Joan Buchanan

Joan Buchanan

Assemblymember Joan Buchanan, a Democrat from Contra Costa County who served on the lath of the San Ramon Valley Unified School Commune for virtually two decades, will run the Assembly Didactics Committee, as of tomorrow. Assuming she wins reelection to a 3rd term in November, she'll chair the committee when the Legislature returns in January.

Buchanan will supercede Julia Brownley, a Santa Monica Democrat who's in a tight race for Congress. Assembly Speaker John Pérez appear changes in Assemby leadership and commission chairs yesterday.

A Democrat from Alamo with business concern experience, elected in a swing district, Buchanan has parted with her political party on some business issues and has backed changes in public pensions opposed by organized labor. At the same time, she opposed SB 1530, which would take made information technology easier to fire teachers accused of serious misconduct. (She explained her position on SB 1530 in this argument.) This twelvemonth she authored AB 1772, which would mandate kindergarten, at present optional for parents; since it would establish a new state mandate, information technology's unlikely to pass. 1 bill that did pass, two years ago, set in motion a quality rating scale for preschools that put the country in position for a federal $50 million early childhood Race to the Tiptop grant.

Asked about her priorities as chair, Buchanan responded in an email, "I practise not have a predetermined agenda. I plan to do all I tin can to ensure that every child in California receives a loftier quality education. Given our electric current funding challenges, it will be important to bring the entire education customs together and seek consensus.

"I currently hold regular 'classroom cabinet' meetings with each school district in my Associates commune and the bulletin I receive from them is that they are struggling to go on upward with electric current demands on their districts and do not need additional rules and regulations placed upon them. Therefore, I strongly believe that any new legislation nosotros enact must bring meaningful alter and ameliorate educatee learning."

Buchanan's appointment could signal that the Associates could movement cautiously on Gov. Jerry Brown's plan for a weighted student formula funneling new dollars to districts with loftier percentages of low-income students and English learners. Buchanan's generally prosperous districts would have not have benefited, and Buchanan was disquisitional of the timing and specifics of the governor's programme. If, every bit expected, legislative leaders insist that Dark-brown send his next iteration every bit a pecker, not as part of his budget, the program would get through the Senate and Assembly Education Committees. Brownley was a potent proponent of weighted student funding and had hoped that her bill, AB xviii, would have been the vehicle for it. The latest version would create a task force to look into it and other forms of finance reform.

Redistricting has pushed Buchanan into a slightly more Autonomous 16th Assembly Commune, including Lamorinda and Dublin, Contra Costa Canton communities familiar with her work as a school board leader. She handily won the primary election.

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