Assembly Budget Subcommittee No. 3 on Education Finance

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to our Subcommittee on education finance. I'm Chair Assemblymember David Alvarez. I will be joined by our colleagues in a few minutes. Today's hearing we will be covering some of the biggest new investments in public school over the recent years that you are all quite familiar with. These are in Proposition 98, including the Universal Meals program, the after-school programs, otherwise known as Extended Learning Opportunities and community schools.

We will also hear three proposals in the January from the January budget that are seeking to extend programs from prior years. The Expanded Learning Opportunity panel is an oversight panel. Any budget items related to the learning recovery will be heard together on the April 30 hearing here in a few weeks.

Look forward to hearing about the process, the progress, excuse me, on the investments that we've made so far, which have been transformative in many ways, meeting student basic needs and learning how we can continue to improve these investments and again continue our role of oversight on these expenditures. So with that, we will get started with our first item. Issue number one is the universal schools meals oversight and proposals.

Again, the panel will provide an update on the recent Budget Act investments from the last few years, offering a universal school meal program at all public schools, and the January budget proposal, which is to increase the program appropriations. We have the Department of Finance, Legislative Analyst Office, Department of Education. We have a school district representation, Greenfield Union School District, California Food Bank is here, and the UC Nutrition Policy Institute. So with that, we will get started with the Department of Finance report.

Good morning, Chair and members. I'm Rebecca Lee with the Department of Finance. I will be providing an overview of the Governor's Budget universal school meals proposals. The Governor's Budget includes a one-time backfill of 65 million Proposition 98 General Fund in the current year to cover an anticipated shortfall based on projections and actual meal counts through August 2023. Part of the shortfall is attributed to current year funding being used to cover past year meal reimbursement.

The shortfall in the past year was due to the 22-23 actuals coming in approximately 17.7 million meals higher than may revision estimates, representing at about a 1.4 higher lunch meal counts and 3.6 higher breakfast meal counts than originally projected.

For budget year, the Governor's Budget also includes an increase of 122.2 million Proposition 98 General Fund to fully fund the anticipated growth in universal meals in 24-25 based on serving a projected 848,000,000 meals. And including the estimated increase in federal reimbursement rates, which results in changes to the state portion of the reduced price and paid meal categories. This estimate assumes 1% increase in lunch meal counts and 3% increase in breakfast meal counts for an increase of 17 million additional meals, or overall 2% increase to the universal meals program.

We assume there will be continued growth in the short term before leveling off with anticipated growth drivers, including the continued ramp-up of the breakfast programs, increasing awareness of universal meals, and increasing quality and variety of meal offerings due to recent investments in both kitchen infrastructure and freshly prepared meals. The Governor's Budget also includes an increase of 13.47 million Proposition 98 General Fund to reflect the 0.76% COLA bringing the state reimbursement rate from 0.9686 cents to 0.9760 cents.

This would bring the total increase for the nutrition program of $135.66 million for both gross and COLA in the budget year. That concludes my remarks and happy to answer any questions at the appropriate time.

Thank you. Appreciate that. We'll move on to the Legislative Analyst Office.

Good morning. Sarah Cortez with the Legislative Analyst Office. So, given the budget condition that has been discussed in great detail in previous hearings and the cost pressures in the school nutrition program, our school nutrition analysis provides options to contain future cost growth. And I want to emphasize that this is a menu of options that the Legislature can choose from if it decides that this is an area that costs need to be contained based on projected cost growth in the school nutrition program and available funding

None of the options we provide in our analysis would change the requirement for public schools to offer free meals to all students maintaining Universal Meals. So we provide three options. The first option we provide is to set the nutrition rate lower. The figure on page five of your agenda shows how rates work under Universal Meals.

All the bars are the same height, so a school receives the same amount per meal, regardless if it's served to a student eligible for free, reduced, or paid. You can see that a free meal the bulk of the funds that make up the rate a school receives are federal funds with a small share of state funds, whereas the paid mill is flipped. The bulk of the funds provided for the meal is state funds with a small share of federal funds.

So there's two ways to reduce the rate. The first would be an across-the-board rate reduction. This keeps all the bars the same height. Or the other option is a targeted approach such as reducing the paid contribution. The option here would have the paid bar lower than the free and reduced bar. The second option we lay out is to revisit the approach to COLA.

Continuing to look at this figure on page five of your agenda, let's just look at the free bar for a second, the dark piece of the bar is grown annually by the state K-12 COLA. Governor's Budget assumes a 0.76% increase and the teal bar is grown by the federal COLA and that will be provided with federal funds. The Governor's Budget assumes a 5.5% increase.

Under the Governor's Budget, this combined state and federal contribution grows 4.7%, which is a much higher growth than the 0.76% in the rest of the state K-12 programs. The growth in the federal COLA results in state contributions to the paid rate beyond the 0.76% state COLA as well. The state share of the paid rate is assumed to grow 6.6% under the Governor's Budget and that's because the federal rate increases and how our reimbursement system works in the nutrition program.

The state could approach the COLA for school nutrition differently. The first approach in our options or in our menu is to no longer provide a federal COLA to the paid rate, and this would mean the combined free and paid rate would no longer grow at the same pace. The second approach is to suspend the automatic COLA and just decide on an inflationary adjustment annually. The third option within this menu is to suspend the administrative augmentation authority.

In 22-23 the budget included provisional language that requires the Department of Finance to augment the appropriation of school nutrition if expenditures are projected to exceed the amount available. If the Legislature suspended this language, it would return school nutrition funding to how it worked prior to 22-23 where if there wasn't enough funding for school nutrition provided in the annual budget, the Legislature could either provide an additional augmentation or prorate the state meal rate.

Suspending the language allows the Legislature to consider increases in school nutrition with other priorities within K-12 education. And the last thing I'll discuss is actually our only recommendation that we have in our analysis. So this is separate from the menu of options, and this is really aligned towards an eye on long-term program structure. And we have a recommendation to remove the mandatory participation requirement for newly eligible CEP schools. Now, this is a small subset of the schools that this mandatory participation requirement applies to.

So the Federal Government lowered the threshold for CEP eligibility so more schools are eligible for CEP starting in 24-25. And the state requires as part of universal mills that if you're eligible for CEP, you must opt into what we refer to in our report as alternative reimbursement option, but is more commonly known as the provisions. The figure on page three of your agenda provides a side-by-side of how school nutrition reimbursement traditionally works and how it works under CEP.

We chose to highlight CEP because that's most commonly used. One of the key reasons for the state mandatory participation requirement is to maximize federal reimbursements, and based on our modeling, CEP participation for newly eligible schools doesn't always maximize federal reimbursement.

An example we highlight in our report is a school that received a free and reduced price rate for two-thirds of its lunches in 22-23 but it had a relatively lower ISP of 29%, which means if it had participated in CEP in 22-23 it wasn't eligible at the time because of the new federal rule change. But if it had, only 46% of its lunches would have been reimbursed at the free rate and 54% of its lunches would be reimbursed at the paid rate.

So requiring this school to participate would have resulted in increased state costs. And that concludes my remarks, but I'm happy to take questions at the appropriate time.

Thank you, the Department of Education.

Good morning Mr. Chair and committee members, and Happy National Nutrition Month. Kim Franzell on behalf of State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tony Thurman. Like textbooks and other educational services, access to universal school meals for all students is essential component to the whole-child approach quality education, transforming our California schools and creating healthier habits for our 5.8 million public school students. California Universal Meals is a sound educational and public health policy, and that's because far too many students do not have consistent access to adequate nutrition and basic food needs.

Universal Meals support student health and improve academic achievement. And based on a third-party analysis sponsored by the No Kid Hungry, on average, students who eat school breakfast achieved 17.5% higher scores on standardized math test and attended one and a half more days of school per year. So this not only benefited our students, but also increased a school's average daily attendance. A fully-funded Universal Meals program is foundational so that all students have greater access to a school breakfast and school lunch regardless of their income.

And this is especially critical in California because of our high cost of living compared to the rest of the nation. The federal income threshold to qualify a child for a free, reduced, or paid meal for the national School Lunch School Breakfast program is based on the federal poverty level. The income levels are the same across 48 states and territories, with the exception of Alaska and Hawaii, tere is no other regional indexing for high-cost states or regions like California.

To illustrate this with the new federal income thresholds, if a family of three makes over $47,767 annually. That's just $919 weekly. Regardless if they live in Iowa or California, they would not be income-eligible for a free or reduced-priced meal and they would be considered in the paid category for the federal meal programs and would need to pay for their student's meals. 44% of our insecure families in California have incomes above the federal poverty level that qualify their children at the reduced rate.

Food insecurity crosses all categories under the national school lunch, the paid, the reduced, and the free. Our families depend on California universal meals as part of their child's educational experience and our participation numbers show and reflect the great need. Prior to the pandemic in 2018, our schools served 822,000,000 school meals breakfast and lunch. In 2022, the first year of Universal Meals, California schools served more than 845,000,000 breakfast and lunch and for the 23-24 fiscal year we are projecting 894,000,000 school meals will be served.

And you heard from Department of Finance around the growth trends. Central to being able to provide these much needed meals and the success of universal meals is predictable, reliable, and full state meal reimbursement for our schools, not prorated and no administrative augmentation authority that needs to remain intact. They need to have the confidence that they can serve meals because a meal, whether it's at the free, the paid, or the reduced, is the same meal for all children and it's really an equity issue.

The intent of the state meal reimbursement is to ensure that our local educational agencies are financially able to serve healthy, more freshly prepared, culturally relevant meals for all students. But unfortunately, our school food services have always run on extremely tight budgets and that has been persistent with inflation, food chain supply chain issues, staffing issues, and just rising costs just really is quite detrimental to many of their operations.

A recent national survey by the School Association reported serious to moderate concerns regarding the financial stability of school nutrition programs and the largest concerns were in the western states. And we know this is true for California because 28% of our LAS and 42% of our charter schools that are operating the National School Lunch and School Breakfast program are encroaching on their general funds to support their meal operations. So it not only impacts the meals being served, but also educational services.

This will continue to be problematic, especially as many of the wonderful one-time-only grant funds begin to sunset. Sustaining California universal meals and state reimbursement is critical. In closing, as the first state in the nation to implement universal meals, we have taken bold steps to establish greater equity in our school meal programs to benefit all students.

We are investing in the whole child so no student is left behind and all are better equipped to reach their full academic potential through consistent, nutritious meals each and every school day. That concludes my testimony, and I'm happy to answer questions at the appropriate time.

Thank you. We have the Greenfield Union School District here.

Good morning. It's my first time doing this, so bear with me.

Welcome.

Good morning. Thank you to the Committee for letting me be a part of this esteemed panel, and welcome to my colleagues in the audience. My name is Joshua Rogers. I'm the Public Policy and Legislation Committee Co-chair for the California School Nutrition Association. We represent 2560 school nutrition staff and industry members of the hardest working department on a school campus. I come to you with 18 years of school nutrition experience and 20 years of food service management experience.

I am currently the Director of nutrition services for the Greenfield Union School District in Bakersfield. If you know a school food service director, we are some of the most passionate people you'll ever meet. We care deeply about the students we serve every day and want to ensure that they have proper nutrition to succeed in school and life. We are the only department on a school campus that sees the majority of the students twice a day.

I know for a fact that the meals we serve across the state are some of the only meals some of our students receive. My district has been providing universal meals since 2008 under the community eligibility provision. Currently, 99.38% of our students receive free meals. When we started CP, we saw an increase in breakfast and lunch participation. With Universal Meals, we have eliminated the stigma that used to exist for students who receive free and reduced meals because everyone eats and everyone eats the same thing.

This is what students across the state have been able to experience over the last two years. Thank you. Nutrition departments constantly are constantly evolving and changing to make sure they're serving better food for our students. We strive to enhance our programs by I strive to enhance my program by doing a cooking training over the summer where we bring in staff. We work on kitchen skills and do practice new scratch recipes, also going and doing student taste testings.

We currently prepare about 30% of our scratch of scratch cooking in all of 12 of our kitchens. It's taken a long time to get staff trained to do scratch cooking. I use the analogy that we're like a cruise ship. We make slow turns. We don't turn on a 90-degree angle. In school, students have access to computers, books, paper, pencil, everything they need to be able to complete their education.

And now, thank you for providing them with Universal Meals and the extra money that we have received for the kitchen infrastructure and training funds known as KIT. This has been very beneficial to myself and my colleagues across the state to help improve our programs. In my district, we have just purchased a mobile kitchen that we would be able to use to enhance our summer feeding programs.

We'll be able to take it out into the community and serve at parks and different areas to help our students because we know they need it during the summer. Other districts have done a lot of work over the last years with a couple of years with KIT funds, but there are still a lot of opportunities and improvements in school areas in the state.

When nutrition staff attend meetings or trainings, they hear that other districts are doing what their other districts are doing and their students for their students, and then they come back to their districts and try and implement that in their program. Nutrition staff are typically the lowest-paid staff on a campus, but I have managed to provide a raise to my staff outside of their normal step raises each year.

By doing this, I have seen a better retention rate of staff, but this has been a struggle to get where I am at. The majority of our school nutrition staff are working parents who have struggled, who are struggling to make ends meet, especially during hard economic times. Districts across the state have seen an increase in participation, and this creates more jobs in schools because when we serve more students, we need more staff to do that.

Some staff have even been able to get benefits through the district. In the Governor's Budget, the additional funds that have been proposed are not for creating a new program, but they are to cover the meals that we have served this year. I remember prior to universal meals when the state would run out of money, the districts would have to wait months or years to get reimbursed. Now the state taking more of the reimbursement in funding.

If funding runs out, nutrition programs will have a tough financial time to get through that. Our school nutrition programs affect a lot of different sectors of the economy. We buy agricultural products and other supplies for our meal programs. They process and package those products they deliver to our schools. Some manufacturers have seen increases in purchasing and they've needed to expand their facilities.

In closing, we request that Universal Meals be fully funded so all students in the state continue to have the ability to learn at high levels. We all know that students can't learn if they are hungry. Thank you, and I will answer any questions that is appropriate.

Thank you very much. Move on to our next panelist, the California Food Bank.

Hi. Good morning, Chair and committee members. My name is Itzul Gutierrez, Senior Policy Advocate at the California Association of Food Banks. At the Association, we have a network of 41 food banks leading the collective effort to end hunger in California, and we are a proud, original co-sponsor of School Meals For All. No child should go hungry. Yet California's high cost of living leads many families to struggle to make ends meet.

Current data shows that over one in four households with children in California are food insecure, with deep disparities for Latin and black households. To be eligible for school meals, as we heard, a family of four must earn $39,000 or less and $57,720 to be eligible for reduced-priced meals. Among California's families who are experiencing food insecurity, nearly half the incomes, as we heard, are too high to meet the federal eligibility requirements for free or reduced-priced school meals.

And as we saw in the California Budget and Policy Center reported last week, we can all agree 57,000 is hard to live on for a family of four in California, now more than ever, Healthy School Meals For All is the most important policy change to education policy in decades, ensuring all students have access to nutritious meals at school to support their health and learning.

School administrators, educators, teachers, parents, students, and farmers all support Healthy School Meals For All, and it makes this coalition one of the largest and most diverse to ever come together to support this policy initiative. As we heard, California became the first state to offer school meals for all at no charge.

Building upon the success of implementing this program for schoolchildren providing a meal to every child since 2022-23 school year, this policy had bipartisan support in the state Legislature. California's leadership or let me just stop there. One other thing I wanted to add about the bipartisan issue is that we need to also realize that hunger doesn't choose sides. It doesn't choose big geographies. It often hides, even in communities of wealth.

California's leadership in school meals for all has inspired a national movement, as we heard, resulting in eight states adopting and an additional 25 states proposing legislation to establish universal school meal policies. Nationally, recent poll results show that School Meals For All have garnered widespread support, and it has even been adopted as a priority in the Biden-Harris administration's national strategy on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health, released in September 2022.

