Credit: Lillian Mongeau / EdSource

Districts say the state should reimburse them for the full toll of buying and replacing computers needed for standardized tests.

Credit: Lillian Mongeau / EdSource

Districts say the country should reimburse them for the total cost of ownership and replacing computers needed for standardized tests.

The land could be liable for as much as $one billion per yr in costs if a group of schoolhouse districts succeeds in winning reimbursement for expenses associated with the implementation of computer-based tests in the Mutual Cadre and other new land standards.

Four unified districts – Santa Ana, Vallejo, Plumas and Porterville – and the Plumas County Office of Teaching filed a merits to classify the new tests as country mandates. If the Commission on State Mandates agrees, the state volition exist required to reimburse all districts statewide seeking to recover costs. The California School Boards Association, which is financing the effort, announced the filing Wednesday.

With Assembly Nib 484, passed in 2013, the Legislature replaced STAR, the testing arrangement for the old state standards, with a new testing regimen called the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress program, or CAASPP. It lays out a timetable for a series of statewide computer-administered assessments, starting this spring with the Smarter Counterbalanced tests on the Common Cadre State Standards in math and English language arts that all districts must requite.

The districts contend that, unlike the quondam pencil-and-paper tests, the new computer-based tests crave districts to buy computers, expand their Internet broadband capacity, install wireless connections, hire additional computer technicians and train other commune staff to administer the tests. In its filing, Santa Ana, the biggest of the 4 districts with about l,000 students, said it is expecting to spend most $12 million last year and this year combined on devices and bandwidth expansion, including $124,000 on staff time. The district said it has not yet determined training costs. The claim estimates the statewide cost for all districts at $1 billion in 2014-15.

Under the state Constitution, the land must pay for new responsibilities and programs or expanded levels of services that the Legislature requires local governments and districts to provide.

"This new state assessment … requires a computer rather than a pencil," Santa Ana Unified Superintendent Rick Miller said in a argument. "Equally a effect, we have had to spend millions of dollars in order to administer the test and nosotros will need to proceed to make additional expenditures in the hereafter."

Josh Daniels, an attorney for the California School Boards Association, said the claim is seeking to establish that the country has an obligation to reimburse by and hereafter costs, since districts volition accept to replace computers, upgrade Cyberspace capacity and go on to pay employee costs associated with the tests. In that location will also exist new tests in coming years for new science and social studies standards, plus new Mutual Core-aligned tests for English learners and severely disabled students.

"I recollect Santa Ana and the districts have a strong argument," said Robert Miyashiro, vice president of School Services of California,  Inc., a consulting company that advises school districts. "The state police creating CAASPP imposed costs on districts."

H.D. Palmer, spokesman for the Department of Finance, said Thursday that the administration is reviewing the filing and has no comment at this point.

The 2013-14 country budget allotted $one.25 billion to districts – about $200 per student – in one-time money to implement the Common Cadre standards. Districts could utilize that funding to train teachers, buy textbooks and purchase or upgrade technology. The Department of Finance, on Gov. Jerry Brown'southward behalf, could argue that the $1.25 billion should count toward meeting the country's CAASPP obligation. The mandates committee would and then take to make up one's mind, through hearings, whether it was plenty to comprehend districts' actual testing expenses.

Brownish is proposing an additional $1.1 billion in "discretionary" dollars in the 2015-16 budget with the intention that information technology be put toward Common Core implementation. All the same, districts could spend the money on whatsoever plan, undercutting the administration's possible argument that this funding should count as a mandate offset, Miyashiro said.

Under the state Constitution, the state must pay for new responsibilities and programs or expanded levels of services that the Legislature requires local governments and districts to provide. The country has acknowledged forty mandated programs for K-12 districts, enabling them to claim the costs of collective bargaining, complying with the open-meetings law, conducting criminal groundwork checks of volunteers and administering the loftier school exit exam. The Legislative Annotator's Office estimates that unpaid pending mandate claims full between $4 billion and $5 billion.

Districts accept a choice of documenting their mandated expenses and seeking reimbursement from the state – a lengthy, cumbersome process – or, nether the Brown administration, accepting a yearly lump sum called the Education Mandates Block Grant. Information technology is $28 per student for grades Yard-eight and $54 per pupil in grades 9-12. Districts mutter that the block grant doesn't cover all of their expenses, just it is an easier fashion to get at least some money they're owed.

Miyashiro cautioned that information technology may take years for the districts involved in this case to see whatever money. The commission holds lengthy evidentiary proceedings and has a backlog of cases. The vii-member commission also tends to be wary of new claims, Miyashiro said. Its members include the state controller, the state treasurer and the director of the Department of Finance, plus public representatives appointed past the governor.

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