Senate Standing Committee on Education

Bills on today's agenda, five bills are on consent. Those bills are item number two, SB373. Item number three, SB374. Item number four, SB478. Item number six, SB568. And item number 12, SB619. Witnesses may be asked to limit their testimony to two minutes to ensure the Committee is able to complete today's agenda in a timely fashion. Seeing no quorum yet, let's begin as a Subcommitee with the first Bill I see we have Senator Umberg here. Welcome, Senator Umberg. And you may begin when you're ready.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Madam Chair, Members, and special thanks to Consultant Lynn Lorber for her work on the bill. This is a very simple bill, SB 249. It would require that elections for County Board of Education be conducted during the general election, typically in November. The purpose of this is to ensure that we have the greatest number of voters making this very important decision. Elections, the Board of Education for counties are unusual in that, unlike our elections, you don't need to get 51% of the vote.

You can be elected with a plurality, and thus it would be important that we have as many voters as we can for that election, and thus the bill to move it. With me to testify in support is Ms. Savannah... Savannah. Ms. Savannah Jorgensen from the League of Women Voters of California. Thank you, Ms. Jorgensen.

Good morning, Chair and Members of the Committee. My name is Savannah Jorgensen, and I'm here on behalf of the League of Women Voters of California to express our strong support for SB 249. This bill would require that elections for County Boards of Education be consolidated with the statewide general election, a simple but powerful change that strengthens our democracy.

Voter turnout in primary elections is typically lower and less diverse than in general elections. That means a small, unrepresentative slice of the electorate can end up making major decisions about public education, decisions that impact every family and student in our communities.

According to recent voter participation statistics from the Secretary of State's Office, turnout in the 2024 primary was 35% of registered voters, compared with 51% during the 2024 general election. And studies show that the primary electorate tends to be disproportionately exclude younger voters, Latinos, Asian Americans, and Black voters.

By consolidating the County Boards of Education contests with the general election, SB 249 ensures that more Californians, especially those from underrepresented communities, have a meaningful voice in choosing the leaders who shape our local education systems. This aligns with the League's belief that local governance should reflect the voice of the many, not just the few. More inclusive elections lead to more accountable and representative leadership. SB 249 opens the doors of democracy wider, and we thank Senator Umberg for authoring this important bill. We urge your aye vote. Thank you.

Thank you for your presentation. Are there any other support witnesses here in Room 2100? If so, please use the microphone outside the railing. And please only state your name, organization, and position on the bill.

Annie Chou with the California Teachers Association in support.

Morning. Faith Lee with Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California. Apologies for submitting the letter late, but we're in support. Thank you.

Good morning. Mitch Steiger with CFT, a Union of Educators and Classified Professionals, also in support.

Good morning. Obed Franco here on behalf of the Asian Law Caucus in support.

Good morning. Carlos Lopez with the California School Employees Association in support.

Anybody else? Great. We will now move on to lead witnesses in opposition, if there are any. The two lead witnesses may come forward and use the microphones at the table in front of us. Seeing as we have no one, are there any other opposition witnesses here in Room 2100? If so, please use the microphone outside the railing. Please only state your name, organization, and position on the bill.

It must be Groundhog Day. We're here talking about consolidating elections again. Tom Sheehy on behalf of the Orange County Board of Education in opposition to SB 249.

Good morning. My name is Tim Shaw. I'm a trustee on the Orange County Board of Education. Our board is unanimously opposed to this bill. Thank you.

Anybody else? Thank you. Thank you to all of our support and opposition witnesses. We will now bring the discussion back to the Members. Do any of our Members have questions or comments? Oh, Senator Choi.

Thank you, Chair. Senator Umberg, I know your intent of the consolidating the several Counties Board of Education election to November general election. That may simplify. However, they do have provisions for them to be able to change the election date if they choose. And as you have seen, board member from Orange County Board of Education, Mr. Shaw.

Tim Shaw was just stating that he opposes to the bill. Have you talked to any Orange County Board of Education board members, what they feel about why they are opposing to that? That's the number one question. And by leaving the election as is now, the support testimonies to say that there will be more people to vote in general election and more inclusive votes are more important. But I feel the other way because on the general election there are so many election positions they need to consider in the vote. Sometimes it's overwhelming.

But when the Board of Education election is different date, then it'll be a lot simpler for them to study who they are and also campaign works more effectively because not too many competing campaigns out there for different positions or issues. So I think I personally leaving it up to the local jurisdiction for the decision. And then I also, as I stated, see many merits for having different date elections. What do you think about that?

Would you like me to respond, Madam Chair?

Yes, if you'd like to respond briefly.

Sure. Thank you, Senator Choi. And I and I think this does reflect the legitimate difference of opinion. I do think it's a matter of statewide interest, not just local interest, but a matter of statewide interest that we have the largest participation in County Board of Election. Excuse me, County Board of Education elections.

It's an incredibly important job. And thus, at least from my perspective, we want as many people as is possible to weigh in on that decision. We're all experts on elections here, at least all of us who are elected. We're all experts and we know that the voter turnout in the general is quite a bit higher than typically in the primary. And then the second issue in terms of local control, as I said at the outset, really a matter of state. I think it's a matter of statewide interest that we increase turnout as as best we can.

Thank you, Senator Umberg. I'm going to take a moment really quick because I see we have a quorum here and would love for the Assistant to please call the roll.

For the quorum. [Roll Call] We have quorum.

The Assistant notes a quorum has been established. I do have to run to another Committee, so... And I recognize Senator Laird does as well. Senator Cortese, if you wouldn't mind, I'm going to pass you the gavel so we could continue on. But Senator Umberg, I like your bill. I will be voting for it, and the recommendation is do pass to Elections and Constitutional Amendments. So I will move the bill when it's appropriate.

Anybody else? I guess there is nobody else unless it's me. So I'm going to give you an opportunity to close, Senator Umberg.

Simply, I simply urge an aye vote.

Thank you. Go ahead and call a roll call vote at this time.

Okay. File item number 1, SB 249, Umberg, the motion is do pass to Senate Elections and Constitutional Amendments Committee. [Roll Call]

All right, thank you, Senator Umberg. We'll keep that bill on call for the absent Members.

Thank you very much.

I believe next up is Senator Ashby on SB 761. Welcome.

Senator Cortese, thank you for being here, truly. Very happy to see you, my friend.

Knowing my timeliness, that's really actually kind of a miracle.

The entire Senate thanks you for your service today. Senator Cortese. Hello. Senator Ochoa Bogh. Nice to see you too. Happy to have you guys both here and grateful. I was a little surprised this one didn't land on your consent calendar.

But I'm happy to talk about CalFresh anytime that I am given the opportunity, which I assume is also why it was being presented. So I'm here to present SB 761. This one's personal for me.

I was a young single mom when I was in college, and it was called food stamps then, not CalFresh, but I used food stamps to sustain myself and my young son. And it was really important to me. But it was also a tough system to navigate.

And so now that we're all here, we have an opportunity to make it easier for the next generation. SB 761 is called the CalFresh for Students Act. The Bill streamlines access to CalFresh benefits by allowing students to receive a notification that they're potentially eligible for CalFresh when they complete their Cal grant application.

Right now, these systems are totally separate, so they would have no way of knowing unless they also go down and apply for CalFresh. So I do accept the proposed amendments from your Committee. Thank you. This is always a great Committee to work with. We've had opportunity that a couple times the last couple years. Love this stuff.

SB761 expands the programs of study that increase students eligibility for CalFresh as well as creating the notification system. Half of California's college students experience food insecurity. They encounter barriers that make it difficult to access these programs. And ultimately just feeding themselves while they're going through college becomes a burden. And we want to alleviate that.

Although so many of those students are eligible for CalFresh, fewer than 25% of them actually receive the benefits that they should be able to access. This gap in access is due to really a cumbersome process, really, across variety of entities, but mostly the state, various state entities.

SB 761 fixes this by streamlining the process for students to access their benefits, ensuring that they're aware of what they're eligible for, and making sure that our state agencies are working better together to serve Californians, providing a more straightforward eligibility process for California students. I do have with me a couple of witnesses I believe.

I know I have. I think I have Ali from Junior League, but I think she's going to give you some information about why she's here doing this support. And then we have Erica who's here on behalf of the alliance for a Better Community. So respectfully ask for your aye vote and thank my witnesses for their help.

Good morning Chair Perez and Members of the Senate Education Committee. My name is Ali Dumas and I am the President Elect for the Junior League of Sacramento. Our League is one of 17 leagues across California and 297 globally.

The junior Leagues of California formed the State Public Affairs Committee in 1971 to advocate on issues that align with our mission and legislative priorities health education, family support, violence prevention and ending human trafficking.

With more than one in five Californians currently struggling with food insecurity, it has become a key focus area for many leagues, including the Junior League of Sacramento. Working to remove the barriers students experience when applying for food benefits is one way we support this post secondary success and improve their chances of graduation as well as supporting families.

Studies like the one completed by Johns Hopkins in 2021 found that students that were food insecure and hungry were 43% less likely to graduate, which makes sense for many reasons, including their need to prioritize their immediate work to pay for their basic needs and their inability to concentrate and perform in class due to extreme and unnecessary hunger.

Connecting college students right away through the Cal grant process to CalFresh application assistance improves their chances of successfully navigating the process and receiving the crucial food benefits.

It also makes sense to help streamline which programs can be considered as one that will improve their eligibility by identifying all 2 and 4 year college and universities that are public programs, are allowable, remove the confusion for students and become easier to communicate.

We would like to thank Senator Ashby for her leadership and supporting students for her continued support of the Junior League of Sacramento.

On behalf of the 7,000 California women in the junior league and the estimated 1.3 million students in public institutions of higher education that are food insecure, we ask that you please support SB 761 today and later on the Senate Floor. Thank you.

Good morning everyone and Members of the Committee. My name is Erica Cervantes. I'm here on behalf of alliance for Better Community or ABC for short. We are a Latino advocacy organization based in LA focused on advancing the economic mobility, health and educational success of Latinos across the county.

ABC is a proud co sponsor of SB 761, which takes an important step to ensure that California's college students can access the basic nutrition they need to succeed. The Bill streamlines CalFresh access by allowing students to opt in for eligibility screening through their Cal Grant application, reducing barriers and connecting them to food assistance early on.

UCLA studies confirm what we see on the ground, which is that food insecurity is widespread across college students and it directly undermines their success. Students facing hunger are more likely to reduce their course loads, delay graduation and drop out altogether.

Currently, Latino students make up nearly half of California's community college students and a large portion of our CSU and UC systems, yet they continue to face disproportionate barriers to food access. College students often have to balance coursework, multiple jobs and family responsibilities. Despite their eligibility, many still are not enrolled in CalFresh.

SB 761 combines the state's grant delivery system for Cal grant with CalFresh eligibility screening, allowing students to easily opt in for direct help.

Additionally, the Bill expands the local program that increases employability pathways to include students enrolled at least half time at any public post secondary institution, ensuring more students can meet CalFresh eligibility requirements through their academic programs. Overall, SB 761 promotes equity and efficiency, ensuring no student has to choose between food security and completing their degree.

We thank the Senator for her leadership on this bill and we respectfully ask for your aye vote. Thank you.

Support here in room 2100 for SB761. Please proceed to the microphone.

