Assembly Budget Subcommittee No. 3 on Education Finance

Good morning everybody. Welcome to our Assembly Budget Subcommitee No. 3 on Education Finance. Good morning to you all. Assemblymember David Alvarez, Chair of the Committee and I welcome you all here today.

Today we have a few items from the Department of Education, some proposals from the January budget as it relates to literacy, curricula and nutrition. As themes, my questions are focused on two things really primarily how can we support system coherence and how are we evaluating the impact of our investments?

To the extent that the presenters can provide context on these two specific questions, I'd appreciate that in advance. Otherwise I'm sure we'll exchange in that with the question and answer period. Appreciate you all being here.

So we'll ask the first panel on issue one, curriculum frameworks standards and instructional materials study. This is a proposal in the Governor's budget for a study of the California's curriculum adoption process.

So I'd ask the Department of Finance to please kick us off with the proposal itself and then the Legislative Analyst provides some feedback followed by the Department of Education if there are any comments from the departments. So welcome. Good morning. Department of Finance, please begin.

Good Morning Chair. Hugo Solis Galeana with the Department of Finance. I'll be providing an overview of the Governor's budget proposal, relating to the curriculum framework standards and instruction materials process.

The Governor's budget proposes one million dollars one-time Prop. 98 general fund for the Superintendent of Public Instruction to allocate to a county Office of Education to contract with one or more research or nonprofit organizations to study the processes by which other states develop curriculum frameworks, instructional guidance, professional development and instructional resources, and how they evaluate the extent to which they support the teaching and learning of state content standards.

The selected entity will provide a report to the legislature and Finance, among others, that will include the findings, a summary of the processes that inform curriculum guidance, and recommendations for how to improve and streamline California's curriculum guidance process by January 1, 2027.

Moving on, the Governor's budget also includes $250,000 one-time non-Proposition 98 general fund to develop supplemental guidance for ELA/ELD that complements the ELA/ELD follow up adoption.

Funds are available for the Superintendent of Public Instruction to select the county Office of Education subject to the approval of the Executive Director of the State Board to partner with one or more research organizations, institutes of higher education or other nonprofits with expertise in evidence-based literacy instruction to develop guidance to support the follow up adoption and subsequent implementation of English Language Arts/English Language Development instructional materials by the Instructional Quality Commission and the State Board of Education.

That concludes my remarks, but I'm happy to answer questions at the appropriate time.

Thank you. Does the Legislative Analyst's Office have comments?

Good morning, Mr. Chair, Members. Dylan Hawksworth-Lutzow with the LAO. We don't have any comments or concerns at this time, but we're here to answer questions.

Thank you. Department of Education.

Good Morning Chair Alvarez and Members of the Committee. Mike Torres, Director of the Curriculum Frameworks and Instructional Resources Division on behalf of State Superintendent Public of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond. I apologize about my voice this morning. Big surprise.

There is currently no cycle of regular update and legislation pertaining to content standards and and curriculum frameworks. It requires an act of legislation and an appropriation of funds, the legislature in order to begin the process of updating standards and require so-- Excuse me, seem to have turned my page.

The CDE most definitely sees the worth of implementing a predictable and adaptable schedule of review and update for content standards frameworks and the adoption of instructional materials as the current process does result in guidance that can be wildly out of date.

As an example, the most current history social science standards were adopted in 1998, making them 27 years old. Any contractor hired to write standards or framework generally requires at least nine months to write a first draft, which is then followed up with meetings with review panels made up of current educators where multiple edits are given.

This necessitates further rounds of writing and draft production, which can take many months. And publishers and content developers have told us repeatedly that they need a minimum of 18 to 24 months to complete a quality program set of textbooks to participate in an adoption.

So this proposed study represents a great opportunity for the state to learn from what other states are doing. CDE would like to learn about the processes that other states go through when they perform an update to their standards and curriculum frameworks guidance and undergo their local instructional materials adoptions.

We feel that it may be informative to our process to learn about what other states do and may highlight these opportunities to streamline our own processes.

So with that said, it does take a very long time for us to carefully and thoughtfully create such important and impactful educational policy documents in an open and transparent manner, and it will be wonderful to hear about what other states do to continue to ensure that transparency.

Finally, the CDE would like to learn from this process how other states are able to incorporate sufficient time for publishers to incorporate the state guidance into the writing of their material.

So, as mentioned before, we give about 18 to 24 months to publishers to create their programs and it'll be nice to hear about what other states do to help expedite that. CDE staff would embrace consistency with an eight year cycle or less for standards and framework development and ultimately the instructional materials adoption.

This reliable schedule would also ensure and inform local adoption processes. Another goal that CDE has from this report would be to receive recommendations on how to increase educator participation in the process, specifically classroom teachers. Rightfully so, current Ed Code requires that classroom educators must be a majority of the participants in the update or adoption process.

However, we all know that teachers have a lot of responsibilities already on their plates and we've struggled in our processes in attracting and retaining teachers to conduct the intensive summer long review of instructional material programs, and we'd love to learn about how other states do that.

Current language does not include requiring the contractor to interview the CDE, the IQC, or the State Board of Education staff who are intimately involved with current processes. Rather, the language asks the researcher to find out what other states do.

It would be great for the independent contractor to have great familiarity with current California Education Code and regulations and the reasoning behind those regulations and the Education Code as they're currently written. Those are all the comments that I have. Happy to answer any questions.

Thank you very much. I'm going to ask some questions that are probably quite basic because this was an item that was maybe more eye opening than anything for me learning about the lack of adoption of new curriculum. Department of Education gave an example. I think it was history, social science 1989-- 98 was that year.

Is that the oldest or least recent adoption of new curriculum?

So that's the least recent adoption of state standards.

Right. What is the most recent adoption?

The most recent instructional materials adoption is undergoing right now is the 2025 Mathematics Adoption.

Is mathematics done on a more regular basis?

No, it is not. So it also follows that eight year cycle.

Eight year cycle. Okay, so I'm trying to understand if there is a-- I heard there's a cycle, but then some have not been done for a few years. So are some required to be in a cycle and others are not?

So that's a great question. So the way Education Code is written is that instructional materials may be submitted for review to the State Board at least once, but not more than twice every eight years.

And it's submitted by whom?

By publishers and content developers.

So no publisher, content developer of history, has submitted requests for review since 1998.

So those are the standards. So there's the three pieces here. There's the standards, there's the curriculum frameworks which provides that guidance on how to teach to those standards. And then there's the instructional materials which are then aligned to the framework and the standards. So three different elements. Each takes about two to three years.

And the study is to review all of the elements?

The study is to review all three elements.

Okay. And there's nothing that is already sufficiently obvious that we should be doing this more frequently. Like a 1998 last revision of that standards?

Of the standards. There have been multiple attempts over the past several years to put a legislation forward because it requires an act of legislation to update standards.

Okay. And that has not been successful for, in your opinion and I'll ask others, what reason?

I can't speak for why the bills pass or fail.

Okay. Was the department in support of that legislation?

I believe the department has typically been in support of updating standards.

Does the LAO have comments on the lack of progress on legislative attempts to update standards? Any assessment that you can provide?

No specific comments or assessment. I think I would just note in terms of when we have updated recently, it's been more of other external actions being taken. So for example, when the Common Core standards were established, there was federal-- there was an incentive for the state to adopt those as well.

So that's when the state chose to adopt those standards. And then subsequently the next generation science standards were adopted as well. So that's been when the state has sort of taken action to go ahead and update at least the standards portion of it.

So when we've had to, not because we thought it was needed. Department of Finance, do you have any thoughts on why there haven't been administrative proposals to update standards?

Amber Alexander with the Department of Finance. I think what we have seen most recently with regards to updates have been specific to the framework, often requiring the Instructional Quality Commission to consider a particular topic when frameworks are next revised.

To the point made by the CDE, to the extent that there's a desire to update the standards that would require legislation, I'm not aware of legislation, at least in recent years that has focused on curriculum standard update with regards to history, social science, most of the legislation that has come through recently has been specific to the frameworks.

And look, I'm not looking to venture into space that I'm not an expert in, but don't we want to update standards on a more regular basis for those who are using those state standards to then create curriculum? And I mean, certainly going on 30 years in the case of history, a lot has happened since then.

It's not a rhetorical-- I mean sort of rhetorical question. That's just-- it's just surprising I guess, this item is surprising. What do we expect to learn from studying other states? I mean, don't we-- We all are in different spaces. We learn about different things. We go to conferences, we hear about how other states do other things.

Why does it take a study in order for us to figure out what other states are doing that might work better than what we're doing? And I guess maybe that starts with the proposals from the administration. So start with that.

Hugo Solis Galeana with the Department of Finance. One of the things that the report is seeking to do is see exactly where we could take from other states.

So applying what we know, everything that we know about our process and then seeing from different states, just how can we improve specific portions of it so that we can ideally streamline and improve our own process--

And we can't do that through asking, reading about what they do. LAO often provides examples of what others are doing. I think we sometimes provide-- there's proposals to say we should do this this particular way because it's done better in other states.

I'm just-- Is it just really just to learn? We think as a result of this, then we're going to come up with a better alternative to do this? I'm really just curious as to what the outcomes are, the expectation of the outcomes are from the proposal.

Well, in terms of the impact that we hope the study will have, the administration will look at the study's findings and determine potential potential actions after its delivery. But again, we're waiting on the study itself.

And how long would you think this study would take? Is it the 18 to 24 months? I might have taken that out of context from what CDE mentioned.

The study will be delivered by January 1, 2027.

Okay, so yeah, 18 months. I know the LAO had no comments in there, but do you have any additional context to the questions that I've asked about this approach or use these funds to do this? What else we should expect from if this were to move forward as a proposal?

Edgar Cabral with the LAO. Yeah, I mean I think the questions you're raising I think are ones that we think makes sense for in terms of before agreeing to spend a million dollars on a study to understand what are the key goals and what are the key issues. I think, for example, I think, Chair, the issues you raised are more about just what is the frequency.

But I think my understanding of what some of the goal is more about the process. Our process is, you know, other states, for example, don't necessarily have the curriculum framework process that's building where the instructional materials are built off of the curriculum framework process. There's other different approaches.

Some states have more local adoptions as opposed to state adoption. So I think being very clear about what are the goals of the-- what specifically we want to find out would be important. It can be-- because it's really, as Dr. Torres mentioned, it's almost like three processes that we're talking about here.

And so what exactly are we trying to get out of each of them?

I'm still not fully understanding. So I'm going to turn on someone with more expertise, a board member. Dr. Patel. Please help illuminate.

Yeah, it seems like-- Thank you for bringing this presentation forward. Sorry I missed the beginning part of it. But staff's documents are great and it really helps us prepare.

So I think, just to help clarify and set the table a little bit better, can you give some examples of the types of things we look at when we're talking about standards versus frameworks versus actual materials? In my head, it's kind of like bylaws, which maybe don't change a lot, versus procedures or rules, right?

And then kind of more going into the bills that we would pass would be the materials. So it seems like that may be an effective way to frame it. But can you give some examples of what that might be?

I'd be happy to give some examples. So not specifically from standards, but just wild examples. So let's say a standard says a student needs to know how to multiply two numbers together. So that's the what, the how is from the curriculum framework. The curriculum framework says to teachers and textbook manufacturers, here's how you can do that.

