Pupil instruction: instructional time requirements.

Existing law requires a school district, other than one newly formed, to maintain the regular school days of the district for at least 175 days to receive any apportionment based on average daily attendance from the State School Fund, and imposes penalties for failing to maintain that requirement, except as specified. Existing law authorizes a school district, county office of education, or charter school to reduce the equivalent of up to 5 days of instruction or the equivalent number of instructional minutes in certain circumstances without incurring fiscal penalties. Existing law authorizes local educational agencies that are prevented by fire, flood, earthquake, epidemic, or order of a military officer in certain circumstances to receive as their apportionment an estimated amount intended to equal what the amount would have been absent the events that prevented the schools from opening. Existing law requires the withholding of apportionments and the imposition of fiscal penalties for school districts and county offices of education that fail to comply with the requirements for at least a minimum number of days of instruction in a school year. This bill, commencing with the 2021–22 school year, would exempt a local educational agency, as defined to include a school district, county office of education, and charter school, from these provisions if it adds instructional minutes to existing instructional days in an equivalent of no more than 15 instructional days within that same school year and in compliance with a specified procedure and if the local educational agency can demonstrate that it could not meet the instructional day requirements due to specified circumstances. The bill would require that exempt local educational agency to include the approval of the exclusive representative of any impacted bargaining unit.