Good morning, Madam Chair and Senators Adam Keiglin on behalf of No Kid Hungry in support.

Morning. Faith Lee with Asian Americans Advancement Justice Southern California. We're in support.

Good morning. Carol Gonzalez on behalf of the Southern California College Attainment we're proud co sponsors along with California competes.

Thank you Alex Zuko from the Student Aid Commission in support and here for any technical questions you may have.

Thank you very much, ma'am. Now, we will continue with any lead witnesses in opposition. Seeing none. We'll continue with any witnesses in opposition in room 2100. Seeing Nan. We'll bring it back to the dais. Do you have any questions or comments?

I have a question. It's a technical one. Thank you, Madam Chair. And thanks to the author for bringing this forward. So the analysis recommends changing from the application to the grant delivery system. What does that mean in practice in terms of how this. How eligibility would be validated?

There is no technical Cal Grant application. When you apply for fafsa, it just kind of puts you into the portal.

So this just identifies that it's not an application you're filling out, but it's the portal that will open up when you are deemed eligible and then you'll get the little pop up if you are, your income shows that you could be eligible and you'll be able to opt in there.

Okay. Once you've been awarded a Cal Grant or when you apply, at what stage in the process is this happening? Or right at the application, Right at.

The beginning when you're asked to set up your web grant account, right after you're shown that you could be eligible.

For Cal Grant, at that point you can opt into the data share and everything that would allow the Commission to validate this.

Correct. And then it wouldn't be shared until you've selected your school. So we know where your award will be going, so we know what county you'll be in.

Program has been deemed by the institution as meeting the training.

Well, they're actually going to be two separate pieces since only public universities are eligible for the LPI expansion. If you're a private University, you still could have other exemptions like you get a TANF funded benefit. You could be a student with dependent child or disability.

So your eligibility is just going to be separate than the question of expanding the definition of what is a program to increase employability.

Senator, the Bill does both things. It increases the eligibility through the programs, the employability programs that increase eligibility at the schools where that is a possibility. But it also does the notification as she's just explained to you, but it takes into account the various things that might make you eligible.

So for me that was being a single mom, but for some people it might be income eligibility or other.

And then. So it's more than an eligibility determination, though you are, you're then enrolled or.

No, no, no. The only thing we're letting them know is you could be possible because we used to actually, during the pandemic had extra funds to send postcards to any student based on their income. They could be eligible. And that was just. You should actually contact your county about CalFresh.

There was no assumption that you were eligible or you were guaranteed enrollment. It was just, this is a serve, this is a basic need service. You could be eligible for like financial aid. So you should contact your county.

The stat is that fewer than 25% of the people who are eligible, students that are eligible know that they're eligible. So this lets you know, hey, you, you, you could get CalFresh if you want it. And here's how you do that.

But it doesn't Link you to the county and then automatically put you into the county's program that would then give you the Fund.

And what would it take to do that?

It's so the part of the Bill that kind of we actually have the authority to actually make that opt in at any point. The piece of the Bill is the data sharing agreement with cdss and then cdss through their higher education liaisons that were established in a Rambula's Bill two years ago, 1326.

They would then reach out to the students. It is kind of based on the Compton College model. When the students actually go in for financial aid assistance at the counter, they're asked right then and there, it looks like you could be eligible.

Would you like somebody from LA County DSS to reach out to you and walk you through what the application looks like? And they've gone from like a 10% uptake to a 48% uptake in three years because just that warm handoff, whether it's successful or not or they actually are eligible.

Just having that kind of conversation and then they can apply and know about it has proven to be very effective.

But Senator, it would be a great follow up Bill. It would have an appropriations price tag on it. So we might want to choose our year wisely. But it would be a great silo breaking exercise.

Yeah, agree. I mean I think the chief consultant, I visited Cal State, Chico, I don't. Know67 years ago, the city for their chs.

They were great.

Yeah. And I mean so, so as this issue was, was already becoming real but, but, but bubbling up more clearly and I mean it's obviously incredibly frustrating for, for regular people trying to navigate this as I just, you know, I've given my information a thousand times and why do I have to keep proving the same question?

And part of it's always been a fidelity question. And I know it's also raised in the analysis. You know, EDD is traditionally on the employment, on the employability and training portion has done this. And maybe they're, maybe they're more objective, maybe they're slightly better at this than Compton College would be or Solano College in my district.

But how much is that, how much is that Fidelity worth in terms of people not being able to access the benefits to which they're both entitled and they desperately need in order to survive. And so I'm glad, I'm very glad to see this Bill because it's opening up this, this, this question, this conversation.

This is a major step forward. Better also than for me. It leads us right up to the ledge where we should.

We can see the actual answer here, which is to integrate these systems more completely and to use things like the, you know, the new ID, the, the new digital ID that that Department of Technology is developing that would allow a lot of this stuff to happen without having to fill the same information out over and over again.

So very glad to see this Bill.

Strongly supportive of it and hopeful that the partners who are working on it will use the implementation process to help us suss out exactly what it would take in order to make it real that students can simply get access to these programs directly by proving their, proving their, their impoverishment one time and then getting access to the, the services basic needs that they, that they need.

So thanks, Madam Chair.

Thank you. Senator Cabaldon, any other questions or comments? Seeing none. Senator Astro, would you like to close? Respectfully ask for your aye vote. Thank you very much. Madam Secretary, please call the roll. zero, yes, we need a motion.

[Roll call]

Thank you. We have a three to zero vote right now. We'll leave that open for our absent Members. And thank you, Ms. Ashby.

Thanks, colleague.

Welcome, Senator Cabaldon. We'll now move on to Bill or File item number seven, SB539 by Senator Cabaldon. Welcome.

Thank you so much. Madam Chair, I'm pleased to be here to present SB539. Proposition 2 passed in 2024, our first statewide school facilities bond. And it included the passage of Prop 3051 previously that called for the Department of General Services to convene a working group to study California school of construct approval process.

And that study was complete and it recommended and some changes to the school facilities process are being implemented.

I come bearing news, the good word from the rest of government, from those of us that are building housing, that are building other public facilities, that are building infrastructure projects, that we are learning much more about how to substantially reinvent the way that we do permitting, planning and construction in those domains.

And if you serve on the Housing Committee like I do, you know, every five minutes there's a Bill to require that projects, major projects, be done in 90 days.

You know, we're imposing more shot clocks, but also substantially re engineering the sequencing of which in which projects are accomplished and both through the use of technologies, but also modern project management approaches.

I think what's becoming clear is the way that we handle school facility construction is still in the very linear process that we have always done it that one step at a time. And then as step five changes something, you go back to step one again and start over again.

So I was so surprised when Senator Perez, on the floor of the Senate, when the Senate passed the Wildfire package, got up and said and told the story of a young boy whose school was burned down.

And the thing he wanted most in life was to be able to go back to his school, to that school with his friends. And so we were hoping through the passage of that legislation that that might happen soon.

Looking at our record here, it's more likely that that little boy will return and maybe be able to go to the high school that also was damaged and not that never returned to the elementary school. We can do much better on the school construction side. I don't pretend to know what the answers are.

So all SB539 does is says that we that we will examine other approaches and reforms and we'll do it on a regular basis to keep up with the.

With what we're learning, not just in the way that we've always conceived of school construction, but the lessons that we're learning from the rest of the public infrastructure development and the housing policies that we're adopting in California to significantly improve and speed up the reconstruction and the repair in this case of wildfire stricken schools.

So that's the proposal. It's a modest one. I think we're trying to open up the conversation more broadly and encourage our school facilities partners to look at look outside the boundaries of our traditional process and innovate in ways that can bring some of what we've learned in other domains to the world of school facilities. Ask for an aye vote. Thanks, Madam Chair.

Lead witnesses?

Nope.

Nope. Okay, so we'll continue with any witnesses in support of SB539. Hear room 2100. Seeing none. Do we have any witnesses in opposition to SB539? Seeing none. We'll bring it back to the dais. Do we have any comments or questions? None. Okay, so Senator Cabaldon, we just want to make sure that you are accepting the amendments.

Yes, sorry about that, Madam Chair. Yes, I'm happy to accept the Committee staff recommended amendments as always.

Wonderful, wonderful to do. We have a motion so moved by Senator Cortese. Madam Secretary, please call roll. Thank you.

[Roll Call]

Okay, that is three to zero. Leave that open for our absent Members. Thank you, Senator Cabaldon. We have another Bill by Senator Cabaldin. File item number 8, SB744. You may proceed when ready.

All right, thank you, Madam Chair. And just to correct myself from last time, let me be sure to at the be at the outset want to accept the recommended amendment in staff comment number 3 with respect to the designation of the California community colleges and not the Chancellor specifically, given the shared governance process in place for higher education.

So this bill addresses. This bill addresses the tremendous need in California higher education to serve more than just traditional age college students. And one of the major reasons why adults in California do not pursue the education that they desire.

And I'll say California Competes did a study and poll a couple of years ago that showed right after the pandemic that showed that 40% of Californians expressed an intent to go back to school to training or higher education, this is adults, within the next two years.

Of course, they didn't do so, and there are many reasons for that. But one of them is that we don't recognize on a consistent basis or statewide prior learning that has occurred. And that might be prior learning in places like the military, in employment, in community service.

What we're seeing more and more is learning that's occurring in non-school settings. If you've worked with many teenagers, there are a lot of folks who have the equivalent of at least a portion of an associate's degree in video editing from their YouTube channels.

There are a lot of other ways in which learning is and skills are being developed which we don't effectively recognize. The Legislature has been pushing on this for decades and so have our institutions. The law currently anticipates a process for this and the, and the community colleges and others have been working in this space for a bit.

This year the Governor is proposing an additional budget augmentation for credit for prior learning. So these are ongoing conversations that are happening both in the Budget Subcommittee process and through this legislation.

Credit for prior learning is key because it recognizes the real world learning and therefore makes it more likely, number one, that those skills get, get validated so employers can recognize, yes, I know how to work in a lab. I, I'm familiar with lab safety protocols. Yes, I have actually completed the equivalent of a certificate in advanced in advanced auto repair. And that is critical for the income and career opportunities for our adults.

But the other reason is that adults often don't go back to college because they get back and they're told you have now have to enroll in the first semester of auto mechanics. And I've been doing auto mechanics for 20 years. Could you maybe put me in the third class and not the first one?

And when you're told no, we don't have a process for that, there's no exam, there's no AP exam equivalent for auto mechanics. The most likely outcome is you just don't go. And so it really is important for us to acknowledge and recognize and credit prior learning. The community colleges are doing some fantastic work in this space.

The Chancellor there, through her leadership, is providing a lot of new innovations in this space. What this bill does, SB 744, and as I want to emphasize, we are working together with the colleges and with the Administration to make sure that we line up all of the proposals this year. But this recognizes, both puts in place the state policy framework, it emphasizes the criticality of those credits being transferred.

That if Copper Mountain College says, yes, you have completed the equivalent of chemistry 1 or chemistry 16, which might be lab safety, that you then when you transfer to Cal State San Bernardino or San Jose State, that you don't have to go approve it again. That we, in a single system of public higher education that the people of California have created and funded, that we have deputized the faculty at that first institution to determine what credit for prior learning is.

So number one, it does that. Second is it creates a path for faculty and for potential students to actually get the credit validated. Because sometimes there are no exams that are out there that can, that can validate. And sometimes, and often it is the case that it is the first time that you're coming in.