You can line up the numbers on top of each other. You can use algorithms, you can have students use blocks and manipulatives. You can have students complete worksheets, you can have students watch videos. And that's the how, you're going to teach how to multiply.

And so that then gives the guidance to the teachers and the textbook manufacturers on what ends up on the pages of the textbooks or what actually ends up in the hands of students and educators related to what it is we want them to learn.

So from that tiered structure, it seems like standards, while they may not change every two or three or four years, maybe 20-30 years, is a long time to see a set of standards.

That I think is a valid concern from my Chair, that maybe it is worth addressing it and I think it helps when we lay the table out that way. The standard may be critical thinking, right? And then, you know, to your example, the curriculum may be reading comprehension will be the way we get to critical thinking.

And then the materials are what passages, what books we're going to adopt, et cetera. When we look at what other states are doing, do we even know which states we're going to look at? Because I think as California leads the way in certain aspects of public education, we do consider our values when we look at how we build our processes around public education.

Many states may not be doing things the same way we would like to do. And of course, there are states that are probably doing a great job. Their funding structure is, of course, very different than ours.

So when we're considering-- Do we have a set of parameters that we're considering when we're putting forth this study before jumping in and fully funding a study, have we already come up with what that set of-- what that study is going to examine, the goals, et cetera, as brought up before, or is that going to be part of developing the study?

Is that included in the funding of the study?

So in terms of the specific criteria that the study will look at, we have general points in terms of specific states. That's not-- We don't have anything written into statute about that. But the study will focus on evaluating successes in relation to how other states support educators in implementing the content standards through the various processes.

And is it going to take into account how districts purchase curriculum as well and how funding sources are distributed? For example and the reason why LCFF matters to me in this particular context is when we do adopt new curriculums and new materials, faculty staff have to go through training.

And that training comes from some budget somewhere, right? We have to fund that. And oftentimes it comes from negotiated professional growth days. And that is directly tied to our funding formula and what districts have available to them if it's not directly put in the budget for all districts, not through an equity grant program.

So are we considering that when we look at processes, or is that too, is that the step two that comes after we understand what other states are doing?

We have included in the language that they'll look at professional development, things like that, in terms of specifics, that would be in a subsequent step.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'd like to follow up with my colleagues. So first of all, is this study at the request of the State Board of Education.

I'm not sure if you're referring to-- Is the proposal included at their request? This is a proposal from the administration, and to the extent that the State Board is part of the administration, they have had some input on the proposal, yes.

Okay, so is it safe to assume that the State Board of Education is in support of this proposal then?

Yes, they have been consulted in the drafting, and we'll continue to collaborate with them as we move towards the May Revision too, to the extent there's any changes that they would like to see.

Okay. I apologize for being late, and maybe this is covered, but what was the genesis of this request for this proposal?

I think over the years, recently, you've seen a consistent trend with some of the framework and instructional materials adoptions that have gone before the State Board, both in terms of it being a lengthier process, there being more public involvement, more public comments to sort through, and it did lead to questions about whether the process could be made more efficient.

And to further examine that, we feel that looking at what other states may do will help to inform any changes we may choose to make in California.

Okay. I mean, I guess what I'm trying to get at, you know, especially given that we're in, you know, proposed budget cutting modes and we don't like to throw around a million dollars here or there for studies, you know, if we can avoid it. Whose idea is this?

This is a proposal from the administration, and it's included in the Governor's budget. So in terms of who's putting forward the proposal, it would be the administration on behalf of the governor.

Is the chair, Linda Darling-Hammond, in support of this proposal?

I'm not able to speak for Dr. Darling-Hammond specifically, but I can again say that the State Board Education staff was consulted in drafting, and any further input they have on the proposal, we would be working with them to incorporate in the May Revision.

Okay. All right, thank you.

Thank you. Yeah. Just to wrap up the comment, I think you hear the theme of the questions. I want to thank Dr. Patel for really outlining, crystallizing a little bit better sort of, you know, the three different things involved with this.

And I think it's not entirely clear to me what is going to get accomplished. Certainly standards, you know, potentially those could go longer. Maybe 30 years is too long, maybe it's not. But if everything else is taking a long time, frameworks and curriculum adoption and materials, and that certainly is a problem.

And I guess I, at the moment, am not entirely sure what the goal is of the proposal in terms of-- I'm all for streamlining, and we can find ways to streamline, excellent.

But not entirely sure in which ways the proposal is going to achieve results that we currently can't achieve for some reason under the existing system that we have in place, which at least we're looking at doing something differently because it clearly isn't working. So appreciative of that.

But I think you've heard the input, I think you heard the questions. Hopefully in the May Revise we see something that reflects that. So appreciate all of you. We'll hold the issue open and we will move on to issue number two, the state literacy network.

Panel will hear the Governor's budget proposal to add a literacy network to the state system of support. We will hear the proposal from the Department of Finance. We have the Legislative Analyst's Office available. The Collaborative for Education Excellence will be here as well, and Department of Education also.

So Department of Finance, we'll start with you.

Hugo Solis Galeana with the Department of Finance. The Governor's budget proposes $25,000,000 one-time Proposition 98 general fund to be available through the 2029-2030 fiscal year for the California Collaborative for Educational Excellence to convene in consultation with the State Department of Education, a statewide literacy network.

The network will convene literacy leads to support statewide implementation of evidence-based practices aligned to the English Language Arts/English Language Development framework, the English Learner Roadmap, the Literacy Roadmap and the use of data to support effective instruction. The network will also curate a clearinghouse for evidence-based literacy resources and highlight best practices from high performing districts.

The administration sees the literacy network proposal as the place to align and maximize the impact of existing literacy initiatives within the statewide system of support and present California's comprehensive view of literacy and available literacy resources to local educational agencies, seeking to improve outcomes for the state students. That concludes my remarks.

Do we have comments from the LAO? Thank you. The Collaborative? Would you like to make some comments?

Good morning. Dr. Stephanie Gregson, Deputy Executive Director with the California Collaborative for Educational Excellence. Since 2019, the State of California has invested $650 million in literacy initiatives.

Right now, currently we have 13 different literacy leads working across the state, all with different timelines, different requirements of who they collaborate with, different goals, and we have no single entity coordinating all of the different literacy leads. So when a grant sunsets, so does the expertise and the resources that have been built through that grant because it's one-time funding.

The proposed $25 million investment through 2930 allows the opportunity to be intentional and focused of bringing all the literacy leads together towards a north star of high quality instruction for every single student in California. That is something that, under the statewide system of support, we have the infrastructure for to build within. Right now, currently, we have over 60 different initiatives across the statewide system of support. That only includes seven literacy leads.

So right now, within the Literacy Network, we have again the opportunity and the possibility to bring together all literacy leads to find that north star of high quality instruction to find coherence across all of the different literacy leads and initiatives. The network will connect literacy leads intentionally. They'll leverage the existing statewide system support resource hub and they'll be able to share and lift up best practices across the tiered systems that already reaches every district in California.

In speaking with many of the literacy leads just yesterday, they are very much looking forward to the opportunity to collaborate and learn from and with each other because they don't have that opportunity currently and this provides that opportunity for them. Surface level solutions address immediate acute needs but aren't sufficient for long term solutions.

The Literacy Network represents the next evolution of our approach by bringing together every entity leading literacy work in the state together to build system capabilities and commit to the north star of high quality literacy instruction. Currently, literacy initiatives operate as separate programs with their own timelines, reporting structure, and implementation strategies.

The Literacy Network provides the opportunity to create a unified ecosystem rather than maintaining disconnected programs competing for attention and resources. In essence, we need to move away from treating literacy as a series of separate programs to embedding it within our state's educational infrastructure, ensuring more consistent implementation, higher impact for the investment, greater sustainability, and ultimately better outcomes for students.

In closing, one time grants buy time. Systems buy results a literacy network within the statewide system of support is California's opportunity to stop piecing together temporary solutions and start building a lasting foundation for every student in every community and access to excellent literacy instruction for years to come. Our students deserve nothing less.

Thank you. Do we have the Department of Education? Any comments or no?

Yes. Bonnie Garcia, Statewide Literacy Co-Director with the Department of Education. And it's a lot cooler in here than it is outside. The funding proposed for the statewide literacy network will build on the work that the literacy leads have engaged in with a statewide system of support.

This proposal addresses the critical need to have a network focused on literacy that ensures targeted support, coherence across initiatives, and direct measurable outcomes. Currently, the system of support is coordinated by CCEE and CDE, and they convene state and federally funded leads of multiple initiatives that support various state indicators, which includes academics, English Learner Progress, and others.

Literacy, therefore, is not the sole focus of that system of support. This statewide literacy network will provide this dedicated space for collaboration. As Stephanie mentioned, we heard a lot of the participants yesterday talk about how there is a need for this more dedicated space of collaboration, as well as implement practices that are aligned to the ELA/ELD framework, the EL Roadmap, our new exciting literacy roadmap, and the use of data to support effective instruction as well as new literacy policies and guidance.

The 25 million investment in the statewide literacy network is necessary if we want to sustain and expand our literacy efforts. This funding will allow California to move the work forward in improving student literacy and ultimately lifelong outcomes. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Appreciate all of you. The one question that immediately comes to mind on this is a one time expenditure proposal, but I heard specifically from the Collaborative, who is sort of lead this whole work, that this would be the long term solution. And so that to me just doesn't add up. Help me understand how a one time expenditure ensures that all this work that the Collaborative is hoping to put together and keep is maintained over the course of time with a one time allocation.

Hugo Solis Galeana with the Department of Finance. The $25 million will be spread across five years, so it's something that we plan on revisiting for the May Revise.

Okay, so this is a five year expenditure. And what types of expenditures... Maybe, I don't need you to give me the line item budget, but what are the sort of major expenditures of the $5 million a year? What do you anticipate that expenditures, the expenditures to be in? What are we going to get for that?

Amber Alexander with the Department of Finance. We would certainly defer to the Collaborative as the convener to the extent that they had specific visions, but I think in the trailer bill language you do see a few key areas. Certainly developing the clearinghouse for resources would be one of the main expenditure pieces.

Lifting up best practices and professional development around existing literacy initiatives would be another one of the key expenditures we would envision. But again, would defer to the Collaborative's guidance and expertise and conversations that they have with the Department about what's needed.

I do want to ask the Collaborative and the Department. Yes, the convening of literacy leads to support the implementation is one of the tasks of this proposal. Two, creating the clearinghouse, and three, studying, highlighting, and disseminating information. All those things to me, to the previous conversation we had, unless you do this on an ongoing basis, the value gets lost. And so I'm trying to... Maybe I assume that the $5 million for five year expenditure is enough to get us through five years.

That's like question number one, and if it's not, I'd like to know why not and where is it deficient. And two, is it not the opinion of the Department and the clearing, the Collaborative that this work is not just a five year type of work and needs to be an ongoing type of commitment in order to achieve its goals? The Collaborative, you use the term, I forget what it was, but reaching the pinnacle or like this is the North Star is what you were saying. In order to follow the North Star, you got to keep doing it.

