Signed by Governor Gavin Newsom

Vote Smart's Synopsis:

Vote to concur with house amendments and pass a bill that appropriates funds to public schools during the shutdown.

Highlights:

• Specifies that average daily attendance for the 2019-2020 school year reported to the State Department of Education for the second period and the annual period for local education agencies will only include all full school months from July 1, 2019, to February 29, 2020 inclusively (Sec. 1).

• Specifies that instructional days and minutes that a local educational agency would have offered pupils to meet the necessary requirements during the period of time the school is closed due to COVID-19, are considered met in order to prevent a loss of funding related to an instructional time penalty (Sec. 2).

• Classifies a school closure due to COVID-19 as a qualifying event, ensuring continuity of funding for the After School Education and Safety Program, and specifies that the obligation for a program grantee to submit a request for pupil attendance credits is waived (Sec. 4).

• Specifies that the attendance and reporting requirements imposed on childcare and development programs are waived for programs that comply with an Executive Order to ensure continuity of payments to state-subsidized childcare and development programs (Sec. 5).

• Requires the time needed to assess pupils for English language proficiency to be extended by 45 days (Sec. 6).

• Requires specific testing windows to be extended by the length of time a school is closed due to COVID-19, or until the end of the testing window, whichever comes first (Sec. 6).

• Requires the State Department of Education, in order to determine a local educational agency’s compliance with the special education timelines, to consider the days a school is closed due to COVID-19 as days between a pupil’s regular school session (Sec. 8).

• Appropriates $100 million from the General Fund to the Superintendent of Public Instruction to be apportioned on the basis of average daily attendance generated by local educational agencies that provide a classroom-based educational program to pupils after March 4, 2020, and before June 30, 2020 (Sec. 9).

• Requires these funds apportioned to local educational agencies be used to purchase personal protective equipment, or to pay for supplies and labor related to cleaning schoolsites, or both (Sec. 9).

Full Bill Text