School Safety: sexting.

(1) Existing law, the Interagency School Safety Demonstration Act of 1985, establishes the School/Law Enforcement Partnership, and requires the partnership to establish a statewide school safety cadre for the purpose of facilitating interagency coordination and collaboration to reduce school violence and crime, truancy rates, bullying, teen relationship violence, and discrimination and harassment. Existing law requires the partnership to sponsor at least 2 regional conferences to identify exemplary programs and techniques that have been effectively used to reduce school crime, including hate crimes, vandalism, drug and alcohol abuse, gang membership and gang violence, truancy, and excessive absenteeism. The conferences may include, but need not be limited to, information on specified topics. This bill would define sexting for purposes of that act as the dissemination of, or the solicitation or incitement to disseminate, a photograph or other visual recording by a pupil to another pupil or school personnel by means of an electronic act with the intent to humiliate or harass. A photograph or other visual recording to which the bill would apply would be required to depict a specified area of the minor's body or a sexually explicit photograph or other visual recording of an identifiable minor. The bill would further define sexting to not include a depiction, portrayal, or image that has any serious literary, artistic, educational, political, or scientific value or that involves athletic events or school sanctioned activities. The bill would require the partnership's school safety programs to also have the purpose of reducing sexting, and would include sexting as a topic that may be included in the partnership's conferences. (2) Existing law prohibits the suspension of a pupil from school or the recommendation of a pupil for expulsion from school unless the school district superintendent or the principal of the school in which the pupil is enrolled determines that the pupil has committed any of several specified acts. This bill would include engaging in an act of sexting, as defined above, as an act for which a pupil may be suspended or expelled from school.