Partnership academies: Clean Technology and Renewable Energy Job Training, Career Technical Education, and Dropout Prevention Program.

Existing law establishes the partnership academies program as a school-business partnership program to provide occupational training to educationally disadvantaged high school pupils. Under existing law, the Superintendent of Public Instruction is required to award grants to school districts maintaining high schools to plan, establish, and maintain these partnership academies. Existing law requires the surcharge imposed on the consumption of electricity in the state to be transferred to the Energy Resources Programs Account in the General Fund, which is available, upon appropriation by the Legislature, for ongoing energy programs and projects. This bill would require the Controller annually to allocate $8,000,000 from the Energy Resources Program Account, upon appropriation by the Legislature, to the Superintendent of Public Instruction for expenditure in the form of local grants to be allocated pursuant to the existing provisions for creating and maintaining partnership academies. The bill would require a grantee to implement or maintain a partnership academy that focuses on employment in clean technology businesses and renewable energy businesses and provides skilled workforces for the products and services for energy or water conservation, or both, renewable energy, pollution reduction, or other technologies. The bill would require the State Energy Resources Conservation and Development Commission, in consultation with the State Department of Education, to develop guidelines, that would be exempted from the Administrative Procedure Act, to ensure that programs receiving grants reflect current state energy policies and priorities as well as provide skills and education linked to the needs of relevant industries. The bill would authorize a school district to apply for planning grants for implementing a partnership academy and would allow the Superintendent to expend up to 5% of the funds transferred to the Superintendent to pay the costs incurred in the administration of this program. The bill would require the State Department of Education in consultation with the State Energy Resources Conservation and Development Commission to provide a report to the Legislature that includes a description of the curriculum and substance of the programs funded by grants awarded pursuant to these provisions, and specified data. The bill would provide that the bill's provisions would become inoperative on June 30, 2016, and, as of January 1, 2017, would repeal these provisions.