You know, I have this particular set of skills and I think it applies to this course. No one has ever been there before. It takes time for both the faculty member and the student because the faculty member has to design what would it take to validate this learning and then you have to demonstrate it.

Maybe that's a portfolio that you're providing of your prior work. Well, you have to prepare that as a student and the faculty member has to evaluate it and then accredited against some broader set of standards. That takes time.

So what this bill does is it counts that as a non-credit course, just like parenting, citizenship, and other courses that we offer through the community colleges that are eligible for a reduced rate of funding, no tuition.

But that accounts for the fact that what we have been doing for the last 20 years is demanding that faculty credit prior learning without giving them any time to do it. And this bill recognizes that, both for the student and the faculty member, that does take time.

So it would authorize that as another one of the, I think half a dozen areas in which non-credit courses could be offered one on one between the student and the faculty member. So those are the critical elements of bill I do want to emphasize.

We're going to continue to work together with the colleges, with the Administration, and with you to make sure that we have a completely aligned comprehensive proposal at the end of the year between this and the trailer bill language that's also pending. So would ask for an aye vote. Thanks, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Senator Cabaldon, do you have any witnesses in support? Okay. Do we have any witnesses in support here in Room 2100 for SB 744? Seeing none. We'll go to any lead witnesses in opposition to SB 744. Seeing none. Do we have any other witnesses in opposition to SB 744? Seeing none. We'll bring it back to the dais.

Do we have any comments or questions? See we have a motion by Senator Cortese. Senator Cabaldon, thank you for bringing this forward. This is a huge undertaking to coordinate everyone to ensure that everybody's on the same page. And thank you. I did notice your mentioning of local schools in my district.

Copper Mountain never gets a shout out.

Thank you very much for giving them a shout out. And thank you for mentioning my district school. I appreciate that. Very thoughtful. Senator Cabaldon, would you like to close?

Ask for an aye vote. Thanks, Madam Chair. Thank you, Senator.

All right, perfect. Madam Secretary, please call the roll.

This is file item number eight, SB 744. Cabaldon. The motion is...

Oh, sorry.

The motion is do pass the Senate Appropriations Committee. [Roll Call]

All right, that's three to zero. We'll leave that on call for absent Members. Thank you, Senator Cabaldon. Senator Cortese, would you like to proceed? Okay, wonderful. We're going to continue with file item number 10, SB 743 by Senator Cortese. Actually, file number 9. Let's do 9, SB 685. Would that be okay?

Welcome, Senator Cortese. You may proceed when you're ready.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and members of the committee. I appreciate the opportunity to present Senate Bill 685, which establishes a financial assistance for students experiencing homeless program. A lot to say, but it's, I think, a pretty straightforward bill.

I do want to indicate that I'm taking the committee amendments and I believe those deal with the pilot program aspect of the bill. And one other issue which I'm not going to attempt to restate, but I take both amendments. So.

The bill provides critical financial support to students who've experienced homelessness during high school, ensuring they can not only access higher education, but also remain enrolled and succeed. Many of these unhoused students face significant challenges even after being accepted to CSU.

The cost of attending CSU, which can reach around $35,000 per year for on campus students, is of course a major barrier, especially when we consider the unmet needs for housing, transportation, and food. We've heard a lot about that already today.

While California has made significant strides with support such as Cal Grant and other state financial aid programs, many students still face an unmet need of about $10,000 for basic living expenses. This gap is a serious barrier for students who are already struggling to stabilize their living situations.

At the CSU, 52% of students report experiencing housing insecurity and 40% experience food insecurity. That's system wide. In our CSU, San Jose State University, there is presently an overall 11% homeless or unhoused population. And my understanding is that figure is also replicated statewide.

For first generation college students these issues are even more pronounced with 65% reporting food insecurity and 20% experiencing homelessness. Without adequate financial support, these students of course face increased risk of dropping out and lower academic performance, perpetuating the cycle of poverty. SB 685 ensures that CSU campuses provide additional support to cover unmet cost of attendance needs for housing, food, and transportation.

This targeted financial assistance allows students to focus on their studies without worrying about basic survival, which significantly increases their likelihood of graduation long term success. With us here today is Shivani Ramanthan with GENup to speak in support of this bill. And I'd respectfully ask for your aye vote.

Thank you Senator Cortese, and welcome.

Good morning members of the Committee. My name is Shivani Ramanathan and I am an Education Advocacy Director at Generation Up. GENup is an entirely student led advocacy organization fighting for educational equity through the California legislative process. I am here today on behalf of our thousands of student Members to respectfully request your support on SB 685.

I would like to start today by thanking Senator for his continued work on this issue of student homelessness over the last few legislative cycles and for introducing SB 685 to ensure that California's most vulnerable students can achieve academic success. It is past time that we faced the harsh reality of student homelessness in California.

Hundreds of thousands of students come into school every morning after having slept in their cars, in a shelter, or on a street. For the few that are able to access higher education, the challenges continue.

Rising housing costs and limited available bed spaces have left 11% of CSU students homeless, while thousands more experience housing insecurity or skip meals to make rent.

California makes significant investments in financial aid, but the reality is, with the rising cost of living, tuition, housing, and basic necessities, many students, especially those from underserved backgrounds, still fall between those cracks. Even with support, there's often a gap between the aid received and what is actually needed to survive and succeed.

According to a recent report from the Students HOMES Coalition, most students spend twice as much on housing and food than they do on tuition. And yet these costs are not fully considered by aid programs. Higher education is the pathway to lifelong financial security.

If we want homeless students to be able to lift themselves up, we must give them the tools to do so. SB 685 will provide students with the necessary cost of attendance assistance so they can focus on their studies rather than fighting housing insecurity.

On behalf of Generation Up, I urge you to join us in the fight against student homelessness as we vote aye on SB 685 today. Thank you.

Thank you very much. See no other lead witnesses. We're now going to continue with any witnesses in support of SB 685. Please proceed to the microphone. State your name, the organization that you are representing, and your either support or opposition.

Good morning, Leilani Aguinaldo. On behalf of Fresno Unified School District and if we could, we would also ask for the Chancellor and the Senator to consider adding Fresno Unified, not Fresno Unified, Fresno State University, explicitly in the bill as one of the three universities. Thank you.

Good morning, Kim Lewis, representing the California Coalition for Youth, in Support.

Good morning, John Horner, Board President, Morgan Hill Unified School District. On behalf of our over 800 McKinney–Vento homeless students, we are in support.

Thank you very much. Seeing no other witnesses in support, we'll now continue with any witnesses in opposition to 6, SB 7, sorry, SB 685. Haven't woken up this morning. Seeing no witnesses in opposition. Now we're going to back to the dais. Do we have any questions or comments? I guess I'll proceed with some questions.

So, Senator Cortese, thank you so much for coming and testifying today. It's very exciting to see our youth engaged. So a couple of questions.

When we, with this particular program, when we have a classification of the high school student who was classified as homeless or unhoused while in high school to qualify for the pilot program, is there any segment of time in which we're going to say, okay, you had to have graduated perhaps within the last two years, three years, or is this someone that was homeless 10-20 years ago while in high school to qualify for this particular pilot program?

I don't know how long exactly the Mckinney-Vento, you know, federal program has been in place, but we're really just trying to, you know, essentially pivot off of that population, that definition, and trying not to be too judgmental about folks coming in and out of that population while they're in high school, meaning if they were in it at some point, they should be eligible for this program. That's just the way we've set up the bill.

And to help me out understand a little bit more, and for those that may not understand, could you give us a little more of a definition as to what that means at the federal, from the federal level that you're modeling into the state level?

I'm just trying to see whether or not someone that was perhaps the way that I'm reading it, that was considered unhoused during their high school years, but is now maybe 30 years old or 35 years old, would that qualify within that, within that definition for this program?

I, yeah, I don't believe that somebody who was in high school 30 years ago is going to have a Mckinney-Vento record, is what I'm saying, or a homelessness record in that high school to be able to point to. It's not, it's not a self certification program.

But, you know, the, the definition, the Mckinney-Vento definition, which is what's used in our public schools, of course, and mandated to be used to define homelessness and identify the unhoused population.

I'm going to paraphrase it because I don't have the definition right in front of me in my notes here, but it basically says that it has to be someone who does not have consistently a roof over their head. So it's a pretty straightforward definition. It will cover people who are couch surfing, you know, from place to place.

It would cover people who are living in the back of their parents' van. I don't know how many other examples. Obviously somebody out on the street, you know, literally out on the street or living in a tent. And we have that. We have those situations or kids.

At least we do in San Jose, where kids are actually living with a parent or parents in a tent encampment in a riparian corridor and they're still going to school, thank God. At least that's happening. But it's those students who have been identified to be in that situation that we're targeting here with the bill.

We're certainly open to as we move forward, you know, trying to make that definition better. But so far on all the legislation I've done around student homelessness, we really, you know, tried to lean on the current population as identified, you know, in high school. So.

Thank you, Senator Cortese. And the reason I'm asking is in order to qualify student to meet the, they need to meet the following criteria.

And correct me if I'm wrong, but it says that the identified by the school personnel as a homeless child or youth pursuant to the federal Mckinney-Vento Homeless Assistant Act, while are residing in California at any time between the start of 9th grade and at the end of 12th grade, and they will be between the ages of 17 and 26.

So a young adult.

Yes.

At the time the student receives a financial assistance under the pilot program. How is this different than perhaps our other financial aid programs where we try to, you know, bring in, whether it's a grant program or even loans to be able to meet the needs of the students.

And of course, we're seeing so many other programs through the Education Committee that is trying to assist with additional financial aid to our students. So we have a lot of programs going on right now.

Has there been any consideration as to, I don't know if we need to do a study or oversight hearing as to everything that's currently available for all of the students. We just keep expanding the programs, in my opinion, just humble opinion, but we're not addressing their actual recalls of the problem, which is our high cost of living for one.

Number two is the high cost of just tuition, school, books, and all of that. And I'm not sure which one, you know, I'm always, you hear me advocate all the time.

I'm trying to address the issues at the root of the problem as to why the cost is so high to, you know, run our schools, to be able to afford the education that we have. Or do we continue to, on the other side of the other spectrum of just continuously providing more programs, but we're making it so expensive here, but we're adding more additional funding here rather than just giving the money directly to the schools so that they don't have to increase tuition.

So it's one of those things where we just keep shuffling money. It's overall costing a lot more money and making it very difficult for our students to actually go to school. And I'm really concerned that, you know, we still are not addressing, once again, the high cost of school that impacts all of our students.

And one of the comments that we just had in our budget one, committee hearing just, you know, a week or two weeks ago, was that we're seeing a lot of programs that are addressing our entry. Our students at the lower end of the economic demographic, better middle class, is still suffering because of the high cost of housing.

So it's one of the concerns that I have about this, that we are continuously expanding more and more programs, but yet we're not fixing the system itself that makes it affordable for all of our students and lower the costs.

I've been a huge advocate of ensuring that we're building housing within our universities, within our colleges, so that we don't impact the housing around our universities, which makes housing much more expensive for the local residents, including folks that live in the city and work at the university.

So when we look at this program, how do you justify the overall program in comparison to just addressing the issue of making sure that we're fully funding our universities?