You can't just do it for a few years and then magically we all just figure out the North Star on our own. So can you please provide a response to two things. The $5 million a year, enough to do the work that you have been tasked to as a result of this proposal. And two, is this a long term or is this a five year commitment and we should be set once we complete the five years?

So to your first question, it's a starting point. The 5 million for five years is a good starting point. Not knowing what it will look like as it evolves because that's something that we want to ensure that it constantly evolves as whatever new legislation comes forward around literacy, that we are inclusive of all of that and we're growing. The first starting point is also developing and finding commitment around what that North Star of high quality literacy instruction is. And that's going to take some hard conversations with all of the literacy leads.

When would we know what that is? That goal, that North Star, the mission. After how many years of this work?

You know, systems change takes time. When we have, when we're working with our most distressed districts under direct technical assistance, it takes three to five years to see impact and improvement within systems change work. So we are looking for one.

We've already started the conversation with the literacy leads around co-designing what this would look like and feel like and be experienced with them. And they have all said they need to, we need commitment around what that North Star of high quality literacy instruction is, and then how are we all moving towards it.

Right now, they're all on different pathways, and so this provides us the opportunity to bring them together. This cannot be just five years, it has to be longer than five years. It has to be as long as we have multiple literacy initiatives working across the state, they will need the opportunity and the intentionality and focused time to collaborate and learn with each other and learn from each other.

What do you think we should expect once we've reached in the five years some sort of implementation in terms of outcomes for students? You pointed out really well, 650 million alone the last five years to literacy, specifically. Not to mention all the other funding that's gone into education. And yet the achievement gaps persist. And yes, Covid happened at the beginning of that five year period, but it's now, we're now entering year 3 and 4, 4 next year, and the achievement gaps persist. We should be intentional in our funding it with outcomes in mind or student success.

And I'm just curious, what can we, as we go out and tell Californians we are spending your important tax dollars on ensuring that literacy rates increase and that we don't fall further behind or we're not behind places like Texas in some cases with English learners, when it comes to literacy. What are we expecting that this is going to actually do when it comes to students and the outcomes and students?

I see two pathways around what this can do for students and school districts. One, our most distressed districts do not always know and understand what's available to them around high quality literacy instruction resources. This literacy network provides that opportunity to to open up access to all of our districts in that way, specifically our most distressed districts.

In which ways will we go for the most distressed districts to support them? Because some of the challenges I assume will persist, and I don't know what they are. So be interested in knowing how are we going to make sure that they do have access. Because clearly, as you're stating, they don't today and that's a limitation.

So through this being connected with the statewide system of support where we have tiered supports and resources, so universal. All of the literacy network resources that are available and supports that are available will be advertised accessible through all of our statewide systems support initiatives.

So it's not just the literacy leads that are getting and understanding the information around what's there for professional learning and literacy. It's the equity leads. They'll understand, oh, we have this wonderful professional learning resource around literacy. I need these three districts to have access to them. Let's get them connected.

Do some of the, and this question is made more for CDE. Don't some of... And please just tell me if I'm wrong in this assumption. Some of our distressed districts, as were described, aren't some of them limited in their capacity to like, find these types of resources, and that's why they don't have perhaps access to some of these programs or some of these available resources? And how is this going to make sure that those specific districts do have access?

Because the ones that, you know, the large ones, certainly the ones I represent in my, my city, my region, they probably have individuals who can go and find those resources. But if we're trying to help those who are really distressed, as the term is being used here, what are the challenges that they're facing?

Is it that they don't have someone in the administration or someone at the outside of the classroom bases that can go after these resources to bring them in? That's what I hear often is a challenge. They don't have the personnel to go and apply for programs, seek these resources because they're barely figuring out how to run a school system. Do you know, do you know, do you have any opinion on who are the distressed districts that are now going to be served by this?

So, as was shared, this statewide literacy network would involve a lot of the literacy or the literacy leads that have been involved in the state system of support. For example, our state leads for the Literacy Coaches and Reading Specialists Grant, which are identified according to their unduplicated count.

And what this, what this network would allow us to do is allow us to continue that work. As Dr. Gregson mentioned, improvement work can take anywhere from 3, 5, 7 years. And many of these initiatives that we have are about three to five years in. Some of them are expiring, other ones are getting ready to expire, and other ones might have another year.

So the efforts that the, that have been made to reach, like for example, rural districts who often have the issues that you're mentioning, would allow us to work more closely with the literacy leads and literacy and literacy initiative leads to be able to better address and work to address the needs of these rural districts that we're already working with.

So let me ask a more basic question. So are they getting a literacy lead at those districts directly through this initiative? There's going to be someone at that district that's now funded through this initiative to do that work?

No.

Okay. So, so how are we going to reach out to them? Posting, advertising is all good, but what I keep hearing, and I don't represent these, so I, you know, it's, it's a little bit interesting that I'm being the advocate here for the rural districts and for some of those that have harder to reach.

But you know, we represent all of California, and if we're seeing pockets of the literacy, lack of literacy success as we'd like to see in those areas, then we gotta be touching those areas. And if there's not gonna be someone based in that district and someone based somewhere else outside of their county, somewhere else in the state, how are they going to be reached? I'm not understanding that.

So I have a great example for you. So we have the Rural Math Collaborative that's led by Lake County, very rural area. And they work with other rural county offices. They are part of our statewide system of support under the Learning Acceleration Systems Grant. Now, yes, their focus is math.

However, they have representatives that come to our statewide system of support meetings and get to hear from the other leads around what resources supports are available through the statewide system of support resource hub through the directory. So they are then able to know, oh, I have Lakeport Unified that is struggling in literacy. I know exactly who I need to contact to get that district connected with the literacy lead, whether it's through the literacy coaches through.

And I think... I'm sorry to cut you off, but I think information is great. But unless that person's focused on math, and people are overwhelmed in the education system with everything we've asked them to do. For them to then, okay, maybe if I have a conversation with a colleague on literacy, I'll mention, oh, I had heard something at the statewide. I'm not challenging that this is the wrong way to go. We've made significant investments. We're being asked to make another investment, which is very much worth it.

But if we don't have movement and we're not reaching the schools and the districts that need to be reached where there's a big impact that could be had, there comes a point where, and I think we're very close to that point, where we can't continue to say we've made all these investments, and yet the data is showing that the students are not achieving the growth that needs to happen. And so that's the part that... Maybe I woke up on the wrong side today, and you're the sort of focus of this, like, frustration. But.

And then to the previous panel, then there's this conversation happening around curriculum and standards, and then you're doing this work, and I'm not really sure how this is connected to whatever that conversation may be going forward. So it's just a little bit of a level of frustration, again, just the amounts of investments that have happened, and yet the outcomes don't speak for themselves.

And I want to support you and the work that you do in a way that is sufficient and that is going to actually get you to serve the students that get to be served. And that's what my questions are about. So with that, I'm going to pause there because somebody else should jump in at this point and ask other questions. Mr. Muratsuchi.

Thank you very much. No, I really appreciate, Mr. Chair, your critical eye toward any expenditures. But you know, I just in general, this is a very timely proposal because we are about to unveil a new bill tomorrow in our Assembly Education Committee that, you know, is going to be focusing on providing more professional development and instructional material support for evidence based literacy instruction.

And you know, we've been wrestling with those questions of, you know, it's one thing to develop, you know, to identify best practices and to, you know, try to share them with other districts, but how do we get districts to actually adopt and implement these best practices in a statewide system where we have the local control of our separate school districts?

But I mean, I think conceptually it makes sense that, like the staff analysis summarizes and as the representative from the CCEE stated, that we've made $650 million in one time literary investments, and so this proposal is seeking to coordinate that. I but, again, casting with healthy skepticism how this is actually going to translate to what is taught and ultimately what's taught in our classrooms. I think that's our real question.

So, for example, I mean, I know the whole country has been, you know, many states across the country has been jumping on this bandwagon of what some people are called the science of reading. What others, you know, it seems to almost become a politically controversial term or the preferred term seems to be evidence based literacy instruction. But how would this help, you know, the best practices for evidence based literacy instruction actually being taught in our neediest schools?

Amber Alexander with Department of Finance. I think one of the pieces that's key that hasn't really been touched on is the role of the County Offices of Education and the statewide system of support. So while the proposal is focused on coordinating the leads and the initiatives that are convened under the leads, there is still very much a role that is envisioned for those County Offices of Education that are part of that system.

And that is really the link that we would see between bringing some of the best practices and the clearinghouse resource awareness down to the district level as those County Offices of Education are working with school districts to identify areas where student outcomes could be improved. And to the extent that that's literacy or English language arts.

We would then anticipate that, through the awareness that the proposal is bringing, that county office could then make sure that the school or the school district is then connected with the supports and services that could help to improve those outcomes.

And to the extent that it is found to be beneficial to, you know, provide resources on a particular subject, if it's science of, science of reading or any of that you were speaking of, that information would be available and those connections could be made through the proposal.

Okay, so, I mean, I, so I guess the basic idea is that we have these, these one time funds, different leads. These are statewide leads, is that correct?

Yes. And their County Office of Education leads.

Okay. But ultimately the county offices can... How does that, how does that translate into, you know, the school district level? Do the county offices, you know, provide, you know, presentations and trainings on best practices for literacy instruction and invite school districts who may or may not attend these invitations? Is that...

Yes. So our County Office of Education partners provide professional learning on literacy through their universal supports, through their differentiated assistance, and then in partnership with CCEE through our direct technical assistance work.

Okay. But if school districts don't have funding for professional development, then how are they going to take advantage of these trainings on best practices that County Offices of Education are providing?

There's multiple pathways for them to be able to access professional learning. Some are very much free through the County Office of Education, some are funded through the differentiated assistance, and some are funded through direct technical assistance.

Okay, okay. So for example, if there is legislation that proposes to provide funding to school districts to provide professional development for evidence based literacy instruction, could some of that funding come from this $25 million literacy network?

The- The literacy network. One component of that is to provide professional development. So again, to the extent that the collaborative, in their convenings and their collaboration with the department identified that as a need, that could be an allowable use.

I think we would also note that there are other proposals we'll hear through this budget cycle and then- and then other proposals that have been heard through past hearings, including the discretionary block grant and then also the Learning Recovery Emergency Block Grant funds that both have components of professional development as allowable uses, to the extent that that's identified through either the needs assessment in the case of the Learning Recovery Emergency Block Grant funds, or through conversations and development of the LCAPs at the local level.

Okay. Yeah, I would just like to highlight-- Mr. Chair, I think, you know, getting especially, you know, every third grader to- to read at grade level is such a foundational goal that sets the path for, not only for academic success, but for lifetime success for, you know, for all California kids.

And so, you know, to the extent that this can help, you know, as you're talking about, you know, actually make a difference in the classrooms of our neediest communities. I think this is worthwhile to continue to explore. Thank you.

Yeah, thank you. And I'm going to borrow the term North Star. That should be the North Star. Every third grader should be able to be able to read at grade level, right. And I know the North Star here is different, but from an overall picture, that should be what we should be focused on.

And if this helps us get there, then great. I'm more of a visual learner. And I think every time I hear something, I try to create a picture in my mind of how this program is going to work. And maybe that would be helpful to me.

