Education finance: additional education funding.

Existing law establishes a public school financing system that requires state funding for county superintendents of schools, school districts, and charter schools to be calculated pursuant to a local control funding formula, as specified, that includes average daily attendance as a component of that calculation for these local educational agencies. Existing law requires the Superintendent of Public Instruction, on or before February 20 of each year, to make a first principal apportionment of funds and, on or before July 2 of each year, to make a 2nd principal apportionment of funds to each local educational agency. This bill would define "average daily membership" as the quotient of the aggregate enrollment days for all pupils in a school district, county office of education, or charter school, from transitional kindergarten to grade 12, inclusive, as applicable, divided by the total number of instructional days for the local educational agency in an academic year. The bill would require a local educational agency's average daily membership to be calculated using data from the same fiscal year or years that the local educational agency used to calculate its average daily attendance for purposes of state apportionment, as provided. For any fiscal year before the 2022–23 fiscal year for which average daily membership data is not available, the bill would require the Superintendent to use a local educational agency's census day enrollment count, as provided. The bill, commencing with the 2022–23 fiscal year, would require a local educational agency that submits enrollment data to the Superintendent and demonstrates a maintenance of effort to address chronic absenteeism, as provided, to receive as additional education funding the difference between what the local educational agency would have received under the local control funding formula based on average daily membership and what the local educational agency received under the local control funding formula based on average daily attendance for that fiscal year, as provided. The bill would make that maintenance of effort requirement subject to an annual audit and would provide that failure to meet the maintenance of effort requirement shall result in the loss of the additional education funding. The bill would require local educational agencies to use at least 30% of their additional education funding for local educational agency expenditures to address chronic absenteeism and habitual truancy, as provided. This bill would, for purposes of calculating a local educational agency's average daily membership, require the Superintendent to issue directives and guidance on determining the date of withdrawal for a pupil deemed habitually truant. The bill would require the Legislative Analyst's Office to submit a report to the Legislature, on or before November 1, 2028, on the implementation of the average daily membership funding in local educational agencies selected by the Legislative Analyst's Office, as provided. The bill would expressly state that funds to implement these provisions would be continuously appropriated in the annual Budget Act.