Pupils: expulsion and suspension.

Existing law establishes the California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System (CALPADS) , and requires a local educational agency to retain all data necessary to compile reports required by specified federal laws, including, but not limited to, dropout and graduation rates. Existing law requires the Superintendent of Public Instruction to submit to the Governor, the Legislature, and the State Board of Education an annual report on dropouts using the data produced by CALPADS. Existing law requires that certain data listed in the report be presented, if possible, for specified subgroups, including ethnicity and gender. This bill would additionally require that the behavioral data included in the report, including suspension and expulsion data, be presented for those subgroups, if possible. Existing law authorizes the establishment of county and local school attendance review boards that may promote the use of alternatives to the juvenile court system if available public and private services are insufficient or inappropriate to correct school attendance or school behavior problems. Existing law provides that any minor pupil who is a habitual truant, is irregular in attendance at school, or is habitually insubordinate or disorderly during attendance at school may be referred to a school attendance review board. Existing law requires the governing board of a school district to adopt rules and regulations to require the appropriate officers and employees of the district to gather and transmit to the county superintendent of schools the number and types of referrals to school attendance review boards and of requests for petitions to the juvenile court. This bill would instead require the governing board of a school district to transmit the above-described information to the State Department of Education. Existing law limits the number of schooldays for which a pupil may be suspended from school to 5. Existing law allows the superintendent of the school district or other person designated by the superintendent to extend the period of suspension if the governing board of the school district is considering expelling the pupil or the suspension is for the balance of the semester from continuation school. Existing law requires a school district to maintain specified data regarding pupils who are recommended for expulsion. This bill would require a school district to also maintain certain data relating to extending the period of suspension. Existing law requires that a school district identify each suspension or expulsion of a pupil by offense committed for the reporting of expulsion and suspension offenses to the department. This bill would require the department, by July 1 of each year, to make specified data regarding suspensions, expulsions, and referrals to school attendance review boards available to the public on its Internet Web site, and to disaggregate the data, to the extent possible, by ethnicity, special education status, English learners, socioeconomic status, and gender, and cross-tabulate all those categories by gender and special education status. The bill would require the Superintendent, if reliable data is not available by July 1, to report to the Legislature, on or before that date, regarding the reason for the delay and the date that he or she anticipates the data will become available. The bill would prohibit the publication of the data in a manner that would reveal personally identifiable information of any pupil, or cause the suspension of a pupil to be counted more than once, as specified.