School Meals For All mandates high-poverty schools to engage in community eligibility, fostering equity by guaranteeing access to healthy meals for all enrolled students without necessitating individual meal applications. The response to School Meals For All has been incredibly positive and there have been numerous successful outcomes. As we heard, access to school meals improves the health of children, as school meals are often the healthiest meals children eat throughout the day. School Meals For All facilitates socialization and improved mental health through meals with peers.

Improved access to school lunch has led to fewer disciplinary problems and lower suspension rates in schools. Offering school meals has diminished the stigma around free meals, thereby fostering a decline in societal perceptions and increased participation among students. Offering free school meals to all students has been found to improve academic performance and school attendance rates. Parents, guardians, and caregivers report that School Meals For All saves time and money and reduces family stress.

In California and other states, implementing Healthy School Meals For All participation in the national school and school breakfast programs has increased, ensuring access to hundreds of thousands of children. For all of these reasons, this is why more than 100 organizations are asking the Committee and the Legislature to support the Governor's proposal and these policies. Full implementation California should continue to protect school meals for all to ensure children are ready to learn and thrive. As we heard, hungry children can't learn.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak, and I'd be happy to answer any questions.

Thank you. We have the UC Nutrition Policy Institute.

Hi, good morning. My name is Christina Hecht and I'm Senior Policy Advisor at the Nutrition Policy Institute, which is in the University of California's Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources. NPI was selected by the state to evaluate the School Meals For All program, and I am part of NPI's evaluation team. Thank you for having me here today. As you know, this program offers two meals daily at no charge to all California public school students, regardless of their family's financial circumstances.

Our evaluation shows overwhelming appreciation and support for the School Meals For All program. For example, across all income categories, all income categories of parents, an impressive 80% say they are in support of the program. The California program is only in its second year, but both our evaluation and findings from numerous studies around the country are consistent and clear. School Meals For All accomplishes its primary goal, increased participation in school meals so that every student is nourished and ready to learn, particularly students from lower-income families.

And I just want to add that in the testimony I submitted to Aaron, I provide the research citations for my statements. Allowing all students to eat school meals at no charge effectively addresses two major barriers to school meal participation. The first relates to the federal income cutoffs for free and reduced-priced meals that California has eliminated by making school meals available for all.

As you've heard, this is important because the federal poverty level, already considered very low by many experts, doesn't take into account the high cost of living in our state, a higher cost of living is associated with increased food insecurity. As you've heard, nearly half of California's food-insecure families made too much to qualify for free or reduced-price meals.

Our research found that the greatest increase in participation when meals are at no charge to all students comes from those who are near eligible for reduced-price meals, those families you just heard about. This indicates that universal meals are an equitable way to address food insecurity among children. The second barrier is a sense of stigma that was associated with means-tested school meals, which prevented qualified children from participating.

During the first year of the state program, 46% of district food service directors reported a decrease in stigma for students from low-income families. From surveys with California parents in the second year of the program, we found that across all income levels, 65% believe the program reduces stigma for their child about eating a school meal.

In other words, although initially it may seem counterintuitive, the low-income students are encouraged to participate in school meals once the higher-income students can and do, and it no longer can be seen as a low-income persons program. Our evaluation finds that students also feel the program reduces stigma and embarrassment about taking a school meal. When we have robust participation, it benefits all students. Most important, when more students eat more, kids are eating more nutritious meals.

I'm sure you're aware of the epidemic of diet related chronic disease and its toll on our state's healthcare costs. Poor diet is now the leading cause of illness in our country. School meals provide good nutrition for all students. This is because USDA's stringent nutrition standards, stemming from implementation of the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act in 2012, have now made schools the single overall healthiest source of food in the US. New standards due out next month will make this more so.

A program that grows participation by lower-income students can help reduce a variety of disparities, including in nutrition, health, and attendance. But offering no-charge meals to all students is also good for all students. Research shows improvement for all students in behavior, overall well-being and school climate, attendance and academic performance, diet quality, and lower body mass index. Our evaluation finds that over three-quarters of California parents feel that offering meals at no charge to all students can improve student academics and the behavior of all.

While students say the program supports food security, increases meal participation, makes school meals feel more inclusive, and reduces hassle. And yes, they're also eager to see more of those fresh local ingredients which help our local farmers and local economies. I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you.

Thank you all for being here and for your testimony. Appreciate that. I think I wanted to start off by acknowledging the significance of universal meals. When I was a student in school I was a recipient of Free Meals program and definitely important to my nutrition. I also had an opportunity to spend a summer working in the summer lunch program and being not an auditor but one of the individuals that goes to the sites and visits and does the counting and the tallying.

If you've done the program you're familiar with it, where you make sure that there are students, children, excuse me, that are present and you count the meals that have been received, the meals that are consumed, and the meals that are left so familiar with that aspect of it. And also a recipient of the summer lunch program at my local community community nonprofit down the street when I was young. So I'm actually not going to focus my time on her questions on the significance of it. I think.

Plenty of evidence that has been provided as to that. What I would like to spend my time on and hopefully ask certainly of the panel when I ask the questions, and then members of the public who speak at the end of the agenda today is to help us understand how we can continue to be successful with this program, but also understand that in tough budget year, we need to be creative, if possible. We need to be judicious.

We need to be doing all the things we can do to ensure that the program not only is successful and that the meals are provided, but that we are doing everything we can to make sure that funding one program doesn't sacrifice other very important programs. The one good thing about all of you here today as well is that you will hear from other very important programs, and everybody will say that their programs are very important, and they are.

But in our role, we now must make decisions in a year like this as to how do we allocate the funding we have to all these important programs. So your role is to help us do that better. So that's what my questions are going to be focused on, and I'm appreciative that there's practitioners, people who are on the ground actually implementing these programs because that helps us understand better, but as noted on the agenda, this program costs have been increasing.

We are being asked for an additional, an augmentation for the current year, a larger budget set aside for next year, and that's as a result of the Paid Meal Program growing and the Free and Reduced Program dropping. And I want to really dive deep into why that's happened because I think we've got some work to do there collectively to make sure that that doesn't happen.

So maybe to set the stage for that conversation, for those questions, I know the LAO talked about in reference a figure in the report that's available on the imbalance, I'll just call it, of the Free Reduced and the Paid Program and how much the state is now contributing in that regard.

I guess the question to the LAO's Office would be, if there was a more balanced approach of the distribution of the contributions from the federal government, would that keep the program going at the same rate, providing the same number of meals, and also give some relief to the state's budget, because that's what I am assuming from your comments that if we had more federal contributions, the state's contributions would be less. But I don't want to simplify it. I want to give you an opportunity to talk about that.

Sure. Thank you for the opportunity to address that. So I think you're referring to figure 13 in our report that shows that there's this pie chart where the funds going towards the paid meals, there's just a lot more funds going towards those than the free meal, and that's really a product of just how our reimbursement system works. And it's figure 11 in our report, but I'll actually go to your agenda. Figure--page five, the figure, where the state contribution for the paid meals is just so much more compared to the state contribution for the free meals.

My comments about the federal COLA and the growth of the federal COLA actually is that the federal government does do an automatic inflationary adjustment for meals. So when they increase that, that actually--because of the way our reimbursement system works--the paid contribution, the state contribution for paid also increases with that because we're aligning these three rates: what a combined free rate is getting, the combined reduced rate will also get, and the combined paid rate will get.

So the free rate growing because of the federal COLA results in the paid rate growing as well, and the state having to put in those dollars that the federal government is not. So if the federal government were to increase rates just providing, like, let's just say we waived our magic wand and the federal government put more dollars into increasing the free rate, that would actually result in the state actually having to put more state dollars to match the paid rate. So I hope that helps as you consider actions on the federal government really directly resulting in state action or state the impact on the state program.

Thank you. I understand that now, but I guess my question then would be, from your perspective, what would then lead to what I'm suggesting or hoping that these leads to, which is federal government making a larger contribution towards this program than what the state is contributing?

Yes. The way our system works now, if the federal government were to provide more dollars that would offset state dollars, it would be towards that paid rate piece.

Okay. One of the things that we've identified, and I'll go maybe to the school district and maybe CDE, if you have some comments as well, or anybody else, there's a note that because of LCFF, we are no longer collecting perhaps more data or more accurate data on who should be recipients or would qualify as recipients for the meal program. Is that something that either the district, yourself, or the CDE is noticing is happening? Is that true?

Yes, it is. With LCFF coming out, my district, we collect income eligibility guidelines or alternate income forms. On those forms, the federal government does not recognize our state form. So if a family that qualifies for a free, reduced, or paid meal doesn't fill out the federal guideline or federal form, then they don't qualify. For a district on a Provision CEP or Provision Two, those all have to do the alternate income form.

But a district that is not on a provision, they would still have to collect the federal meal application to be able to qualify students for free, reduced, and paid. Talking with directors around the state, they are struggling with getting families to complete the applications because there's no incentive for them to fill that out now.

Families go, well, 'you're going to give me free meals anyways.' So that's a struggle that we have seen. I was talking to a Director in the Orange County area and she said that with Summer EBT coming out, they sent information out to families letting them know if they don't fill out an application that they aren't going to be qualified for Summer EBT. She collected another 200 applications, so those are the struggles that we're having out in the field, is that there's no real incentive. We can't force families to fill out the forms. If we could force them, then that would help the program.

That would help the program in terms of being able to receive more financial assistance from the federal government because--

Correct. More free and reduced income from the federal government.

Right. Do you have some comments?

Kim Franzell, Department of Education, and I'll add with community eligibility and with Universal Meals in California and the mandate that high poverty schools apply to be on a provision, we have seen a pretty big bump in those schools that are applying to be on CEP. We have over 6,300 school sites on community eligibility and another 908 school sites on Provision Two. I mentioned this because with CEP, the reduced price category goes away. So it's really just the difference between the paid and the federal.

And under the federal law, the meal application can only be used for purposes of the National School Lunch / School Breakfast Program, so the alternative income form is then collected if a school is on CEP in those non-base years.

And so Josh was addressing, you know, some of the challenges and there are a lot of best practices out there to help schools collect more of the alternative income form, of which I will say, I think one benefit we will start to see is the newest federal child nutrition program, Summer EBT, and that eligibility, so I think that could actually help our collection of the data that we need for Universal Meals.

I'm not familiar with this new program. So it's a new EBT program for summer for access to food?

Yes. It's 120 dollars in benefits.

And people will now have to apply, as was mentioned just now?

It's income-based. During Pandemic EBT, it was kind of automatic and even CEP community eligibility schools, all students were eligible, but now it is based on individual student. So it will help schools, I think, also just have more applications, more data to really help with--

That data is going to be collected, I assume, right before the summer, the end of the school year. Will you be able to apply that data for the next year? Fo the next school year?

Some of it can be, and we're working with USD on flexibilities and waivers. There is an interim final rule and providing comments and recommendations at this time.

Does the interim final rule include this flexibility that would allow you collect the data the year before?

It gives timeframes to when it can be collected, so yeah, it will be somewhat helpful. So I think that will help schools as well as--we started this amazing program just right on the tail of the pandemic where we had a few years of free meals for everybody.

And so it's taken a lot of education with families to help them understand the value of collecting either the alternative income form or the meal applications and making the connection to the entire educational system and other benefits that their family can receive from this, whether it's internet or testing scores or different services available. So we've done a lot of messaging and trying to help schools increase their rate.

Well, I think this is the pathway we must take in order to continue to sustain this program, given what you know are our challenges from a budget standpoint and our competing and important other school programs. And so I'd ask again to how much more can the departments do? How much more can locals do to ensure that that collection of data, which is probably the simplest thing to accomplish--I know it's difficult to do.

I fill out those forms every year at the beginning, and there's parents I know get fatigued over that, but is there another way? Does anybody else have an idea of how to better increase California's share? Is the Administration looking at any other alternative on how to reduce the budgetary impact from the state budget and maximize federal benefits?

Rebecca Lee, Department of Finance. I would just say the Administration remains fully committed to fully funding Universal Meals, at this time is not proposing any changes or reductions, but with that, we are happy to continue engaging in the conversations into the spring. As you know, when we get into the May Revision, we will provide an update as well. We already heard some new numbers already from the Department, so we are happy to continue to participate in these conversations.

Well, I'd ask you at the May Revision, when you do come forward with changes or suggestions that we must incorporate a pathway forward to accomplish more reimbursement from the federal government. That has to be part of our budget solution in May, and so I'd ask you to come back prepared to discuss why the Revise includes that or does not include that. I think that's going to be important for us to know. Is there anything else at the district level you'd like to share about how we can better do this?

I don't know if it would be like a state message of the need for filling out a meal application. Somebody from a higher level saying this is very important for Universal Meals to be sustainable. Something like that might be beneficial if commercials or billboards or something like that because hearing it from the school district might not always be the best way. If there's commercials or something that could be done, that's not always in our funding abilities for schools.

Yeah. Sure.

Sorry. Kim Franzell, Department of Education. Messaging is so important as well as the Department is implementing an improved direct certification process so to directly certify those children for the meal programs and that will be fully implemented in the coming school year so we will get better direct cert match. So identifying those children that are eligible for free meals, so drawing down more federal dollars. So there's one solution.

Sorry, how are you doing that? I'm not understanding.

Direct certification is a federal mandate. We're looking at some of the categorical eligibility programs, such as SNAP, CalWORKs, if a child is homeless, Head Start, and if they are directly certified for the meal programs without having to complete an application. So we have some opportunities to do better. We're doing better matching with the fuzzy match, it's called, and doing that so that will fully be implemented in the coming school year.

So that will help us identify more children at the free rate, again drawing down more federal dollars at that free meal reimbursement rate. And I think also the federal government only requires that the direct certification for the meal programs be conducted three times a year, and we encourage schools to do it monthly so that we can get as much, identify as many students as possible. So I think we have an opportunity there as a state to look at that as well.

Okay. Are there other suggestions? UC Policy Institute or--

Christina Hecht, UC Nutrition Policy Institute. No, this is not really in our research area.

Do you have any thoughts?

I just want to lift up what Josh said, just really the messaging coming and having that support from the community that also works closely with the families, food banks, CBOs, all of us who are on the ground with families can also help lift up, and if we can get that support as well to get the messaging out along with the state, I think we could have a great way to maximize that and draw down those federal funds.

Okay.

Christina Hecht.

Well, on the topic of messaging, as we survey California's food service directors, this is--messaging in general is one of their top needs.

Oh, you changed your mind.

Messaging that the meals are available or messaging around collecting this data?

Everything. Parents need to understand that there are nutrition standards. They need to understand what goes into making the school meals. They need to understand about the income eligibility forms and, I mean, I think messaging in general. Kim, do you have more to say on that?

I'm going to turn it over now to my colleague, Mr. Muratsuchi.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and I appreciate your opening remarks because I completely agree with you that, you know, I'm proud to be a Californian, first in the nation in rolling out Universal Meals. I think we don't have to discuss any further the absolute importance, absolute priority, that no child, no California public school student should go hungry. You can't learn if you're hungry. That's established. The question is, we're starting to hear of districts. We just passed the March 15th layoff notice deadline.

San Diego Unified issued layoff notices. Districts in my Assembly District have issued layoff notices, and so we need to get smarter in terms of how we administer these programs, making sure that every child that needs a free meal gets it, and fully recognizing that we need to eliminate the stigma that previously existed with the Free and Reduced Lunch. So that's all established as far as I believe we are concerned. We're looking at real dollars here.

I mean, according to the staff analysis, the 23-24 budget included 1.6 billion Proposition 98 General Fund dollars going toward the Universal Meal Program. I mean, that's real money there, and that's money that could be spent to avoid those layoffs, to pay teachers more so that we can address the teacher workforce shortage, to hire more literacy coaches. I mean, all the wonderful programs that we're going to be discussing today.

So my main point, which I've raised in a previous hearing, is why are we providing free meals to kids that don't need it? Why are we providing free meals for kids in Beverly Hills or Palo Alto who don't need it? I understand that there may be low-income kids in Beverly Hills and Palo Alto, but, you know--and so my first question is to the certification program, trying to identify better ways of doing this. Schools directly certify students under the Identified Student Percentage Program from the CDE.

