Existing law, the Kindergarten-University Public Education Facilities Bond Act of 2006, in part, authorizes the sale of $7,329,000,000 of state general obligation bonds to provide aid to school districts, county superintendents of schools, and county boards of education to construct and modernize education facilities. The Leroy F. Greene School Facilities Act of 1998 (the Greene Act) requires the State Allocation Board to allocate to applicant school districts, prescribed per-unhoused-pupil state funding for construction and modernization of school facilities, including hardship funding, and authorizes the board to allocate supplemental funding for site development and acquisition. The Greene Act requires the career technical education advisory committee of a school district, in conjunction with an application of the district for funding of any construction or modernization project, and as a condition of the district receiving funds for the project, to provide
written confirmation that the need for vocational and career technical education facilities is being adequately met within the district, as specified. The Greene Act prohibits the board from apportioning funds to a school district unless the applicant school district has certified that the services for design professionals working on the project have been obtained through a specified competitive bidding process and has obtained written approval from the State Department of Education that the site selection, and the building plans and specifications, comply with the standards adopted by the department.
This bill would require the
State Department of Education to include in its application for new construction plan approval certain questions relating to career technical education facilities, including whether the project will include facilities related to career technical education and if not, how the applicant district plans to meet the needs of pupils related to career technical education. The
department
would be required to maintain the answers to those questions in a publicly accessible manner and to provide a summary of the responses to those questions to the Office of Public School Construction on a quarterly basis. The Office of Public School Construction would be required to post the summary to its Web site as soon as possible after receiving it.