Well, I think, you know, I mean, of course, on, as we say, both sides of the aisle, we've heard, you know, those kind of concerns that probably Senator Bernie Sanders is, was the most vocal over the, in the last decade calling for, you know, basically no tuition, no cost post secondary education.

But I think for us here at the state level, we can do what we can with what we have, which is a balance, requires us to have a balanced budget, and it allows us, you know, I think to be a little more surgical, even just through our appropriations process, is what I'm saying.

I think that's the greatest hindrance. I think what you're pointing out is appropriate and we should be getting to the root cause of this. It's not, the system is not delivering for a variety of reasons economically to students like it did when I was at UC Davis.

And you know, for many who were perhaps a little bit younger than me, but not this generation, you could afford to even work your way through college at that time. Maybe you'd have to put in a lot of hours, but even at minimum wage in those days, the relationship between minimum wage and what was considered a living wage and rent and food and so forth was in equilibrium to some degree, even for a college student.

I feel sorry for the students today, including my own four children who are now adults, the youngest is 25, who have never experienced that. They have not ever experienced what I would consider to be an economy in this country, in the state, that's in equilibrium, that would allow them to get off to the same kind of a good start as they left post secondary education, let alone entering it.

So we have issues, but I think it would take, frankly, federal kind of federal budget dollars to come in and do some kind of sweeping change to get us caught up. In the meanwhile, to the extent we can afford it as a state.

I think what we've been seeing is authors like myself, I think other members of this committee coming in and trying to be reasonable with dollars, knowing that it's tough to get a bill through, but at the same time, you know, doing that in a more prescriptive way and saying, let's just pilot, you know, a few campuses Instead of all 31 CSUs like we're doing in this bill.

I would love to have walked in here saying, this bill would at least solve this piece of the problem at all 31 campuses in one of our university systems. It's not even touching UC, but it would, it would knock us out of the box in terms of the cost of doing business.

You know, the cost of, of that appropriation would be. I don't want to, nothing's impossible, but it would be extraordinarily significant here and, you know, create a lot of resistance for, for me or any other author trying to get that to the governor's desk. So, you know, I think those are the initial responses I have.

But you pinpointed exactly what we pinpointed in the bill. That the cost of living itself, along with the gap in terms of the cost of tuition, books, and, you know, and supplies, is now significant. It's up to 25% you know of.

Even with all the other assistants that you're referring to, it's still leaving a gap that we found to be, on average, about $10,000 per student that, that they're out there trying to come up with. So can we help all students with that? No.

Again, we, creates a tremendous appropriations problem, but we can, in a sense, artificially say, well, look, those who had, who were in, in poverty, as defined by homelessness, as defined by the federal government, are likely, if that was their situation at any point in high school.

It's, it's hard to fathom that they suddenly, you know, became affluent enough to afford $10,000 a year by the time they stepped into CSU. That's really what we're saying, that it's very predictive that those students are still, are still struggling when they got out of high school.

And not to be facetious, I mean, short of winning the lottery or something like that, how would they have earned $40,000 a year to subsidize themselves to get through, you know, a four year program or 50,000 to get through a five year program?

So we're trying to help with that, keep them propped up, keep them from being part of our street homelessness. Which is, as we all know, just a huge pipeline. Right now there's 200, I believe, 270,000 homeless students in California. There's 24,000 who will graduate from high school this year. 24,000 who will graduate from high school.

That's just the seniors. That's not counting, you know, anybody who is in that category. So just these are just admittedly a sense of maybe a sort of band aid relative to what you're, you're calling for, which is, you know, a root cause solution. I don't have the root cause solution today. I appreciate your, your perspective on it.

And so I'm not, I'm not sure, obviously, and you may or may not know, but I'm kind of curious. When they, our students fill out their FAFSA and fill out all of their financial aid applications, is there not questions as to whether or not.

Well, obviously the income, whether or not they have income, family, all of that, isn't that already considered part of the process as far as their financial aid application and how that's going to be considered as to their financial aid package?

Yeah. So if you max that out, what we're saying is that you're still going to end up with a deficit. There's also, there is a middle, a middle class scholarship program. We've been asked good questions about that. Isn't, doesn't that take care of the gap?

It will in some cases, but it's, it's a more, it is a more prescriptive benefit. It was recently expanded to foster youth.

This pilot is, is creating a more broad brush opportunity in the pilot to test what happens under obviously the guidance of, of the chancellors and you know, the university presidents on these campuses, you know, to go in and, again, help more holistically with what that particular student is dealing with.

And we think they have that information. The one that's dealing with a $500 gap in one area may, you know, may be experiencing something a little bit different than the next student that fits this definition that walks in the door and says, I need help. But it's, it's in another area of support.

Maybe it's books, maybe it's tuition. So we're just, we're trying to close that final gap for them that exists even after Pell Grant, even after everything else comes forward, and hopefully it still will.

I, I don't want to be overly partisan here, but, you know, we, we're all watching with bated breath as to what happens as they shift those federal benefits over to, you know, from one agency to another to, to administer through SBA. Are these students, you know, going to? Is it still going to be only a $10,000 gap?

My last question. Sorry, Senator Cortese, go ahead, finish.

I'm done with that.

Just a question on that. So, traditionally speaking, when we've had this, these gaps in the financial aid package, have students traditionally applied for a loan? Is that normally how they've done in the past if they wanted to, is having a loan?

Yes, and that would still be the case under this bill. This bill is, in some sense, is assuming that that student has filled out their FAFSA, qualified for whatever they can qualify for, and they're still facing a cost deficit.

And we've seen that even at the community college level. There's been two bills since we've been here in the last couple of years where community colleges that had surplus resources came to us for authority.

In fact, both of them happened to be in the Bay Area, but came to us asking for enabling legislation to allow them to cover these same sort of costs. Because even at the community college level, where students are experiencing, you know, this enough of a deficit in meeting their basic educational costs that, you know, we have chancellors there and a couple of community college presidents already who have come forward and said, we want to help.

We want to try to zero that out for these students. So this. You didn't ask this, but I just want to say this. It probably should have been in my, my opening.

I was asked about a year ago to speak, as we all are, at a particular convening at the University of California around things like guaranteed income and other tools that we could potentially use.

And one of the speakers was there from the State of Colorado and indicated in effect that they had adopted legislation in the State of Colorado system wide to do. What I'm calling for today was SB 685 and inspired me to come back to my staff as as you can imagine and say go get that Bill.

Let's see, you know, to what extent we could do that in California or scale it in California or at least pilot in California because they've had it up and running long enough to know that it's working. So it is modeled after another state, albeit one that's smaller than ours.

Okay, thank you. Any other questions? Senator Cabaldon?

So I'm not sure if this is for the author for the committee staff. So that indicated you were going to take the the committee amendments and one of which was related to the middle class scholarship and to the, the sequencing of this the, it's the two last dollar programs one.

So the committee amendment was consider clarifying the operational sequence. But in what, in what order will the sequence be? And to the question that you raised about the expected student and family contribution, how does that play out in the sequence that the amendments would accomplish?

Uh huh. But didn't. I think. Oh, okay, so you don't have a proposal... Is this one of the amendments that I thought that you accepted? You mentioned two issues, but one of which you said was a complicated one in the analysis, I thought.

Was not so much complicated. I don't want... I just was reluctant to state the amendment without having the exact wordage here.

Okay. Okay. So those, that's not one of the, One of the two amendments. So it's. I, I do think it's a good. I'm interested in the answer into, the answer to that question as you proceed. The, the sort of, the ordering of them and to what. Where to. To assure that there still is an expected student and family contribution, as there should be in each of the, in each of the programs. But that's a, that's exactly what can be worked on going forward.

Happy to do that, by the way. Happy to.

I don't know what the answer is exactly, but yes. Okay. Appreciate that, Senator. So I think, you know, Senator Ochoa Bogh, our vest here raises some key issues around this. And I think these, you know, whether it's foster youth or students experiencing homelessness, they are, they are also a warning sign about the broader population of students that we're grappling with, I think.

Senator Cortese is undertaking a commendable effort to try, to try to grapple with the most severe consequences the students who are facing, have experienced and may currently be facing homelessness as well. But it is these bigger issues.

I mean, a big part of this is just the rent's too damn high and you can't afford food, and it's getting worse right now. The cost of, if you're a student parent, the cost of a stroller is expected to go up by 100% over the next, you know, over the next few days and weeks. And so our... So we have substantial challenges with just baseline affordability for necessities that. And that we don't budget for in our, in our financial aid programs. Maybe we can't. I don't know, but we never have.

And so the crisis that the gap between what's available to students for their student financial aid and the cost of housing and the cost of living in California, particularly in California's college communities, is big and growing, and that's an issue for all students.

As I said, these foster youth and students experiencing homelessness are just, they're just bearing the worst of it. So that is the fundamental we and that's why I think we're so committed to really addressing affordability in profound ways. Because we can't, we will never be able to just keep up with more programs to support and to provide aid. But we need to, we need to, we need to try. Well, you know, while we're, while we're tackling both problems.

So I think it is true that we should be looking at the bigger issue, but that's one of them. And also that we should have fewer, you know, in the end, in a perfect world, we should have a lot fewer programs. I mean, the, the Pell Grant program, the Cal Grant program should do all of this.

It should be able to account here are the actual real costs. Here's your contribution. Here's the contribution that you should, every person attending college is expected to make and have been since the beginning of financial aid. And here's the rest in an aid package of grants and work study, loans where that's appropriate. More programs doesn't make that better.

But both of those core programs are not, they're not adequately funded. I mean, we're not funding Cal Grant reform at this stage. Pell Grant is not growing quickly enough. And so although this isn't the, to me, this isn't the ideal. You know, nobody would design it this way from the start.

While we're, while we continue to work towards that, programs like this, and I appreciate that it's a pilot so we can learn, are essential to assure that students who are in the most vulnerable position are taken care of. The other kind of systemic issue, it strikes me as a couple generations.

This was also not as much of an issue because we did not create the expectation that every single student, every single Californian had to go to college and they had to go right at 18, regardless. And it's so important that you should be prepared to sleep in your car in the student services parking lot or in the stadium parking lot at your college in order to go to college. And, and college is very important.

Learning past high school is critical to economic prosperity and success, both for the individual and for California as a whole. So it really is important, but we've created such an expectation that you must do it and you must do it at 18. Don't come back later.

Because we've designed our entire system of post-secondary education around the idea that we all go learn for four years at the age of 18 and never learn anything again. And that's your one shot. And a lot of our financial aid and other programs don't give you another chance.

And so we put this immense pressure on young people that your entire future depends on making this choice. And they're hearing that message so much that they are prepared to endure the kind of hardships that this bill is intended to get at.

And so I'm a big fan that everyone should go to college or the military or apprenticeships after high school, that everyone needs additional education and learning and training. But we haven't got it quite right if we're saying that everyone needs it and everybody should be prepared to sleep in the library in order to get there.

And so I think both we've got to deal with the cost issues and then create a different expectation around how Californians can succeed economically and learn and earn an education through their lifetime and not just at the point when they may be the most vulnerable economically. So thanks for the in the bill forward, Senator.

I think we need to watch, focus a lot on career tech as well, as well as got to start watching more Dirty Jobs the show to see what's available there and gain those skills that can then be put into credentials and accredited programs. So that's another pathway that we have. Any other comments or questions? Okay. Do we have a motion of the bill? Okay, wonderful. We have a motion by Senator Cabaldon. Senator Cortese, would you like to close?

