AB 207 Would Ensure That Students Have Access to Local Schools

Sacramento – Governor Jerry Brown signed AB 207 by Assemblymember Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco) into law today. The bill is a modest but important step toward ensuring that schools are accessible to all students by clarifying student residency requirements.

“Some families, including victims of domestic violence, immigrant and low wage workers, and the homeless, often have difficulty in providing proof to establish residency within a school district.  This bill creates uniform guidelines for school districts to verify student residency, ensuring that schools are accessible to children from all backgrounds,” said Ammiano.

“Streamlining the requirements for families to prove they live in the school districts is long overdue and makes the right to public schools a reality for students from families in poverty, immigrant families, victims of domestic violence and homeless families,” said Liz Guillen of Public Advocates, a sponsor of the bill.

“The ACLU congratulates the author and other supporters of AB 207 for their steadfast work spanning nearly a decade to help ensure that residency requirements are not a barrier to low-income students enrolling in their neighborhood schools,” said Tiffany Mok of the ACLU.

"Thanks to Assemblymember Ammiano and his staff the most significant barriers to school enrollment faced by some of our most vulnerable children have been eliminated. Low-income, homeless, migrant and immigrant families should no longer have to jump through needless document hurdles just to get a classroom seat for their children, who have a right to learn," added Laura Faer, Education Rights Director, Public Counsel.

AB 207 requires school districts to accept reasonable evidence that a pupil meets the residency requirements for school attendance in that district, and specifies which documentation schools must accept as proof of residency.

Contact: Quintin Mecke, 415-557-3013