Education finance: school facilities: Kindergarten-Community Colleges Public Education Facilities Bond Act of 2022.

(1) The Leroy F. Greene School Facilities Act of 1998 provides for the adoption of rules, regulations, and procedures, under the administration of the Director of General Services, for the allocation of state funds by the State Allocation Board for the construction and modernization of public school facilities. This bill would add provisions to the act to require the Department of General Services to process all applications received under the act on and after an unspecified date and to present those applications to the State Allocation Board within 120 days of receipt. The bill would require applicants for bond funding to supply designated information to the State Department of Education. The bill would authorize school districts to receive a supplemental grant to expand an existing, or construct a new, gymnasium, multipurpose room, library, or school kitchen under specified conditions. The bill would amend the methodology for calculating a school district's required local contribution, as specified. The bill would specifically authorize the allocation of state funds for the replacement of school buildings that are at least 75 years old, for specified assistance to school districts with a school facility located on a military installation, as specified, and small school districts, as defined, and for the testing and remediation of lead levels in water fountains and faucets used for drinking or preparing food on schoolsites. The bill would authorize new construction and modernization grants to be used for seismic mitigation purposes, certain health and safety projects, and, among other things, to establish schoolsite-based infrastructure to provide broadband internet access. The bill would also authorize modernization grants to be used for the control, management, or abatement of lead. The bill would increase the maximum level of total bonding capacity, as defined, that a school district could have in order to be deemed eligible for financial hardship under the act from $5,000,000 to $15,000,000. The bill, commencing in the 2023–24 fiscal year, would increase that $15,000,000 maximum by a specified inflation adjustment. The bill would authorize the State Allocation Board to provide specified assistance to school districts and county offices of education impacted by a natural disaster for which the Governor has declared a state of emergency. (2) The California Constitution prohibits the Legislature from creating a debt or liability that singly or in the aggregate with any previous debts or liabilities exceeds the sum of $300,000, except by an act that (A) authorizes the debt for a single object or work specified in the act, (B) has been passed by a 23 vote of all the Members elected to each house of the Legislature, (C) has been submitted to the people at a statewide general or primary election, and (D) has received a majority of all the votes cast for and against it at that election. This bill would set forth the Kindergarten-Community Colleges Public Education Facilities Bond Act of 2022 as a state general obligation bond act that would provide $12,000,000,000 to construct and modernize education facilities, as provided. The bond act would become operative only if approved by the voters at an unspecified statewide election in 2022. The bill would require its other provisions to take effect upon voter approval of the bond act. (3) This bill would declare that it is to take effect immediately as an urgency statute.