Instructional materials: digital format.

Existing law requires the State Board of Education to adopt at least 5 basic instructional materials in specified subject areas for use in kindergarten and grades 1 to 8, inclusive, for district boards, as defined. Existing law also requires the governing board of each school district maintaining one or more high schools to adopt instructional materials that meet specified criteria for use in the high schools under its control. Existing law prohibits the state board from adopting instructional materials until the 2015–16 school year. Existing law requires a publisher or manufacturer of instructional materials to provide to the state, at no cost, computer files or other electronic versions of each state-adopted literary title and the right to transcribe, reproduce, modify, and distribute the material in braille, large print if the publisher does not offer a large print edition, recordings, American Sign Language videos for the deaf, or other specialized accessible media exclusively for use by pupils with visual or other disabilities that prevent use of standard instructional materials. This bill would require a publisher or manufacturer that offers printed instructional materials in an equivalent digital format to offer the digital format at the same cost as, or lower cost than, the cost of the purchased printed format, and would require a publisher or manufacturer of printed supplemental instructional materials to offer the supplemental instructional materials in an equivalent digital format at the same cost as, or lower cost than, the cost of the purchased printed format. The bill would, if the publisher or manufacturer cannot obtain copyright due to a 3rd-party contract conflict, authorize an equivalent digital format to be substituted with comparable digital materials. The bill also would authorize a school district to use instructional materials in digital format that were purchased by the school district to create a districtwide online digital database for classroom use, as specified. The bill would exempt from these requirements small publishers and small manufacturers of instructional materials, as defined, and would specify that these provisions be implemented in accordance with specified provisions suspending the adoption of instructional materials by the state board. The bill would become operative only if AB 1790 of the 2011–12 Regular Session is enacted.