California is one of just ten states that has a full-time Legislature. In Oregon, the Legislature meets for just 35 days in even-numbered years and in Nevada the Legislature doesn’t meet at all in alternating years. In California though, the Legislature meets much of the year to create, debate, and vote on legislative bills, and it’s been busy. In the current two-year (2023-24) session, the Assembly has proposed over 3,200 bills and the Senate has proposed more than 1,500. Since K-14 education is a large part of California’s budget, it should come as no surprise that literally hundreds of these bills attempt to affect public education in some manner.

CTA has a robust legislative position process centered around the CTA State Council. If a bill has anything to do with education, including education funding, it is handed off to one of the 21 State Council standing committees for review, except that matters dealing entirely with higher education go to CCA. This means that CCA functions like a State Council committee for the purposes of legislation, even though we don’t meet during State Council. This in turn means that the 25 CCA members on State Council can serve on a State Council committee such as Budget, Civil Rights in Education or Retirement. I currently sit on the Political Involvement Committee, and CCA Vice President Randa Wahbe chairs the CTA Communications Committee.

This legislative session, CCA received 80 bills to review, and we also were listed as a secondary committee on another 30. This past year, our Legislation and Advocacy Committee met a total of eight times to review these bills and our Policy Committee met seven times to determine whether each bill aligned with CTA policy. In the end, we chose to support 30 bills. These positions were confirmed by the CCA Council and the CTA State Council earlier this year and CTA’s Government Relations staff are now working to convince lawmakers to vote “yes” on these bills.

While most bills don’t make it into law, here are the bills that CCA took a “support” position on that are still active as of early June:

Assembly Bills

AB 1577 (Low) – This bill would require a general acute care hospital meeting certain criteria to meet with representatives from a community college with an approved nursing program, upon request, to discuss the clinical placement needs of the school or program. The bill would also require an approved nursing program within a community college to annually report specified information, including the number of clinical slots the school or program has been unable to fill.

AB 1790 (Connolly) – This bill would require the California State University (CSU) to submit an initial report to the Legislature on the status of implementing the California State Auditor recommendations on the investigations and outcomes of sexual harassment reports and formal sexual harassment complaints, including summarized results from specific campus compliance reviews and identification of any systemic issues the CSU needs to address in taking corrective action.

AB 1841 (Weber) – This bill would require each community college district and the California State University to notify, by sending an email at the beginning of each academic semester or term, students of the presence and location of fentanyl test strips and opioid overdose reversal medication, and to distribute opioid overdose reversal medication to specified college employees. This bill would also prohibit disciplinary measures from being imposed for drug possession or use occurring at or near the time of an incident where a residential adviser or house manager administers a dose of opioid overdose reversal medication.

AB 1905 (Addis) – This bill would prohibit anyone working at any campus of the California Community Colleges, the California State University, the University of California, or the College of the Law, San Francisco from receiving special rights or letters of recommendation if they have committed sexual harassment or resign during an investigation and requires all institutions to have a written policy on how to handle sexual harassment complaints involving employees.

AB 2019 (Hoover) – This bill would require all school districts with early and middle high schools to submit an annual report to the State Department of Education (CDE). The CDE would then be tasked to consolidate these reports and submit them to the Legislature and the Department of Finance.

AB 2033 (Reyes) – This bill would require at least one convenience or grocery store located on each campus of the California Community Colleges to accept the use of electronic benefits transfer cards.

AB 2047 (Mike Fong) – This bill would require that each systemwide Office of Civil Rights (OCR) establish a systemwide nondiscrimination policy, including the development and implementation of a grievance procedure for sex discrimination complaints, and requires each systemwide OCR to, among other things, provide specified education and training, establish best practices guidance on sex discrimination prevention and complaint adjudication, and oversee campus- and district-based Title IX offices.

AB 2048 (Mike Fong) – This bill would require each California State University and University of California campus, and each community college district, to establish a Title IX office under the administration of a Title IX coordinator responsible for coordinating the campus’ implementation and compliance with systemwide nondiscrimination policies. Each Title IX office would be required to ensure timely and effective responses to complaints of sex discrimination, and to process, adjudicate, and implement the outcomes of complaints of sex discrimination.

AB 2277 (Wallis) – This bill would require community colleges to negotiate in good faith with the exclusive representative for part-time, temporary faculty on the terms of their reemployment preference and evaluation process. This reemployment preference would be based on a range of 80% to 85% of a full-time equivalent load.

AB 2326 (Alvarez) – This bill would revise statutory provisions related to campus policies protecting against specified types of discrimination to require the chancellor of each University of California campus to have the primary responsibility for ensuring campus programs and activities are free from discrimination based on specified characteristics, including, but not limited to, the prevention of sexual harassment.

