IV Press - River, English bills pass Senate
Staff Report
Two bills authored by Assemblyman V. Manuel Pérez, D-Coachella, were passed Thursday in the Senate, where they garnered solid bipartisan support. AB 1079 facilitates cleanup of the New River, which flows through Calexico and up the Imperial Valley farmlands to the Salton Sea and is considered the most polluted river in the United States. The bill initiates the New River Improvement Project and requires the California Mexico Border Relations Council, a state body comprised of six agency secretaries, to develop a strategic plan to guide the implementation with partners on both sides of the border. The bill passed by a vote of 28-8. It will return to the Assembly next week for approval of amendments before heading to the governor’s desk.
“Cleaning up the New River is an investment in the Valley’s future,” Pérez said in a prepared statement. “The pollution in the New River has taken a serious toll on health and has impeded the economic development of the Imperial Valley. It has been a top priority of mine to rally the necessary stakeholders to address the problem.”
AB 1435 creates a means for better monitoring the progress of English learners. The bill requires that results from the California English Language Development Test be factored into the Academic Performance Index, a calculation of student and school performance based on annual standardized tests. Inclusion of this data will help schools demonstrate how well they are instructing English learners and help to refine instructional practices for working with them. The bill, which passed on consent, next goes to the governor’s desk. “The progress made by English learners is not always evident in our statewide tests, and this ends up hurting schools with high numbers of such students,” Pérez said in a prepared statement. “Incorporating the CELDT into the API enables us to better track the gains made by schools in reclassifying students to proficient, while also helping to identify schools where performance is lagging.”
