Senate Standing Committee on Education

The Senate Education Committee has come to order. We have one bill on today's agenda, SB 685 by Senator Cortese. We are hearing this bill pursuant to Senate rule 29.10 D because it was amended in the Assembly to replace its contents.

This is the first time this bill has been heard by this committee in its current form. Witnesses are asked to limit their testimony to two minutes to ensure the committee is able to complete today's agenda in a timely fashion.

We do have a quorum, so I'm going to have, secretary call the roll very quickly.

[roll call]

Great. And a quorum has been established, and welcome Senator Cortese. You can get started whenever you'd like.

Thank you, Madam Chair, members. We appreciate the opportunity to present SB 685 at this time. I'm going to keep my remarks a little bit minimized and let our witness, who will introduce in a moment, say what she needs to say. And of course, we'd both be available for questions.

This bill has to do with the 9th circuit decision, Laughlin v California Department of Education, which basically changed the way we would deal with individualized education programs that used to be limited to nonsectarian schools.

That designation is no longer something that we can sustain from the standpoint of of the courts. So a lot of work has been done.

A lot of work has been done by the California Department of Education to bring and help craft this legislation that not only aligns with the court decision, but makes it such that all schools, sectarian schools as well, can provide this special education so long as they comply with the requirements that are outlined in the bill and that have traditionally been required in our world of education here in California.

So I'm, with that, going to turn it over to Kimberly Rosenberger, on behalf of who's here on behalf of the California Department of Education. And let me just say at the appropriate time and respectfully request your aye vote.

Thank you, Madam Chair, members. Kimberly Rosenberger, Deputy Superintendent of Public Instruction for External Affairs, here on behalf of the State Superintendent. We are very appreciative of the work of the Senator and also both committees. This is addressing a court decision for a very small population of students. Non public schools serve less than 1% of students.

These are students with incredibly high needs that the LEAs are unable to serve. We make sure that we're maintaining the extension of the LEA and what they're serving, and so by making sure we expand to non sectarian, we're also carrying over the Lofman decision of ensuring that they get a secular education and they're providing the state mandated LEA curriculum that is appropriate for the school and reflective of the contract that they hold.

This bill just carries over existing protections and safeguards for students, particularly around credentialing, fingerprinting, and reporting mechanisms. We were really sure to be thoughtful on making sure that the student population that is the most vulnerable was protected and that we maintain California constitution, education code protections, and state other state laws. Thank you.

Thank you for your presentation. Do we have any me too's here registers to for or here to register support? If you could use the mic.

Cassie Manzini on behalf of the California School Employees Association in support.

Thank you. Mitch Steiger with CFT, also in support.

Great. Thank you. Do we have anybody here in opposition? Any opposition, please rise.

Seeing no and rising, I'll turn it back to the committee.

Do we have committee comments or questions?

We have a motion by Senator Gonzales. Senator Ochoa Bogh has a question.

I do. And, sorry. I just got the analysis right now, so I'm trying to read really quickly to, to understand. I'm kinda curious as to how this looks in the real world. Because I know we've got the philosophical part and we've got the theory part and then we have the practical part.

So it says here that the Pacific Justice Institute in its formal letter, a secular view is an antithesis to a religious view. While both may be respectful and neutral, they are not compatible with one another. This is a thinly veiled attempt to restrict aid to schools, which allow sectarian content.

How do you plan on, do how does this work? And because I can't see a parent choosing a secondary school and then having or be able to follow this. Like I don't, I don't see how this works.

I don't think the burden falls on the parent. It's that the school, those schools will now come into alignment with what non sectarian schools have been doing all along. But let me defer to the witness to answer more technically. It's a school. It's a education institutional requirement to to comply with state law.

Yeah. And I'll echo it. It isn't, this isn't a school choice situation. This is when a school cannot meet the IEP of the student, often because they have significant needs, they will contract with a school that has those additional services, to best ensure the student's getting their public right to an education. So it's a contract between the LEA and the school.

And in the Loffman decision, it did say, we have the term nonsectarian for certified public schools. They were saying that's an unfair barrier to say no religious schools can apply, but they must provide a secular education.

And so multiple times throughout the court decision, they say being religious shouldn't be a barrier but they still have to provide the state mandated secular education. And so if it's in conflict, that's because there still is maintained the separation of church and state.

It's just saying that, because you identify as a religious institution, that shouldn't be an immediate prohibition for you being certified as a public school.

If you wanna offer these services, then you can do so in a secular manner per the Loffman decision, then you should be able to apply. As the language was drafted previously, if you wanted to offer a consistent with state mandate secular education, you weren't able to apply because of your religious identification. That is what we're addressing here.

Okay. So I'm no. I'm strong because I literally just got the language, and so I can't read everything right now to be able to have a improvise. So I'm not gonna be supporting this bill today. That's one of the reasons why I'm always really concerned about bills coming in at the very last minute for us to be able to you know, after we're voting, you know on hundreds of bills on this end.

But I know that this is part of the process. We're able to do that. But I am extremely concerned about bringing this bill right for not having gone through the process and having the time. So I'm I'm gonna vote no today on this bill, and I look forward to having more discussions on it in the near future.