Ms. Franzell, you said that you check with CalFresh and other records. Does that happen at a school site level or a school district level in terms of checking? Do you check if a student's family is enrolled in CalFresh, for example?

Thank you. Kim Franzell, Department of Education. It's a little bit of all of that. So direct certification actually happens at the state level. So when the school district uploads the students information into our CALPADS data, there's that direct certification that happens. Direct certification, a school district could also have an agreement with their local health department, welfare department where they are getting that data, and so they're doing a local match as well. And then there's certainly the application. So it's done electronically for the direct certification statewide, and then some schools do also do it at a local level as well.

But is that electronic data sharing, is that done at a student by student level or is it done to determine a percentage of a school site that's receiving CalFresh?

You can go. It's individual, but if there's like a triple-blind--you know, we have agreements with Department of Social Services, health care services. So we don't see that individual data, but it is desegregated.

So. Josh Rogers, Greenfield. So how it works at a site level is the parents come in, they enroll, they do all their information. Staff put that into our student information system. That then gets uploaded to CALPADS, and that's where the data match does--so it checks all the database for whichever department that comes from. So then we get a report back, and that's where it's beneficial to do it on a monthly basis because your enrollment always changes.

If that staff putting that information in miskeys something, they don't match, then when they come back and fix it, then the next month they would match. So there is some human error there at the beginning, but once they're on the program, they're there.

Okay. So if we're going to that level of checking whether students need the free meals, then if we want to eliminate the stigma, then why can't we reverse engineer this and require families that can afford to pay for meals pay for the meal? Can school districts give the same meal card? I just stepped outside and checked with my wife to make sure that, yes, my daughter is receiving free meals. She doesn't need a free meal.

But yeah, of course everyone's going to be happy because it's a free meal. Everyone loves free things. But given that we're talking about budget cuts and layoffs, why can't we develop a system like, for example, every student gets a meal card, but you check to see those that can afford, send them a bill. Can we do that?

Kim Franzell, Department of Education. There would no longer be school meals for all Universal Meals Program. So we would only be the first state to implement, but then that would deconstruct the program. But there is also federal laws and California laws around preventing overt identification of a child that's in their income category. So a card would that wouldn't necessarily be appropriate. And we heard so much about the stigma and the shaming of students--

Which we've established. We're not arguing about the stigma.

But it's very real.

And I agree--

And kids are going hungry.

I'm not disputing that. I'm trying to figure out the kids that--the wealthy kids in Palo Alto or wealthy families in Beverly Hills, why is the state paying for those meals? 1.6 billion Prop 98 General Fund and we're talking about increasing we're trying to make it more efficient so that we accomplish the goals of providing a meal to everyone that needs it and reduce--avoid the stigma.

Josh Rogers, Greenfield. So I will say that you've mentioned layoffs. Those are usually teacher layoffs, right? So our programs in our district are one of the only programs that we run as a business. I run it as a business. It's my personal business funded by federal dollars and state dollars. I make sure that we're not exceeding--we're not encroaching on the General Fund.

Prior to the no shaming student bill, we had 260,000 dollars of bad meal debt that the district had to pay out of the General Fund. That was over years that that had been collecting. But that was something that--and then once we did the no shaming policy, those bad lunch debts kept increasing. The first year was 40,000. The next year it was 70,000. My boss came to me, 'why are we not collecting this money?' I said, 'well, I can't do anything about it now.'

So if we go back to that, we're still going to have an issue where this is now switching from our program to the General Fund, and the schools are going to have to provide it because there's regulations in our program that we cannot take on bad lunch debt. We have to be made whole.

Which again, I'm fully in support of the Universal Meal Program. We're just trying to figure out how to make it more efficient. I'm looking at the staff analysis summarizing the LAO comments. LAO's position is that the Proposition 98 funding is not sufficient to cover the state's current ongoing spending level.

This is in reaction to the Governor's Budget is adding additional ongoing dollars, and then there's recent CVE estimates that indicate that even the 122 million in the Governor's Budget isn't even enough to cover the program in the existing way based on projections of meals, and that's incorporating growth in the meal projections, plus rates, the increase in the COLA and all of that.

Ok.

May I make one comment? Kim Franzell, Department of Education, and I just want to kind of anchor back to just the end of February, the federal government released their income, their federal poverty level threshold, and so just, again, when we talk about the paid category, there's no way to tease out those that may be very affluent versus those that are marginally there, and so the example I gave for the family of three was real, right? A family of three, if they make 47,767 dollars annually, they're in the paid category.

Which, again, the basic principle we're not disagreeing on. Anyone that needs the free meal should get a free meal. The question is, how do we make our program better so that wealthy families are not getting free meals? It just seems like, rather than putting the--clearly, I'd heard from many school districts that they're not getting the federal applications because they don't need to, right? I mean, they get the free meal even if they don't submit the application.

And so, of course, the federal reimbursement is going to go down, and that's going to increase the state obligation. So it just seems like rather than putting the burden on low-income families to submit applications, it seems like we should think about how do we get families that can afford it to put the burden on them, on why they should get the meals. If anyone has any ideas toward that effort, either the speakers or in the audience, would love to hear it, but thank you, Mr. Chair. I just wanted to continue to explore this.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Muratsuchi. Yeah. I hope, again, it's clear, at least from the two of us at this point, I think--don't want to speak for Mr. Muratsuchi, but listening to his questions--this is about what we call cost containment. How do we ensure that the cost doesn't continue to increase on the backs of other important programs when we know--this is the part that I think is frustrating.

We know that we can be getting more funds from the federal government to help us pay for this program. And it is incumbent upon us. It is our responsibility to do everything we can to ensure that that happens, that we do not leave one dollar on the table. And so that's what we're asking of all of us to figure this out.

And we're going to hold this issue open to further discuss again in hopes that in the feedback you've received in our questions and hopefully in the feedback that the public will be providing, we can identify ways to do that. We do not want to do the talk about carrot and the stick approach. We don't want to be the stick to the school districts, but to those who are in the school districts, we need your participation in this. We understand it's easier not to collect the data.

It's much simpler to do that. But you must recognize that that comes at a cost as well because that means that the increased cost in this program that could be funded other ways isn't going to other school programs. So let's do a win-win for the state. That's what we're hoping that this conversation leads to. So with that, I thank you all for your participation in this panel. We'll move on to the second issue, the Expanded Learning Opportunities Grant Program.

The panel will review the implementation of the Expanded Learning Opportunities Program, ELO-P or ELOP, the state's universal afterschool and summer school program. The January budget proposal addresses learning recovery in the context of ELP will be heard at a future hearing. So for this panel, we've got the Department of Education, we have another school district, the San Diego Unified School District, we have the LAO, and we have the Department of Finance.

So we'll get started with the Department of Education, please.

Good morning. My name is - Mr. Chair and Members of the Committee. Thank you. My name is Michael Funk representing State Superintendent Tony Thurman. And before I start, my time at the Department of Education, working in expanded learning has been 12 years, but I've given the last 32 years of my career focused on expanded learning in the Bay Area and making sure that expanded learning is a transformative experience for our young people and families.

And with that, I will give my written testimony. The Expanded Learning Opportunities Program, ELOP, in its third year, has dramatically increased opportunities for California students and families. Earlier this year, staff from the Legislature, Department of Finance, LAO, CDE, State Board and other agencies visited the Folsom Cordova Unified School District. Before ELOP, this district had nine school sites funded through the afterschool education safety grants.

They now have a robust expanded learning program at 23 school sites offering high quality academic and cultural enrichment programs for up to 1500 students starting at TK. This expansion creates equity and access to California families who either would have had no access prior to ELOP or would have had to figure out transportation for their child. A large percentage of the children in this district live in single parent households where the parent is most commonly unable to leave work to address school day schedule.

Last Summer I visited the Fresno Unified School District. Their Superintendent, Bob Nelson told me a few weeks ago, and I quote him directly, I think some of the critical things why ELOP is so important are being able to fund the best kid centric nonprofits in our community, providing economic viability for our town by virtue of the fact that we are providing safe, comfortable, and a loving place for kids who thrive where their parents have the freedom to stay working.

We are also creating a natural pipeline of new teachers and leaders from the classified staff and community educators who are serving in the expanded learning program. In our case, where our students are not naturally given the opportunity to have what privileged kids would have in terms of camps or distance experiences. We can provide this directly using ELOP funding.

It gives us the combination of being able to provide academic support to make up for lost time in the classroom, as well as just doing amazing things that keep kids coming back and buck the trend of chronic absenteeism. In an environment of declining enrollment and chronic absenteeism, this program largely is paying for itself. Of course, that's at the local district level.

It does not make sense to reduce ELOP funding when high quality ELOP programs are increasing the average daily attendance for districts, and I'm reflecting on the LAO recommendations for some adjustment this year. With the proposed expansion of ELOP to include attendance recovery. This program will generate revenue for LEAs and ELOP is one of our transforming California school initiative programs that's making our California public school system more relevant and attractive to our families. These transformations to our school system are critical at a time of declining enrollment.

So just a couple comments regarding the LAO's proposal to restructure somehow the funding for ELOP, perhaps based on actual attendance. If that is still the case. There are a few issues with this recommendation. Many LEAs are doing exactly what CDE, the Administration, and the Legislature have recommended. They are blending and braiding other funding with ELOP, such as ASES and 21st century community learning centers to create one comprehensive program. Other funding sources are combined with ELOP for TK kindergarten programs.

Sorting out ELOP attendance from these other funding sources would be impossible in many locations. Secondly, the Legislature did not give CDE the authority to collect ELOP attendance by design. CDE will likely collect attendance in the future, but that data is not available now. Finally, funding at the level of the current attendance does not provide any capacity for growth in attendance. Increasing attendance would be necessary for the new attendance recovery component to be successful. That concludes my testimony. I'm very thankful that colleagues from community based organizations in a local school district are part of the panel because we work closely together to ensure implementation with fidelity to the vision.

Thank you. Do we have San Diego Unified?

Good morning. Thank you for this opportunity to share San Diego Unified's model for ELOP programming. My name is Nicole DeWitt. I'm the Senior Executive Director of Thriving School Communities, which oversees our ELO Department. Our main focus has been in two areas, our Summer offerings, as well as an expansion of our extended day programs during the school year.

Our Summer programming is made up of two distinct components, a morning academic program that's provided by our San Diego Unified educators that focuses on literacy, numeracy, and social emotional competencies and then an afternoon enrichment program that's provided by over 80 local organizations in the areas of STEAM, music, performing arts, sports and fitness, outdoor nature activities, and career exploration. Leveraging partners such as the San Diego Zoo, Living Coast Discovery, and the Chicano Federation.

We also have utilized these funds to expand our extended day programming during the school year, a program that we reference as primetime. We're now able to expand to all elementary sites in order to serve more unduplicated pupils across our district. So, since just this past Summer of 2023, San Diego Unified has served over 24,500 unduplicated pupils. 15,000 of those pupils participated in one or more of our Summer programs, and close to 9,500 are currently enrolled in our extended day primetime programming.

Across all grade levels, students who participated in 80% or more of the Summer program demonstrated bigger gains than did non participants on the Fall Administration of the FAST reading and math assessments, which are assessments that we give several times throughout the year to monitor progress towards mastery of standards. We also saw gains in social emotional competencies through the use of our Summer Leader In Me program.

ELOP has been transformational for our families, particularly those with the greatest need, giving students access to learning opportunities that they could previously not afford. However, the instability in the per pupil ELOP funding rate we receive from year to year has been a huge challenge. Districts receive different amounts of per pupil funding based on the percentage of unduplicated pupils they serve, so districts with more than 75% unduplicated students receive a fixed per pupil rate each year.

However, districts like San Diego Unified who have less than 75% unduplicated students do not receive a fixed rate, and instead there's back calculation each year based on how much funding is left over after rate one districts are funded. Because of this, rate two is unstable and can vary from year to year.

We only learn our per pupil funding rate weeks before the start of the school year, putting us in the challenging position of having to plan programs, make staffing decisions, communicate with families, and maintain relationships with our community partners without knowing how much funding we will receive from the state to support our programs. This current fiscal year of 24/25 our per pupil funding rate decreased by $250 per student, which is a 12% reduction, resulting in a loss of $7.2 million.

For San Diego Unified. The decrease in rate two this year was attributed to a 3.27% increase in state classroom based TK through six average daily attendance, including nearly 30,000 new four year old students added from the statewide expansion of universal transitional kindergarten. So, as the number of students increases, the amount of per pupil funding for rate two districts shrinks. This cut has put a strain on our programs, and we've had to reduce the number and variety of enrichment programs we plan to offer this Summer.

As TK expansion continues across the state, rate two will continue to drop and we will struggle to offer high quality nine hour programs to all of our unduplicated pupils as required by the Expanded Learning Opportunities Program. Our breadth of offerings will also be drastically reduced, reinforcing the inequities that existed for our students prior to ELOP. Again, I thank you for your time and I would be happy to answer any questions the Subcommittee may have about our ELOP programming.

Thank you. We have EDMO here. Mr. Caballero, welcome.

Thank you. Chair Alvarez and Members. My name is Eduardo Caballero and I stand for equity, authenticity and courage for myself and all others. I'm here to speak on the impact of the historic Expanded Learning Opportunity Program. While our state is in a budget crisis, it is essential that we preserve and protect the programs for our most vulnerable children. In the next few minutes, I will talk about who we represent, the data we currently have, and need, and tell the story.

I've been the Executive Director and cofounder of EDMO for 20 years. We are a nonprofit that engages roughly 10,000 students annually. We partner with 17 school districts and charter schools across 13 counties in Northern and Central California. That is up from approximately 2000 kids that we worked with pre pandemic, thanks to ELOP. We bring high quality science, art, tech and social emotional learning to students that wouldn't otherwise have access.

Our children include Latino kids born to field workers in Salinas, black and Asian kids from working class families in Oakland and Richmond, and rural white kids from parents struggling to find work in Lake County. I'm here on behalf of these children, their families, and those of the other members of the California Afterschool Advocacy Alliance, otherwise known as CA3. We are a statewide coalition of more than 35 after school and summer providers, intermediaries, LEAs, and other supporters from across the state. Now for some data.

Statistics about the impact of Summer and afterschool programs are irrefutable. Summer and after school are the most inequitable time in a child's education. While all kids go to school nine to three, children from low income families experience 6000 hours less of learning time than affluent families by 6th grade. That's mostly because of inequitable access to out of school time programs. This opportunity gap directly impacts academic achievement, attendance, graduation rates and even incarceration rates and more. ELOP funding changes that narrative for kids, families and staff.

We have collectively raised the quality and quantity of science, art, tech, dance, theater, music and academic support that kids receive in these programs. Our organization is impacting five times more kids since 2021, as have most CBOs increased their impact as well. We no longer charge families for most of our programs. Our industry has been able to raise wages for staff who come from the same communities that we serve and work in a sector that has been historically underpaid.

Higher wages means higher staff retention rates, more continuity for students who need that continuity the most. The impact on working parents is profound. The cost of childcare is rising, with families spending close to 30% of their income on childcare, according to a 2023 study. An independent evaluator who surveyed our afterschool EDMO families found that 99% of parents and guardians relied on EDMO so that they could go to work and school.

When parents work and their childcare is free, they have more resources for other necessities like food and housing. 81% reported that EDMO helped their child get their homework done on time. 83% reported that EDMO made their child more excited to go to school. Excited and more prepared kids means better attendance rates, as shown by numerous studies and our colleagues here. Now, one thing California does not have is any statewide data collection for ELOP.

The state must collect data on elope funds and how they're being spent by districts and which students are and are not attending programs. EDMO and our district partners already collect a lot of the data, including demographics, attendance and more. So this data is already in place and being collected. It shouldn't be a big lift for the state to do this statewide. We need this, and I urge the Committee to help us get this data collection started. I'll wrap with a quick story.

