appreciate today's hearing and highlighting the need to expand the educators workforce. We request that you ensure the inclusion and success of faith English learners into your final budget. The chair mentioned programs that are popular and doing well. So this is a program that has a great track record for your consideration.

We're requesting 20 million for it to bring back the Bilingual Teacher Professional Development Program that uses a grow your own approach to address a bilingual teacher shortage by allowing local educational agencies to apply for estate funds to provide professional learning opportunities to increase the number of bilingually authorized teachers. Thank you for your consideration.

Thank you. Next speaker, please.

Line 12. Go ahead.

Good morning. Katie Hardeman with the California Teachers Association. We appreciate the conversation today, and CTA recognizes the significant one time funding provided for the educator pipeline. However, ongoing funding is needed to improve salaries and working and learning conditions for teachers and students. And really, in order to retain teachers in the session, CTA also supports eliminating financial barriers for teachers entering the profession. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We have no further lines in queue.

Thank you very much. With that, we will adjourn.