Teachers: professional development: Bilingual Teacher Professional Development Program: eligibility.

(1) Existing law establishes the Bilingual Teacher Professional Development Program, administered by the State Department of Education, in consultation with the Commission on Teacher Credentialing, for teachers seeking to provide instruction in bilingual and multilingual settings. Existing law, for the 2023–24 fiscal year, appropriates $20,000,000 from the General Fund to the Superintendent of Public Instruction for purposes of the program, to be available for grants totaling $4,000,000 each fiscal year, from the 2023–24 fiscal year to the 2027–28 fiscal year, inclusive, as provided. Existing law requires the department to allocate grant funding to eligible local educational agencies, including county offices of education, school districts, charter schools, or a consortia of local educational agencies for purposes of providing professional development services to teachers or paraprofessionals who satisfy specified requirements, but exempts participants who are currently enrolled in, or have completed, the Asian Language Bilingual Teacher Education Program from those requirements that apply to teachers. This bill would also exempt participants who are currently enrolled in, or have completed, programs to support bilingual teacher education in languages in the classroom, such as Arabic, Cantonese, Mandarin, Spanish, Tagalog, and Vietnamese, and other languages, as represented in an instructional program, from those specified requirements that apply to teachers. By expanding the scope of eligibility for purposes of an appropriation, the bill would make an appropriation. (2) Existing requires Bilingual Teacher Professional Development Program grant recipients to provide to the department, by July 1, 2026, a preliminary report, and, by January 1, 2029, a final report, on the number of participants who were issued bilingual authorizations, the number of previously authorized teachers who have participated in the program and subsequently returned to bilingual teaching assignments, and the number of teachers who are still working at least 50% of the time in a bilingual setting. This bill would extend the deadline for the final report by one year to January 1, 2030. (3) Funds appropriated by this bill would be applied toward the minimum funding requirements for school districts and community college districts imposed by Section 8 of Article XVI of the California Constitution.