I appreciate very much, you know, the conversation, the points that have been made. We want to keep working on this. We do want to learn from both the bill process, but also hopefully the pilot program if we can get this stood up. And I agree with, I, I feel like I agree with 99% of, of what's been said, if not 100%. The worst thing that possibly happened is for us to finish closing these gaps and then have the cost of living double down.

Both of the speakers, both the Committee Members mentioned that for whatever reasons are going to cause it, whether it's macroeconomic issues, tariff issues, or whether it's just this inability to stop the increased cost of housing and things like that locally. All of a sudden you have a bigger gap again, even with the grants, even with everything that the federal government and state government provides.

So hopefully together we, we find better comprehensive solutions for all of that going forward. In the meantime, as I said earlier, I believe this is an effort to do what we can with what we have right now. And I'd respectfully ask for your aye vote.

Thank you, Senator Cortese. Madam Secretary, please call the roll.

File item number 9, SB 685, Cortese. The motion is do pass as amended to Senate Appropriations Committee. [Roll Call]

Thank you. We have a 4-0, but we'll keep that bill open for our absent Members. We'll now continue with file item number 10, SB 743 by Senator Cortese. You may proceed.

Okay, thank you again, Madam Chair and members. SB 743 establishes the equalization reserve account. It's designed that accounts design to provide additional dollars to underfunded school districts. Fixing the long standing funding inequities in California's public schools. For far too long, where a child lives has determined how much funding their school receives.

This bill ensures that all students, no matter their zip code. Really meaning no matter their neighborhood, no matter their housing location, have access to the same quality education. According to data from the Legislative Analyst Office, there's a funding efficiency of about $34 billion in underserved districts, financially underserved districts.

Research shows that an increase in per people spending leads to improved student achievement, higher test scores, better graduation rates and greater college readiness. Teachers will also benefit from the additional funding which can be used for better salaries, professional development, smaller class sizes, et cetera.

This will help reduce teacher burnout and turnover, ensuring that districts can retain and attract high quality educators. The bill establishes a framework for allocating additional dollars for the purpose of equalizing school districts that are on the inequitable side of education funding in California without impacting the money school districts are currently receiving.

I think you'll hear more specifics on that, examples of that from the witnesses that have joined us today. But the bill is about providing students and teachers with the resources they need to succeed regardless of where they live. It's about investing in the future of all California students by ensuring they have equitable access to a quality education.

I believe this is a bill that will finally begin to reverse an antiquated school funding formula that's close to 45 years old that I have observed during my lifetime and also my public service career is creating devastating outcomes and consequences for students. This is a long term solution.

It won't solve everything overnight, but it will help close the funding gap and improve student outcomes, particularly for those in the most disadvantaged communities. As I mentioned, we have witnesses here today. Lisa Andrew, CEO of the Silicon Valley Education Foundation, and Mr.

Glenn VanderZee, Superintendent of Eastside Union High School District, which I believe is the largest high school district in Northern California.

And we have Kenneth Kapphahn from the Legislative Analyst Offices here, really for technical support because the bill can get a little bit formula complex and I may want to refer questions to him or you may want to. So with that, I'd respectfully ask for your I vote. I vote, Madam Chair.

But we can turn to the witnesses.

Wonderful. Thank you and welcome. Who would like to proceed first?

Thank you. I'll just introduce myself. Kenneth Kapphahn with the Analyst's Office. I cover Proposition 98, school property taxes, and the Proposition 98 reserved for the office. So not here to make recommendations, but happy to answer any technical questions that you have about the interaction between this bill and those formulas. Thank you.

Okay. Good morning, Chair Ochoa Bogh and members of the committee, and thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today. We are here because we have seen firsthand how unequal funding affects our students and to emphasize the urgent need to address the problem. Now, as we speak.

Across the state, students in one school district are using 3D printers, participating in hands on stem experiences and traveling the halls of an art museum. Well, in another district within the same county, students are cutting out cardboard shapes with Scissors, watching a YouTube video about frog dissection and learning about the ocean from a book.

And let's be honest, we've all seen the ocean screensavers and said, wow, I wish I was there. Some students have never been there and they won't know what that sounds like or feels like.

As a teacher, principal, superintendent, and now a CEO of an education foundation, I have experienced the near impossible task of preparing students to become productive and engaged citizens with limited resources all because my school district was located in an area with limited property tax revenue.

As a teacher, choices such as buying a ream of copier paper or new PE equipment that my students can use during recess from my very limited classroom budget or as a principal choosing between a school counselor or to reduce class size with another math teacher, and my all time favorite, being a superintendent and bargaining for a teacher professional development day or offering to give a 1% off the salary schedule bonus.

Across the state, California's investment in a student's education varies within the same county. In Kern and Fresno counties, the delta in per pupil spending between basic aid and non basic aid districts is approximately $16,000. In Santa Clara County, the delta is approximately 13.

And in both Orange and San Bernardino counties, the difference between basic aid and non basic aid districts is approximately 7,000.

While I am proud of all of California students and that they're held to the same academic standards and graduation requirements, I am not proud of the Continued acceptance of a funding structure that that asks students to meet those standards with unequal resources.

This is a complicated issue and it calls for courage, it calls for perseverance, and it calls for a beginning. This needs to be solved now. SB 743 provides a framework to begin the process of solving the funding problem to ensure true access and opportunity for all students, no matter their zip code.

Equitable education about funding. Equitable education is about outcomes. So according to the Learning Policy Institute, increasing funding by just $1,000 per student over three years resulted in a full grade level gain in reading and math. Imagine that as our SBAC scores, as what we report to the feds and what that might look like on NAEP.

That is less than filling the gaps fully. As I described earlier, this same three here, $3,000 investment, led to an 8.2 percentage point increase in graduation rates and improved college readiness. This study illustrates that working to equalize funding invests in California's human capital and future workforce, which enhances our economic competitiveness.

By ensuring every student is well funded, the state can improve overall educational outcomes, which is crucial for cultivating a competitive, innovation driven economy.

Ask you to close up. I'm so sorry. Thank you very much.

The students in your senate districts in the state deserve more than a promise of an education.

They deserve an equal opportunity to thrive because of their education. Thank you Senator Cortese for authoring this bill and thank you committee members for your consideration.

Thank you very much. Do we have any other primary witnesses in support of the bill?

Yes, Glenn VanderZee, Superintendent of East Side and also representative of the East Side Alliance, which is a group of high school districts and seven feeder districts, about 45,000 students in school right now.

In school with the goal that we have for districts all over our state, which is that our students can be full participants in their classrooms, their school schools and in the future, full participants of California. The state has done a lot towards that. We've standardized curricula, standardized testing, CSU and UC entrance requirements. Great work.

What we haven't done is standardize the way we fund and invest in students. So the students that I referred to this morning are working 20 minutes away from students age like peers that will receive $12,000 more annually than them. Sit on that for a second. They're in their classroom today working to meet the same standards.

And students 20 minutes away are after that same goal with an additional 12,000 annually. Senate Bill 743 looks to end that.

It gets to move us away from the cuts that my district made last night at $10 million for services that our students we know need, but will not just get away from cuts, but move to more things we can do. What can we do? We can make competitive salaries across our state.

We can increase instructional programs for both staff and students. We can get classified campus monitors and parent community involvement specialists to create positive campuses, increase safety and outreach to families for greater engagement around all those items we were just discussing.

We can create early math specialists, make sure students get the intervention early in elementary school so they can show up at the ninth grade ready to meet the A through G requirements and have an equal competitive footing with those students 20 minutes away.

We can make sure that CTE programs in AP classes as well as A through G classes, that when our students get to that next level work, they go, oh, this is relevant. I did this in high school. I've used this machine before. I've, I, I've used this software.

That's what happens 20 minutes away from our students across the state. We have the disparities and we can choose to invest and when. By investing this, what we're also doing is creating greater local control, greater local control for districts that are currently underfunded to be able to make the decisions of where to invest.

We ask that you take this bill and pass it forward and look to support students equally across the great state of California in the future. Thank you.

Great. Thank you very much. All right, now we'll move on. To anyone who'd like to come forward in support of this bill. We'll take supporters of SB 743. Please come forward. Just state your name and your support, position and organization.

Hi, my name is Mirella Maldonado and I come from the Hispanic Foundation of Silicon Valley located in San Jose, and I'm support of Senate Bill 743. Thank you.

My name is Isaiil Cotran and I am from SOMOS Mayfair. My brother and I are students from Alum Rock School District from East San Jose. I am in support of SB 743. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi, good morning. My name is Ines Ruiz and I am from SOMOS Mayfair, parent from Alum Rock School District from San Jose, and I am in support of SB 743.

Thank you.

Hi, good morning. My name is Christopher Wanis from the Latino Education Advancement Foundation in East San Jose, and I'm here in support of SB 743.

Good morning. Corina Herrera-Loera proud trustee of the Alum Rock Union Elementary School District, and I'm in support of SB 743.

Mercedes Carvajal, proud parent of Oak Grove School District in San Jose and I'm in support of SB 743.

Hello, my name is Sophia Diquattro and. I am a resident in Santa Clara County in support of SB 743.

Hi, good morning. I'm Juliette Duran. I am a nonprofit professional and resident of Santa Clara County. I support SB 743.

Hi, my name is Juan Carlos. I am and I am from SOMOS Mayfair and a student from Alum Rock School District, San Jose in San Jose. I am in supporting from SB 743. Thank you.

Hola, buenas tardes. Mi nombre es María Muñoz. Soy de SOMOS Mayfair. Soy mamá del distrito de Alum Rock. También vengo a apoyar la SB 743. Gracias.

Good morning. My name is Olivia Ortiz, I'm from SOMOS Mayfair. I'm also a parent of Alum Rock School District and I'm also parent of the East Side Union High School and. I'm here to support SB 743. Thank you.

Good morning. My name is Shelby Schoppet-Panzarini and I'm a parent in Santa Clara County and I'm here supporting SB 743.

Hi, my name is Jasmin Flores. I'm a credentialed teacher in Santa Clara County and I am in support of 743. Thank you.

Good morning. Danea Villegas-Pena, I'm a nonprofit manager and a resident of Santa Clara County and I am in support of SB 743. Thank you.

Good morning. My name is Chris Norwood. I'm the chair of the Santa Clara County School Boards Association Legislative Action Committee. board member for Metro Ed Silicon Valley Technical Education and board president for the Milpitas Unified School District. I'm in support of Senate Bill 743.

Good morning. Chris Ramirez, educator and parent of a middle schooler in high school in San Benito County and here in support.

Hi, my name is Dr. Cynthia Temesi, education advocate. I'm a resident in Monterey County and I'm in support of 743. Thank you.

Good morning. I'm Sofia Quintana and I'm an educator in Santa Clara County in support of SB 743.

Good morning. I'm Karina Solano and I'm an educator and also community leader in Santa Clara County and I'm here to support SB 743.

Good morning. I'm Sadra Shoaib, a parent from Alameda County and support for 743.

Good morning. I'm Sayam Moktan and I am a Santa Clara County resident and I'm in support of SB 743.

Good morning. I'm Tiffany Gao. I am a credentialed teacher in Santa Clara County and I'm in support of SB 743.