So I understand, okay, this funding goes to the collaborative, then it goes to the counties, and then how it reaches the schools would be helpful. More importantly, you know, I'd rather-- say we're investing 25 million and we're going to ensure that the bottom 10% of performance schools on literacy are the ones we focus on exclusively.

And we're going to put a-- whatever a literacy-- all the different investments that we have, we're going to put the right tools at those 10% schools to ensure that there's growth there, as opposed to the way I see it now, and I again acknowledge that I may be wrong.

It goes to this collaborative, then it goes to the county, and then whoever goes to the professional development may implement it at their school, may not.

Probably the schools that are struggling the most with literacy have a bunch of other challenges and as much as they'd love to be stronger in literacy, may not have the ability to get to these professional development, even free, opportunities and therefore what is the impact of this program? So I've said enough.

I think you understand how I feel. So I want this to be successful. I want you to be successful. I want to see how we can get to that. So appreciate you all answering questions and providing your feedback. Really valuable. We'll hold the issue open and move on to issue number three.

Very much in line with the conversation in literacy, a proposal from the Governor to further expand literacy coaches for California. We have the Department of Finance who will present the proposal and then others who may want to add or contribute to that as well. Please go ahead.

Hugo Solis Galeana with the Department of Finance. The Governor's budget proposes $500 million one-time Proposition 98 general fund to expand upon the existing literacy coaches and reading specialists program to provide training and credentialing for literacy coaches and to establish a math coaches program.

For the literacy coaches program, we are allocating $235 million for local educational agencies to develop school literacy programs, employ and develop literacy coaches and specialists, and develop and implement interventions for pupils in need of targeted literacy support.

For training and credentialing we are including a $15 million investment for the Superintendent of Public Instruction to select one or more county Offices of Education to provide training for educators to become literacy coaches.

The funding will also provide credentialing opportunities for educators to become reading and literacy specialists as well as bilingual specialists working with the California Reading and Literature Project, the California Writing Project and other experts.

Lastly, for the math coaches program, we are providing a $250 million investment for local educational agencies to support math coaching and specialists for eligible schools, as well as for plans to support one or more trained coaches or specialists with training aligned to the math framework.

This proposal will also provide funding for educators to obtain math credentials and authorizations. And that concludes my remarks.

Thank you. Legislative Analyst's Office.

Good morning, Mr. Chair, Members. Dylan Hawksworth-Lutzow with the LAO. We have a couple concerns that lead us to recommending approving these proposals with some modifications. As we've talked about a bit before, I want to provide a little bit more background. The state does score relatively low on math reading exams.

Less than half of students score proficient or above on state tests, and the state has historically scored below the national average on the National Assessment of Education Progress, though the gap has closed a bit in recent years.

This gap is driven by outcomes for economically disadvantaged students. Regarding the proposals, adding a little bit more context to those or a little bit more detail. The literacy coach proposals, the $235 million, that's proposing to bring the eligibility for the grants that have existed previously from 95% unduplicated pupils and above to 94% unduplicated pupils and above.

So an additional percent of eligibility increase. For the math coach proposals, it's a slightly different threshold. It's 90% unduplicated pupils and above, and 75% unduplicated pupils and above for rural districts. And another difference there is that the literacy coach proposal is for schools, eligible schools, and the math coach proposals is for eligible districts.

So we recommend adopting this proposal with a few modifications to the math coach proposal to ensure funds are used most effectively. First, we recommend limiting the grant eligibility to elementary schools. Research does support using math coaches, but we think that it's more likely to be effective supporting the teachers that have the least math expertise.

We recommend setting a minimum grant amount. Currently, the math coach proposal doesn't have a minimum grant amount, so it's unclear whether funding from the math coach proposal would actually achieve the required activities. We recommend requiring funds be spent only at eligible school sites.

The- The math coach proposal does direct funding to districts rather than the schools that are serving the highest rates of unduplicated pupils. And we recommend considering automatic eligibility rather than the application process.

So something that we've already heard in this hearing is that some smaller districts may have more of an administrative burden to apply for grants and programs that they might benefit from. So we do recommend making eligibility automatic as long as you have that required level of unduplicated students.

Lastly, we recommend considering the mix of literacy and math coach funding. The state has already provided 500 million or almost $500 million of literacy coach funding in the past.

So with the introduction of math the distribution trade off-- it becomes a trade off between further expansion of literacy coach access and establishing faster access, wider initial access to math coaches. That concludes our comments. We're happy to answer questions.

Thank you. Does the Department have comments?

Yes. Good morning, Chair Members of the Committee, I'm Cheryl Cotton, Deputy Superintendent at the California Department of Education, presenting on behalf of our State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tony Thurmond, to advocate for a vital program aimed at at enhancing literacy and mathematics education across our state.

This proposal, which the Department strongly supports, seeks to expand support for literacy and math education in California schools while continuing to fund literacy initiatives that have already made significant impacts on students through school literacy programs, educator training and student interventions.

The CDE advocates adding a third cohort of schools to further this work and ensuring more students benefit from the improved literacy instruction. To date, funded sites and districts have accomplished much in the short amount of time since the program was established.

When looking at the first and second cohort reports, we see that LEAs have hired a significant number of literacy coaches, reading specialists, and bilingual reading specialists and are reporting an increase in student achievement because of those new positions.

Similar to the first two cohorts, the proposed funding would allow for a Literacy Coaches Reading Specialist Educator Training lead for Cohort 1 and 2. Sacramento county and Napa County Offices of Education have been conducting free professional learning sessions and providing support in hubs across the state.

Participants in their professional learning offerings have reported improved classroom instruction, increased teacher capacity, student engagement and outcomes, and strengthen support systems. Additional funding would allow more schools to have access to these much needed fun- resources. Additionally, the proposal includes a Mathematics Coaches and Specialists Grant program to help educators align instruction with the newly adopted 2023 math framework.

The proposed Math Coaches and Specialist Grant program provides LEAs the resources necessary to employ and train math coaches and specialists in collaboration with multiple statewide mathematics initiatives already underway.

Coherence. This grant program seeks to address a critical need in our education system by providing funds to LEAs to ensure additional support for educators in aligning their mathematics instruction with a new framework and in effectively delivering high quality education.

Given the status of mathematics access and achievement, California and frankly, the United States have needed to develop new approaches for deepening math learning, addressing achievement gaps, and modernizing instruction to meet the demands of a fast changing world.

The Mathematics Coaches and Specialists Grant program provides this opportunity to leverage existing initiatives and ensure impact reaches the classroom and teachers. By equipping LEAs with resources to employ and train mathematics coaches and specialists, we aim to enhance the quality of mathematics instruction delivered in our classrooms. The impact of this proposal will extend far beyond the individual classrooms.

By investing in local access to high effective literacy and math coaches and specialists, we're investing in the academic success of our students. Improved literacy and math instruction will lead to increased student engagement, higher achievement levels, and ultimately better outcomes for all learners. I could also add retention of teachers as well.

In closing, I urge you to support this critical initiative that promises to elevate both literacy and mathematics in our state in unique and distinct ways. By allocating resources to this project, we are not only investing in the present, but also securing a bright future for generations to come. Thank you for your consideration.

Look forward to answering your questions.

Thank you all. Appreciate it. I'm going to start with sort of where we left this conversation off last year, and that's on the issue of an evaluation. Department of Education cited reports of different participation levels and things like that. I'm just. I'm curious how many of the, let's say, bottom quartile of schools that have- in terms of--

in literacy, let's talk about literacy first-- are currently participating with a literacy coach on a school site?

What I can tell you is that we've hired about 239 literacy coaches, 4- 42 reading specialists, and 31 bilingual reading specialists. So we are finding and hiring those folks. I know that was a concern initially. I can't tell you specifically. We can find that information for you, though.

Thank you. So we don't know where they're at in terms of their placement.

I don't know directly right now.

Right. No, but we do know where they are. You just don't have it with you at the moment. In terms of the goals of. Of- Of ensuring that school sites have this kind of support, when this was proposed initially, what was the goal? You mentioned 239, 42 reading specialists.

Where did we hope to be with the funding that was allocated?

Ideally, we were hoping for at least one reading literacy coach for each of the assigned schools or LEAs. We're roughly at a literacy coach per site. If we're looking at the numbers, you know, solely different places are able to support in different ways. But, we got close to--

So let me--

To- To the goal of at least a coach per LEA.

A coach per LEA, not a coach per school.

Ideally, it's a coach per school.

-get your information on. That- That would require how many hundreds more?

We're working towards that.

That's what I wanted to--

It would probably double that number that we have got so far.

And is the funding that was proposed and approved by the legislature, was that with the intention and with the bandwidth to fund all of that?

There were multiple. Multiple initiatives or multiple foci in the initial legislation. In addition to math coaches. I'm sorry, literacy coaches and reading specialists. It also was developing literacy plans. It also was providing intervention support. There are multiple focuses within that, and those funds are going towards those. All of those areas, not just for the coaches as well.

So then I think the answer would be no. There wasn't sufficient funding approved to provide a literacy coach or a reading specialist at every site.

This is an ongoing work, and so they are continuing to hire coaches. They are continuing to provide professional development. It was not a, you know, you received the funds in 20.

No, I understand that that takes some time. I'm just curious if there was enough allocation to actually accomplish that from a dollar standpoint.

I think that there- there is enough allocation to accomplish the goal of the grant program as it stands.

To ensure a reading specialist or a literacy coach at every school site.

There are challenges to. We're not talking about teacher recruitment today, but there's challenges to the recruitment of teachers.

I understand all the challenges we've talked about.

Hire the coaches is- is--

My question is exclusively on are we providing the funding that if we had all the teachers, if we had all the teacher prep programs, if people weren't retiring or if people weren't getting golden handshakes because of what's happening that you. If we had all the personnel available.

Is the funding available to ensure that there is a literacy coach at every school? It's okay. We don't know. I'm just. I want to know where the status is.

Amber Alexander with the Department of Finance. Yes, the- the funding formula does account for that. So it does provide a minimum grant award of $450,000 for every LEA per eligible school site.

I think the piece that is a little unclear is in terms of placement to my colleague from the Department of Education, those- those funds may not necessarily be used to place that coach at every eligible school site that is generating the funds, but every LEA that is having an eligible school site in their- in their district bounds does have a literacy code.

This gets to, I think topic Mr. Mertzucci was just talking about. Certainly something I've said, something the LEA is bringing up in the context of the math coaches. But are we getting these individuals at the schools where they need to be in order to serve the students that they need to serve?

And it sounds like we could get that data because we know where they're at. It sounds like. I'd love to get that. We'll have staff make sure follow up on that. But being more intentional about ensuring that that's where these coaches are actually and specialists are landing is incredibly critical to this investment.

Otherwise, that's not the investment we're making. We're making a different investment. So with that, Dr. Patel has some questions.

It's more. I'm just trying to piece it all together. Throughout our years over the past decade, we have done a lot of investment in our school districts and our school sites that have the most critical needs, the most disadvantaged students. So we have LCFF with our supplemental and concentration.

We have these literacy grant programs, over 600 million over the past several years in one time funds. We're asking for a literacy coordinator to coordinate all those programs and now we're asking for more targeted funds.

