La Costa Canyon High School
San Dieguito Union High
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La Costa Canyon High School |
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Schools affected HISTORY OF THE WILLIAMS LEGISLATION In May of 2005, more than 40 students and their parents, helped by the ACLU and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, filed a lawsuit to ask the California state government to step forward when local school districts did not provide adequate resources for teaching and learning. This lawsuit, known as Williams versus California later became a class action, which means it extended beyond the 45 school districts named in the initial lawsuit, and would apply to all school districts statewide. Ex-governor Gray Davis opposed the lawsuit, and contested it for four years. When the voters recalled Gov. Davis in a special election, Gov. Schwarzenegger took a very different position, and moved quickly to settle the case. He summoned the plaintiff’s attorneys, the defendants, and lawmakers to come together. The results of those meetings were five laws that became known as the Williams legislation. A summary of the terms of the settlement are available from the ACLU. And you can also find more general background to the settlement itself on the ACLU’s Web site. SCHOOLS AFFECTED All schools are touched by the Williams legislation in several ways. All schools must now report for facts about teachers, textbooks, facilities and science labs. All schools must post signs in each classroom about students’ and parents’ rights to file complaints. But schools that fall in the lowest three deciles of the Academic Performance Index’s ranking system are receiving much more attention. To see if a school is on this list, just go to the California Department of Education’s Web site, where they have a page on this topic. THE LAWS Senate Bill 550 spelled out the responsibilities of the county offices of education to inspect the schools that were the special focus of the Williams settlement. It detailed the basis for determining that schools whose base API from 2003 fell in deciles 1, 2 or 3 would be at the center of the legislation. It set aside money for improving the facilities of those schools that needed repairs, and for buying textbooks as needed. Assembly Bill 2727 gave parents greater rights to complain to school and district leadership. The range of problems that parents could complain about was expanded considerably. And county offices of education were tasked with the responsibility of summing up those complaints four times a year. Assembly Bill 1550 called for strict limits on, and the eventual phasing out of, one category of year-round schools, the Concept 6 group. This type of multi-track school is used in Los Angeles Unified, and includes just 163 school days. Assembly Bill 3001 did many things. Among the more important are these three. First, it gave schools whose APIs were in the lowest three deciles the first priority when the district assigned teachers hired by the district. Second, it gave the Fiscal Crisis Management and Assistance Team expanded powers to review how districts recruit and retain principals and teachers. Third, it called for districts to report the extent of teacher misassignments and vacancies in all schools. This included specific attention to the qualifications of teachers whose classes included lots of English learners (more than 20 percent was the threshold). Senate Bill 6 created a special pool of funds to pay for a special, one-time needs assessment of the condition of buildings in schools that were in the bottom three deciles of the API base scores in 2003. That needs assessment would be conducted only by qualified professionals, following the strict guidelines of the Office of Public School Construction. Districts that have schools on this decile 1-3 list would also be entitled to draw on a statewide funding source to make the repairs the assessments recommended. YOUR RIGHTS TO COMPLAIN Thanks to the Williams legislation, you have expanded rights to register complaints to your school and district leadership. Your rights prior to Williams centered on your civil rights. Claims of discrimination based on your or your child’s ethnicity, special education status or English language fluency, for example, were most common. But the Williams legislation now gives you the right to file complaints if you believe your child, or any child lacks adequate resources to learn. This includes the condition of school buildings. It also includes whether your child has access to up-to-date textbooks, and if your child is taking a lab science class, adequate lab equipment for that course. It also includes whether your child has full-time teachers permanently assigned to his classrooms, and whether those teachers are well-prepared and qualified to teach the subjects they’re assigned to. To read more about the complaint process, you can go to two pages online: the ACLU’s Web page about complaints, or the California Department of Education’s Web page. The California Department of Education also offers a brochure, explaining to parents much more information about what they formally call the Uniform Complaint Procedure. Please note that this brochure does not take the Williams legislation into account.
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