Dive Brief:

• The California legislature has debated a range of education issues this year, and with the close of the legislative session, schools face a number of new policies while other issues are notably unresolved.
• The Los Angeles Times reports Gov. Jerry Brown approved a gender-neutral bathroom law that will require schools — among other institutions — to make existing single-toilet bathrooms gender-neutral, and he also signed bills that will excuse absences by immigrant students to attend naturalization ceremonies and make it easier for high school students to access high-quality ethnic studies classes.
• On the side of inaction, the legislature did not make any changes to teacher job protections following the decision in Vergara v. State of California, Brown vetoed a measure to strengthen the school accountability system in the state (deferring to the state board of education), and he also struck down a bill that would have required charter schools to be much more transparent with their records.

Dive Insight:

By approving a gender-neutral bathroom law, the California legislature largely sidestepped the debate about whether transgender students should be able to use the bathroom corresponding to their gender identity or if they should be forced to use the bathroom of the gender on their birth certificates. Elsewhere, Virginia has so far been successful in its fight to prevent transgender students from using the bathrooms of their choice.

While the legislative session is now over, California voters will take the baton in yet another controversial education issue this year. Proposition 58 would end the “English in Public Schools” Initiative, approved by voters in 1998, which has banned non-English language instruction in public schools for almost two decades. This has made charter and private schools especially competitive when it comes to forming increasingly popular dual language programs.