Pupil health: administration of medicinal cannabis: schoolsites.

Existing law authorizes a school nurse or other designated school personnel to assist any pupil who is required to take, during the regular schoolday, medication prescribed for the pupil by a physician and surgeon or ordered for the pupil by a physician assistant, if the school district receives specified written statements from the physician and surgeon or physician assistant and from the parent, foster parent, or guardian of the pupil. Existing law, the Compassionate Use Act of 1996, provides that a patient or a patient's primary caregiver who possesses or cultivates marijuana for personal medical purposes of the patient upon the written or oral recommendation or approval of a physician is not subject to conviction for offenses relating to possession and cultivation of marijuana. Existing law also requires the State Department of Public Health to establish a voluntary program for the issuance of identification cards to qualified patients who are entitled to the protections of the act. This bill would enact Jojo's Act, which would authorize the governing board of a school district, a county board of education, or the governing body of a charter school maintaining kindergarten or any of grades 1 to 12, inclusive, to adopt, at a regularly scheduled meeting of the governing board or body, a policy, as provided, that allows a parent or guardian of a pupil to possess and administer medicinal cannabis, as defined, at a schoolsite to the pupil who is a qualified patient entitled to the protections of the Compassionate Use Act of 1996, excluding cannabis, as defined, in a smokeable or vapeable form. The bill would authorize the policy to be amended or rescinded for any reason at a regularly scheduled meeting, as specified, and for exigent circumstances at a special meeting, as specified. The bill, for pupil records collected for the purpose of administering medicinal cannabis, would require those records to be treated as medical records and subject to all provisions of state and federal law governing the confidentiality and disclosure of medical records. Existing constitutional provisions require that a statute that limits the right of access to the meetings of public bodies or the writings of public officials and agencies be adopted with findings demonstrating the interest protected by the limitation and the need for protecting that interest. This bill would make legislative findings to that effect.