As part of his proposed budget package, California Governor Jerry Brown seeks to eliminate $10.4 million in state child nutrition subsides allocated to "private entities."  The proposed reduction appears on page "EDU 9" of this state budget document (as the second-to-last bulleted item).  If approved by the Legislature, private school students would be impacted, but not their public school counterparts.  CAPSO believes that in this instance, singling out private school students makes for bad policy, not merely with respect to equity, but in terms of dollars and cents.

Every recipient of the state subsidy, which supplements child nutrition funding provided by the federal government, hails from a low-income family.  Each student beneficiary, regardless of whether he/she attends a public school or a private school, has met the same means test for participation in the National School Breakfast and National School Lunch programs.  The Governor's proposal will deny assistance to children from low-income families solely upon the basis of the type of school they attend.

 

Apparently, Governor Brown believes that any child enrolled in a private school must belong to a family that can afford to shoulder the amount of the proposed cut.  (One might just as easily - and wrongly - assume that every current private school family can afford an additional increase in tuition.) The Governor would do well to consider whether the state of California can afford to absorb displaced private school children owing to their inability to receive nutritious meals in school.

 

The state subsidy in question comes to $0.1562 for breakfast, and the same amount for lunch.  That comes to about 31 cents per-pupil-per-day, and $56.23 per-pupil over the course of a 180-day school year.  At the same time, every student attending a private school is saving the state a minimum of $7,600 a year, or $42.22 per-day (as compared to 31 cents).  If as few as one out of every 136 private school students currently receiving the subsidy Governor Brown proposes to eliminate should transfer to a public school to receive more nutritious meals the net savings would be completely eliminated, and the state would incur additional expense.

 

CAPSO opposes the Governor's proposal.  The private school community recognizes that California faces difficult economic challenges, and is prepared to shoulder its fair share of the burden.  We suggest only that the proposed reduction be distributed equally among all recipients of the benefit.  In this manner, the impact upon each recipient would be minimal, and a misguided policy that may well prove to be "penny-wise and pound-foolish" will be avoided.

CAPSO invites you to make your voice heard using our Legislative Action Center.  We've created a pre-scripted email message to Governor Brown that can also be personalized, should you so choose.

You can access our Action Alert and send your message to the Governor, here.  It's easy, and it's important.

 

Download Registration Form for Bay Area
 

On March 6, Dale Regan, Head of School at Episcopal School of Jacksonville, and Board President of the Florida Council of Independent Schools (FCIS), was shot to death by a teacher whom she had dismissed earlier the same day.  The teacher, Shane Schumerth, 28, then turned the AK-47 rifle on himself and took his own life.  The events are reported by StAugustine.com, here.

 

Beyond Technology Education will offer a webinar titled, "Educational Trends and Statistics: Technology that Impacts our Classrooms," on Wednesday, March 21, and again on Wednesday, March 28, beginning at 10:00 a.m. PDT.  The BTE model, developed over the course of twenty years, can be valuable for schools interested in upgrading or improving their technology integration methods.  Additional information and registration pages for each of the webinars can be accessed by clicking on the highlighted links, above. 

 

Two years ago, I found myself grappling with one of the more perplexing pieces of legislation I had (and have) yet to encounter.  The bill, AB 2685, was authored by then State Assembly Member Hector De La Torre, who, at the time, was mounting a campaign for State Insurance Commissioner. The measure in question included the following provisions in its "as introduced" form:

Section 44021 is added to the Education Code, to read:

44021.  (a) A private school shall notify the Commission on Teacher Credentialing whenever an employee who comes in contact with minor pupils in the course of his or her employment is charged with the commission of any sex offense, as defined in Section 44010, no later than 10 days after being informed that the employee has been charged.

(b) Any principal, teacher, employee, or school officer of a private school who refuses or willfully neglects to notify the commission pursuant to subdivision (a) is guilty of a misdemeanor punishable by imprisonment in a county jail not to exceed six months or by a fine not to exceed five thousand dollars ($5,000), or by both that fine and imprisonment.