Last Summer, I was speaking with a site Director in Lake County. She told me this is the hardest job I've ever had. Some days I wake up and I ask myself, why do I do it? And then I think about Cody and she points to the seven year old blonde kid skipping into line and she said, his mother came up to me one day with tears in her eyes to thank me.

She told me he'd been kicked out of the only after school program offered in her district. She could not work a regular job because she always had to pick him up after school, and oftentimes he would get sent home from school because of behavior issues. But ever since EDMO opened up a STEAM and SEL program in her school, thanks to ELOP, he's thriving. So much so that mom got a good paying job with the county. She has housing stability.

For the first time. She's actually having money to save for a down payment for her own home. And her son is doing better than ever in school. The Expanded Learning Opportunity Program is the most important legislation enacted in our nation's history to address educational inequality and out of school time. I ask this Committee, as the guardians of our state's most vulnerable children, please preserve full funding for ELOP and help us measure its impact. Thank you.

Thank you. Next we'll hear from the Legislative Analyst Office.

Jackie Barocio, Legislative Analyst Office. As was mentioned in the previous panel, we are projecting an overall deficit within Prop . 98, and I think with that in mind, in our analysis, we did lay out various options that the Legislature could consider to both generate additional savings but then also contain cost, one of those being some comments related to the Expanded Learning Opportunities Program. Specifically, the Legislature could consider restructuring some of the program aspects, such as basing funding on attendance.

Also, it could consider pursuing a single rate structure. Again, we acknowledge that with these program changes, of course there may be workload implications for districts to realign their programs to absorb any of these changes, but we do think that they're feasible at the statewide level. Secondly, other things that we would elevate for legislative consideration is reconsidering the carryover fund policy. In the last two years, we've allowed the funds to carry over for a time limited amount of time, a limited amount of time.

But beginning with the 23/24 allocation, funds will carry over on an ongoing basis. So as opposed to just allowing them to continuously carry over to districts, the Legislature could consider should we proactively scoop any projected ELOP unspent funds from the 23/24 year as a way to generate additional fund savings but maintaining baseline funding levels moving forward. Thank you.

Thank you. Does the Department of Finance have any comments?

Good morning, Mr. Chair. Members of the Committee, Sabrina Adams with the Department of Finance. The Expanded Learning Opportunities Program provides funding for before, afterschool and Summer school education and enrichment programs for students in transitional kindergarten through the 6th grade. Beginning in the 2023/24 school year, local educational agencies are required to offer Expanded Learning Opportunity Programs to all low income students, English language learners and youth in foster care.

Local educational agencies with the highest concentrations, highest concentrations of these students are required to offer expanded learning opportunities to all elementary students. The Governor's Budget does not propose any changes to the Expanded Learning Opportunity Program funding or its requirements and sustains the ongoing commitment of 4 billion Proposition 98 General Fund for this fiscal year. This concludes my remarks and I can answer your questions at the appropriate time.

Thank you. Let me start by asking about the - first of all, thanks for the work that - those of you who do the work on the ground appreciate that and for sharing your testimony. Let me start by asking about the universal aspect of this program. Do we offer or does the school site offer access to these after school programs to every student on a school site?

Nicole Dewitt, San Diego Unified. So we do focus on our unduplicated pupils first. So we do enrollment for unduplicated pupils first and then if there are any spots remaining after that, then we will open it up to non unduplicated pupils. But we really do a consorted effort for outreach to make sure that as many unduplicated pupils as possible are enrolled into these programs initially.

And do you have a - from San Diego Unified and I'll ask to CDE as well. Do we have statistics on how many unduplicated pupils are participating by school site or district wide?

So we do keep that information so that we're monitoring how many unduplicated pupils per school site are participating in these programmings. They are very popular, especially now that we've partnered with our local organizations. A lot of the local partnerships that we had in the Summer, we've carried over into our extended day programming during the school year. So they are very popular and they do fill up rather quickly.

Okay. Do you maintain data? We've heard about data collection. Does this Department maintain data on participation and by unduplicated pupil?

Yeah. Michael Funk, Department of Education. So by design, the Legislature, as I mentioned in my testimony, does not give us the authority now to collect any student level participation. We don't have figures. We are, just this month we launched a new working group, the Research and Evaluation Strategy Committee for Expanded Learning, to look specifically into what type of data do we need to collect in the future. By design, in the first three years of this program, none of that data was collected at the state level.

We have great examples of most LEAs are collecting that data. I would want to remind the Committee, in terms of access, if a district is 75% unduplicated or above, the law requires the program be offered to all TK through 6th grade classroom based students. However, the law also allows for that LEA to charge fees except to those unduplicated students.

So, like in the previous issue on this Committee, those families that can't afford some type of fee, the district is allowed to charge. For those students who are unduplicated or homeless. They are not allowed to charge a fee. It's prohibited. So that's protected. Below 75% unduplicated students, the LEA is required to offer to all unduplicated students, not all students, and then provide access.

So we have a great deal of interest and are working internally and also with the Legislature to start to work on a plan to capture the students that are provided access to this program or enrolled. And to the testimony of EDMO, we agree that statewide data is important for this level of investment.

So I ask these questions because even if there isn't participation by all students. The funding received by the districts is equal to the number of students, right.

It's based on a formula of attendance of unduplicated pupils.

So if you've got 1000 kids who are unduplicated, you get, in the case of a 75%, the higher tier, 27.50 per pupil. So if you get 1000, you get $2.7 million, but you might not have 1000 students participating, you might have 500 students participating, but you're still getting funding for 1000 students, right?

That's correct.

So that's why I asked these questions, because this is an oversight hearing, trying to understand the funding that we provide. You all heard the previous conversation. We're trying to ensure that we provide as many full and complete programs to students in a way that enhances their opportunities. And when we've got difficult ears, we've got to make sure we're really focused on serving the students we intend to serve.

And so I definitely would expect that we continue the conversation about funding this, the level of funding and the amount of participation. I think that's something that needs to be. There needs to be some accountability around that. I also am sympathetic to the argument of this rate one versus rate two. I think the inconsistency and the lack of ability to plan is not fair.

And so I think this is something we must also address and hopeful that in the May revision we hear more about that and we hear more about this funding and allocating funding to the students and the schools that need it. I also definitely am interested in having more information on the attendance to recovery was mentioned frequently as one of the measures that we've seen of success for the program.

I'm not sure if it was attendance recovery specifically, but certainly improvements in performance from the previous program as well. So there are multiple programs that are really helpful. And in reference to the other program, are you coordinating with the before school, which is like the breakfast program, and are you collecting data as you enroll students? I think you are because some of you have to serve or charge the unduplicated. So what data are you collecting and how different? If you know? You might not know. Is that from the data that needs to be collected for the meals program? Does the Department know the answer to that?

Oh, I'm sorry. Well, first of all, many ELOP sites, districts are operating before and after school programs as the before school programs are a real benefit to families who have parents that start working early. And so in that case, a breakfast is required in a before school program. I'm not aware of how LEAs -maybe you could address that from San Diego unified.

Okay.

Yeah, absolutely. Nicole DeWitt at San Diego Unified. So our primetime program, as I mentioned before, that is our six to six program. So it does encompass both before and after school. So we actually do use a combination of funding sources to fund that program. We do use the existing ASES and assets program that is related to the breakfast program as well, and the enrollment into that as well as ELOP. So it is a combination of different funding sources.

And we do track attendance for the before program and the after program as well, to make sure that our families are attending consistently. If we're seeing that there's students that aren't showing up with consistency, there is outreach to families to understand any barriers or challenges.

Okay. At this point, turn it over to my colleagues so that they can get a chance to ask some questions. Mr. Muratsuchi.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. First of all, want to acknowledge Mr. Caballero's passion for ELOP. You know, I'm also a true believer, a big believer in the ELOP programs. Coming out of the pandemic - we know that we continue to struggle with the ongoing impacts of the pandemic, whether it's learning loss, whether it's the social emotional impacts, whether it's chronic absenteeism. And so the ELOP program is absolutely critical to making sure that we have the afterschool programs, the Summer school programs, to address those ongoing impacts on our most vulnerable communities.

Mr. Chair, this past Fall, I had an opportunity to visit one of the ELOP programs at San Diego Unified. I think I read it in the Summer, actually, because there were high school students. There were high school students who were basically being teaching aids for the TK. I think it was K through three. I just remember they were little kids and they were partnering with the Covey Institute to teach the seven habits of highly effective people.

It was just such a great program, providing not only the opportunities for the kids to have those kind of enrichment activities during the Summer months when we know that the learning loss is most pronounced in low income communities. I want to give kudos to San Diego Unified for just one of many, I hope, districts throughout the state that are running these excellent ELOP programs. I did want to follow up on the Chair's focus on this issue of the rate one versus rate two districts.

San Diego Unified, they did the right thing. They expanded their ELOP programs, relying on the rate, but then the rate, too, dropped by 12% from 22/23 to the current year. How much of a loss do you know has that caused for San Diego Unified.

$7.2 million.

$7.2 million loss for San Diego Unified. When were you notified of the rate change?

So it was just a few weeks from the start of our next fiscal year. So it was well after we had already started negotiating new contracts with our partners and doing the hiring for our Summer programming.

So you had already staffed up and hired people, and then you were notified of the $7 million loss in the rate change. And so that just really highlights the importance of having this rate stability. I wanted to turn to Department of Finance. The staff analysis references an estimated $1.7 billion in unspent funds for the Expanded Learning Opportunity Grant Program. Has there been any consideration in reallocating the 1.7 billion in unspent funds to help restore rate two levels to the 2022/23 level?

Thank you. Brittany Thompson with the Department of Finance. At this time, there is no proposal to reallocate those funds in the Governor's Budget.

Okay. I would urge the Department of Finance to consider we have 1.7, again, real money. When we see the B's instead of the M's, then that's when we start paying attention to finance. Also, do we have any idea on how much is available in terms of unspent ELOP funds?

Sabrina Adams, Department of Finance. I think the Department of Education would have a better answer for that.

So, Michael Funk, Department of Education. This is a paragraph provided by our school fiscal services division, which handles the appropriation. I'll read it directly. The most current expenditure information available is the 2022-23 annual LEA financial data collection submitted to CDE.

This data would represent information as of June 30, 2023. CDE does not have real time expenditure data for LEAs. The 22-23 annual fiscal data includes ELOP expenditures from funding received by LEAs from both the 21-22 and 22-23 appropriations.

As the data collected by CDE does not distinguish by fiscal year. CDE is compiling this information and can provide the legislature this information by the end of next week. Let me say that as the program office for this, we are directed by education code to collect the exact expenditures from the 21-22 appropriation and the 22-23 appropriation after June 30, 2024.

So this year, we've already developed a reporting instrument, and as soon as the new fiscal year starts, we'll be sending that instrument out to LEAs with a due date of September 30, 2024 for exact amount of expenditures by LEA for the first two years of appropriation.

Okay, so it sounds like we'll get that data after we pass our budget. So again, I would urge the Department of Finance to consider taking, I would respectfully disagree with the LAO's recommendation to sweep those funds, but rather to consider using unspent funds to address this rate stabilization so that we cannot punish districts like San Diego unified for providing these wonderful ELOP programs.

And last but not least, Mr. Chair, I would just ask the Department of Finance, does the Department of Finance have any plan to provide some stability to rate two districts?

The Governor's Budget does not propose any changes to ELOP rates at this time.

Okay. I would again urge the Department of Finance to provide, recognize the challenges that districts are facing with this 12% drop year to year after they had staffed up so that we can continue to support these great programs. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Fong.

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair. I just wanted to make a quick comment. Really appreciate the questions by my colleagues here. I just want to elevate and uplift the work being done here on the expanded Learning Opportunities program.

And to our presenters from San Diego, Edmont, and all the presenters, thank you for uplifting the important work of after school programs, summer programs, and just want to uplift the programs in Southern California as well. And had a chance to visit Woodcraft Rangers in my district recently.

There was a thousand students out there that day, and it was just tremendous work being done at the Garvey School district and in Southern California. And on a personal level, I used to sit on the board of LA's best advisory board, after school programs and work being done at LA Unified and everywhere else. So uplift the work that's being done here and really appreciate the comments from my colleagues. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. Yeah, after school programs absolutely are impactful in work. I had the opportunity to work at the first generation college program for kids starting in third grade before we offered a lot of robust programming in San Diego, actually.

And they make a difference. So obviously, we want to continue to be able to serve, especially those students that they impact the most. And so we want to see how we can continue to do that on a going forward basis.

And that's going to require that we have real data on who we're serving, because it's one thing to just offer an after school program. It's a whole another to actually touch the students that need, like the student that you referenced in your testimony, Mr. Caballero, that we know there are families who really need this program. We want to make sure that they're taking advantage of it. And so the only way to know that is by collecting data. We don't have data.

We don't know who we're serving. And we cannot do business that way, especially when our education dollars are so desperately needed in so many different ways. And so we're going to hold this issue open to work with recommendations from the LAO.

And so you're looking to recommendations from CDE, from Department of Finance on how we're going to be able to track data and collect data for students as minimum as providing a checkbox in calpads where we understand that the student is participating.

We don't even have that data. That's the minimum we could expect of a program that's $4 billion a year. And also how we're ensuring that parents are being notified. I know when the programs first got rolled out as a parent of a student at a title one school.

The people who signed up first were those with a lot of sometimes these programs require online sign ups. So guess who was signing up? Not the parents who had the biggest needs.

And so we've got to figure out a way to make sure that we get the word out to parents more effectively to ensure that those that need the support of these programs are being offered. So I think that's the work that continues from now until we adopt this budget.

So hold this issue open and looking to also in the tier issue right. That needs to be addressed. Thank you very much to this panel. We will move on to zero emission school buses.

We will hear the January proposal to expand the existing zero emission school bus program from California Air Resources Board. We have the Department of Finance, we have the Legislative Analyst Office, and we've got the Air Resources Board here. We will start with the Department of Finance.

Good morning. Katie Lagomarsino with the Department of Finance. Governor's Budget makes statutory language updates regarding zero emission school buses for fiscal year 24-25. As you'll recall, the 22-23 budget proposed 1.5 billion Prop. 98 General Fund to replace existing school buses with electric buses, a proposal which was revised to instead provide those funds evenly over the course of three years. So 500 million in 23-24, 500 million in 24-25 and 500 million in 25-26.

We maintain this year's 500 million investment to support greening school bus fleets through programs operated by the California Air Resources Board and the California Energy Commission in 24-25.

As stated in statute, of that 500 million 375 million will be provided to the Air Resources Board for their hybrid and zero emission truck and voucher incentive project, and the remaining 125 million will be provided to the Energy Commission Fund zero emission school bus charging or fueling infrastructure.

Our language adds the 500 million for the 24-25 fiscal year to Section 96 of SB 114, along with the standard Proposition 98 paragraph at the end attributing the year of the funds to the 24-25 year. This concludes my remarks. I'm happy to take questions at the appropriate time.

Thank you. We will go on to the Legislative Analyst Office.

Thank you, chair and members Ken Capon with the analyst office. Last month you heard us say that we thought Proposition 98 funding was going to come in $7.7 billion below the Governor's Budget estimate across 23-24 and 24-25.

Based on the economic and revenue data we've seen since then, our assessment is essentially unchanged. The proposal before you is to provide 500 million for a second round of grants under this program.

This is the second largest proposal in the governor's K-14 package after the cost of living adjustment. We do recognize the state previously adopted some intent language to provide additional funding, but we would recommend rejecting this proposal as well as the other new spending increases in light of the very large budget shortfall.

One additional consideration here is that even without this state grant, some funding does remain available for districts to purchase zero emission school buses. That includes a very large federal program.

Districts have already been successful in achieving some funding through that program. There are also a couple of programs administered at the state level, funding administered by local air quality districts, and both of those things are available to help districts purchase buses even if there isn't a second round of funding under this program concludes my comments.

Thank you we have CARB.

Good morning. My name is Michelle Buffington and I am the chief budget policy officer at the California Air Resources Board. California is making steady progress cleaning up the state's school bus fleet to improve air quality for students and surrounding communities.