What- What is the sufficient amount of investment and overall strategic plan to bring us to a level where our students aren't continually meeting the requi- the standards of the state?

I- I- I'm just struggling to find out what is the coordinated overall big picture strategic plan to coordinate these dollars and these resources in the most effective way to help us get to improve literacy and improve math skills by third grade. I would love to have an in depth conversation around that.

I do love the LAO's comment about not making school districts apply for these grants. Those that struggle the most, that need this funding the most, tend to be the most under resourced.

They may be those same districts that it's the same one school that's the school district and the county office and they may be the ones that are rural and with the highest need. So I love that suggestion, but my question is a genuine one. Have we looked at. I mean I'm sure we have, right?

That's what you guys do. What is the best path forward that we can make sure we're doing this in the most efficient way instead of piecemeal with one time dollars on an ongoing basis? One time dollars on an ongoing basis.

It's very perplexing to me and I would love to know what the plan is long term for making this, you know, embedded in the work that we fund through Prop 98.

I know one- one area of focus is around coaches and in terms of research showing that that is where we're getting the most bang for our buck is having coaches in schools, in districts and supporting what's happening in the classroom.

I don't have a figure for you of what that would take, but looking at getting to that point for our neediest schools, so bringing it down to 94% unduplicated count for literacy, 90% unduplicated count for math, I think does help get close to that point, particularly for our most- our most in need communities.

What would that dollar amount be? That- That sounds like it would be pretty large.

Amber Alexander with Finance similarly to my colleagues, I don't know that we have a particular dollar amount, but we would just emphasize the broader discretionary funds that go out to districts through the Local Control Funding Formula. And all of these programs, including the literacy and math coach program, are supplemental to that funding.

And so I think from the administration's perspective you really see a focus on accountability changes to make sure that, you know, regardless of the amount of funds that are going in, that there is an intentional focus to target those- those dollars and to plan for those dollars for those students of greatest need and in those areas where outcomes could be improved upon and changes like making sure that to the extent there's a goal or an action in a local control accountability plan that has remained the same, you know, year after year and is not seeing those, those improvements that were desired, that the district goes back and modifies and is continuously improving those plans to get at more of that achievement that we're hoping to see.

Yeah, thank you for bringing that point forward because I think we're kind of on the same page on that one. I think a lot of districts that do receive concentration dollars are already investing in literacy coaches and math coaches and trying to target those to those students that have the greatest need.

And so what would these additional dollars due to that ongoing effort that's already in place and embedded in many school districts?

I think that this helps to really target and focus the work that's happening.

So if you look at what we've been doing around the LCRS existing cohorts, providing very specific focus around structured literacy, development of literacy plans, what they need for their particular community, focusing on parent engagement and family engagement, but in a much more focused way.

So it's not, I'm gonna- I'm gonna grab this program over here and I don't know, let's try this over there. This is very. Using evidence based strategies that all of the cohorts are focusing on. I think that that is what helps is giving that really focused. I'm saying focus like 20 times today. But--

No, I understand what you're giving.

Giving more of an emphasis on structured literacy and more of an interest in focus on what's needed to move students forward. That's what's happening with our LCRS grant. So it's not just here's a pile of money and you figure it out. It's here is funding for you, for your particular needs and let's support you.

And then they've got hubs, they've got folks across the state who are providing really close in support to those LEAs as well.

Yeah, I think our school districts, our LEAs certainly would appreciate that additional support and focus.

Yes.

Because they're dealing with a lot and there are a lot of things our public education system at the local level are tasked with that are kind of moving above and beyond just reading, writing and arithmetic.

And so getting back and helping our school districts deliver on those core functions while doing all the other things we need them to do to help create strong communities. I think that support is definitely appreciated. Thank you.

Thank you, Dr. Patel. Yeah. You know, to your point, the question and the agenda of there's an evaluation that's still pending. There is absolutely, as Dr. Cotton mentioned, plenty of evidence that literacy coaches are successful in other places. We don't know what's happening in California today.

And I think perhaps we've modeled some of those other programs, which is good. Which takes me now back to issue number one.

Why aren't we modeling things that other states are doing and we can do it in this program, besides the point here, but we don't know until the evaluation comes forward in December whether the way we've approached it. I'll give you a minute here. Approach- Approach it the way that is going to be driving those results.

Earlier the concern I also have, which we're gonna definitely need to follow up on is, where's the placement of the liter- literacy coaches? Because I'm not entirely sure where they're at and that they're serving the- the schools with the highest needs specifically. And so that's a really important point of this,

as this moves forward in whichever way it moves forward, knowing preferably that an evaluation which is pending until December should really drive what that investment should be. It may require us to make a bigger investment in this space because we're not doing sufficient or we may need to tweak the way we're doing. I don't know.

I can't judge because we don't have that evaluation. Until we have that, we'll be able to really analyze at least that component of it, which is- which is a component of the entire picture. As you well pointed out, Dr. Cotton.

I was going to say that while the evaluation is- is due 2029, we do have annual--

2025.

2025. We do have annual reporting. And so we do hear from our LEAs. Know that. I'm just looking at some of the information that was gathered. Improved classroom instruction. Teachers are integrating structured literacy practices into their daily instruction. Increased teacher capacity.

Through professional development coaching, teachers have deepened their understanding of evidence based literacy practices. With student engagement. Students are- are becoming more engaged during their literacy lessons and initial assessments are suggesting improvements on foundational reading skills, alignment and consistency.

Classrooms now reflect a more cohesive approach to literacy instruction with teachers aligning their methods to research based strategies and district goals and then also strengthen support systems. So the implementation of the structured literacy has fostered collaboration among teachers, coaches, literacy leadership teams. So it goes deeper.

No, and- and I appreciate that. And even with the earlier item, it might sound as if, you know, some people jump on the- in- on a microphone and start to say why aren't we seeing the results now? That's not really what I'm trying to get at.

We have made a couple years of investments in all these programs and at some point it does take all the things that you just mentioned, the integration, the training, the- the environment in order to be able to make sure students are in the space that they need to be in, in order to make those gains.

At some point we need to start seeing gains. And now a couple years in half a billion additional investment in this is a substantial investment. And so at some point we need to see the results of the programming and it's got to be evidence based. And I think that's, you know, there's reports of the right things happening.

But are the outcomes happening? That's what really at the end of the day is what we should really make sure is happening. So thank you. A very good context to the whole conversation. Appreciate it. And I think there's definitely some follow up that staff will have on this item in particular, we will hold the issue open.

Yes.

Thank you to all of you on this panel. And we will move on to issue number four. If I can ask the panel to please come forward. This is on the educator training for screening for peoples risk of reading difficulties.

It's a proposal from the Governor's Budget to have professional development to support the implementation of the screening for peoples for risk of reading difficulties and an update on the tool that we discussed at length at this committee last year as adopted by the Board of Education.

So we will have the Department of Finance start with the proposal and Legislative Analyst Office and CDE available I think as well. Welcome.

Good morning. Jodi Lieberman with the Department of Finance. I will be giving an overview of the reading difficulty screener included in the Governor's Budget. The Governor's Budget includes 40 million one time Proposition 98 for LEAs that administer literacy screenings to pupils in K through 2 for reading difficulties.

The structure of this proposal is nearly identical to what was included in the 2024 Budget Act. The funding will be allocated to LEAs at a per pupil rate using prior year school enrollment data from the California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System, or CalPADS.

An LEA must spend these funds on any part of implementing the screener, including the administration of the screener to pupils in K2, excluding TK in order to assess for reading difficulties using the screening instruments recently approved by the CDE. That's all. I'm happy to take questions at the appropriate time.

Thank you. The Legislative Analyst Office.

Yeah. Mr. Chair, members Dylan Lutzow with the DLAO. We think the proposed $40 million is a reasonable estimate of costs associated with training staff and the implementation of their required literacy screenings.

However, we do note that $25 million was provided for staff training last year, so we recommend reducing the proposed funding to 15 million to create 40 million total. Thank you.

Thank you. Department, do you have any comments?

Yes. Thank you so much. The funding for literacy screening professional development plays a critical role in improving literacy by identifying students at risk for reading difficulties early. It enables interventions that prevent potential problems and ultimately helps us get our students reading by third grade and beyond, strengthening academic outcomes and lifelong success.

Since approval of the list of screening instruments in December and the release of the $25 million from the 2024 budget just January less than four months ago, LEAs have been very busy preparing for the implementation of screenings, engaging in professional development, developing plans and selecting instruments for their board so they can be approved by or before June 30th of this year.

The 25 million allocated has been essential in this preparation. However, understanding what is being asked of them pursuant to the statute. LEAs have shared that the funding from the 2024 budget that allows for educator training, for administration of screening is just not enough to move forward in a realistic way that allows for sustainability of this work.

More is needed for professional learning- for professional learning, procurement of materials, and for the actual implementation of screening.

The proposed 40 million funding that allows for additional PD or professional development and the procurement of materials in addition to the 25 million allocated for the 20- from the 24/25 budget is therefore essential in continuing this work next year and annually thereafter. The legislature seeks continuous progress in student literacy outcomes rather than a one time effort.

And if we're truly going to move the needle on student achievement, ensuring students are reading by third grade and are fully literate by the time they graduate high school, the field truly needs this additional funding. Thank you.

Thank you. I'm going to try to keep this one simple, one important work that needs to happen.

Just curious given we had a conversation last year about funding and what was going to get funded one, why maybe finance the jump in the allocation requirement from 40 to 65 million and then is this now for full implementation and then obviously on a year to year basis, the costs associated with the screening itself.

Can you help us understand the- this program and its long term success?

Okay, so first the jump. This allocation is going to be covering more implementation. So to your point, this is full implementation. The amount that was provided last year was for training. This is for training. More broadly, it's for any costs related to implementing the screener, including procurement of screening instruments, screening administration and training employees.

So it's covering more costs of implementation. As far as--

Let me- Let me just interrupt. Covering all the costs--

-of implementation. Okay.

All the costs.

As far as ongoing. The ongoing aspect, the administration does expect still for the mandates process to fully play out. And at that point, we would be incorporating the ongoing cost of implementing this screener into the mandates block grant.

Okay.

But we're providing this 40 million at this time because we know that there are upfront costs to administering this at this time.

So the only discrepancy here was with the LAO. You- You've heard the response. I'm sure you've heard this before. It's not news to you. Where do you still believe that there is sufficient funding for full implementation of this program?

I think the main point that we would make is that the largest- we think that the largest portion of the costs are going to be for training, and that's what the previous money was allocated for. We would also note that of the four approved screener instruments, two of them are free. So

depending on what choices districts make about which screeners they want to use and how they implement these screenings, costs will vary.

Okay. Alright. Well, some uncertainty there for sure. If they all pick the ones that are not free, it's going to cost us more. But we've got to do this. So those are all my questions on this. Anybody else? Dr. Patel?

Just a quick clarifying question. What grade levels are we doing this screening?

K through 2, excluding TK.

Okay, thank you. And certainly supportive of catching these difficulties at an early age. This is available to all LEAs, regardless of how they're funded. Right. Thank you.

I actually forgot to ask something that was very critical to this whole conversation was on English learners. And those tools then, I assume have all been vetted by all the folks who were involved in that conversation. Anybody want to comment on that? I see the LAO shaking your head. I don't know if you have a comment.

