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Two Education Initiatives Enter Circulation

SACRAMENTO - Secretary of State Debra Bowen today announced the proponent of two new initiatives may begin collecting petition signatures for his measures.

The Attorney General prepares the legal title and summary that is required to appear on initiative petitions. When the official language is complete, the Attorney General forwards it to the proponent and to the Secretary of State, and the initiative may be circulated for signatures. The Secretary of State then provides calendar deadlines to the proponent and to county elections officials.

SCHOOL TEACHERS. PERFORMANCE-BASED LAYOFFS. DISMISSALS. INITIATIVE STATUTE. Requires school districts to use a classroom teacher's performance ratings, rather than seniority, to determine layoffs. Requires districts to conduct specified evaluations of each teacher’s performance annually. Requires these annual evaluations to measure teacher performance by, at a minimum, student academic progress, classroom observations and instructional practices, parent and student feedback, and teacher partnerships with community members and organizations. Provides that teachers convicted of certain violent, serious, or sexual felonies are to be automatically dismissed and permanently barred from employment as a teacher in the state. Summary of estimate by Legislative Analyst and Director of Finance of fiscal impact on state and local government: Costs ranging from several hundreds of millions of dollars to over $1 billion annually in the initial three years for school districts to conduct more frequent and intensive teacher evaluations, with annual costs dropping to between one-third and one-half in subsequent years. One-time costs in the tens of millions of dollars to in excess of $100 million for school districts to create new teacher evaluation systems, with ongoing annual costs to manage the new systems of tens of millions of dollars. (13-0058.)

The Secretary of State's tracking number for this measure is 1646 and the Attorney General's tracking number is 13-0058.

The Attorney General's official title and summary for the second measure is as follows:

SCHOOL TEACHERS. PERFORMANCE-BASED LAYOFFS AND REHIRING. DISMISSALS. INITIATIVE STATUTE. Requires school districts to use a classroom teacher’s performance ratings, rather than seniority, to determine layoffs and make rehiring decisions. Requires districts to conduct specified evaluations of each teacher’s performance annually. Requires these annual evaluations to measure teacher performance by, at a minimum, student academic progress, classroom observations and instructional practices, parent and student feedback, and teacher partnerships with community members and organizations. Provides that teachers convicted of certain violent, serious, or sexual felonies are to be automatically dismissed and permanently barred from employment as a teacher in the state. Summary of estimate by Legislative Analyst and Director of Finance of fiscal impact on state and local government: Costs ranging from several hundreds of millions of dollars to over $1 billion annually in the initial three years for school districts to conduct more frequent and intensive teacher evaluations, with annual costs dropping to between one-third and one-half in subsequent years. One-time costs in the tens of millions of dollars to in excess of $100 million for school districts to create new teacher evaluation systems, with ongoing annual costs to manage the new systems of tens of millions of dollars. (13-0062.)

The Secretary of State's tracking number for this measure is 1647 and the Attorney General's tracking number is 13-0062.

The proponent for the measures, Matt David, must collect signatures of 504,760 registered voters (five percent of the total votes cast for governor in the 2010 gubernatorial election) for each measure in order to qualify it for the ballot. The proponent has 150 days to circulate petitions for the measures, meaning the signatures must be submitted to county elections officials by July 14, 2014.

The proponent can be reached at (916) 446-6752.

To sign up for regular ballot measure updates via email, RSS feed, or Twitter, go to www.sos.ca.gov/multimedia.

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