AB 2370 (Cervantes) – This bill would require that the instructor of record for a course of instruction be a person who meets the minimum qualifications to serve as a faculty member teaching credit instruction or a faculty member teaching noncredit instruction.

AB 2403 (Bonta) – This bill would require that the Student Equity and Achievement Program student equity plan include a description of how all campus groups were involved in its development.

AB 2492 (Irwin) – This bill would require public postsecondary educational institutions to comply with provisions of the Equity in Higher Education Act, to establish and designate at least one person to fulfill the positions of confidential student advocate, confidential staff and faculty advocate, and confidential respondent services coordinator in order to assist students, faculty, or staff who have filed a complaint of sex discrimination, experienced sex discrimination, or are accused of sex discrimination.

AB 2567 (Mathis) – This bill would require the office of the Chancellor of the California State University and the office of the Chancellor of the California Community Colleges, and requests the office of the President of the University of California, to require their respective campuses providing campus-owned, campus-operated, or campus-affiliated student housing to collect and publish data on student housing for their respective campuses, including additional information regarding students who are veterans.

AB 2586 (Alvarez) – This bill would prohibit public California colleges from denying a student employment based on their failure to provide proof of federal work authorization, unless it is required by federal law or for a grant-funded position.

AB 2608 (Gabriel) – This bill would require public California colleges to provide educational and preventive information on sexual violence and harassment as part of campus orientations and requires most educational institutions receiving state financial assistance to train students annually on sexual violence and harassment.

AB 2707 (Mike Fong) – This bill would require the state’s Legislative Analyst’s Office to conduct a study evaluating the age demographics of housing-insecure community college students in order to identify the issues and unique barriers faced by community college students 25 years and older in securing housing.

AB 2834 (Rendon) – This bill would require that the names of part-time faculty be listed in the class schedule and bulletin once they are assigned to a class and extends the same preferences to part-time faculty at California State University campuses.

AB 2936 (Jackson) – This bill would require the California Community Colleges and the California State University, and request the University of California, to develop a reconciliation master plan for use on each of their respective campuses to address cultural and political conflicts arising on campus and requires the plan to ensure that students have a forum to be seen, have their voices heard, and feel safe.

AB 2987 (Ortega) – This bill would require each California State University (CSU) and California Community College (CCC) campus, and would request each University of California (UC) campus, to provide status updates on the outcomes of complaints of sex discrimination to the complainants and respondents, except for those who opt to not receive the updates. This would include decisions of disciplinary action being made against a respondent in response to a complaint of sex discrimination.

Senate Bills

SB 906 (Skinner) – This bill would require organizations providing compensation or services to student athletes to publicly disclose the information to the school and would also require a school supporting a student athlete in earning compensation to publicly disclose the value of the support.

SB 959 (Menjivar) – This bill would require the California Health and Human Services Agency to create and regularly update a website where members of the public can find information and resources to support transgender individuals and their families in accessing health care and other support services in California.

SB 1015 (Cortese) – This bill would require that the Nursing Education and Workforce Advisory Committee study how nursing schools maintain their clinical education standards and further requires the Board of Registered Nursing to submit an annual report to the Legislature with recommendations on how nursing programs can better manage their clinical placements and how nursing programs work with clinical facilities.

SB 1042 (Roth) – This bill would require a health facility offering prelicensure clinical placement slots or a clinic to meet with representatives of the school or program to discuss the clinical placement needs of the school or program. The bill also requires an approved nursing program to notify the California Department of Health Care Access and the Board of Registered Nurses of the beginning and end dates of the academic term for each clinical slot needed by a clinical group with content area, education level, and the number of clinical slots the school or program has been unable to fill each year.

SB 1166 (Dodd) – This bill would require the California Community Colleges (CCC), the California State University, and asks the University of California to include in their annual reports a summary of actions taken to prevent sex discrimination on all campus programs and activities. These reports would then be made available on the respective websites of each institution and CCC districts would also be required to submit a report to the chancellor’s office on their efforts to ensure a discrimination-free environment.

SB 1348 (Bradford) – This bill would establish the California Seal of Excellence in Serving Black and African American Postsecondary Students to recognize those higher education campuses in California that are excelling at providing academic resources to Black and African American students.

SB 1491 (Eggman) – This bill would require the California Student Aid Commission to provide a written notice to students who receive state financial aid regarding whether their postsecondary educational institution has an exemption from either the Equity in Higher Education Act or Title IX on file.

While you engage in summer coursework, research or relaxation, CTA will be working on your behalf to get CCA-supported bills passed. The deadline for each house to pass bills is the end of August, but the Governor then has another month to decide whether to sign or veto. We will therefore be well into the fall semester before we have the final results, and we’ll publish a report for you then. May you have a great summer!