Finance CD.

I can comment. The four tools that were selected and approved were done so by a panel. And the panel was able to review applications and make determinations based upon what was submitted to ensure that the instruments were going to be valid for students in California, including for our multilingual students.

Yeah. And just for context, to make sure that there's no misidentification of students.

Exactly. And there's additional context in the statute that provides information on how to do.

Thank you. Appreciate that clarity. Thank you all for the panel. We will hold the issue open and move on to our final panel which is on issue number five, the transitional kindergarten dual language learner screener, which we just previewed a bit. At least the- the- the issue of screeners.

So this panel will hear the governor's proposal on the replacement screener tool in transitional kindergarten for dual language learners. So we have the Department of Finance who will present the Governor's Budget proposal, Legislative Analyst Office and the California Department of Education here available as well. Department of Finance, we'll start with you. Welcome.

Thank you. Good morning. Chair and committee members. Nate Williams with the Department of Finance. And I'll be presenting on the transitional kindergarten multilingual learner screening instrument. With the expansion of transitional kindergarten, there's an increased opportunity to support our youngest multilingual learners.

Early identification done in a developmentally appropriate manner is key to providing early support and improving educational outcomes for these young students. The Governor's Budget includes a $10 million one time Proposition 98 General Fund investment for statewide use of a screening instrument for multilingual learners in transitional kindergarten.

The proposed statutory changes instruct the Department of Education to select with the approval of the Executive Director of the State Board of Education, a suitable and developmentally appropriate screening instrument along with the necessary trainings and make those resources available to local education agencies.

Schools may begin using the screening instrument to screen Students in 26-27 school year with the requirement for all students to begin using the screening instrument in the 27-28 school year. That concludes my remarks, but I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you. The Legislative Analyst Office.

Edgar Cabral with the Legislative Analyst Office. So this proposal is in response to recent legislation just AB 2268, authored by Muratsuchi, which exempts TK students from being assessed for English proficiency using the state's existing English learner assessment. And that change was enacted.

Our understanding is in part because of concerns that that existing proficiency tool was not developmentally appropriate for transitional kindergarten students for essentially four year olds since the tool was really intended to be beginning for kindergarten. So we do recommend that the legislature adopt the proposal by selecting a screening instrument for TK students.

There would now be a developmentally appropriate tool to help identify students who would benefit from that additional English development support. But in addition to that, I think the state faces other decisions regarding multilingual learners in TK. So again, under current law, because TK students are no longer classified as English learners. That does not-

That's not incorporated into the Local Control Funding Formula, and there are no specific requirements in statute regarding support for those- for those TK students.

So the legislature may want to weigh the trade offs of having some specific service requirements in law for students that have been identified and having those service requirements would give greater assurance that there's support provided. But again, that could increase associated costs.

And the current- the state's current approach does not include funding either through LCFF or also through Federal Title 3 funding. These TK students would not be eligible because they would not meet the English Learner designation.

So the legislature, if it wants to provide funding tied to service requirements, has several options, including modifying the LCFF to account for student- TK students that are multilingual learners, or for providing funding through a separate grant. That concludes my remarks. I'm happy to answer any questions at the appropriate time.

Thank you. Any other comments? No. Were you going to make comment? I'm sorry. No. You're good. Okay. Thank you. Department of Education is here for questions if we have them. My only question is around the issue of creating another screening tool for children of this age. My understanding is that preschool already has a screening tool developed for multilingual learners. Is that, maybe the Department would be the most appropriate of education to answer that question.

Absolutely. May I provide some background?

Of course. Yeah.

Thank you. Good morning, Mr. Chair and Members. I'm Alesha Moreno Ramirez California Department of Education, on behalf of State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, and I'm joined by my colleague here, Stephen Propheter. As Assembly Bill AB 2268 began to take shape, this Committee engaged in discussions around concerns uplifted by the field about the developmental appropriateness of the ELPAC assessment as it was neither designed nor validated for 4 year old TK students.

This deliberation involved considering the implications of AB 2268 as well as plausible next steps forward. And as part of this, CDE considered various approaches to identifying and supporting multilingual learners in TK in ways that acknowledge a child's language background and experience, support teachers to uplift the linguistic assets in the classroom as building blocks for other learning, minimize the burden of testing on both children and educators, and mitigate potential systems challenges.

And as such, today we'll give just a little bit of background as to the value of the multilingual screener in TK year in response to AB 2268, which again eliminated the use of the ELPAC and thus the identification of TK students as ELs. Multilingual learners in TK are a distinction distinct group of students unique from both dual language learners in the preschool setting and English learner students in kindergarten through grade 12.

The California State Preschool Program, or CSPP, uses a multi-step process, including the Family Language Instrument and the Family Language and Interest Interview to identify dual language learners, or DLLs. And these tools, developed in response to Assembly Bill 1363, gather information from parents to determine DLL status but do not directly assess the children's language proficiency.

This process involves a four question survey that determines DLL status and a 15 minute oral interview of families of dual language learners that is intended to help the program support the child's needs in the classroom and CSPP contractors receive additional funding for identified dual language learners in that setting.

In contrast, in K-12 setting involves formal identification of English learners or EL students. With guidance from the CDE, LEAs follow a process defined by federal Title 3 law to assess language proficiency and expressly serve students identified as EL to develop English proficiency while concurrently developing proficiency on academic measures.

This includes utilizing a four question home language survey, which depending upon responses reported, may lead to administration of the Initial ELPAC assessment. And the initial ELPAC is used to determine if a student is designated as EL and provide EL programs and services. So to be clear, CSPP identification involves conversation and information gathering from parents. And in K-12 there is an assessment of English language proficiency.

I'm gonna pause you right there cause I think I heard the answer to my question in your response, which is you do something a little bit... Would like to do a little bit, something a little bit different, which is language proficiency in the TK tool. But the question from sitting through hearings around preschool and the Master Plan for Education is that preschool and TK are the two options for four year olds and both are universally acceptable and appropriate as I'll just call it the first grade of school.

I know maybe some people don't like to refer to it as that, but certainly the first step in school. And so why would we not use the same tool for both? Why don't not adopt the language proficiency in the preschool screening tool then and make it consistent over both and not create another screener system with, I assume, additional bureaucracy related to that? Why can't we just have one?

Yeah. So good morning, Mr. Chair and Members. Stephen Propheter, the Director of the Early Education Division at the California Department of Education. So just to provide a little context. So what we use in the California State Preschool Program, it's not considered a screener. So there's slightly different purposes for what the state preschool program uses compared to what's kind of proposed in the Governor's Budget.

Have we talked to stakeholders in the preschool world about whether it would make sense for us to use this, a more appropriate, a different kind of test, an actual screening?

Are you asking if we have asked our state preschool programs about using a screener as opposed to... We have not. We haven't done that because there hasn't been a proposal. So.

So I understand that they're different for different purposes. I get all that. I'm just wondering why we have to have two separate. Especially when at some school sites you have both the preschool and you have TK and now you have two different tools just for that grade alone, just for that age group alone, which, developmentally, we treat them very similarly. And so I'm going to...

If I may. So there are. So it's true. There are elementary sites where TK is offered as well as state preschool. Just for context, would point out that not every LEA that offers TK or is required to offer TK also has a state preschool program.

Yeah, I understand that. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Still, I think we need to have a conversation about, and certainly for multilingual learners, particularly. Every time we've talked about screenings and tools like that, we have had pretty in depth conversations about how we ensure that multilinguals are, we are utilizing the appropriate tools with them.

And that goes through extensive policy committee discussion, which I think certainly this one hearing on this is not sufficient to talk about whether this is the right approach. And again, I still think we should probably talk about the preschool approach and see if that should be something we combine.

So that's what I would ask staff to do, is to work with staff in the appropriate development policy committees to develop something that's more appropriately for this age group. Those would be my only questions and comments on this. Do we have other questions, comments? You do? No, we're good. Okay. All right. Okay.

Well, with that, that brings us the end of that item. We'll hold the issue open and ask staff to work on that. And I said that was our last item, but we have issue number six, Universal School Meals and Kitchen Infrastructure Proposals. Will ask the Department of Finance to present the Governor's budget proposal for impact of Universal School Meals, including new funding for kitchen Infrastructure and Training Grant. Department of Finance. Welcome.

Thank you. Nate Williams with Department of Finance, and I'll be presenting on the investments in child nutrition. The Governor's Budget reflects the administration's ongoing commitment to increasing access to and improving the quality of meals served to students within the California school system.

Specifically, I'm going to highlight a few investments in both the Universal Meals Program as well as the Kitchen Infrastructure and Training. First, for the Universal Meals Program, the Governor's Budget includes a one time backfill of $31.5 million Proposition 98 General Fund in the current year to cover an anticipated shortfall based on actual meal counts through August 2024.

This shortfall is due to revised projections for the current year coming in approximately 40 million meals higher than projected at the 2024 Budget Act, representing about a 4.2% higher lunch and breakfast meal count than originally projected.

Additionally, the Governor's Budget also includes an increase of 84.1 million Proposition 98 General Fund to fully fund the anticipated growth in the Universal Meals Program for the budget year 25-26 based on serving a projected 933 million meals.

This estimate for the budget year is based on a projected increase in meal counts of about 5.7% compared to the actual meal counts from 23-24 for the Universal Meals Program. We are assuming that there will be continued growth in the short term before eventually leveling off with the anticipated growth drivers continuing to be the ramp up of breakfast programs.

So if you recall, prior to the Universal Meals Program, not all schools offered breakfast programs. As well as increasing awareness of the Universal Meals Program and increasing the quality and the variety of meal offerings due to recent investments in both kitchen infrastructure and freshly prepared meals. The Governor's Budget also includes an increase of $22.2 million Proposition 98 to reflect the 2.43% cost of living adjustment.

Bringing the state reimbursement rate from a little under 98 cents to a little over $1. And this would bring the total increase for the Nutrition Program to 106.33 million for both the growth and the cost of living adjustment. Furthermore, the Governor's Budget includes 150 million one time Proposition 98 for local education agencies to expend on kitchen infrastructure upgrades and training that will increase the school's capacity for freshly prepared on site meals using minimally processed, locally grown, and sustainable food.

This investment is designed to complement the investments made in the Farm to School Program, which aims to build capacity by investing in school kitchen infrastructure and training for culinary staff to prepare meals from scratch. Also builds upon the 100 million one time Prop immediate investment from the 2022 Budget Act for food procurement grants.

It was called the School Food Best Practices Grants, which was a collaborative effort between the Department of Education and the Department of Food and Ag to support schools in procuring more locally sourced, whole, or minimally processed foods for freshly prepared meals. Also, it builds upon previous kitchen infrastructure and training investments of approximately 750 million by targeting specific funding for schools to increase the number of freshly prepared meals.

Specifically, this investment includes 100 million in competitive grants for infrastructure upgrades designed to increase the capacity for freshly prepared meals on site as well as the remaining 50 million will be allocated to schools based on a formula to provide additional training to staff to increase the number of freshly prepared meals on site. That concludes my remarks, but I'm happy to take any questions you may have.

Thank you. Do we have any comments from the LAO?

