Bills Would Create New School Database, Regulate Police Tech

Among the legislation sitting on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk are three gov tech bills — one of which would establish a new schools database and two that would put guardrails on law enforcement systems.

The first, Senate Bill 848, would task the Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC) with setting up a new database of classified employees who have gone through “substantiated investigations” for egregious misconduct, which includes sexual offenses.

The database, which would need to be completed by July 1, 2027, would cover both local education agencies and private schools, and would require interfacing with state and local partners. Reporters across the state would need to enter information into the system, as well as search the database when making hires. The commission would serve as data administrator.

According to a Senate committee analysis of the bill, CTC would need $2.6 million in the first year of implementation and $2.5 million each year after for the system. That would fund four IT staff to develop, implement and integrate the database into the existing system for credentialed employees. It would also cover 14 administrative employees, for technical assistance to reporters and employees.

Broadly, the idea behind the database is to allow schools to see when potential hires have been investigated for egregious misconduct at other schools.

“Currently, fragmented recordkeeping and inconsistent reporting practices allow individuals with substantiated misconduct histories to move between school employers — particularly in noncertificated positions — without detection,” the committee analysis reads.

The second bill, Senate Bill 274, would put a slew of new requirements on local entities operating automated license plate readers (ALPRs), including:

• Requiring them to delete information captured by ALPRs within 60 days if it doesn’t match information on an authorized “hot list”
• Putting new safeguards in place to manage who has access to ALPR data, including data security and privacy training for employees
• Adding clauses to contracts with ALPR vendors specifying that access to national databases — as well as national databases pulling information from California ALPR systems — should not be included by default

The third bill, Senate Bill 524, would put some guardrails around police officers using AI to write official reports. More specifically, the bill would require disclosure of the use of AI, ask officers to retain first drafts of reports and maintain an audit trail of who used AI to generate the report.