Thank you.

Senator Cabaldon.

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm gonna support it. I understand the the reason also for the the lateness.

It's just that we're the during this bill couldn't have been introduced to the beginning of the year because there was no settlement in place on the on the 9th Circuit case. So the timing, I would prefer something other than the 3rd to the last day myself. But in general, I think that this one is driven by the timing of the court decision and then the ensuing settlement.

And just to make the finer point on the issue of the sectarian question, because I think the opposition letter also had this a bit wrong. So the opposition letter did say that it this essentially gives with one hand and takes away with the other, and it makes it worse by saying, by essentially having the requirement for nonsectarian services.

But that is I think, the as the witness has said, that's not what's going on here. The under current law that needs to be fixed, a sectarian school cannot, cannot sign a contract with the state to provide IEP services.

This bill would allow that to occur and instead say that the services being provided under the contract with the state have to be nonsectarian. That does not mean that the school can't offer sectarian education.

It can, but not as part of the contract that the taxpayers of California are paying for.

That seems to me like a very, very surgical approach to try to both comply with the court case and what the court case was about, which was assuring that sectarian schools, if they can provide the non sectarian services, they should be able to do so.

So, this seems like a much like it opens the door for far more sectarian schools to be able to provide these services, which is a value, I think, for kids and families around the state, while still assuring the core objective that original law was about. So I'm intending to support it today. I would have liked to have more time as well, but I think, the rationale here is very compelling.

Sorry. Could I just ask for one

Senator Ochoa Bogh.

I apologize. But just sorry. Curiosity. So does this mean that the schools will be able to still provide everything else that they would otherwise provide as long as they're providing the secular educational requirements?

As I, as I read it, yes. Because the the school if I'm attending a Catholic school and it has a it has a Catholic education, whatever as part of that program, that yes, they can provide that, but not as not under the contract with the state. So the state's contracting for non sectarian services just like it always has before but this bill says, look, what but I can go to the school, which before I couldn't.

Now I can go to the school and the school can be reimbursed for the, for the non sectarian direct IEP services that are in place. Right? So

We don't know exactly how the schools are gonna navigate that segregation, if you will. I mean, there's ideology about it's better, you know, in schools right now, in public schools right now, there's always a debate going on that you want more inclusion and you want all the kids in exactly the same curriculum.

This probably doesn't lend itself to that very well with a religious school, but it does prohibit the religious school from navigating this by having a separate sectarian curriculum regardless of what's going on in the rest of the school. I mean, that's this is not attempting to tell them how to do that.

It's just basically saying if you, if you're under contract if you want one of these contracts, which you've never been able to get before ever, then you're you're gonna have to show you're just gonna have to comport with the separation of church and state issues that that come before all other schools in publicly funded education here in California.

So I don't know.

Okay. So even more so. So the question

You probably have to

For the logistics, it'd be important to talk to the stakeholders to see what this looks like in once again, in practice. But I can see the huge conundrum that we find ourselves in. So even more so, I won't not be able to support the bill, but I'm really, really intrigued about ensuring that I moving forward, have conversations with with our schools to to see what this will look like in practice.

So thank you, for bringing this forward and for at least starting the conversations on this issue.

Grateful that for the discussion, and Senator Cortese, thank you for bringing forward this bill. You're responding to a very important court decision that's happened, which is part of the reason why this is a gut and amend. It was heard in the Assembly Education Committee, and so I just wanna make a note of that. And the only reason this wasn't on the agenda earlier in the week is we just didn't have your amendments quite yet processed.

So it was just a timeline piece, but I'm very supportive and recommend an aye vote, and I'll let you close.

Well, let me just close by saying thank you very much for your engagement, for the committee's engagement, understanding, and support of of what's going on here. We felt the same way in the other house going in and having people understand exactly what's going on here.

I'm optimistic for whatever it's worth is probably nothing to do with persuading you on the vote today, but honestly, based on my own lived experience of public schools having the, having had, and some still do, the practice of pulling children out for religious education during the course of a day, and religious schools being able to separate out non religious education during the course of their day.

But again, the bill doesn't dictate anything in terms of how to do that, and hopefully there'll be good navigation on that in the future. In the meantime, in order to comport with the new laws, we would respectfully ask for your aye vote. Thank you.

We have two motions by Senator Gonzales and Senator Cabaldon. Secretary, can you call the roll? Oh, and the motion is that the Assembly amendments be concurred in.

[roll call]

We'll put that bill on call. Thank you so much, Senator Cortese. And I know many of our members are gonna be stepping away now that we've finished, but this is our last committee hearing for the year and the end of the two year session, and I just wanna give a very big thank you to the staff that have done such a tremendous job this year, the entire team. It's been really, really incredible.

We've heard hundreds of bills, and I think everybody should just be really, really proud of all of the team and the consultants and the staff that have been working so hard on this committee. So thank you all so much.

So we will actually be closing the rule, and the Senate Education Committee is oh, and the vote on SB 685 will be a 5-1 vote, so that bill is out. And we will go ahead and adjourn this committee. Thank you all so much.