Yeah, Edgar Cabral with the LAO. So in terms of the Universal Meals Program costs, we think the administration's current year estimates are reasonable. For 25-26 though, we think the administration likely underestimates the number of meals that will be served.

The Governor's Budget essentially assumes flat growth, no year to year growth from 24-25 to 25-26, and based on our analysis of recent meal growth trends, we would estimate that the state would serve about 5% more meals in 25-26, which would cost about $32 million in additional funding in 25-26 compared to what the Governor includes in the budget.

In terms of the kitchen infrastructure grant funding, we do recommend rejecting that proposal. At this time, the state doesn't have information around the effectiveness of the use of the previous kitchen infrastructure training and funding. This would be the third round. The first reports for the first two rounds of funding are due June 30th of 2025.

Regarding the specific requirement around freshly prepared on site meals, the state does not have a lot of information on the capacity or interest level for additional funding. In the second round of funding, there was funding specifically for this purpose that LEAs could opt into, and roughly half of LEAs opted in to receive those funds on the condition that they improve or increase the amount of freshly prepared on site meals.

We don't know at this point whether those specific grantees have demand for additional funding or whether those who opted out of the funds would want to participate again. There presumably was a reason they didn't participate in the first place.

The Legislature could evaluate funding if the additional funding is merited in 26-27 when more information on the uses of the first and second round of funds are available. If the Legislature is interested in providing additional funding, a third round of kitchen infrastructure, we have a couple of considerations.

One, the Legislature could consider removing the criteria that funds are used only for increasing capacity for freshly prepared on site meals. That would allow funds to be used more broadly to address any of the most pressing local school nutrition needs or for implementing universal school meals more broadly.

And then if the Legislature does continue to provide funds for a more targeted approach, such as freshly prepared on site meals, we recommend the state set goals associated with the funds and then collect data statewide from all LEAs to better assess progress towards meeting those goals.

So that way if, say, the state does want to fund freshly prepared on site meals, if we have a sense of what all LEAs are doing regarding that area, we can see what progress has been made and whether additional whether future spending is addressing those issues and then whether additional funding should be continued in the future. That concludes my remarks. I'm happy to answer any questions.

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

Yes, thank you. Good morning, Mr. Chair and Members. Kim Frinzell with the Department of Education on behalf of State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond. And I want to thank you for your continued support and investments in California school meals and especially the infrastructure funding that is so essential to our school meal programs to better serve the students in their community.

We all know that school meals are a vital source of nutrition and complete meals and universal access to school meals is associated with improved diet quality, academic achievements, and eliminating food insecurity. Our school meals are standard based. They include a variety of fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grain rich, lean meats, plant based options, and a variety of dairy products as well. And all students deserve to have access to a school breakfast and lunch each instructional day with dignity, no shaming, and no meal debt, regardless of their income eligibility.

This is especially true in California, where we know that over 61% of our students living in our state are living below the federal poverty level that qualifies them for the reduced price or free meal programs, national school lunch, school breakfast program. And our schools, our families really do depend on universal meals for their students to help, to help nourish them. And we cannot talk about universal meals without addressing the very valuable and appreciated state investments in the school meals through the 2021 and the 2022 Kitchen Infrastructure and Training Funding.

These funds have enabled schools to increase training and professional development for their staff so that they can move away from more highly processed foods, ultra processed foods, and offer more minimally processed, more freshly prepared foods, as you heard my colleague from Department of Finance speak to. As well as many of our kitchens are incredibly outdated, and so just the infrastructure, not only do they need the equipment, but just the electrical and many plumbing systems that are needed to bring in better quality equipment and to create the space so that they can offer the school meals to the best quality.

That increases participation, which is exactly what we want. So there is evidence around the need. School nutrition directors from across the state anecdotally have spoken with me about how this consistent funding is so essential. But we also don't want to forget that this is really validated through the University of California, the Nutrition Policy Institute.

They were actually funded in the state budget to do formative and impact and process evaluation of universal, our California Universal Meals Program. And this included the quality of school meals, the Kitchen Infrastructure and Training Funding. And this is very research based.

They had a very diverse perspective from administrators, food service directors, parents, over 2,000 parents and students. 60% of the school nutrition directors reported to the Nutrition Policy Institute that these state funds have been the contributing factor for their ability to procure and offer more locally sourced, freshly prepared meals and to help increase participation and to nourish the students and to offer foods that are palatable and acceptable to the students.

But also supporting local economies. We don't want to lose sight to how valuable our meal programs are to our local economies. And this aligns with an analysis assessment that the Department of Education conducted. We did a mid year assessment of the 2021 Kitchen Infrastructure and Training Funds, and we had 697 that completed this assessment, and 222 reported that they had either at that point had either planned or actually initiated some very large scale infrastructure projects, such as kitchen remodels, service remodeling so that kids have adequate time to eat and the point of service are up to date.

And then we had 41 that reported that because they're offering more freshly prepared meals that they needed larger storage facilities and warehouse projects. So schools have clearly demonstrated the need for the funding. They also, we know that they need more time to encumber the funds as well. They've had permitting delays and approval delays.

We will know more when the final report is due June 30th of this year. But we do strongly urge the continuation of the 2025 KIT funds, especially with all the federal discretionary funding really kind of some being terminated and some being really uncertain of what will happen. We lost $71 million in federal funds.

So just in conclusion, California Universal Meals is working, and it's a proven program to address food and nutrition security. Healthy school meals and the infrastructure needed to provide those healthy meals are investments that we want to continue with. And this is really vital with the federal threats on our child nutrition programs now more than ever. So thank you for your continued support.

Thank you. Appreciate you all. Just curious, on the issue of the kitchen funds, does the Department of Finance, is one of the reasons for requesting additional funding, were the last two rounds oversubscribed and by how much?

So when you... Sorry, Nate Williams, Department of Finance. Are you asking like do we have more people asking for the funds? That would probably be, Kim may be better to answer that question.

Happy to answer that. And I think we need to kind of set the table a bit. In the 2021 and 2022 year, USDA was pushing a lot of federal grants at that point. And I don't want to say that there was too much money, but there was just a lot that schools were trying to navigate. So for the 2021 funding, we had 150 million for the KIT funding, and 941 LEAs opted into that of about 1200. And then for the 2022 funding, we had over a thousand opted in. So we could see, right, that the need was definitely there.

You're talking about LEAs, not school sites. Okay. Yes.

Mr. Chair, to clarify, I think those proposals, they were not competitive grants. They were formula grants. So everybody got some amount of, as long as they opted in. It sounds like the vast majority opted in, and it was based on a formula. There wasn't a specific request for an amount. So I think in terms of answering your specific question, I don't think we have the... We could say this district wanted more money and they couldn't access it, but there have been multiple rounds.

So the LAO raised the point that these are supposed to be funds for, what was the phrase? It was like, I don't want to say healthy meals, because they're all healthy meals, but like that the award should be tied to referring to... Thank you. Freshly prepared on site meals. That's currently not a requirement of the proposal, or is it a requirement in the proposal?

So, yes, the proposal that we're putting forward has that requirement.

And how would that be measured, captured, make sure that that's what the funds get used for?

That would be a part of the kind of the grant proposal process. So it'd be a competitive grant this round, as opposed to where they just opt in. So schools would have to come forward with a proposal of how they plan to spend the funds.

And then I assume, auditing. How does the LAO, what are the concerns from the LAO on making sure that it gets used in those ways? What can we say? What could we add to the proposal to make sure that that's happening?

I think there would need to be some actually measuring that. Right. Measuring before and after progress. Right. If the, if the goal is we want to increase the amount of meals that are, that are freshly prepared, then there should be an expectation that there would be measurement of that before and after. Right.

So that we can have a sense of the improvement. I think that's more broadly. Some of the suggestions that we raised, just more broadly about that would be, if you did that, you would be collecting that for the grantees, but you're not collecting that for the whole system. And so if, if this is a goal that we want as a system to have a larger percentage of those meals served that way, then the state might want to consider requiring some kind of a data collection.

I would agree. So we're going to move this proposal forward and it's for that purpose and it should be actually delivering those results. So hopefully in either the May Revision or if this proposal were to move forward, we'd see the language there. Any other questions on this item? Dr. Patel.

Yes, we're very excited at the local community level to see freshly prepared meals. The getting, walking away from these overproduced meals is an excellent thing. I think, to the LAO's point, the better meals that we prepare for our students, we will see more students wanting to eat those meals.

So we do need to make sure that we're capturing the right budget amount for our students to be covered and not have to come back over and over again for additional funds. I would love to be able to get closer to that amount. Is there a way to better project that?

Do you mean in terms of the demand for these grant funds? I mean, I think there could be. I mean, I think there have been some surveys and other others of just what do LEAs think the amount, what their infrastructure would need to be. So I think those are far beyond what we've provided.

I mean, the meal reimbursements.

Oh, the reimbursement rates. That I'm not familiar. So I think to your point, sometimes this does require additional costs to operate your program. And so it might, either because the food costs are higher or because it takes more staff time to prepare, but we don't have a specific estimate of what that would be.

Yeah. What I would say to answer this... Sorry. Nate Williams, Department of Finance. So the projections that we put out at Governor's Budget, so there's actually a lag in when we pay meals. So the Governor's Budget only has meal counts for the current year through August, which a lot of schools are just barely kind of starting in August. So we don't have a lot of current year data to work with. So we really are only projecting off of kind of what was the past year at that point.

And then so to project for the budget year using only that data, it's difficult for us to make a lot of projections and we don't want to, you know, over ask for way too much money. And so a lot of times the May Revision process is really how we refine that. So that's kind of the, the best way that I can explain. We do the best that we can to try and hit that number, but it's, it can be difficult sometimes.

Yeah, that's fair. I totally see that. Thank you for providing that explanation. I am looking forward to seeing that May Revision then get funded because I know our kids are increasingly becoming more engaged with what the what the school nutrition plan is providing for them at school. We're seeing some great changes in our menu in our local school districts, and kids are loving the fresh produce that's available to them. Another question regarding the infrastructure specifically.

There are some school districts, I'm drawing from my own experience who have not been able to, who will push forward successful bonds for facilities improvements, and then yet they're required to provide this freshly prepared food. High school levels they do have prep kitchens, but at the elementary and the middle schools they don't.

And they do the best that they can with the facilities they have, but they're left remaining with having to feed a large number of children in a very short time period, and they tend to go to the pre prepared meals for that. And how can we better support those districts strategically with infrastructure support?

You know, even though knowing that many school districts didn't need it and we didn't see dipping in, how can we better target those funds to help ensure all districts get to the place where they have the facilities, infrastructure to provide those freshly prepared meals? Any thoughts on that? I'm throwing it wide open.

I would say for, you know, it's difficult. Very small districts, I mean you have kind of the minimum buy in issue where it's going to be difficult for them. So I think for those districts the best thing that they can do is to get creative with a centralized kitchen or sometimes they will even outsource to other kitchens in the, in the area that they can provide. You know, maybe there's a kitchen in the area that can provide meals. And so they're not actually having to do as much of the prep, you know, because that does require a lot of staff and things like that.

In my particular situation, it's a very large school district. With no bond funding or infrastructure dollars to make the improvements.

