Newsom signs several bills impacting education

October 21, 2019
Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed a number of education-related bills passed during the 2019 legislative session. ACSA Senior Director of State Governmental Relations Edgar Zazueta said the most significant pieces of legislation that were acted upon this year were those related to charter schools. “There had been a lot of discussions about charter school reform for a number of years, and ultimately those discussions culminated in the signing of AB 1505 and AB 1507,” he said. Zazueta said school boards and districts will now have more discretion and authority to review charter school petitions through the lens of what is needed in the community. A new school bond will be on the March 2020 ballot as a result of Newsom signing AB 48 (O’Donnell). This ACSA-advocated bill will ask voters to approve a $15 billion school bond, $9 billion of which would go to K-12 schools. One loss was the signing of SB 328, which mandates that middle schools not start class until 8 a.m. and high schools not start until 8:30. Newsom signed this bill on the last day to do so, Oct. 13. California will now become the first state in the nation to push back school start times amid research showing that more sleep for teens leads to better outcomes. “This was something that ACSA didn’t support — not because of the policy, we understand a lot of our members are already enacting different start times that make sense for their community,” Zazueta said. “For us it was always about local control. We really felt that those closest to the students should be making those decisions.” The governor vetoed AB 751, which would have let the Superintendent of Public Instruction administer an alternative assessment to 11th grade students, such as the SAT, with the goal of improving college entrance rates.  As this was Newsom’s first legislative session as governor, Zazueta said there were a number of lessons learned. “I think the biggest takeaway for us as an organization should be that we need to continue to educate the policymakers,” he said. “We need to tell them ­— tell that story about what all of these new policies mean from an implementation standpoint.
Gov. Gavin Newsom signing AB48.
Assemblyman Patrick O’Donnell, ACSA President Wes Smith and others stand by Gov. Gavin Newsom during a signing ceremony for AB 48, which will place a $15 billion school improvement bond on the March 2020 ballot.
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Association of California School Administrators
Association of California School Administrators