 

The proposed law made no sense to me. I imagined it was motivated by a good and noble desire: to afford children the same sort of protection that is provided by the "mandated reporter" requirements.  But alas!  Good intentions do not automatically produce good law, and the logic underpinning AB 2685 was seriously flawed.  The whole point of the "mandated reporter" laws is to bring suspected acts of child abuse to the attention of appropriate law enforcement agencies so as to facilitate timely and appropriate investigations.  AB 2685, however, addressed instances in which investigations had already been conducted and legal charges of misconduct had already been made.  That is to say, the alleged facts of the matter were already known to appropriate law enforcement agencies.  And this being the case, I wondered why private school employees were being threatened with fines and/or imprisonment for failing to report information that was already in the hands of the authorities? 

 

The first time I phoned the author's office to air my concerns, I was told by a staff member, in a rather peremptory manner, that the bill proposed to do nothing more than subject private schools to the same requirements that applied to public schools.  When I requested a citation of existing law, I was told that it wasn't available offhand, but that they'd get back to me.  While I awaited a return call that never came, I engaged in one of my least favorite of all activities: ploughing through the state law codes in search of something that doesn't exist.

 

At the same time, CAPSO adopted a formal position of "oppose unless amended" to AB 2685.  In delivering notification of our views to the bill's author and other key legislators, we offered the following suggestion: Whenever an individual is charged with the commission of a sex crime, have the appropriate law enforcement agency ascertain whether the person is an employee school - public or private - and, upon verification, notify the Commission on Teacher Credentialing.  Our suggestion was ignored, but the bill was amended so as to remove the portions appearing above.

 

Fast-forward to the present.  In the aftermath of alleged incidences of sex abuse that have rocked the Los Angeles Unified School District, an article in the Los Angeles Times opened with the following revelation:  "Los Angeles schools Supt. John Deasy said the district will report all teachers accused of misconduct to the state credentialing commission in an effort to keep those who pose a risk to students out of the classroom."  According to the paper, when asked about the handling of past abuse allegations, Mr. Deasy replied, 'I'm horrified.'  And the rest of my comments can't be printed in the language that the L.A. Times uses. I don't think I'm overreacting."

 

The new policy will trigger reporting to the Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC) mainly as a result of information obtained from internal investigations conducted by the district.  The idea is that the CTC will share such information with public and private schools throughout the state so that persons responsible for hiring decisions will be informed, and children will be protected.  Which brings us full circle to AB 2685.

 

While the provisions that were specifically objectionable to the state's private school community were stripped from AB 2685, the bill was eventually passed by both houses of the Legislature and signed into law by former governor Schwarzenegger.  Among its provisions was a change to Section 44237(k) of the California Education Code.  Prior to the passage of AB 2685, the section began as follows:

 

44237(k)  The Commission on Teacher Credentialing shall send on a monthly basis to each private school a list of all teachers who have had their state teaching credential revoked or suspended. The list shall be identical to the list compiled for public schools in the state.

 

AB 2685 changed that section of the Education Code to read as follows:

 

Note that two important changes were made, both of which, arguably, constrain rather than enhance the ability of private school administrators to reduce the risk of a bad hire.  Firstly, the CTC had formerly been required to provide critical information to all private schools on a monthly basis - whether a school requested the information or not.  (Whether the CTC actually followed the law in the years prior to the passage of AB 2685 is another matter.)  With the passage of AB 2685, the CTC need only make the information available.  In practical terms, private schools must now take the initiative to receive such information.

 

Secondly, prior to the passage of AB 2685, private schools officials had been tipped off to teachers whose state-issued credentials had been suspended (pending final action).  Since the passage of the bill, this is no longer the case.  In practical terms, most of the teachers whose names will, henceforth, be reported to the CTC by the Los Angeles Unified School District will likely not be made available to private school officials. 

I mention this not to suggest that witch hunts be conducted, but to demonstrate, instead, the capricious nature of legislation.  Here we have a bill that was prepared to subject private school teachers and administrators to fines and/or imprisonment for failure to provide one government entity with information that was already in possession of another, only to morph into a law that leaves private schools with less useful information and less protection against potentially unfortunate hiring decisions.

At least you know that someone is trying to pay attention, and, hopefully, so do our lawmakers.

Ron Reynolds

The next edition of the CAPSO Midweek E-Mailer will be published on April 4, 2012.