Brown wraps up ed bills, leaves some heads shaking
(Calif.) Gov. Jerry Brown has vetoed a bill that would have made kindergarten mandatory while at the same time signing one intended to show the overwhelming boost that optional year gives kids headed to first grade.
It has been a busy few days for the governor, reviewing hundreds of pieces of legislation – including a stack of education bills – requiring his approval by the end of today.
Those he signed into law over the weekend and Monday include one that removes “willful defiance” as a reason to suspend or expel a student, and another that adds sex trafficking prevention education to the K-12 health curriculum.
Brown also vetoed a plan to allow districts to include sports participation data in their accountability plans as evidence of good school climate. But it is his rejection of Democratic Assemblywoman Joan Buchanan’s AB 1444 – the mandatory kindergarten bill – that is likely to generate more disappointment given the overwhelming sentiment behind it.
“Most children already attend kindergarten, and those that don’t may be enrolled in other educational or developmental programs that are deemed more appropriate for them by their families,” Brown wrote in his veto message. “I would prefer to let parents determine what is best for their children, rather than mandate an entirely new grade level.”
The call to make kindergarten compulsory for all California students before they can enter first grade is part of a broader push to beef up all early learning programs, both here and across the nation.
Buoyed by reams of evidence that the education a child receives in the first five years of life is critical to his or her future success, leaders from President Barack Obama to governors and state legislators have launched initiatives aimed at providing high-quality early learning opportunities to every child from birth to age five.
Current law requires that everyone between the ages of six and 18 attend school full-time. AB 1444 would have maintained the age-eligibility condition, meaning a parent could wait until their child turned six to enroll him or her in school, but that six-year-old would have to start in kindergarten – something opponents of the bill argued would be detrimental to children.
The bill would have affected a relatively small number of students. The California Department of Education estimates that only 28,000 students enrolled in first grade in the 2011-12 school year – 5.7 percent of all first graders – didn’t attended kindergarten the prior year.
Brown did sign, however, AB 1719, by Assemblymember Shirley Weber, D-San Diego, which requires public school agencies, beginning next school year, to “provide an annual report to the State Brown wraps up ed bills, leaves some heads shaking :: SI&A Cabinet Report :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet:
Yoga benefits the whole student
(Calif.) What many children’s yoga instructors call the “frog pose” tones young legs, increases hamstring flexibility and improves heart health. It’s also just one of a number of poses a student may learn during yoga sessions springing up in classrooms across the country.