California Schools
Get Structural Support
from AB 1465

Governor Schwarzenegger signed the School facilities: New Construction and Modernization bill on September 29, 2004.  The legislation sets aside $25 million of school construction bonds to create an incentive for school districts to build new small high schools and to reconfigure large high schools into smaller communities.

Recent school reform efforts in California established that new campuses need to be built across the state in order to accommodate the increased student retention of successful SLCs.  See this month’s SLC Newsletter article about Steve Jubb and his visit to Los Angeles to learn more about the “unanticipated outcomes” that school districts like Oakland, Sacramento and San Jose discovered during the early stages of their small school reform.

The bill, first introduced in February 2003, allows the State Allocation Board to increase construction grants for SLCs by at least 20 percent, or $20 million in total.  High schools with 1,000 or more students may also apply for part of $5 million in proceeds from state bonds, in order to reconfigure their campus into two or more small high schools.

While previous legislation required that the local school district match the state’s funding by 50 percent, AB 1465 allows that number to be decreased slightly, to 40 percent. This will enable some districts that struggle the most with school personalization the resources to begin structural improvements without taking on a financial burden they might otherwise be unable to support.

The author of the bill was Assemblymember Wilma Chan, from Oakland.

As California school districts look to create new high schools and to reform existing large high schools, this new legislation will provide critically needed additional resources to our students, schools and communities.

For the text of the bill and its history, go to http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/postquery?bill_number=ab_1465&sess=CUR&house=B &author=chan.