The state has supported zero emission school bus deployments with incentives for more than a decade now and leads the nation in zero mission school bus deployments.

To date, the total investments the state has made have resulted in over 19,000 mission school buses funded over 600 mission school buses on the road and over 230 California school districts that have purchased at least one emission school bus.

Zero emission buses can help improve air quality and play an especially important role to help protect the health of sensitive populations like our children by reducing their exposure to toxic diesel pollution.

I know that so well.

In the long term, these zero emission buses also will help address climate change by advancing zero emission vehicle technology and grid resiliency through vehicle to grid technology.

Recognizing the benefits of zero emission school buses, the legislature passed AB 579 that will require all newly purchased school buses to be zero mission starting in 2035. The state, through your leadership, has committed to helping school districts prepare for the transition to zero mission and have funding available to support the purchase of zero mission school buses.

The 2023 state budget included $500 million for zero emission school buses and infrastructure, and the governor's proposed budget includes 500 million for the program for 2024-25 fiscal year. Additionally, last year, the legislature committed to providing an additional 500 million for school buses in the 2025-2026 fiscal year.

The California Air Resources Board and the California Energy Commission are working to create a total package for school district bus fleets that includes holistic applications and technical assistance.

CARB leads on vehicle deployment while CEC focuses on infrastructure needs and workforce training. While none of the 500 million of Proposition 98 funding from fiscal year 23-24 has been committed to local education agencies.

Yet CARB and CEC have made significant progress towards launching this program and have worked closely with school districts and public stakeholders to develop program guidelines.

We started preparing for the new funding last October when the Department of General Services, in coordination with CARB and the CEC, established statewide procurement contracts for zero emission school buses. CARB and CEC expect that the program will open for applications in May.

In line with the legislative direction that the first round of funding opened during the 2023-2024 fiscal year, there is significant need for funding to support the replacement of the state's aging school bus fleet.

Generally, the industry standard lifespan for a school bus is 12 to 15 years. Currently, the average age of a publicly owned school bus in California is 14 years old, and over a quarter of publicly owned school buses in the state are more than 20 years old.

These older buses are subject to less stringent emission standards and emit higher levels of toxic diesel pollutant than the more modern buses. Additionally, older buses have fewer model safety features like seatbelts.

With so much of the state's cool bus fleet nearing replacement, we want to encourage districts to replace their old buses with zero emission instead of purchasing another diesel bus that could be on the road for another 10 to 20 years.

While there is federal and local funding that can supplement state investments, CARB estimates that to fully transition California's public school bus fleet to zero emission will cost just under $6 billion, and consistently offering school buses incentives is essential to ensure that school districts are ready to make the switch to zero mission school buses by the 2035 mission school bus purchase requirement set in AB at 579.

The transition to zero mission school buses for California schools is a collective effort amongst agencies in the local, state and federal level, and accomplishing the goals of AB 579 and Governor Newsom's Executive Order N 79-20 requires consistent and continued investment in zero emission school bus transportation programs. With that, that ends my remarks, but I have my colleague here from the Energy Commission as well.

Thank you. Thank you all for your presentation. So it's a $500 million proposal for next year, but we're talking about a $1 billion Proposition 98 expenditure. If you take last year in this year. I like your phrase, Mr. Merzuchi. We're talking about B's, not M's, B's. Billions. Like that catches your attention, which is one of the main reasons why we have this as a standalone item.

The question still remains for me as to it sounds like CARB and maybe CEC are working on the program guidelines. But when is going to be the date when districts will be able to apply at your current pace for the funding, for the initial round of funding?

Good morning, Elizabeth John from the California Energy Commission. We anticipate that we will open for applications in May of 2024.

So that's in about a month?

Yes.

So you've finalized your guidelines?

Correct.

And what are you doing during the next month to ensure that people start to apply?

As part of our process, we are taking our third party implementer block grant to our CEC business meeting in front of our commission, which will be adopted in April, and we are holding a workshop in April as well.

Okay. There were 230 districts with at least one elect zero emission vehicle purchase. But given that the $500 million has not been. That award program hasn't been opened, they all utilize different funding for the purchase of those vehicles, correct?

That is correct.

Okay. What is exactly the federal program and whoever's analyzed this, I assume some of you who do this on a daily basis have analyzed the potential for the federal infrastructure bill and specifically the $5 billion that was set aside as part of that federal legislation for school, for buses, for electric buses in particular. What do you anticipate California's participation to be in that program?

Sure. So, as you pointed out, it's $5 billion from the US EPA's clean school bus program, which was authorized under the federal Infrastructure Investments and Jobs act. And the funding would be available from 2022 through 2026.

Part of the requirements is that or the rules framing the funding is that no more than 10% of that funding can be awarded to projects in each state. So the absolute maximum that California can receive out of that funding is 500 million.

Is that on? So the total funding. Got it. Okay. And they also haven't rolled that out, though, right?

They have, and they've started. And thus far, California has received approximately $170 million. They've offered $170 million of awards to California schools, and that's about 9% of the federal funding that's been awarded to date.

If you can look at our agenda on figure three, we identified the different programs, and there are quite a bit of programs that fund zero emission vehicles in the state. Where would I find the federal funding allocation? Which column would that be.

Mr. Chair? Again, Ken Capan with the analyst office. So I think this is a chart our office put together. This is just the state programs on this chart. So that's why there's no federal program on here. There's really only one significant federal program for buses.

There's a very small EPA administered program focused on reducing diesel emissions, but that's a very small program. Really, the one to know about is this $500 million one that was created a couple of years ago.

So did we receive that in 23-24 or when did we receive that grant?

The small.

No, the 107. I think you said 107.

It's distributed in tranches over the years, so there'll be another. We've already received, as the agency said, 170 million. That's for grants for various school entities in California. I think the next tranche, next release will be, is scheduled for April of 2024. But that's on the EPA's timeline. They're doing it. It's an annual process.

And do we know whether the schools have already made the purchases with that money or what have they done with that money or the districts? I assume it's going to districts who's receiving.

The eligible applicants for the federal funding are either school districts or school transportation providers. So the state in and of itself can't apply for the funding. But we have been providing letters of support to districts.

I believe that the funding. Let me just double check quickly my notes, but I believe that the funding is. They have not purchased the buses yet. They are going to purchase the buses with the funding. There is also a tax credit that is available after the fact, but that is separate from the $5 billion pot of funding that we're talking about.

Are they allowed to use this DGS procurement process that you referred to that's been created for the procurement of these buses.

The programs no, are not currently aligned to do that. Again, because the school districts are applying directly for the federal funding and they've already been purchasing. They've been accessing a different way to get to the school buses, to the zero mission school buses.

But you said they've been purchasing. But I thought you said that they haven't purchased them yet.

They are making commitments to purchase now. So that program with the DGS, the Department of General Services, is not currently open yet. That will open whenever we open our applications in May. And so currently, while the school districts are looking for buses, they are contacting the manufacturers themselves.

Okay.

I do believe, though, moving forward, once the DGS program is set up, they will be able to access the DGS program to purchase the school buses, regardless of which program they go through.

Including the federal funding. Correct. Got it. Mr. Fong, do you have some questions on this item.

Just a quick question. Thank you so much, Mr. Chair. Just a follow up in a line of questioning. Thank you for the information on the amount of funding allocations. Why is the administration proposing an increase for funding for school buses if the prior allocations have not yet gone out? And what are some of the challenges in getting the money out?

Katie Lagomarsino with the Department of Finance. This is really the administration maintaining what was agreed upon. The 1.5 billion. Originally, 1 billion was delayed to the further years, so we remain committed to the agreement of 1.5 billion.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Muratsuchi

Thank you. For the Energy Commission. What is the average cost of a zero emission vehicle bus?

Actually, I'd be happy to take that question. The average cost for a zero emission bus is about $400,000.

Okay. And has there been any uptick? What is the rate of adoption of these zero emission buses statewide? Among LEAs.

I'm sorry, can you ask that question?

Are LEAs taking advantage of these dollars? Can you comment on the rate of participation in these ZEV bus financial assistance programs?

Great. Thank you. Of course, we have had several iterations of zero emission school bus programs over the years. We've had funding available through our HFIT program. Consistently, those funds are exhausted because of high demand.

We also had the rural school bus pilot project, which was kind of the pre existing program before we were moving into this new one that also was oversubscribed every year that we had allocations to put towards that program.

We have the Volkswagen Mitigation Trust Fund, but the money that was set aside for school buses is also exhausted. And so we've seen very high demand for zero emission school buses when we're able to offer the funding on a consistent basis.

So under the, so the 500 million one time Prop 98 funds that are allocated for zero emission school bus grants, is it first come, first serve?

No, it's a competitive grant process that looks at factors like the age of the buses, how many unduplicated pupils you have. There's a set of four or five criteria that I looked at to determine the eligibility.

Okay. And the grant, is it for the full amount or are districts required to have some kind of matching funds?

It's intended to be the full amount. So again, as you heard from the agency, the cost of a full size zero emission battery electric bus is about 400,000 districts can get through this program, 400,000 for the bus, another potentially 50,000 for the charging infrastructure, and then there's another 50,000 allowance on top of that, potentially for other transportation expenses that may relate to implementing training for drivers, sort of any other transportation expenses the district has.

Okay. For the Department of Finance, I've made this comment before, but I'm a big supporter of zero emission vehicles, big supporter of zero emission buses for our school districts. But I concerned about this amount of allocation, given that school districts are laying off teachers and classified staff or at least issuing layoff notices.

Do you have any comment in terms of what should be the priority, avoiding layoffs versus having this large of an allocation for zero emission school buses?

Lena Grant with the Department of Finance. Understand your concern. The administration remains committed to the, as my colleague had mentioned to the agreement that the legislature agreed to in the previous budget of that three year commitment, and this reflects just our maintaining an existing commitment.

We think with bills like my colleague mentioned, AB 579 being signed, this is an important step towards greening our school bus fleets, and we find this a priority of the administration.

Okay. I would just urge the Department of Finance to prioritize making sure that we're protecting classroom funding, protecting, supporting our teachers and classified staff, given the budget challenges we're facing. Thank you.

Thank you. A question on AB 579. Are we also requiring other buses, like in the private sector and public transportation systems, to have zero emission fleet by 2035, or do they have a different requirement?

My understanding is that AB 579 is focused on LEAs and not on public transit. There are other, I believe, targets in place for transit through other mechanisms.

Okay. If we match the timeline of 2035 to the timeline of the public transportation system, which I believe is 2040, but certainly would appreciate being corrected on that. If that's not the case, I'd be interested in what the commitment would have to be on an annual basis, because you mentioned $6 billion.

In order to essentially convert all the fleet that exists, it would be needed by 2035, which definitely is a short time period to accomplish that, I'd be interested in the additional years, what that would mean for future conversion. I also would like to ask about currently, school districts pay for new buses out of a specific fund. Do we fund the full cost of a school bus today?

So historically, districts, there weren't any specific state grants available except for a very small program formally administered by the Department of Education for small school districts. The past couple of years, really the past 10 or 12, there's been a lot of funding for school buses.

I think we're up to about 2 billion across all state programs. So that's been something that has really emerged onto the scene over the past 10 or 12 years or so.

For districts that for many of these programs, they will pay for the full cost of replacing a diesel bus with a zero emission bus. That's the case for the program that's before you in this panel, as well as the federal program pays for most of the costs.

A lot of the other programs do that as well. If districts want to expand their fleets, there's much less funding available for that. Districts can do that various ways. In some cases, there's local funding available to do that.

Maybe an agreement with a local transit agency. Districts can also pay for those costs out of their General Fund. Sometimes they'll have some kind of, for example, a lease to own agreement where they'll annualize those costs over a period of years to eventually own and pay for that bus.

Yeah, I'm trying to understand it. So I come from local government. When we purchased fleet for our city services and there was thousands of fleet dumpster trucks, all sorts of large fleet and small fleet, it was all purchased with General Fund dollars from our local, in our case, our city. And so I'm trying to understand.

Are you telling me that for the last, I think you said 10 to 12 years, the state has been essentially been the only source for vehicle replacement for fleet replacement for school districts.

That's really the period where we started to have grants that are specific to that purpose. So prior to that time, districts would pay for it out of their local operating budgets, typically. Again, if they could get a local grant or work with some of their local governments, they would try to do that. But yes, to the extent, again, those programs have really been focused on the bus replacement and specifically replacing diesel with zero emission.

If a district isn't doing that, though, then they're still generally looking at their local general purpose dollars.

So if a school district needs to replace the fleet, their fleet or bus, and they do not receive this grant, they will likely be making the decision to go with a less expensive option, which would be a diesel bus, in the next several years until they have to, by statute, currently anyway, 2035.

Yeah, I mean, you heard, for example, that the cost of an electric bus is about $400,000. A diesel bus of the same size is typically about half that cost.

So for districts that don't have a grant, one of the reasons for having the grants was to encourage them to purchase the electric because they have such higher upfront costs.

Right.

And so will they still have access to the grants for the diesel trucks, is that the home to school transportation program or what does a home to school first that question then tell me what home to school actually funds.

Yeah. So the home to school transportation reimbursement, that's 60% funding. That only covers the operational costs of the transportation program. So that covers the drivers, the fuel, the oil, the maintenance, the dispatchers, but it doesn't pay for the capital costs.

And so that program continues in this budget? Yes, and for the foreseeable future. So a district that doesn't have access to this money because they do not get the grant and they have to replace, they'll be replacing it with a diesel vehicle and they'll get other not home to school.

You just clarified that that's for operations, not infrastructure. But there are other dollars in the state budget that Fund vehicle fleet replacement. That is non zero emissions.

There's very little of that, actually, for the non. Most of the vast majority of the state dollars are focused on battery electric, zero emission. There are a few programs that allow other types of low emission alternatives, things like compressed natural gas, propane, potentially. But there aren't any programs that right now that are focused on funding new.

Okay. So that's what I was asking. I think I was not asking it correctly. School districts today, if they replace their fleet and they replace it with zero emission vehicles, they have this grant money available. But those that don't get this grant money are still replacing fleet.

They're just going off on their own and they're replacing fleet. So there is still cost to local districts on fleet replacements today. They're just maybe replacing it with a $200,000 diesel versus a $400,000 electric.

I think that's a very good summary of the situation in districts. Yes. Sorry for the confusion.

No. And so what this program does, it says, zero, you don't have to pay the 200,000. We'll just give you 400,000 for an electric. So there are some savings to those that are able to qualify and get this grant funding, but those that are not do not achieve those savings. Okay.

Thank you. Okay, we will definitely continue to have the conversation about this. This is a major source of funding. As my colleague said, when there are other impacts to Proposition 98, this might be a place where we would look at alternatives and hopeful that you come forward with some alternatives in the mayor revised. So hold the issue open and move on to item number four. Issue four is the proposal on state parks pass.

We will review the January budget proposal that creates a $2.1 million annual state park pass program for fourth grade students. Speaking of fourth grade students, happy birthday to my son. He's a fourth grader turning 10 today and I don't get to see him in person, but I saw him this morning. We have Department of Finance and the Legislative Analyst Office. We'll start with the Department of Finance.

Katie Lago Marcino with the Department of Finance. I'll provide an overview of our state parks pass proposal. The Governor's Budget proposes 2.1 million ongoing Prop . 98 General Fund for a County Office of Education to enable fourth graders attending public schools to access California State Parks. The corresponding language states that the selected County Office of Education will contract with the California Department of Parks and Recreation and will not recover indirect costs on these funds.

Through this program, fourth grade students will learn about daily lives, adventures, accomplishments, cultural traditions and dynamic energy of the residents who formed the state and shaped its varied landscape. This concludes my remarks. I'm happy to take questions at the appropriate time.

Thank you.

Again, Ken Capon with the analyst office. So very brief background here. The state in 21-22 established a pilot program that provided fourth graders and their families with free access to participating state parks was funded with a non Proposition 98 General Fund appropriation of 5.6 million over three years. So what the Governor's Budget is proposing to do is to continue that program with 2.1 million Proposition 98 General Fund ongoing. Most significant difference here, I think, is that the previous program was directed towards all fourth graders, this one is focusing specifically on public school students.