Good morning. My name is Derek Grasty. I'm an educator and board trustee, Mount Pleasant School District, and I'm in support of Senate Bill 743. Thank you.

Good morning. John Horner, Board President, Morgan Hill Unified School District and secretary of the Legislative Action Committee of the Santa Clara County School Board Association here in support of SB 743.

Good morning, all. My name is Gerardo Ixteyo Loera. I am a parent, an activist and resident of the east side of San Jose in Santa Clara County, and I am here in support of SB 743.

Good morning. Victor Vasquez, co Executive Director at SOMOS Mayfair, advocating here for East Side and Alum Rock School District, parents and students. We are strongly in support of SB 743. Thank you.

We're concluding support witnesses.

Good morning. Lisanna Dominguez, nonprofit executive here in support of SB 743. Thank you.

Good morning. Chris Rosa, on behalf of Silicon Valley Leadership Group in support.

Very much. Now we're going to move on to any witnesses in opposition to SB 743. Seeing none. We'll bring it back to the dais. Any comments or questions? Yes, Madam Vice Chair.

Thank you. I just want to thank you, Senator Cortese, for bringing this forward. I know how difficult it can be obviously to run a school district and to have these basic aid districts that need all of the support, and especially seeing the children here that we know are, you know, are certainly at the center of all of this. But just maybe you can address this in your close.

But given, you know, the vast sort of language in here and trying to figure out, you know, next steps. I think the analysis points out in their number seven that all school districts, all basic aid districts, excuse me, are sort of treated the same and obviously have varying fiscal sort of conditions. So if you would like to address that in the close or now how, you know, just to find out what your line of thinking is around that.

Yeah, thank you very much for the question. Appreciate it. And I mean that's the one area I think that we have some additional work to do to try to create a mechanism in the, in the bill to deal with what's kind of been coined as basic aid nuance in the bill. And it's just, it's not just in the bill, basic aid nuance in terms of funding.

So the biggest gap that we have overall in the state, at least that we're aware of and I'm aware of as the author, between non-basic aid districts and basic aid districts, you know, East Side Union High School District, for example, is about 14,000 per pupil when you break it down per pupil. Palo Alto across the way is 20 minutes away, is closing in on $30,000. I think their exact numbers is north of $27,000 per pupil. So almost double right now. And then that disparity exists throughout our county and in a lot of other places as well.

We have some areas where basically the schools are, the districts are all basic aid, but there are funding differences less significant than that. But there are funding differences between the basic aid schools. This bill is trying to attack, you know, what will end up being a long term way, a long term methodology, you know, that biggest gap first. So in the bill itself, it really speaks to closing the non-basic aid to basic aid gap first.

A fair question comes up under number seven is, okay, so you know, but then how do you, how do you equalize, in a sense, what's left? That's the way I think of it. And that would be this nuance between basic aid schools. So there needs to be a way to prioritize that. Again, what I'm referring to as a nuance between basic aid schools. So that that doesn't become the next sort of permanent funding gap. If there's a way to do that simultaneously or concurrently, you know, we can look at that as well.

But you know, after months and months of work on, on the bill, we were mostly focused on trying to create a trigger without interfering with Prop 13, without interfering with Prop 98, without interfering with Prop 218, without interfering with any other constitutional mandates.

And this would ultimately, the intent here is to ultimately come back with a constitutional amendment that locks this in, either put on the ballot by the Legislature or put on as a citizen referendum. It's a huge commitment in Silicon Valley to, to run that campaign. Obviously, I won't get into the details of that here in a legislative building, but that's the goal. So I think it's important, before that day comes, to figure out how to close that basic aid nuance gap.

And, and one of our colleagues has had a long discussion with me about that because, you know, because of geographic, that, that, those geographic differences where the biggest problem isn't non-basic aid schools, you know, like we see in some other areas. So it has to be addressed.

We'll keep working on that and I expect folks will ask me along the way, how did you resolve that, that issue? And if you can give us that opportunity, we'll keep working on it. But we think we've come up with a really excellent formula that's triggered in the same fashion, as you're very aware of our budget this year. You're right on top of that.

And you know how our Prop 98 Reserve, not Prop 98, but the Prop 98 Reserve shows up in the budget this year because of triggers that establish that. That trigger is the identical trigger in the 2025 base budget that would start putting money into this reserve account. But to get to $34 billion just to close the basic aid versus non-basic aid gap is going to require creating in effect an endowment fund that is probably $100 billion.

So that money, as invested in our investment pool, throws off, you know, the kind of, the kind of percentages that are actually going to start closing the biggest gap and hopefully all these gaps. No intention to leave anyone, any district behind here. The idea is ultimately that we have across the board equitable funding. That's the intention.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Senator Cortese. And I'm so glad you brought LAO because I really wanted to nerd out on a couple things. First, because first the overall architecture and the design of the bill I think in our conversation described it was clever, elegant.

I really think there's a lot of thoughtful work that's been done to put together something smart. I'm trying to understand just the, you know, the way the issue's been framed up. And I've been working on this myself for 30 plus years. I'm not Serrano age, but still for a while.

But the way it's been framed up is that the state somehow been contributing to the gap. And so I wonder if you can sort of go over. So we've, we've, we've increased the state's investment in, in K-12 by a large amount over the last several years. But we.

For basic aid districts subject to the revenue limit, along with LCFF, you know, sending most of that money out through that process, as opposed to categoricals for which basic aid districts might be eligible. What share of the, of the substantial state investment that we've been making over the last several years or decade has been going to basic aid districts in the first place?

Thank you, Senator. So I can start with maybe the very short history lesson on Serrano and then get to that question. Prior to the 1970s, school districts were funded primarily based on their property taxes. So district governing boards determine the local property tax rate. And each district's budget was just what is that rate and what is the assessed value of the properties and their, their district. John Serrano was the parent of a student who sued the state over that system.

And the court ultimately agreed with the lawsuit that that system, a student's education was shaped too much by the assessed values of the properties in that district and that was a violation of our equal protection clause. Supreme Court agreed, California Supreme Court and so ordered the Legislature to come up with a new system.

And the Legislature responded with equalization, which was the idea of providing more General Fund to level up those districts that were at the lower end of that spectrum. But the ruling didn't really address the other end. What about the districts around the very high end of that spectrum? And so the court never really addressed that.

And we continue today to have roughly 12% of districts in the state that receive property tax revenue above and beyond what the Local Control Funding Formula would provide for them. The average or the median I think is 6,600 per student. In some cases, like you heard from the witnesses that are in your staff analysis, it's a much larger gap.

But as far as the kind of the impact of the other investments, the amount of sort of the difference between the districts depends on how quickly property tax revenues are growing compared with how quickly the Local Control Funding Formula is growing. Property taxes on average historically have grown around 6% a year.

The Local Control Funding Formula typically is growing more slowly. I would say the average cost of living adjustment over the past few decades has been around 3% a year. So the differences have been getting larger. They did shrink a little bit in 2021 and 22-23 because the state provided such large cost of living adjustments.

Really increased Local Control Funding Formula. That was something that provided a really large increase to the non-basic aid districts, close that gap between basic aid and non-basic aid districts. But that's not, that wasn't the case, for example, in 24-25, 1% COLA that year, likely to be a lower COLA in 25-26. And so then the gap starts to grow again. So it's, the exact size of the gap changes every year. And it really depends on how quickly our property tax revenue is growing and how quickly is the state increasing its funding formula across the board.

Okay, that's not nerdy enough. What I mean is the question, so if we were to deploy $1.0 billion more in next year, just without distinguishing, as this bill does, between basic aid and non-basic. We just, okay, we're going to push out $1.0 billion and it's going to go out through LCFF and the revenue limits. Because of what you just described, it seems to me like very little of that money would be going to basic aid districts under our current financing system. Am I missing?

You're correct about that. So basic aid districts do benefit from some categorical programs. They benefit from funding for special education, school meals, programs like that on top of their regular funding from property taxes. But that's a much smaller share of their budgets.

And so when the Legislature provides a larger COLA, they're only receiving a very small share of that. If you really wanted to target specifically to non-basic aid districts, probably the most efficient approach is to just increase the Local Control Funding Formula and not increase those categorical programs. Then you end up with all of the money going to non-basic aid districts.

Okay, all right. Okay. That's what I thought. LCFF was, part of the design theory behind LCFF was that it was fundamentally, at its core an equalization program already. So, so that's the part I'm trying to understand because for me, it's a...

The challenge is I represent quite a few basic aid districts, some of which are, you know, very wealthy districts, many of which are just rural, declining enrollment districts. You know, they're not morally billionaires or anything like that. They're just, the people are not, they're not, they don't have as many kids. People are not. They're moving out. And so they are in this basic aid yo-yo, you know, where, you know, a district might be in basic aid this year, next year, no, and then back again, whatever.

So they're so, so I'm more careful than I might have been when I used to work for a Los Angeles Legislator in thinking about basic aid districts as sort of all, you know, the kind of rich districts that need to be kept down so that we can only, only equalize. I've been trying to understand what the actual nuance is.

And so the challenge for me is supporting a framework that sort of declares that, even though the financing system already accomplishes that approach to equalization for the most part. Obviously when we adopt categoricals and we put them outside of the revolution limit and outside of LCFF, which I don't think we should do, but when we do do that, it does provide additional dollars to basic aid districts, that's really on the margin.

So here we're saying basic aid districts are just sort of categorically ineligible with sort of a moral undertone to it. That's problematic for me. So I'm struggling with just that, that dimension of it. And the districts that I represent, some of which I say are wealthy, but some of which are just grappling with, with declining enrollment and they need, they need support.

And if we're going to be putting $1.0 billion a year or whatever into a special account with the legal determination at the outset they will never be eligible for that, or at least if they are yo-yoing the wrong year that year. It's, that's hard for me to grapple with. So I'm trying to.

And we've talked about this at great length, and I understand, and I understand. I really appreciate the author's leadership on the series, but that's the hard part for me is understanding what, why, what it will be different when really in terms of who's getting what funding given LCFF and the revenue limits. And then secondarily, what we're saying to basic aid districts that are in this space, that are not super wealthy about the, about whether we see them or value them at all and whether their kids matter too.

If I can, through the Chair, if I can respond a little bit to the same question. And I don't mean to critique the LAO, but I think even that was an oversimplification of what has really happened since Prop 13. I'm somebody who was actually voting at that time. Prop 13 came into an area like East Side Union.

In many areas in the state which were largely agricultural, probably areas in your district as well. In an effect initially there was a funding formula embedded in, at that time in, in that referendum which we, because it's politically completely, for all intents purposes impossible to go back and rewrite Prop 13. It's not going to happen.

People have tried to open it up and that's a big failure. You can't get back to what happened then, which was basically a snapshot of, of low property tax areas versus higher property tax areas that, that established, that established a permanent funding standard going forward. And we heard about Serrano, we heard about these other things, including LCFF.

The state's not responsible for creating the, the bad formula in Prop 13, nor do I think it was intentional redlining like many other things that happened back in those days or before those days. I think it was just a really bad formula. It didn't take into account that prune orchards and apricot orchards and pear orchards that were in places like what is now Silicon Valley at that time were suddenly going to become some of the most wealthy property tax base areas in the entire state. And that's exactly what's going on here.

