Nursing education: service in public hospitals and veterans' facilities.

Existing law establishes the Student Aid Commission as the primary state agency for the administration of state-authorized student financial aid programs available to students attending all segments of postsecondary education. Existing law establishes the State Nursing Assumption Program of Loans for Education, administered by the commission, under which any person enrolled in an institution of postsecondary education and participating in that loan assumption program is eligible to receive a conditional warrant for loan assumption, to be redeemed upon becoming employed as a full-time nursing faculty member at a California college or university. This bill would establish a loan assumption program for employees of eligible public facilities, as defined to include state hospitals, state veterans' homes, members of the California Association of Public Hospitals and Health Systems, California facilities administered by the federal Veterans Health Administration, and health care districts located in California. This program would provide loan assumption benefits to persons who fulfill agreements to work full time for 4 consecutive years as clinical registered nurses or licensed vocational nurses in eligible public facilities, as specified, that employ registered nurses or licensed vocational nurses. The program would provide for the assumption of up to $15,000 annually of a qualifying loan for consecutive years of qualifying clinical registered nursing or licensed vocational nursing service, up to a total loan assumption of $60,000. The bill would require that, in any fiscal year, the commission award no more than the number of warrants that are authorized in the Budget Act for that fiscal year for the assumption of loans pursuant to the program. This program would become inoperative on July 1, 2022, and would be repealed on January 1, 2023. The bill would appropriate $48,000,000 from the General Fund to the commission to be expended for purposes of the commission issuing loan assumption awards beginning with the 2015–16 fiscal year to the 2021–22 fiscal year, inclusive, as specified.