We don't have a specific recommendation on the merits of this proposal, but would just reiterate our earlier comments about the tightness of the state budget. And since the state revenue currently isn't even large enough to support existing programs, any new spending or extensions of existing programs just make the task of balancing the budget more challenging.

Additional consideration regardless of whether you approve this proposal, districts can use their local funds, including the LCFF, to support field trips and other activities that connect students with parks and other outdoor spaces. I'll stop there since I think both of those considerations are already covered pretty well in your staff agenda.

Thank you. The point of my question is going to be why can't we just offer access to the parks to fourth graders? And why do we need to budget to do this? So first question would be, is how many fourth graders in public schools do we have?

Lena Grant with the Department of Finance. I don't have the exact figure on fourth grade specific, but I know on the previous program or the one that's currently that venture pass program that my colleague from the LAO referenced, we have participation rates for that program of fourth graders, but don't know what the total is.

So you have participation of those who participated, that included private school, fourth grade? And is participation number including families or is it including just the fourth graders?

It's passes provided and each pass would cover admission for a student and their family.

Okay, so how many were those?

Approximately 20,000 a year.

20,000. How many of them were public school and how many of them were private school?

The way that it works is that students can self certify and so they're not required to provide any information about public or private or whether they're low income or not.

How did you reach the potential 2.1 million estimate for the current year? Is that the cost per fourth grader and their family? If it was 20,000 last year, I assume you thought some of those 20,000, some percentage were public school. You made a calculation, work your way towards that number. How did you make that calculation?

Yes. So based on the uptake rates of the past two years, again, 20,000 per year. Yeah, we assumed that this, the uptake may increase and based on the original funding, $5.6 million spread out over three years. It would allow it to continue to operate at its current level.

So you're telling me your proposal is based on your belief that there will be 20,000 public school students that will utilize this program? Or is there more or is there less?

I would like to just add to what my colleague was just saying. So that 5.6 million over the last three years equates to approximately 1.8 per year. And that reflects 17,000 approximately in the first year, 26,000 in the second year. We have limited data on 23 because it was collected in November. So it was like 5000 at that point. Since then, this program has expanded to, I think originally it was access to 19 state parks. Now it's, I think, 56 state parks.

So the increased in that from 1.8 annually to 2.1 that we're proposing here reflects that increased parks access and also the rising level of program interest in the Adventure Pass program that currently exists. I would also just note that the way that this would differ, as my colleague from the LAO noted, is that the Adventure Pass program is open to any fourth grader, and this would be limited to public school students.

So there would be modifications made to the existing program that the self certification would require to self certify. At least that's kind of what we're contemplating at the moment, is to modify that to be specific to public school students only.

If I may make one clarification. The money that's proposed to the program for the 2.1 million isn't a direct dollar for dollar reimbursement for the state parks to compensate them for each pass that they would have otherwise charged for. It's really to pay for additional programming directed toward those students. Some transportation costs, marketing the program, admin.

Is it transportation costs so that my son, who's in fourth grade, and his classmates can go to a state park? Is it that type of transportation or what transportation?

Yes. That's our understanding. There's some grants, like part of that. All that is to say is that the 2.1 million isn't directly tied to the number of students using the program. It's more of these general costs of providing access.

Look, I love the idea of providing access to state parks to students and maybe not just fourth graders, and I just don't see why we need to spend money. We should just tell them they could go and encourage them and give them access, and it becomes universal, like the universal meals, and no one feels like, well, do I pay? Do I not pay?

So I hope we can get some more information in May and just make the program available to fourth graders and make it part of what we do in California. Mr. Muratsuchi, you have some questions? Comments?

Thank you. I guess we're moving away from our rule of focusing on a program with M's instead of B's here. But it seems $2.1 million in Prop. 98 funding. I think it's great, first of all, that we should be making sure that all kids, including Low income kids, have opportunities to visit our beautiful state parks.

But I believe, I'm sure there must be a good number of philanthropists in the State of California that can easily cut a check for $2 million to send low income kids to our parks. And so I would urge the Department of Finance to consider whether this is an M, not a B, but it probably jumps out as a prime example that perhaps it should be through private philanthropy instead of Proposition 98 funds. Thank you, Mr Chair.

Thank you. I think that's it. On this issue, we will hold it open. Thank you very much. We will consider this with all the proposals for new one time funding in the May revision context, we will move on to issue six. College and Career guidance initiative, also known by some as CCGI. Panel will review the January proposal the budget proposal from January to fully scale college and career guidance initiative with trailer Bill and an increase of $5 million every year.

Department of Finance will present the initiative. We'll have response comments from the LAO and then the college and Career guidance initiative is also here. Department of Finance.

Thank you, Rebecca Lee with the Department of Finance. I will be providing an overview of the Governor's Budget. California College Guidance Initiative proposals the Governor's Budget includes an increase of 5.084 million Proposition 98 excuse me, Proposition 98 General Fund for the California College Guidance Initiative to continue scaling its services as part of its role as an operational tool of the carried out to career data system.

The additional funding will be used for increased personnel cost and meet rising infrastructure costs as CCGI continues to scale. The CCGI is entering year three of a planned five year scaling process in which it will expand provisions of its tools and services to all local educational agencies serving students in any grades six through 12, as authorized by education code Section 609.5.

This request is in line with previous projections for scaling and will ensure CCGI has the resources to continue adding partner districts, integrating with higher education applications, and developing college and career planning tools and technology to better serve students and educators. This will bring the ongoing appropriation to 23.7 million. With this increase, we believe CCGI is at its limit for cost of scaling, barring inflation or other unforeseen factors, but we would not anticipate future major funding increases.

Certain increases, like vendor costs, could be offset by improved internal operation efficiencies when at scale. CCGI's purpose and functions are codified in Education Code Section 609.5 and the budget request is on track with early projections for the cost to fully scale this work statewide.

The Governor's Budget also includes trailer Bill Language related to the requirement that CCGI provide transcript informed transcript informed accounts to all 9th through 12th grade students by June 2026, which is the end of phase one implementation of the cradle to career legislation. The purpose of a majority of the amendments is to help facilitate the implementation of transcript informed partner accounts for all 9th through twelveth grade students and helps ensure student records are accurately recorded and students get credit for the courses they complete.

This includes requiring LEAs to enter into a data sharing agreement with CCGI by January 12026 and provide initial data files with that. That includes my remarks and I'm happy to answer any questions at the appropriate time.

Thank you Department of Finance LAO.

Jackie Boracio, LAO. As it relates to the trailer Bill Language, we do think that those components in general may increase district participation as it relates to the funding augmentation. Again, given the Proposition 98 deficit, we're just recommending the Legislature reject any new augmentations. To the extent that rejecting this funding may delay statutorily required activities, the Legislature could also amend those deadlines and push them out accordingly. Something else that we would flag as well is that in 22-23 there were some carryover funds within CCGI.

So to the extent that in 23-24 we're on track to also see some carryover funds, the Legislature, as a way to achieve additional one time Proposition 98 General Fund savings, could reappropriate those carryover dollars and make according adjustments to baseline funding levels in 24-25.

Thank you.

Hi, Tessa De Roy with the California College Guidance Initiative. Thank you Chair Alvarez and Members for the opportunity to present this morning. I did just want to give a little bit of a chronology of California colleges. 25 years ago, in 1998, the educational segments in California got together and submitted an intersegmental budget proposal with the original budget language saying that the state needed a quote unquote common front door to higher education as well as an electronic transcript platform.

So these needs have been recognized for a very, very long time. We took over management of California colleges in 2013 and are presently scaled to be we're serving 62% of 9th through 12th graders, approximately half the districts in the state that graduate high school seniors. The challenges are, as is often the case in serving smaller districts.

One of the nice things about the strategy that we're using to get to scale is the ability to actually rely on the private sector vendors, technology vendors who serve those districts to absorb some of the lift precisely due to the kinds of turnover that we're seeing in districts and the challenges that districts face in participating if they're in smaller, less resourced environments. And I'd be happy to answer any questions.

Thank you. Mr. Muratsuchi, do you have some questions? Mr. Fong?

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair. Just a couple of quick questions. I noticed that in report, 240 of the 417 eligible school districts have participated, and I know there are some challenges with some of the smaller districts. How do we encourage and how do we get participation with the other 177 school districts.

Yeah. The primary issue that we've experienced is that there is a bit of a lift in creation of the data files to provide student records to our system. Those records are essential to streamlining processes for students, so they integrate into the CSU and UC applications. They allow us to provide future state the Cal grant GPA to csac. There's a number of things that once you load that data into one common repository, you can leverage multiple times over.

But the barrier is that a lot of smaller districts don't have dedicated staff who actually have the technological and data capacity to upload those files. So we've done two things to try and address that. One is sort of related. We've created the first ever California high school transcript standard. So a set of rules that everything can comply with districts, the technology vendors that serve them. This will help to streamline and systematize what has been historically very messy because there were no rules.

The second thing is that that then enables us to ask the vendors. There are essentially six technology vendors that provide student information systems to K 12. Those vendors, all their technology vendors, they have the capacity.

So if they can set up their systems to comply with that standard and to provide us data through what's called an advanced programming interface, which is a real time data exchange, it actually makes it hands off for districts entirely once they have approved the provision of particular data elements that are needed to operate the system.

Thank you so much for that clarification. Anything we can do to continue to encourage the process here, to really uplift a lot of these small school districts, because I think it's a really good opportunity and program for our students. Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. We have some questions I know we've posed, and I think I'll ask that certainly CCGI and the Administration work with our staff. I'm interested in understanding better if the need exists from 6th grade all the way to t12th grade for all of the services that are part of it, which the full scope, which certainly absolutely necessary in the upper grades, and just trying to understand the necessity in the middle school grades and whether it needs to be that level of intensity.

And then definitely want to know how the $23.4 million being requested in this budget, why it would be required. Beyond the onboarding we usually see when we're starting new programs, there's a lot of upfront costs which make total sense because you're starting and you're figuring it all out.

But to maintain that level of funding in the out years is a question for me, and I think I'd also like to know if this proposal does get approved, maybe the LAO can help us figure out exactly what's the metric we're going to hit. Are we going to then serve, to Mr. Fong's point, the remaining districts? Who is going to be brought in? I want to know exactly what we're going to get for this expenditure because it's a critical one.

But we want to make sure that we bring in as many folks as possible to participate. So those are questions that will remain open, and hopefully we'll have some more information from you working with our staff for our future conversation and decision on this. Thank you very much. Appreciate you being here.

Thank you.

Moving on to issue the next issue, community schools proposal. We will hear about the implementation update on community schools partnerships program and the January budget proposal impacting community schools. We will start with the Department of Education, which will go first. Then we will go to the Department of Finance and we will have the LAO provide comments as well. We'll turn it over to the Department of Education. Thank you.

Okay. Good morning, Mr. Chair and Members of the Committee. I'm Pete Callis on behalf of State Superintendent Public Instruction Tony Thurman. The California Community Schools Partnership program is the largest and most comprehensive community schools transformation program in the nation. To date, the California Department of Education has distributed 419 planning grants and 204 implementation grants supporting 1028 school sites totaling about approximately $1.4 billion.

I want to pause and note that the rollout of this initiative has followed both the letter and the spirit of the statute, which clearly and unequivocally defined the California Community Schools Partnership program as an equity program ensuring that school sites with the highest concentration of poverty would be the first to receive funding to address conditions for teaching and learning, following the pandemic.

The CCSPP has funded implementation school sites with an average of 80% UPC for cohort one and 68% UPC for cohort two over the first two years of program implementation, and CD anticipates this trend to continue in rounds 3 and 4 of the implementation grants. CD also wants to be explicit about what CCSPP is and isn't. This is not a program designed to fix families we have somehow determined are broken.

In contrast, the CCSBP intends to strengthen already existing assets within students, families and communities themselves. That is why CCSBP implementation grantees have used funding to build wellness centers, hire more school social workers, but also to support shared decision making councils that engage families in every aspect of the decisions that affect their child's education. It is also important to note where we are in this historic implementation process. We have completed the first two rounds of implementation grants. Two rounds of implementation grant funding have arrived at schools.

Currently, we are finalizing the scoring of the third round where we have the strongest subscription to date, with 353 applications supporting 1392 schools. We have always anticipated round three would have the strongest subscription. Because of the nexus planning grants maturing and Esther's funds expiring, we look forward to awarding between 1.1 and $1.2 billion in implementation grants this spring. The proposed cut to the CCSBP would be catastrophic. It would destroy the programs and break our promise to our students, their families, their schools, and our communities.

The LAO's proposed cut is not based on CCSBP having unused or undesignated funds. All of the funds, let me repeat, all of the funds are designated for distribution to school sites in precisely the cadence suggested in statute and codified by the State Board of Education. The only reason CCSPP has funds in its accounts is because the CCSPP is designed to have a seven year rollout of funds rooted in a one to two year planning process for most LEA's, and then a five year implementation timeline. That concludes my testimony and I'm happy to answer any questions at the appropriate time.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. Rebecca Lee with the Department of Finance. As noted in the agenda, the Administration is not proposing any changes to the funding for this program. However, we are proposing technical and statutory changes to update the timeline for implementation grant extensions and overall encumbrance deadline to 2032 so that they are aligned with the program timeline. With that, that's the end of my remarks. I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you, LAO.

Thank you chair and Members again, Ken Capon with the analyst office covering for a colleague on this one. We don't have any concerns with technical language changes that the Department of Finance is proposing, but we do recommend looking at this program as one potential source of savings to help address the budget shortfall. Over the past couple of years, the Legislature has appropriated more than $4.1 billion for community schools grants.

After setting aside the amounts that would be needed to cover the first two cohorts of recipients as well as the technical assistance activities, we estimate that nearly 2.6 billion of that amount remains unallocated. So as a starting point for addressing the budget shortfall, we think you could consider rescinding about $1.0 billion of that amount. We think you could obtain those savings in two basic ways. One action would be to not Fund extension grants.

So these are grants providing an additional two years of funding for districts that have already received a five year award. The other action would be to not make new awards to districts that did not previously receive any funding to plan or implement community schools. We think those two actions together could provide savings of about $1.0 billion and would represent the least disruptive approach to obtaining savings.

If you did rescind a larger amount, more than 1 billion, you could obtain additional savings, and those savings would help avoid cuts to school programs in other ways. The trade off there is that some districts, if you did more than a billion, some of the districts that had previously received grants to plan community schools would then not receive grants to implement those plans.

We put those options on the table, recognizing that these aren't steps we'd be discussing in a better economic environment and not something we would be putting on the table if the state had better options. But we see them as a less disruptive approach than reducing LCFF or other funds that the state has already dispersed to districts. Happy to answer any questions.

Thank you. Thank you all for your presentation. I think I want to make some quick, General comments. I'm concerned about this program in that this is a five year commitment and we're asking schools to undergo extensive and important conversations with their school communities in order to implement this program. And then we're saying, we're going to give you money. Well, after the planning, we're going to give you money for the next several years in order to implement that program.

But then after that, there is no guarantee that you're getting any more money. And we hear a lot about initiative fatigue, especially at schools. Schools invest in something and they really focus in on those programs. And oftentimes very successfully do that. More often than not, actually successfully do that, and then the funding is no longer there.

And then I think of this in the context of the ELOP program, ELOP program, that in my mind, and certainly I'd love to hear feedback, certainly from the public and anyone who's implementing this, there are a lot of overlapping goals, which is providing services to students who need them. And that also, maybe now that being a continuous program and how these two could work together going forward so that we can have the consistency that schools need when it comes to funding.

We hear it time and time again. The inconsistency in funding is what drives people, certainly nuts sometimes, but it also does not allow for proper implementation of programming in our school. So I look at, for example, we have a chart here on the grant amounts, $300,000 for the first four years. If you're a medium sized school, if you've got, you know, if you've got 1000 students, you're getting $300 per student in order to do this program. If you've got 500 students, you're getting twice that amount.