But the state, then where the state became a problem in this is the state came forward with LCFF and said, you know, we're going to conflate these low wealth districts, meaning the ones that got shorted from the very beginning of Prop 13. We're going to conflate those, that terminology with low income students. We're going to say, where LCFF came along legislatively and said we'll fix this, we'll equalize this. Show us your poorest students. Show us this.

The Legislature gave a formula that doesn't take into account that non-basic aid districts are not entirely composed of low or below median income students or students who would otherwise qualify a superintendent like this to go in and get equal funding. He can never get equal funding through the LCFF program. That is a creature of state government.

We've created a formula that can't close that gap. It can't. And I would, I would, I would dare anybody to show me how it happens. And I'll give you an example in my own district, in this superintendent's district that illustrates the point. The wealthiest zip code and one of the wealthiest in the state. One of them, okay.

One of the wealthiest districts in all of Silicon Valley and all of Santa Clara County is 95138. It used to be graze land at the time of Prop 13. Not even producing crops, graze land. Extraordinary, Williamstown, a land extraordinary low tax base. It is now the Silver Creek Country Club.

The Silver Creek Country Club has no students that are going to qualify this superintendent for more LCFF money. It's a massive sprawling population of families. Those situations exist, not just in my district or our city or our county, but all over the state. So that this isn't just about creating a form at the state level that lifts up low wealth families or, well, low wealth students. Somehow you have to go back to the, to the root of the formula, this antiquated formula, and say that can't happen anymore.

You can't have a district that's had some of the most aggressive economic development in the state producing only $14,000 per student. That is, that's a formula problem that's locked into the constitution of the State of California. LCFF doesn't close it.

So we're trying to go back to the constitution, say fine, leave that all alone, leave LCFF alone, leave Prop 13 alone, leave Prop 98 alone. And Prop 98 and LCFF to some extent functions analogously to if we gave all men and all women a bump on wages in the State of California, would there be equalization? No, women would still be behind. And that's kind of what we do. We raise minimum wages, we raise living wages, and women still stay behind because we've done nothing so far to try to steer that population up to catch up.

And the only way you can do that with certainty, besides a bill, would be, you know, to guarantee in the Constitution, at least initially, that these, these non-basic aid schools receive funding from somewhere. General Fund is, I think, the only place that we can get it to start, to start equalizing them. It took us 45 years to get in this hole. Based on my calculations, if you start putting money in a reserve account, it'll start catching things up. It'll take another 40 years to actually get it caught up.

And meanwhile we need to deal with this nuance about, that you described, about basic aid schools that are in effect in certain years or for certain periods of time, showing up as if they're non-basic aid districts because of all these mistakes we've kind of made with funding up to this point, we need to fix that in the bill. Senator Gonzalez pointed out it's I think item number seven in the analysis. It's well pointed out by the Committee. By the way, I really appreciate the, the Chair's and the Committee's help with you know, working through this bill, as does my staff.

That's, that number seven is an area we need to work on especially if, you know, we get to the point either way of, of going to the Constitution, going to the voters to actually lock this in. Because we don't want to lock, we don't want to make that mistake again of coming in and locking in a piece of the education community, even if it's a subset, as unequal. That's absolutely not the intent, and it's up to me to help.

It's up to me really as the author to figure out how to close that last gap. But I want to acknowledge it and say you're absolutely right about that. Senator Gonzalez is absolutely right about that. It's first Committee. We need to figure out before we're done how to fix it. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you. And I know how hard you're working on this, how passionate it is, how important the issue is. We used to have an equalization categorical for both K-12 and for community colleges that went away with both the weighted student formula for community colleges and with the creation of LCFF.

But the revenue limit, the kind of the, I don't have, I can't get the bucket graphic out of my mind. But under LCFF, high property tax districts are already not getting new dollars. So there's all, equalization is baked in to the LCFF funding system. And so Calistoga is a great example in my district. Everyone thinks about Calistoga as wine and a spa. But its people are not wealthy, but they are in the district with high levels of property wealth.

So under LCFF's student based formulas, as you're describing, the LCFF sees to a point, sees that it's a low income English learner community with lots of needs. But the revenue limit component of LCFF says but you're not getting any more money because you're basic aid. That's how it's supposed to work. It should work that way.

That's how we've designed the system. But that's exactly what equalization is supposed to do that this, so as we as, I hope, I don't know if I can support the bill, but I hope it does move forward because this is an important conversation to have. But I do think, you know, teasing out how equalization already works in that system and what the needs of those kinds of districts are is going to be important.

And LAO's kind of description of this process I think is one that we all, we should all, you know, dive a little deeper because it is both the yo-yo districts, but it was also fundamentally that we have a system that is intended, at least right now, to, to, to achieve equalization only in that one sided way as you described.

We have never had a state policy to try to bring down the top, only to bring up the bottom. While the top is just, you know, as you say, it's just, you know, districts are getting, some of the wealthy districts are getting super, you know, extremely wealthy. But we've never had a strategy on this. This bill doesn't, doesn't pretend to try to address that piece of it. It's continuing to work on lifting up all the other boats, which I think is commendable and admirable.

But we do need to figure out how to make sure that we're not cutting off communities from any resources that need them and not double solving the same problem with two equalization mechanisms at the same time. Appreciate your work on it, Senator.

So understood, and happy to take on the challenge. You know, obviously it's a big challenge, but we could use your help moving the bill forward and certainly use your expertise moving the policy forward and making whatever amendments we need to make to get this as close to exactly right as possible. We're close now.

Thank you, Senator Cortese. And I know I'm late to the discussion that was happening, but want to reiterate I think some of the points that both Senator Cabaldon and Senator Gonzalez has made already. You know, I think I share with you this concern that our schools are not funded adequately and we haven't funded our schools adequately for a long time. And I think that's the real heart of the issue that you're trying to get at.

Prop 98 was supposed to be a floor, not a ceiling. But it's been treated as a ceiling for some time, and that's created, you know, challenges. But we know that not all basic aid districts are built the same. And so I really want to underscore that. I'll be supporting the bill, but I do want to encourage you to continue working with staff on this.

I do think that this is a bill that does need more work on It, I think Senator Cabaldon raised some really excellent points in his talking points. Would encourage you to reach out to him as well. I worked on the LCFF, actually, a very long time ago.

It was one of the first jobs that I had with the California Endowment when it was being pitched. And you know, I recognize for now, goodness gracious, every 15 years or 10 years from when it was first implemented. So you know, I think it's healthy to have conversations about revisiting these policies, what have been some of the outcomes and, you know, how can we improve them.

I think that those are good conversations to have, but so want to be really mindful here of what we're doing and the impacts that this could have on the rest of the formula. So once again, encourage you to talk to staff and you know, they'll be here to support you in meeting your goals ultimately.

Appreciate that very much. And this Committee staff's already been enormously helpful, and we appreciate it. And, you know, as have folks externally, and we're going to need more. You know, we've been a little bit Santa Clara County centric so far in terms of, you know, gathering information and analyzing things.

But we also have a tremendous boost of support there, as I mentioned earlier, to help us, you know, get through, if we can get this right, address the issues that you have raised here. Obviously, the ultimate goal with this is not just legislation, a Governor's signature, but to have a companion constitutional amendment. And one of as bad rap and maybe in some areas justifiably so as our Silicon Valley wealthiest have right now.

And, and you know, philanthropy does occur there, and the philanthropists who have been supporting education are kind of at their wit's end of having to put one time money in, philanthropy money, write big checks, really big checks to try to close this gap, which is not a solution.

It wouldn't be a solution for the state to use one time money either each year to try to close these gaps in. You know, some of the wealthiest folks, entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley are saying why don't we just fund a campaign to close this gap systemically instead of us having to, you know, to raise money every year to put a band aid on it.

So that's what's behind so much Santa Clara County interest as well as the grassroots interest that you heard today. Parent, you know, parents and families coming forwards, obviously, you know, kind of using that old saying, we're not going to take it anymore.

We don't think our students are any less deserving of $27,000 a year than the Palo Alto kids. And we're going to speak up and we're going to make that happen. And we want to be part of a campaign to make that happen. So it's exciting to be involved with that for me. But it's also a big challenge to try to close these last policy issues, and be very grateful for the continuing support of your Committee staff and yourself.

Excellent.

Thank you.

Well, thank you, Senator Cortese.

I don't need to close again either, by the way.

Okay, yes. And do we have a motion? So we have a motion by Senator Gonzalez, and the motion for the bill is do pass to Senate Appropriations Committee. Can you please call the roll?

This is file item 10, SB 743, Cortese. [Roll Call]

And we will put that bill on call.

Thank you very much.

What are we moving to next? What have we gone through already? SB835. Okay, next up we have SB835 by Senator Ochoa Bogue. I'll go ahead and give folks a minute and Senator Ochoa Bogh to get up there. Once you're ready, we'll get started. What have we gone through already? Oh, yeah. Hey. Yeah, let's do that.

Before you get started, Senator Ochoa Bogh, I want to go ahead and do consultants. All of our bills on consent. So we have five bills on consent. Item number two, SB373. Item number three, SB374. Item number four, SB478. And item number six, SB568. And item number 12, SB619. Do we have a motion on the consent bills? So you have a motion by. I think that was Senator Gonzalez.

[Roll Call]

And we will keep that on call. Alrighty. Senator Ochoa Bohg, please begin when you're ready.

Good morning and thank you, Madam Chair and Members. I'd like to begin by thanking the Committee staff for working with my staff and the sponsor of the Bill. Senate Bill 835 will give Cambridge University's advanced academic curriculum the same standing in the Education Code as the other two internationally recognized providers of advanced academic programs for K12 schools.

Cambridge International Education is a globally recognized nonprofit provider of the Pre K through 12 Cambridge pathway, which includes college level advanced academic curriculum, teacher training and Support and end of course standardized assessments.

Colleges and universities in California and around the world have have acknowledged that incoming freshmen who have taken Cambridge programs in high school are prepared for the rigors of college coursework. Erasing the transition from high school and increasing success rate. Easing. I'm sorry. Easing the transition from high school and increasing success rates in higher education.

For the California school districts and students engaged in the rigorous and prestigious programs with Cambridge, the statutory recognition will provide parity with Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate programs. Joining me is Will Mynster, Principal of Troy High School in Fullerton and Matthew Kaye with Cambridge University Press and Assessment who can answer any technical questions you might have.

Thank you Madam Senator and Committee Members, my name is Matthew Kaye. I am head of Policy, Accountability and Partnership for Cambridge North America. And I'm proud to be here today and appreciate the opportunity to speak about our program.

We are part of the University of Cambridge and as an international organization, Cambridge serves over 10,000 schools in 160 countries and here in the United States over 700 schools across 20 states including and Washington D.C. currently the state statute, as it's written, steers schools toward two of the three large international providers of education.

Cambridge is one that is proud to partner with California schools, currently in five different school districts or local education agencies, including Fullerton, along with my partner here at Troy High School. Today and this year over 170,000 unique students throughout the United States are participating in our AS and A level qualification exams.

And that will include over 300,000 exams. So for the purposes of today, I'll serve as a technical expert. Proud to be here. But I also am joined by Principal Mynster who will speak a little bit more about the program in his school and how it serves his students and community.

Thank you very much Madam Chair Members. Troy High School is a school of 2,500 students serving the students of the Fuller Joint Union High School District. 70% of the students who come to Troy High School come because of the Troy Technology magnetic and the opportunity to take additional classes and programs.

