School accountability: California Collaborative for Educational Excellence: special education resource leads.

Existing law establishes the California Collaborative for Educational Excellence to advise and assist school districts, county superintendents of schools, and charter schools in achieving their local control and accountability plan goals. Existing law requires the department and the collaborative to establish a process, administered by the State Department of Education, to select, subject to approval by the executive director of the state board in consultation with the Department of Finance, special education local plan areas or consortia of special education local plan areas to serve as special education resource leads to work with the lead agencies and other county offices of education to improve pupil outcomes as part of the statewide system of support. Existing law requires at least 3 resource leads to be selected in a manner to ensure statewide representation and focus directly on building special education local plan area capacity, as specified. This bill would authorize county offices of education and consortia of county offices of education to be eligible for selection to serve as special education resource leads under the above-described process. The bill would require at least 3 resource leads to instead be selected in a manner to ensure statewide representation and focus directly on building local and regional capacity. The bill would, subject to an appropriation, commencing with the grant cycle beginning July 1, 2023, require the collaborative and the department to select a partnership consisting of (1) a special education local plan area, county office of education, or consortia of special education local plan areas and county offices of education and (2) a family support organization, as defined, or coalition of family support organizations, from applications jointly submitted to the department, to serve as a special education resource lead to work with specified entities through capacity building, training, and technical assistance on specified topics relating to special education.