And so again, some inconsistencies there in how we're funding it so that it can be implemented fully as intended and envisioned. So that's just my thoughts. I certainly like to get feedback from folks who I hope are here in the public to testify on that. So I just want to share my thoughts, but want to definitely turn it over. And I'll have probably some questions following my colleagues. I'll turn over to Mr. Muratsuchi first.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Similar to the ELOP program, I am a big true believer in the community school model. I think there are a lot of similarities between the ELOP programs and the community schools in terms of having that whole child approach, integrating support services, getting the community engagement, collaborative leadership, extended learning time and opportunities.

Again, similar to the ELOP, it's critical that we continue this commitment as we continue to deal with the ongoing effects of the pandemic, the learning loss and the socially emotional impacts. I would highlight that this program, one of the criteria for the competitive grants is that the districts in which at least 80% of the pupil population are unduplicated. And so I know that in my neck of the woods, I mean, LA USD is close to 90% unduplicated.

Clearly communities that can benefit with this potentially transformative program providing the early care education services for children from birth to five years. I want to echo your comments about how we want to try to make sure that we fulfill the commitment to communities that have started to engage in these planning activities. I'm wondering with the LAO or with the Department of Education, is it too early to see any data in terms of outcomes? Do we have any early data in terms of the return on investments for these community school programs?

We're not aware of any statewide data on that subject.

Yeah, on the statewide program. We don't have data yet on this piece.

Okay. Yeah, I know that I've been talking about touring some community schools in Los Angeles and I need to follow up with the Laco. I know that they are seen as leaders in this space, but I just wanted to highlight the importance of the commute schools, especially for Los Angeles Unified, in our Los Angeles communities.

Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you for allowing me to kind of go back briefly as I was at public safety hearings earlier. So just the big picture, as Mr. Martucci said, and we were here for the last 10 years when we went from woefully funding our public schools to now potentially almost doubling LCFF, which is great. But we've did some other huge things that transform education and families and kids and community schools as one.

Universal TK, universal school meals and early learning after school programs. And so I know we spent at length talking about those. So I know it's a different era now. We have to look, as our Leo said, at our budget situation, at potential savings, but can't be lost, that it's not just expanding per pupil funding that helps student outcomes.

It's these other pieces that are so key on all the other issues, because it's not just what you focus on between 08:00 a.m. And 02:30 p.m. In the classroom, but before school, lunchtime and weekends and after with all these other pieces are so important. I did want to say, I know that I respectfully have a different position than our education chair on the school meals, theoretical. But I think the universal thing that we did is so key that for school meals that it is universal.

And that's the key. And I'll just say for two reasons. One, I think there is a real thing of kids walking in with a card. As a know, I went to Cameron Ranch elementary school, 5 miles from here in San Juan, and I had the little card that was a free lunch, other kids didn't. And so that is real. But just the other thing is so many of our schools are almost all free reduced lunch population anyway.

It takes so much time doing the paperwork and sorting out just everybody get. So if you look at our public school population of 6 million kids in California, in most of our districts, there are some outliers, some wealthy districts, but most of them, the population so much is eligible for it that it just makes sense just in economies of scale and also the right thing. And then lastly, so many kids who participate in these, like this literally is sad to say, this is their meal.

This is like how they get fed that day. And they sometimes stock up at the end of the day because that's the next meal till the next day. And so this really does mean so much more than what we're just on a piece of paper. So that's my two cent for this issue. Thank you.

Thank you. I'd be interested in knowing, although we have no data, so maybe there's no answer to this, how many of the implementation grant awardees are including behavioral health? That's one thing I hear from literally anybody who's doing any work in education. Superintendents, school boards, educators themselves, staff at schools. Behavioral issues have grown tremendously over the years, and everybody wants more support in that space. Of the grantees, how many of them actually have a component of behavioral health built into them? Do we have data?

I have a piece of that. Okay. Yeah. So UCLA is a partner of our lead technical assistance center, which is Alameda County Office of Education. As part of an annual progress report, 87% of the schools, which equates to about 390 of implementation grantees, indicated that the provision of mental health screenings and services were part of their community school's implementation plan or needs and assets assessment.

Of these schools, 77% indicated that they had provided the support prior to year one of the CCSBP implementation, 57% of the subset of grantees indicated that they had expanded their partnerships to deliver these services and supports, and 49% included that they had expanded their capacity to do so. 39% of the grantees provided professional learning and professional development focused on mental health screenings and services, and 48% of the grantees indicated that they were monitoring growth and progress through data and collection strategies.

Did you mention, is UCLA your partner on.

UCLA is a subcontractor of Alameda County Office of Education. They're our lead technical assistance Center for the state.

How often are they providing these reports? Is it an annual report?

It's an annual report.

Okay. And that gets published publicly? Yes. Okay, great. Do we know on the child and youth behavioral health initiatives if that's also integrated, or is it just, you just have General data on mental health screenings and things like that?

We just have the General data that we receive from UCLA right now.

Okay. I think that's one of the, it's not in our Subcommitee because it's part of sub one, I believe. But I think we're having a conversation together. It's, again, a component that we hear often that is needed in schools on this behavioral health, and we'll be having a Joint Hearing to discuss that further. So we'll have that conversation there. We will hold this issue open. Thank you, all of you, for being here. And now we will go on to our public comment.

I'd ask you to please keep your comments succinct, and anything that hasn't been added, please add it. It's been said before then, just acknowledge it's been said before. We'll give you 1 minute and I'll let you know and say thank you once your 1 minute has expired. So thank you all for being here, and let's get started with public comment.

Hello chair and Members of the Committee. My name is Sedalia King with Catalyst California, a Member of the California Partnership for the Future of Learning. We urge the Legislature to preserve the full $2.6 billion for community schools, which is critical to strengthening the public education in our state.

Students, families and educators and communities across the state are counting on the community schools funding to support our public schools now and in the future, and cutting the promised funding in high need school communities across the state undermines all the hard work that went underway and disrupts the state's most promising strategy for remodeling our state's education systems. We shared a letter. I'd be more than happy to follow up with the chair and Members. Thank you again for such thoughtful hearing.

Thank you. And again, if your comments have any feedback on the conversations we've had, we'd love to hear from you on those as well. Thank you.

Good morning chair and Members. I'm here to speak on school meals. We thank you for this opportunity. My name is Crystal Etherton and I'm the Director of nutrition for Placer Union High School District. We have about 4000 students and we are mid 20% free and reduced, and I was also a recipient of free meals growing up. Since universal meals has been implemented, we have increased our participation to 162% from pre pandemic participation.

It's the first time in more than a decade that we've not encroached on the General Fund and historically has been anywhere from 100,000 to almost $400,000 in an annual term for monies that needed to be recovered. Findings show that the average California family right now is saving 16% on their monthly food cost when their students are participating in the free school meals.

With the eligibility threshold from reduced to paid being at almost $48,000 for the 2425 school year, it's a high benefit to have a separate eligibility schedule.

Thank you very much.

Good afternoon chair and Members. My name is Erin Primer. I am here on behalf of the students and families that I serve at San Luis Coastal Unified School District. Many families in our relatively affluent community struggle with hunger in the past, free, reduced and paid model a single mom in my district called me in tears because she missed qualifying by a didn't know how she would be able to feed her child. She needed those free school meals and so did that student.

Unfortunately, this story is not unique. Today, with universal free meals, we can confidently serve all students regardless of their ability to pay. School meals for all is working and is a model to other states for how investing in school meals reduces stigma and child hunger. Thank you for helping all students thrive.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, chair and Members Abby Halperin with the Center for Eco Literacy. We work with over 120 California school districts, many of whom are here in this room today in support of the governor's January budget to fully Fund school meals for all before school meals for all. Countless families were left out of a federal system that does not account for the high cost of living. In California, for instance, military families often made too much to qualify on paper because housing was included in their income calculations.

Additionally, immigrant families often chose not to apply because of concerns around the public charge rule. Today, more students than ever before are participating in school meals, are nourished, and are ready to learn. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Mccarty, Andrew Shane from Grace and child Poverty California, aligning with the previous comments on issue one and just some additional comments that again, we're looking at the extraordinary benefits in reductions in discipline, in improvements in test scores, in attendance. So this investment is more than paying for itself. And I just really want to lean into some of the comments by Director Franzel that the solutions to this in terms of your points about cost containment are at hand.

Under existing law, we already have very clear language to maximize the federal provisions and in doing so, Director Franzel pointed to options that are coming online next fall to improve the statewide matching, more frequent matching, technical assistance for improved local matching.

Because on the public benefit side, right, our calfresh, our medi Cal, our Cal Works programs are county administered so that local match, in addition to the state match, are ripe opportunities to make sure, as you said, maximize all those federal dollars while keeping the critical mandate intact. And doing otherwise, as Director Prinzel said, dismantles the program. We do not want to go back to the bad old days of stigma, and I would also suggest that's going to cost far more. Thank you.

Good afternoon, chair and Committee Members. My name is Juliette Siu and I'm the child nutrition manager at Live Oak School District in Santa Cruz. I'm here to share my support for school meals for all in Santa Cruz County, we are the second most expensive county in the country. Yet at Live Oak School District, we have over 60% of our students who qualify as free or reduced and many more who don't qualify based on federal guidelines.

With school meals for all, the stigma of being free reduced has been removed and our participation has increased over 20% to over 60% in the past three years. This is crucial for a seemingly affluent area where public school districts are facing a declining enrollment related to the high cost of living. School meals for all is working and is a model for other states for how investing in school meals reduces stigma and child hunger while promoting a whole child philosophy. Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Good day chair and Members, my name is Kristen Hillman, Director of food nutrition services for Capistrano Unified School District. Capistrano Unified is a large district and an affluent district in South Orange County. We have pockets of severe need commingled in with our affluency, and that also includes our military families. Some of our military families and many of our families in our district do not qualify for free and reduced price meals through the federal eligibility guidelines.

And in addition to that, our district only has five CEP sites. But our staff, my Department, we do our due diligence to collect meal applications, to do our direct matching on a monthly basis, to work with our county social services Department, to do direct matching through the county as well, and to do student matching sibling matching with our students daily.

We feed 35% of our 42,000 students enrolled, and the school meals for all has assisted us in increasing stigma across all income levels of our student population. It also has helped us with equitability.

Thank you.

Good morning, Anna Ayoka Meedes on behalf of Los Angeles Unified School District, we appreciate the governor's proposal to allow expanded learning opportunity funds to be used to Fund attendance recovery, and we would urge the Legislature to consider other flexibilities in continuing the carryover policy for the expanded learning opportunities program. This is particularly critical with the expiration of the federal Esser funds to allow us to continue to provide critical services for our students. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good morning. Chair and Committee Members Rachel Mueller on behalf of next Gen California, I'm here to respectfully request the Committee support the governor's January budget proposal to fully Fund the California school meals for all program. According to the California Budget and Policy Center, 44% of families facing food insecurity in California would not qualify for free or reduced price school meals because the federal program's income requirements are too Low. For states where it is more expensive to live like California, school meals for all bridges that gap.

I personally am a school meals recipient, or I was when I was going through high school and middle school and elementary school and I live in Folsom, so very high income earning community and I was on that program because I needed it. This program is working and serves as a model to other states for how investing in school meals reduces stigma and child hunger. Thank you for your consideration.

Thank you.

Good morning, Chair. Kapri Walker on behalf of no Kid hungry, we have seen firsthand how important additional state funds are to school based anti hunger programs. The school meals for all program is particularly impactful to children whose parents and caregivers earn wages at or slightly above the state and local minimum wage level. Many of these households typically earn too much to qualify for free meals under the federal guidelines. Yet with the ever increasing cost of living, they don't always make ends meet.

So we urge the Legislature to maintain California's commitment to expanding access to nutritious school meals and summer meals and continue investing in the well being of students by ensuring they have the nutrition they need to learn and thrive now and in the future. Thank you.

Thank you.

Libby Sanchez here on behalf of Altimed, serving nearly 600,000 medical and Low income recipients in the Los Angeles and Orange County areas, here in support of the governor's proposal to fully Fund universal school meals. Food insecurity is a real and significant issue for those that we serve and Fed kids or healthy kids. So we urge the Committee support. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good morning. Mr. Chair and Committee staff Lizzie Kutzona, here on behalf of the office of Kat Taylor and the American Heart Association, want to echo the comments of my colleagues in support of the governor's proposed funding for school meals for all. We are very concerned with the proposed cuts which would increase childhood hunger, reduce the quality of school meals, and threaten the livelihood of school nutrition professionals. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon. My name is Anna Jackson. I'm with Ventura County Farm to school. I was inspired to do this work when I learned that a group of teenagers went to their school Board Meetings to demand healthier food. I work in title one schools in the Oxnard and Ventura area, where most of our students are 80% free and reduced. For the past nine years, I've been working with cafeterias and farms to improve nutrition by bringing local fruits and vegetables into school meal programs.

Through nutrition programs like mine, kids are learning that nutrition is the first key to a healthy future, and school nutrition is a public health prevention program. The Healthy free hunger kids act is working. Research shows that 47% reduction in a likelihood of children in poverty to have obesity due to the improvements in our school meal programs years ago, I processed lunch applications and I watched as our numbers for free and reduced students dropped. During the Trump Administration.

I learned that our migrant families, the ones who grow and harvest the food we eat every day, are so afraid of deportation that they stop seeking food assistance, including school meal programs. There are conditions that impact our students'ability to eat, which can never be reflected on a lunch application.

Thank you for your testimony.

Thank you. Hello. Chair and Committee staff Ines Rosales with Public Advocates and a Member of the California Partnership for the Future of Learning. We recently submitted a letter to your Committee urging you to preserve the full 2.6 billion for the California Community Schools Partnership program. And as we heard from the Department today, cutting the remaining funding would be a disservice to the districts and schools across the state that are really in deep implementation and planning mode.

And I'm happy to follow up with your office and other Members that are interested in learning more about this community schools item. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon. Chair and Members of the Committee. My name is Marshawn Tabin, associate Director of policy and advocacy at the San Francisco-Marin Food bank. My public comment is for school meals for all. I want to start off by saying over one in four California families with children face food insecurity. Programs like school meals fall are essential for meeting hungry children where they are by providing two nutritious meals per day to all students in San Francisco. One in 10 San Francisco are food insecure.

This amount to around 88,000 people, 9000 which are children. For the past year, San Francisco Marine food banks saw over 55,000 families per week at food distribution sites. Rabbling COVID number we can no longer manage hunger. We must manage to end hunger, especially childhood hunger. Personally, I would have benefited from this program. My brother and I was a reduced price kids lunch because my parents made just over the threshold and we couldn't afford to buy lunch every day because of that.

And we usually take change or just Mitch lunch completely at school. Thank you.

Thank you.

Mr. Chair. Good morning. Shane Levine on behalf of National Express and first student, we provide transportation services, predominantly busing, to about a third our companies, and companies like us to about a third of the school districts in the state. This is around issue three on the green school bus proposal. Appreciate you mentioning seeking alternatives and perhaps those come in the May revise. Our school districts are currently excluded from the governor's funding and have been we're looking to find a way to solve for that.

We're facing the same mandate in 579 as everybody else's. And so try to solve for this for these third of these school districts. So appreciate your guidance seeking alternatives. We hope to be a part of the conversation. Thank you.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair. I'm Marissa Chomblay, Vice President of philanthropy and advocacy at the Eatlearn Play foundation, founded by Stefan and Aisha Curry. As you mentioned, there's no debate about the importance of school meals for all program. It's a dignified and inclusive approach in reaching our most vulnerable students, including children who may not qualify but are economically disadvantaged or undocumented. I implore you to consider the consequences of defunding school meals for all.

Not only would this pull the rug from underneath millions of families struggling to put food on the table, but it will place an enormous financial burden back onto school districts facing deficits and managing multiple urgent spending priorities. On behalf of eatlearn play, we commend Senator Skinner's leadership on this landmark policy and respectfully urge the Committee to support the governor's January budget and fully Fund school meals for all. Thank you.

