Campopiano / 1 Senator Jenkins

S.S._______

A BILL
To provide one million dollars per year to approved low income school districts to reduce class sizes.
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Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress
assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE
This act may be cited as the Class-Size Reduction Act of 2015. (CSRA)
SECTION 2. FINDINGS
Congress hereby finds and declares that,
1) Low levels of literacy can limit life chances and may be related to poverty and incarceration.
2) In 2003, 23 percent of people in California ages sixteen and over were proven illiterate.
3) One study lowered the class size from 22 to fifteen- the fifteen students excelled more than the seven who were
displaced into other large classes.
4) California has the highest average of students in high school classrooms at 31 students per class. Most states have
average of seventeen to 23 students.
5) Smaller classes form an academic community among the students where they feel comfortable working together.
6) State Education Departments rely on tax payers money for everything and have no set budget allocations.
7) Teachers can pay close attention to each student when there are less kids to track.
8) For grades one through three, average class is size not to exceed 30 students; no class larger than 32

students.
SECTION 3. STATUTORY LANGUAGE
A) The Class-Size Reduction Act of 2015 shall increase federal funding by five percent provide money to qualifying
school districts in the United States to hire more teachers and reduce classroom sizes. With more teachers in schools,
students can be spread out among the different classes.
B) Any school district may apply for the government funding through an online application from January 1 to 31. The
districts will receive acceptance or denial by April 1 of the given application year, and they will receive the funds on
June 1. Criteria for recipients will be based on how many students in each grade level attend the school; an average of
how many students are in each class; how many teachers are currently hired to teach each academic subject; and the
average GPA of students in each grade level. The districts must also provide a spending report of the previous two
years, so the government can view the district's methods and priorities in budget division and spendings. With this
information, the subcommittee of the state Education Department-known as the Class-Size Reduction Committee
(CSRC)-will choose the top 250 schools in the nation that meet the criteria to receive the grant. This process will be
repeated every five years.
C) The money will be generated from state government Education departments. The CSRC will determine how to
reallocate the funds by cutting down on provided supplies, and other materials. There shall be a nine percent tax
placed on all purchases of textbooks, student desks, smart boards and projectors. In the event that it is discovered that
a school district that has received the grant is utilizing this grant for other purchases (unrelated to the goal of reducing
class sizes), that district will have their grant revoked and will lose two percent of their funding for the two years after.
The schools must submit an expense report every six months for the following five years so the CSRC can monitor
how the grant money is being spent.
D) It is up to each school district to decide how to allocate the money among its schools. It is recommended that the
districts start with supplementing the elementary schools; it has been proven that when children are placed in smaller
academic settings, they tend to develop better learning and study habits that eventually stick with them through
middle, high school, college and young adulthood.
E) This bill shall be enacted on January 1, 2016, with the opening of the online application. This law shall be valid
until there is a nationwide decrease in class sizes to the appropriate ratio of students to teacher for each grade level or
until education rates increase nationwide by 70 percent. Every five years, the CSRC will be required to reevaluate the
necessity of this bill.