Yeah, I mean in that case I would continue to have them to look, you know, whatever state programs we have or also federal programs, although I know that some of those have been getting cuts. But they do also have access to the LCFF funding that has, you know, a lot of, where there's, they have a lot of discretion as to how they can spend that as well on infrastructure. So you know, there are funding mechanisms for them. But we do recognize that there's always more funding needed for some of these infrastructure projects. And so we're just trying to do our best from here to be able to get money out to the locals to help.

Thank you. Yeah, go ahead.

I was just going to add. Kim Frinzell, Department of Education. And because the 2025 KIT funds are potentially competitive, Right. And we think about the criteria. Do we need to target some of these school districts that have old or need to improve their infrastructure? I also think that we have great opportunities.

There's a lot of great synergy if we think about the Governor's executive order as well as some bills around ultra processed foods and what we can do to really move the needle on the types of foods. Even if a school needed to vend meals from another school district or from a commercial vendor, if California is setting higher standards for our children, I think we have great opportunity there.

Completely agree. And then my final question is a full cycle kind of question. We have a mandate in public education to compost our food waste. And as we serve more and more meals, that responsibility is becoming substantial there. There is also substantial waste, especially at some of our school sites.

How do we currently support the composting process for our local agencies? They did not get funding for this additional requirement from the state. It does require additional staff support and, you know, extra bins and things like that and training for our kids year over year because there are new kids every time. What is the support for that, the other end of our food service?

I can take that. Kim Frinzell, Department of Education. So it truly is an LEA function, not a food service, the composting. Right. And just because our federal funds, they have to be allocable, reasonable. Right. And so that that division of where did this pile come from kind of thing makes it a little bit difficult.

But we have worked closely and we've done training with CalRecycle, CalEPA, and done trainings with schools. And there's some pretty cool models out there. So sharing best practices around the recycling is certainly helpful. And then I'll just put a final plug that making sure our children have adequate time time to enjoy their meal. So hopefully there'll be less food waste.

Thank you. Thank you for that. Those are my questions.

Thank you, Dr. Patel. We will hold this issue open. Thank you all for being here and presenting on this item. We will move on to issue number eight, which is a non-presentation item, multiple items. I don't see any questions or comments from the Committee at the time.

So we will not have a formal presentation on these items, and we'll hold the issue open. And with that, we come to the public comments period of the meeting. You have a public comment on something that we discussed today, please come forward. We'll give you a minute. Please identify yourself. And we'll let you know when your minute has expired. Welcome and begin.

Thank you. Good morning, Chair Alvarez and Members. I'm Liz Fenton. I represent the Office of Kat Taylor here in support of of Issue six, the Governor's budget proposal for the School Meals for All Program, which includes full funding for the School Meals for All Program, including increased participation, and the 150 million in one time funding for the Kitchen Infrastructure and Training Program.

As the state continues to face cost of living concerns including rising food prices, School Meals for All is also one of the simplest levers for the state to address the cost of living crisis because it quickly puts money back in the pockets of families when their children eat free at school.

The KIT program is critical to the success of the School Meals for All Program. 92% of LEAs opted into KIT. Many school kitchens are outdated and ill equipped to handle the increased demands of preparing fresh, healthy meals for all students. Further, most school nutrition staff have never received training on how to cook. A UC Berkeley study in 2020 cited a $5.8 billion funding need for these programs.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Good morning, Chair Alvarez and Members. Tiffany Germain with NextGen California here in support of fully funding School Meals for All as well as the 150 million for Kitchen Infrastructure and Training Program that was proposed in the Governor's January budget. This is an incredibly successful program in fighting food insecurity by meeting hungry kids where they are, at school.

Research shows that almost half of food insecure families in California do not qualify for federal school meal assistance, making this program truly essential in fighting childhood hunger. A state funded evaluation by the Nutrition Policy Institute found that students, teachers, and school nutrition directors all report that it is working and has reduced stigma and the embarrassment associated with eating school meals.

The researchers also found that kitchen infrastructure and training funds have supported successful implementation of School Meals for All, helping kitchens and staff to meet the high increase in demand for meals. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Thank you.

Good morning, Chair and Members. Abby Halperin on behalf of the Center for Ecoliteracy and in support of the Governor's Budget proposal to fully fund School Meals for All and the Kitchen Infrastructure and Training Program, or KIT. What we've learned in working with our network of 150 public school districts across the state is that School Meals for All and KIT are working. Before these programs passed, a school nurse in Palm Springs used to have 17 students in his office every day simply because they were hungry.

This has changed thanks to School Meals for All. Students in Southern California now tell us that School Meals for All means eating more than once a day. It means not worrying about whether or not they have enough money to eat for the week. Students are also eating more fresh fruits and vegetables thanks to the KIT program.

San Diego Unified used KIT funds to purchase 300 immersion blenders to prepare fresh salad dressings, salsas, marinara sauce, and smoothies. More remains to be done. 91% of school districts in our network report needing more funding for KIT to address outdated kitchen facilities and provide needed staff training. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman and Members. I'm Brian Rivas speaking on behalf of the Education Trust-West. We're in support of the Governor's proposal for math and literacy coaches. These are areas of need for low income students of color and support with these foundational skills are important for any strategy that is trying to address opportunity and achievement gaps.

We agree with the targeting. We do have a suggested amendment though. We're concerned that the trailer bill would allow LEAs to opt out of the literacy coaches program. We think that should only be the case if there are satisfactory levels of student achievement. So if you're red or orange on the California school dashboard, we think the Legislature ought to limit the ability of LEAs to opt out of that assistance. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi, Chair Alvarez. Itzúl Gutierrez with the California Association of Food Banks. We thank the Legislator for its leadership in establishing and upholding School Meals for All and Kitchen Infrastructure Grants, which ensure students have nutrition they need to thrive. And for that we urge maintaining full funding for this program, including Kitchen Infrastructure Grants, which is essential in supporting California families in the fight for childhood hunger.

Also, we urge the Legislature to continue to strengthen assistance for families and children facing hunger by maximizing access to the federal drawdown of SUN Bucks program by creating an online statewide application and also providing 3 million for summer caregiver meals pilot to ensure parents and caregivers can can sit down and have a meal with their children at summer meal sites located at public libraries. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair and Members. Andrew Cheyne from End Child Poverty California. I'll associate myself with the comments made by Ms. Frinzell and my colleagues on School Meals for All as well as the Kitchen Infrastructure Grants. I just wanted to expand a bit on the summer EBT program that my colleague Itzúl just spoke to.

There's about 1.8 million children who need to apply to this program. The CDE has done fantastic work in standing up the universal benefits application, but it is going to be a static PDF. It's going to be very challenging for a lot of families to find it and submit it, especially while schools are closed over the summer. So we're working with Senator Perez. We'd love to work with you on trying to establish this online application, which will hopefully streamline access for families and draw down as much as $216 million in federal funds.

Good morning. Patti Herrera on behalf of Early Edge California. We were a proud co-sponsor of AB 2216 that repealed the ELPAC for transitional kindergarten students beginning this school year. Uniquely, we were also a co-sponsor of the bills that standardize the identification of dual language learners in our child development programs, so we see the value of that. However, I stand before you today in support of the Governor's proposal to invest $10 million to find a replacement screener for the ELPAC in transitional kindergarten.

When we embarked upon the effort to repeal the ELPAC for TK, our intention was to find a developmentally appropriate tool for our TK students that evaluate the language development needs and supports for our TK students that we can then reconnect back to state funding, hopefully federal funding, as well as classroom instructional strategies and supports. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good morning, Chair and Members. Elle Grant on behalf of the California Alliance of Child and Family Services. We represent 165 community based organizations that serve the state's most vulnerable children, youth, and families, especially those at high risk of being involved with the child welfare system.

On issue five, I just want to say that we strongly support early identification to better support dual language learners, including homeless and foster youth who often face additional barriers. We also appreciate the opt out option and safeguards against misclassification.

And we urge investment in training for teachers so they can give all young students, especially the most vulnerable, the support they need from the start. And on issue six, the Universal School Meals. Just that universal meals are essential for homeless and foster youth who often rely on schools for their only consistent meals.

And we want to support and uplift the increased funding for kitchen upgrades and staff training to improve healthy, accessible meals for all students. Also, emphasizing the robust data collection is really critical to ensuring these investments reach the youth experiencing the highest need. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good morning. Raquel Morales also on behalf of EdTrust-West. We want to support the 10 million for the TK screener and align our comments with Early Edge California. Also want to speak in support of the ELA/ELD instructional material. And we have a suggested amendment that and requesting the state to consider providing publishers with guidance on how to align ELA/ELD instruction materials to that to the California Preschool TK Learning Foundations. We believe that this would build on the CDE's efforts to bring the state closer to P-3 alignment. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good morning, Mr. Chair. Dan Merwin on behalf of the California School Boards Association. On the reading difficulty screeners, we would agree with the Chair's characterization that that is implementation funding. However, the requirement itself is ongoing. We would urge consideration of ongoing funding in the final budget agreement for the out years. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good morning. Heather Calomese with EdVoice. We appreciate the literacy investments in the Governor's Budget proposal. To build on these investments, we would suggest two revisions to two specific proposals, the first being the ELA/ELD Instructional Materials Adoption. We would suggest that the list must align with the current definition of evidence based means of teaching literacy that is currently defined in existing law.

And then also targeting at least $250 million from the Professional Development Discretionary Block Grant towards professional development for literacy educators that is also grounded in evidence based instructional practices for teaching reading as defined in current law. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good morning. Cristina Salazar with Californians Together and on behalf of the California Association for Bilingual Education. We want to align our comments with Early Edge on issue number five. We were two of the other co-sponsors of AB 2268, which exempted TK students from taking the ELPAC.

We recognize that this created a major gap, and without a screener we risk losing critical time to understand and nurture their language development. We support the Governor's proposal on the 10 million investment. We want to make sure that early identification enables home language and language and English development.

Additionally, from the educator perspective, we need to empower them with the right tools, training, and family engagement strategies to build a strong foundation for multilingual learners. On issue number two, both organizations appreciate the Literacy Networks proposal and its emphasis on a comprehensive literacy approach and would like to elevate the inclusion of English language learners and multilingual experts as this was rolled out. Thank you.

Thank you.

Caitlin Jung on behalf of the California School Nutrition Association. CSNA supports fully funding universal school meals and would like to thank both administration and the Legislature for continuing to make universal school meals a priority. CSNA also supports in a third round of Kitchen Infrastructure and Training funding.

As was mentioned by Ms. Frinzell, the first two rounds of KIT funding have been invaluable in helping schools trust to make kitchen improvements and expand the capacity of the programs. But more still needs to be done, especially if we're going to be looking at asking schools to provide more locally prepared, on site fresh meals. We definitely need to do additional infrastructure improvements. So additional rounds of KIT funding would be much appreciated. Thank you.

Thank you. Welcome.

Good morning. Kordell Hampton with the Association of California School Administrators. We're in support of the Governor's proposals related to screeners, both the $40 million for the for students in grades K through 2 and the $10 million for the development for students in TK. We're also in support of the Governor's investment and commitment to universal meals. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you all for your public comment and all who attended today's hearing. We are now adjourned.