Regional occupational centers or programs.

(1) Existing law authorizes the establishment of regional occupational centers or programs to provide career technical education and technical training to students. Existing law provides a system for the funding of regional occupational centers or programs that includes a provision for the apportionment of state funds to these centers or programs. This bill would require, from the 2009–10 fiscal year to the 2012–13 fiscal year, inclusive, that a regional occupational center or program established and maintained by school districts as a joint powers agency receive its operating funds directly from the county office of education of the county in which it is located, in a manner that is consistent with the apportionments for those school districts that comprise the joint powers authority that are provided to the county office of education pursuant to the annual Budget Act. The bill would authorize a joint powers agency receiving an apportionment for a school district pursuant to the bill to disburse those funds to the school district for which that apportionment was made. The bill would provide that nothing in its provisions would prevent any school district or county office of education from using funding received from a specified item of the annual Budget Act for any educational purpose. (2) This bill would declare that it is to take effect immediately as an urgency statute.