40% of the students at Troy are socially and economically disadvantaged to SED and 80% ultimately of the Troy graduates throughout the entire school meet the A through g requirements and 99% go to college. Students at Troy High School have the opportunity to take Advanced Placement courses and we have 29 of them.

International Baccalaureate courses, 12 of them and Cambridge A Level courses, 11 and examinations. All these programs offer students opportunities to take college level work, earn college credit and go further in depth in subject areas that interest them for college and future careers.

In 2019, Troy High School saw the opportunity to improve our academics and discovered how we could incorporate the Cambridge A Level courses, AS Level courses as well into our academic offerings and provide more opportunities for our students. In 2019 and 20, Troy's teachers were trained for specific courses and began teaching the first of them in 2021.

Since the 2021 school year, the Cambridge A Level courses and examinations have been well received by our students and parents for their courses and the rigor that pushes the students to create and learn over a two year course sequence to complete the as and A level in Biology, Business, English, History, Media Studies, Computer Science, Physics, Design and Technology and Mathematics as well as Spanish and Global Perspectives which are AS courses.

Students also have the option to complete the Advanced International Certificate of Education, the ACE diploma. In 2024, the first class of 41 ACE diploma candidates graduated and in 2025 there are 47 ACE diploma candidates.

Troy values the rigor and quality of the college level curriculum along with the flexibility, opportunity and accessibility the Cambridge program offers our students which will encourage more students to be excited to take and succeed in college level courses.

For this reason, it is crucial that Cambridge be treated in the Education Code as the equal to both College Board AP courses and the International Baccalaureate Program. Thank you for your consideration.

Excellent. Thank you so much for your presentation. Do we have any other supporters that would like to speak? Please use the mic at the railing and state your name, organization and position on the bill.

Kevin Gordon, with Montebello Unified School District as well as the San Marcos Unified School District in San Diego County in support of the bill.

Thank you.

Good morning. Christina Marcellus, on behalf of the Small School Districts Association in support. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Now that we've heard from folks in support, is there any lead witnesses in opposition?

Monique Ramos, on behalf of Pearson here in a tweener position. We raised some concerns with the author late last week and she's been gracious enough to agree to continue to work with us as the bill moves through the process.

Okay. Any others in opposition? Any witnesses in opposition? All right, see that we don't have any opposition. We'll go ahead and move it back to Members. Senator Gonzalez.

Yes, thank you, Madam Chair. Question for the author. I know that there was a similar version last year. This version, from what I understand, it removes the CDE's oversight for them to review these private programs that want to be accredited for college credit. So why was it removed this year?

I don't have that as a requirement. I'm not sure if any of our wishes, witnesses or Mr. Gordon, do you have?

Yes, that actually was not in the bill that was carried by Senator Newman, but actually in a version of the bill a year before. And what it was is the idea that the Department of Ed might vet programs like this and do that oversight. It had a cost to it. The Department of Education never supported that bill.

I think it had just added bureaucracy. And then the other big issue was is that a major program like Cambridge, which is on par with the other two major programs, it was sort of like go through the whole exercise for one program. It just didn't make sense. So it was removed from legislation.

Okay. I guess my. Yeah, I can understand that in terms of the cost and the added bureaucracy and everything. But I guess my concern is just, you know, not having that additional oversight.

So if you've got, you know, additional private folks that are coming in to be able to seek that same codification, then, you know, we don't want it to just be a, you know, sort of an unregulated space for this, for this accreditation. So I'm going to lay off of the bill today.

I would like to continue discussing with you on how CDE could potentially come around in terms of a bit of oversight for these programs and then go from there. So I appreciate that.

Senator Cabaldon.

Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. So I appreciate that just following the line of this bill over time that you can easily see it attempts to try to skip the Appropriations Committee wherever possible.

But we're down to a bill that's is a little bit challenging partly for the the concerns that Senator Gonzalez raised, but maybe more into the opposite which is that the we have a permissive ED Code current right now.

So there's nothing that in fact school districts are doing this both the because the bill only does two things well maybe three if I add the snarky part--it allows this to be or it specifically names it as something that can be considered when evaluating principals at the school site.

It allows districts to pay for the fees, the Cambridge fees, which according to the analysis are higher than IB and AP. And then the snarky part is it basically puts a code section in. It's more or less an ad for Cambridge.

But the school districts already have the authority to pay the fees under the permissive ED Code and every other ever every other authorization that they have.

And because the existing law with respect to principal evaluations is including but not limited to AP, IB and a bunch of other stuff, nothing is preventing school districts from already considering Cambridge International Examinations when they are doing looking at academic growth appeal pupils for principal performance.

So on the one hand it makes me less worried about what Senator Gonzales was describing because there's nothing here that doesn't add anything.

But I'm also Pearson's comments are just a reminder that I'm concerned about being in position number where we are just the Legislature is itself kind of every year adding I imagine Pearson's asking you could you put us in there too and then somebody else will come next year with four more and we're not really--

We don't have the expertise to evaluate to evaluate that. And so the old version that had CD play a role or state board play a role to me made more sense.

The analysis sort of points back to apnip and when those were put in the code and analysis notes, you know, who could possibly know why they did that? Way back then during the Declaration of Independence, I was here and, and at that time AP and they were done separately.

So when AP was added in 1992, it was already the case that AP was almost universally accepted for credit by UC and CSU and most of the independent colleges in California.

So it was the law was just recognizing a decision that had already been made basically by higher ed and K12 and IB was not at it at that time because IB was not yet at that stage.

So when the Legislature came back a few years later and put International Baccalaureate in, it did so on the basis of, yes, it's been reviewed.

The faculty at UC and CSU and the community colleges have said yes, we consider this to be equivalent to AP and to some of these other elements, and the K12 communities are in the same place. This feels like, just based on the information, the analysis, we're still at a very nascent stage.

The number of school districts is still relatively small. I read a resolution from the community college academics in it that although they were interested, that they weren't ready yet to start granting credit. My understanding is UC grants credit for some, but not for all.

And so I'm trying to understand, really, where are we in the product cycle of Cambridge? I will say I'm not comfortable with the advertisement part at all. I don't. I just don't. We don't have enough background to say that that's appropriate. And I don't want the ED Code to be a sponsorship opportunity.

But in terms of the content, where are we in terms of, is it the up, the adoption, the uptake of Cambridge programs statewide and by the higher ed partners for which this academic growth metric is supposed to be a proxy.

So may I. Before I continue with our lead witnesses, let me just really quickly address the reason for wanting to be added to the Education Code, as our understanding goes, is that they would like to be included in the ED Code because right now, not having it in Ed Code actually gives a perception that this omission from the code is discouraging many to want to participate in the program and move forward with the program.

So it would give it a little bit of more credibility for students who actually want to take it. So that's my understanding, and then I'll let our lead witnesses continue with the more technical questions.

Thank you, Senator. To respond. A few different elements in there, just to address them kind of in isolation. In particular, Cambridge is currently, you know, we partner with schools.

We don't have quite the history in terms of volume that College Board does, but we do have schools and we have students and communities doing A levels. Those A levels are recognized at the University of California system. There's current apparatus already doing that. Cambridge courses are in the A through G course reference list.

And I think from our vantage point, at least in learning from our schools, this is kind of a binding together of already existing policies. So the current LCFF delineated priorities encourage schools to increase as much as possible the percentage of students completing A through G pathways. Cambridge courses are in the A through G pathway.

They are kind of working students toward admissions recognitions at the UC system, CSU. So we have students sending transcripts off to California colleges and universities. We've got schools serving them to their students and families. There is demand at the ground level within schools.

So for us, this type of thing is really just a matter of making sure that it's recognized with equality, as it already is in several other instances within California code. In terms of the, you know, we certainly don't see it as an ad. So for us, it's more of a explicit inclusion that the state has already determined.

These are priorities. The state wants A through G pathways to be happening for students. Cambridge is a part of that A through G pathway. And in terms of communicating to schools with Fidelity and with full, full transparency of opportunities, inclusion of Cambridge alongside other providers would simply kind of bind that back together.

So, you know, that, that would just kind of be, I think, the response to the, the way in which we're asking for schools to, or when schools ask us, you know, how does Cambridge fit within? It's like, well, we already are well within the landscape.

It's just a matter of making sure that it's explicit across the different elements of the California education landscape.

I do have one comment, if I may add it to what he just stated, and I think his backs are great. The one thing that we're seeing at Troy and with our students is the Cambridge A levels and AAS levels. Examinations have been recognized for many years. I think 1840s, 1850s they began.

And so colleges and universities are used to seeing them from students from other countries, but they're not used to seeing them from students in California while they will be giving credit to students from Singapore or Great Britain or from wherever they may be for the same classes that we're offering.

I think the approach sometimes is a little different in terms of looking at or who's evaluating the transcripts of students from California versus students from someplace else. And I know when I've had conversations with admissions officers from our schools throughout our state that I've been fortunate to be part of some of these meetings.

They all have tremendous value for the program. But sometimes I do wonder when there's the exclusion of Cambridge when it goes out and mentions the AP and the ib, that perhaps the recognition of the value of the program but then when they're looking at California students, they're not looking at it the same way.

And that's where for me, that's why I've been back here the second time, to support something, to go along those lines and put them in with the APE and with the ib.

Yeah. And Madam Chair, if I just might, I appreciate the background. Where I struggle still is that because I understand what you're trying to do, but the flow to me should be in the opposite direction.

Like the educators, broad based across the state from higher ed and from K12 should be coming to the state board, the CD and to us saying this is what we value and therefore here's a problem why we can't use it, as opposed to us saying based on a 20 minute hearing that we are, we believe like we're validating, recommending, we're setting the standard here.

All the things that you said, which I appreciate, but I don't feel like I have enough knowledge on the ground or in the classroom to be able to say or in the admissions office to say, yeah, this is this. Yep, this, you should, everybody should be looking at this. So that's the, that's the challenge for me.

I'm still thinking about it. Look forward to the rest of the conversation in the, in the Committee about, about today.

But I think for the, on the, on the last piece of it, the section three of the Bill with the sort of the AD part and the, you know, and school district, don't forget you have the legal authority to pay the fee that I would have a very hard time voting for this on the floor if it continued to have that provision in, in it because the, the we don't, that's not necessary legally and it is trying, it's tipping the balance on the, on the school district's budgeting and other decisions that we, that we don't need to.

So I continue to have concerns about the overall piece, but I'm open to the idea, looking forward to the discussion. But on that Section 3, even if the Bill comes out of the Committee today with my support, I would be unlikely to be able to vote for the Bill on the floor with that section in it. Madam Chair, thank you.

Were there any. Senator Choi?

Thank you, Chair. And thank you, Senator Ochoa Bogh, for bringing up this new idea of Cambridge International Education Program. And I am just curious. I'm not familiar with this new program other than AP programs and IB programs. And then I happen to know the Troy High School in Fullerton is in my district.

I think Geographically I don't know what Fullerton is. So the reputation of the school is academically excellent. I know that. And you have implemented that program already. My curiosity is that I know students take AP classes or IB classes because that's widely recognized by the college admission.

And reputable colleges prefer students who have taken such classes and through AP classes when they score high than they raised the chance to be admitted to good schools. And since we do have such recognized reputable programs, there's a new Cambridge International Education program. How they are different from AP's or IBS?