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A bill introduced last week asks legislators to make implementing the Common Cadre and other new academic standards the top priority in spending a chunk of the extra $2 billion that the Legislative Annotator'due south Function says could come K-12 schools' way side by side year.

Assembly Bill 631, introduced by Assemblywoman Susan Bonilla, D-Concord, would allot $900 one thousand thousand of the anticipated additional coin to districts to spend on technology, materials, and teacher training on the Common Core. Districts could too use it to help roll out the Next Generation Science Standards and the new standards for English learners, which the land lath adopted last year.

"This funding is critical to the success of public pedagogy in California," said Bonilla, who also sponsored the law in 2022 that added $i.25 billion for Common Core to the state budget. Like that legislation, AB 631 would give school districts broad latitude in using the coin for the new standards, every bit long every bit they submit spending plans to the state Department of Education.

In its January evaluation of the proposed state upkeep, the LAO predicted that, disallowment a stock market downturn, surging tax receipts could generate $i billion to $2 billion more than for the General Fund than Gov. Jerry Brown included in the 2015-xvi budget. Because of how Proposition 98, the primary source of money for instruction, is written, all of the money would be directed to Chiliad-12 districts and community colleges to brand up for funding lost during the recession.

Starting this month, school districts will administer the new online standardized tests in the Common Cadre. Although they have more than spending flexibility nether the Local Control Funding Formula than in the past, teachers and superintendents accept been clamoring for additional funding. They say they need it to railroad train teachers in the new, challenging standards, and to purchase computers and provide broadband connections. The English Linguistic communication Development standards, which the Land Board of Educational activity adopted final year, are an essential resource for assisting English learners in the Mutual Cadre. Districts are just wading into the new science standards; tests on those standards are iii to four years abroad.

Brown has not proposed more than money per se for the Common Core in next year's budget. Notwithstanding, he has proposed committing $1.1 billion in one-time dollars as partial payback of an estimated $4 billion to $5 billion that the state owes Yard-12 districts for past mandated programs that were not reimbursed. Although districts legally could utilize this money as they choose, Dark-brown said the purpose is to "to further their investments in the implementation of Common Core." Critics claim Brown wants to take credit for 2 funding allocations with the aforementioned dollars.

AB 631 credits Brown for making $i.1 billion in mandates reimbursement and says that the Legislature agrees that information technology should exist used for Mutual Cadre purposes.

Wesley Smith, executive director of the Association of California School Administrators, expressed support for AB 631 in a statement that Bonilla released. "We are proud to sponsor Associates Member Susan Bonilla's bill to ensure that a modest, but critical investment is fabricated" for the new standards, Smith said.

The $900 meg for standards development would provide nigh $150 per pupil for the state'south 6.2 million students.

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