Good morning, chair and Members. My name is Clell Hoffman, and I'm here on behalf of San Leonardo Unified School District. I respectfully urge the Committee to support the governor's January budget to fully Fund California school mills for all. I wanted to speak to the CEP question that you had to the panel. So my district, the way that CEP is done is through your direct certification percentage. You have to be at a 40% threshold. I was at 38, and now the USDA allows 25%.

So on paper, I'm at 49%. And because CEP is lowered, I'll raise that to 60%. So with this new lower threshold, I believe that it's going to affect the amount of money that California is going to have to contribute. It's the first year this has happened, so I think that that's going to really make a difference in terms of the burden to California.

And I have to say two of the proudest moments I've had in my career is when two students told me they weren't going to come to school, but they didn't want to miss school lunch. So I hope to continue to make students proud with the quality meals we've been able to make with the extra funds through universal meals. Thank you.

Hello. My name is Jamari Crawford. I am a senior at CK McClatchy High School in Sacramento. If we cut the school meals for all programs as a result of this budget deficit, then a lot of undue suffering will emerge as a result. As a student who has been working in the school cafeteria for a year, it is evident that many kids come to the school cafeteria for lunch and breakfast because that would be the meal that they eat that day.

So if we are to make kids pay for the school meals as a result of cutting the school meals for all programs, then there won't be any simple solutions for kids who aren't able to eat. This program is essential for meeting hungry children where they are by providing two nutritious meals per day to all students. Allowing students to go hungry because they cannot pay for the school meal without giving them a solution is erroneous.

Telling parents if you cannot afford to give your kid money every day to eat breakfast and lunch, then that is your problem to figure out, is wrong, and 100% our problem. We have a solution to prevent all these students from going hungry and we have a way to avoid this undue suffering on both parents and students. The solution is facing us now and it's up to you if you're going to allow kids to go hungry and starve.

Support Governor Newsom's proposed budget to fully Fund those good meals for all program thank you.

Sara Bachez, Children Now, aligning my comments with amazing students and schools that have been represented before us on universal meals as well as community schools. My only comments are in particular to the extended Learning Opportunities program, as well as offering opportunities on recovery attendance and credit recovery for students, considering alternatives beyond those proposed in the January budget to make sure that students can continue progressing in their educational careers. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good morning, Mr. Chair. My name is Carrie Bogdanovich and I am the California School Nutrition Association President and Director of Burbank Unified School District with an enrollment of approximately 14,700 students. Since universal meals, we have doubled amount of breakfasts we have served to 3800 a day, double the amount of lunches we serve to 4700 a day.

As a result, we have increased over 40 hours of labor a day to our site, added 13 positions and have increased hours to five positions which now make my employees benefited as well as Members of CalPERS, I am please protect the funding for school meals.

Thank you.

Good morning. Nicole Meskey, senior Director of nutrition services at Cupertino Union School District we all agree the benefits of the universal Meals program for students, but we have not heard how this program has benefited our community and economy due to the increase in participation in the breakfast and lunch programs. Locally, we have been able to add jobs, increase hours, provide employees with opportunities to receive health insurance and retirement.

This economic impact has extended to our industry partners in the state, with some partners reporting an increase of 30% or higher in sales. We've increased our purchases in local California items and we are supporting small California farmers. In Cupertino, we have seen an increase of 45% in our lunch participation. We're now offer breakfast to all 23 of our schools. Any return to a model of copay or limited copay will incur debt that will come directly out of the General Fund and straight from the classroom.

So please support the universal meals funding.

Thank you.

Thank you chair and Members who were here, Tiffany Mok with CFT, a union of educators and classified professionals. We are here to support the governor's proposal for fully funding universal meals, community schools and zero emission school buses. We additionally want a proposal for a master plan for climate resilient schools to make sure that all our schools have access to school greening. Finally, as always, we support new revenues to create a steady stream of funding for our schools. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Hello, my name is Casey Ng and on behalf of foodshed cooperative I urge you to support Governor Newsom's proposal to fully Fund California's school meals for all. Foodshed Cooperative is a San Diego food hub based in city Heights.

Working on behalf of a network of small to mid sized regenerative farmers, our farmer owned worker cooperative is creating an equitable food system by partnering with local farmers who are utilizing regenerative agricultural practices, then directing this nutritious produce into communities which are historically and currently deprived of this access. While California students'well being is the focal point, I'm here to highlight some ancillary benefits. First, the investment in local farm businesses resulting in economic reinforcement and growth.

Continued full funding offered school districts more ability to partner with local regenerative farms as opposed to industrial farms. The nutrition, cultural, economic and climate benefits are massive. Another benefit is the continued development of a local food system that is resilient and responsive to the needs of its community. Our food hub, the farmers and food system workers remain dedicated to this duty. Thank you. We invite you to participate in this work. Thank you.

Good afternoon Chairman Members Rico Morales on behalf of ET Trust west, we want to express our support for the expansion of CCGI to all six through 12 grade students. Housing all college related processes on one platform can lead to improved family support by counselors and increase access for students and families. For example, CCGI can help support the implementation of universal financial aid and policy, financial aid policy and AB 469.

While we have seen an increase after one year of implementation, equity concerns for students of color remain, and CCGI is a crucial tool that can provide counselors with information on which students still need support with completing the application. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, chair and Members. My name is Rima Ramirez, cafeteria site lead of Twin Rivers Unified School District here in Sacramento. For 17 years, I have witnessed and personally experienced the effects before and after California's school meals for all program since it was enacted and the positive impact it has made in our ability to serve all students. The previous divisional stigmas of free, reduced or paid meals are gone.

Students no longer have to deal with the anxiety about whether or not they will have money on their accounts or if they have a negative balance. This life lesson is one a child should not have to face while coming to school to learn. Their focus and concern should be on their studies for their future. I respectfully ask on behalf of my fellow lunch ladies, the continued support and fully Fund California school meals for all program.

Let the days of courtesy meals charge slips, lunch debt remain rested in peace where they belong. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Yaz Viratala, New Haven Unified School District Director I urge the Committee Fully Fund and continue to fully Fund the universal school meals program and to not make any changes to the state reimbursement rates. The federal income thresholds for free and reduced price meals does not factor in the absurd high cost of living in California. Keeping universal meals intact while requiring paid students to pay for meals will do nothing but create a larger burden to the General funds of school districts.

As historically in school districts I've led and in school districts of my colleagues, the majority of the paid student debt population do not pay for their meals. But the patches of two SB 265 back in 2019, known as the no lunch shaming Bill. We're still required to provide pay students with a meal regardless of their ability to pay or what they currently owe. We're not allowed to use our funding, cafeteria funding to pay off the bad debt, and typically that is paid by the General Fund. Thank you.

Good afternoon. My name is Michael Jochner. I'm the nutrition Director for Morgan Hill Unified School District. I urge this Committee to support the Governor's Budget to fully Fund California's school meals for all program. Morgan Hill has the sad statistic that due to our geographic size, children of color have a five year Shorter lifespan due to poor diet. It's not the affluent kids who will suffer. They don't eat with us anyways. I watch Doordash delivered to them daily.

School meals for all gives the other 99% of the students a fighting chance to defeat childhood diabetes and obesity. We can nourish our future leaders through consistent funding of school meals for all program. Thank you. Thank you.

Good afternoon. My name is Sarah Doherty and I'm here on behalf of Eat Real but will speak to my recent many years as the nutrition Director at North Monterey County Unified School District. In north Monterey County Unified School District, 88% of our student population qualified for free or reduced price meals.

When we implemented districtwide community eligibility and had the ability to serve all students regardless of income, we saw an increase in participation of more than 50% at both breakfast and lunch, proving the point that students who qualified for free meals were not eating at school because of the stigma associated with school meals prior to school meals for all.

Because of the additional revenue received from increased participation and the time we gained due to the reduced administrative burden associated with community eligibility provision in universal meals, we were able to increase freshly prepared meals, invest in our kitchen infrastructures, create jobs for our staff, and support our local economies by procuring from local farmers, ranchers and suppliers. School meals for all is working and is a model for other states for how investing in school meals reduces the stigma for hunger. Thanks for your consideration.

My name is Jenna Sleem and I'm here on behalf of Ventura County Farm to school. Last year, I served as an AmeriCorps Member in the Ventura County School District, where I supported cafeteria culture and students'understanding of nutritious meals. In that time, I saw students thriving because of the impact school meals had on all students'well being and the school environment.

Like others have already said before me, nearly half of California families would not qualify for reduced priced meals and I'm concerned that that will stunt students'positive growth I saw last year. The growth I saw last year wouldn't be possible if we address the framework for school meals for all. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon. My name is Umedi Salazarivas. I'm here as a food court service Member placed at Live Oak School District. When I was a student on the federal free meals program, there was much stigma around participating in school meals. School meals are for poor kids. I felt shame for fueling my body with school lunch, but some days this was the only well balanced meal I'd have with school meals for all.

We changed the narrative to everyone having access to school meals and students to not feeling shame for participating in school lunch. School meals for all is a model on how investing in school meals reduces stigma and child hunger. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon. My name is Cassie Spindler and I am submitting comments as a representative of the California Food Court America program. I'd like to also briefly share about stigma that has been addressed by school meals for all our service Members across the state. See the benefits in the cafeteria and classroom when all students have the same access to nourishment. Social emotional learning, cross cultural sharing and equitable learning spaces are all unlocked when there are no barriers to access.

School meals for all provides dignity to all the children and families of California. Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Hi, Katie Hardman with the California Teachers Association. CTA supports maintaining the commitment to universal school meals for all students and community schools. Thank you.

Hi Jared Call Nourish California. Just want to add my voice to the chorus urging you to fully Fund universal school meals. Also want to urge the Department to explore every option to increase direct certification rates to increase those identified student percentages so that we can better maximize the community eligibility provision and draw down more federal funding. Things like probabilistic matching are done in other states and I think we should really explore that. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello, Jen Dietrich on behalf of the Partnership for Children and Youth, want to really appreciate the discussion this morning about Elop and the recognition about the benefits of expanded learning, including increased school day attendance and student engagement. Appreciate the recognition for the need of data. We want to know which kids are being served.

Really appreciate the recognition on the need for stable and sustainable funding to meet state requirements and echo concerns about tier two districts and also that expanded learning is a pillar of community schools and we can help provide some more information and examples of what that looks like.

And lastly, just want to thank you for coming out to sites and seeing what's happening and also meeting with some of the 500 folks, including 200 students that came up last week expressing their gratitude for elop and trying to highlight the impact so far. Thank you for your support.

My name is Kelly Flores and I'm with the California Association of Food Banks, speaking to school meals for all I want to, plus what we've heard so far, and also align our comments with grace, end child poverty. As a former recipient of school meals, including the comments related to shame, and now as a part of an Association that works with a network of 41 food banks from across the state, we see the impact of hunger on families every day.

We stand proud to support the efforts and maintain funding for school meals for all.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, chair. Beth Smoker with the California Food and Farming Network. We're a network of about 50 organizations that represent small farmers, farm workers and anti hunger communities. And we want to ask that you fully maintain full funding for school meals for all. Thank you.

Thank you.

My name is Asha Sharma with Pesticide Action Network, also in support of maintaining full funding for school meals for all. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon. Rebecca Marcus representing the Center for Food Safety, the California certified organic farmers in Calperg just urging you to maintain full funding for universal school meals. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello, I'm Amber Stott. I'm the CEO of the Sacramento based nonprofit food Literacy center. Our mission is to inspire kids to eat their vegetables in California. We have a 40% childhood obesity rate, which costs California billions of dollars and is preventable if we get our kids to eat their vegetables and to protect their health. There is one place where kids are guaranteed a healthy meal every day. School lunch vegetables are cheaper than healthcare, so do not cut school meals funding. Thank you.

Mr. Chair and staff Jeff Baca, representing the Riverside County Superintendent of Schools, expressing support for the proposal around the California College Guidance initiative. Our County Office of Education has served as CCGI's fiscal agent for almost nine years now, so we're very familiar with the program. Our 23 school districts in the county were early adopters, if you will, and we've seen it made a significant difference with an issue that I think the Legislature and the state has grappled with for some time now.

And that's the seamless articulation between K 12 schools and higher education. We've made a lot of progress, CCGI has made a lot of progress and we hope that momentum can be maintained even in this difficult budget year. Thank you. Thank you.

Chair Alvarez, Miguel Villareal in support of universal school meals and like you and many others in the room, spent the first 12 years of my elementary, middle school, high school as a freelance student. I spent the next 40 years as a school food service Director and making sure that children are receiving healthy meals as possible. I've been advocating for universal meals for at least 30 years and before me, many others advocating for universal meals.

We've been, if you will, kicking the can down the road for many, many years. These are hard decisions, but the decisions that we need to make, we together, you and I and many others from the federal level, have been programs have been severely underfunded for years, relying on school food service programs to make up those deficits by eliminating staff or by reducing food, providing foods that weren't as high quality as we should be doing. So I urge you to support universal meals thank you.

Hello. My name is Alana Flores. I am a student food liaison at the Nevada City School of the Arts here, and I am here to represent and support the free meals for all. It's been paramount to see the effects that it has on our students and the quality of care that they receive.

The ability to have students come together and share meals and have it be at a universal experience creates a community and a vibration that connects them, that brings them together, that creates a conversation of resilience within our community. Beyond just the metrics of what that's affecting, I'm able to see that those children are eating nutritionally valued complete meals throughout the day.

Students that bring things from school are often bringing their sugary and salty snacks that aren't giving them the nutritional value that they required to pass tests to stay focused to curb behavioral issues. So it's a huge blanket that is actually wrapping these students in an understanding of.

Thank you.

Hello, chair and Committee Members who are here. My name is Andrea Marr, and I'm the school food services Director at Nevada City School of the Arts. And I just want to echo everything that everyone is saying. Those are all the key points of why we would want to continue with fully funding universal school meals. As a Director, I've seen our participation rate jump to now. 89% of all of our kids are getting breakfast and lunch every day. We're working with countless local farmers.

We're spending the money there in our community to raise resilience of our own local food system. I've grown my staff from two people to seven people. So that's a community benefit in and of itself. And I just cannot see going backwards. And this is just going to make more and more progress for California school children in our rural communities to fully Fund. Thank you.

Hello, everyone. My name is Christina Lawson, and I'm the food service Director for Western Placer Unified, located in Lincoln, California. I'm really excited to be here to not only echo all of the arguing, like, the benefits of school meals. My biggest concern is if you guys cut our funding, all of the work that we have worked towards this past school year to make school years better, or school food better is going to. Honestly, it's going to be wasted. In my district alone, we only have 32% free and reduced. If you guys cut our funding, I know exactly what's going to happen.

We're going to cut hours to our positions. They're no longer going to be benefited. We're going to end up laying off people and our quality of food will go down drastically. I will no longer be able to invest in our local farm purchasing or procuring from local businesses. All in all, it's going to reduce our quality and the number of students that want to come and eat with us, and it's going to be detrimental to our program.

I do not know how we're supposed to move forward without the funds that we're currently getting because even that is not enough and food service directors are. We're scrappy folks, guys. We want to use our dollars and we're not going to waste them. So we just really need the dollars to keep doing what we're doing and continue to improve our program.

Good afternoon. My name is Sam Greenlee. I'm the Executive Director of Alchemist Community Development Corporation, nonprofit serving the Greater Sacramento area and the father of two school aged children here in Sacramento. I just want to speak strongly in support of the universal school meals program. My children would have to pay if that program were replaced. Could we afford that as a family? Yes. What I see at my children's school is the dignity for all of the children.

When there is no separation of payment or having a card, that there are children whose families could afford lunch and those who cannot eating in the exact same way obtain their food in the exact same way, the kids see no distinction. There's no bullying or picking on.

I remember from my own childhood the separation that those cards would cause and the quality of the food has really improved at the school as the school is able to make more bulk purchasing with more students participating in the program. It's been really incredible and I think feeding children well and feeding them with dignity is worthwhile. Thank you.

Thank you all for your public comment today. Appreciate your participation. With that, we are adjourned.