Three Bills Clear Assembly Education Committee

Three bills intended to protect schoolchildren made it out of the Assembly Education Committee last week. One authored by Assemblymember Das Williams would require publicly funded private schools to fingerprint and perform background checks on their employees. (No schools in Santa Barbara County fit this description, but a handful in Ventura County do.) The others, introduced by chair Joan Buchanan — would require school districts to craft child abuse reporting protocols and streamline the teacher dismissal process.