KARLA SHIRVANIAN | staff writer

Is the extensive amount of legislation going into effect every year hurting schools more than it's helping them?

On Jan. 1, 2008, 250 new pieces of education legislation went into effect in California, furthering the No Child Left Behind Act and all that it hopes to accomplish. However, with such a large and diverse influx of new education laws it is hard to keep track of all the new laws and what they mean to schools, their employees, and perhaps most importantly, their students.

Among the 250 new pieces of legislation, there were bills passed on everything from discrimination to transportation from higher education to the STRS/PERS retirement system, but it seems that all of them have been overlooked or understated because of the proposed budget cuts of 10 percent.

“It is not unusual to see a lot of new laws and to deal with large changes but, without a doubt, the major thing facing all school districts right now is budget,” Director of Communication and Community Affairs for the Azusa Unified School District Cathy Miller said.

Tina Jung, an information officer at the California Department of Education, confirmed the Miller’s thoughts. “The budget really is what has most districts concerned right now because they prepared their budgets months ago but now Governor Schwarzenegger is saying that they’ll cut budgets 10% so schools have to go back and refigure their budgets.”

The California Department of Education passes hundreds of new laws a year most of which are minute changes within existing laws changing a word or two to better the law itself. “The laws are difficult for the average person to understand because most of them are designed to streamline existing laws,” Jung said, making a lack of knowledge a commonplace occurrence.

“I really don’t know about the new laws,” Maria Montell a clerk at Charter Oak High School said.

Jung explained that there are hundreds of laws passed on issues that won’t affect many school districts or classrooms.

“Some of the new laws will help us progress toward closing the achievement gap, add more rigor to the curriculum, provide more assistance to students to pass the exit exam, or protect special education and related services to students with exceptional needs,” State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell said in a December 31 press release.