Childcare: facility licensure: teacher requirements.

Assembly Member Garcia advances a measure that creates an assistant teacher permit pathway across California’s education and social services frameworks to address a staffing shortage in early learning and childcare. The permit would authorize contracting agencies to hire assistants to help with care, development, and instruction, provided the assistant works under supervision by a higher-permit holder and within clearly defined limits, including a two-year, nonrenewable term and site-level staffing caps.

Key provisions establish two parallel incarnations of the assistant teacher permit. Applicants would need at least six college units in early childhood education, child development, or human development, plus an annually updated education plan and employer sponsorship from a state preschool program provider. The permit requires supervision by a teacher-level or higher permit holder, and the permitholder’s education plan must be kept in the employer’s records. The authorized duties include performance of care and instruction with a daily independent supervision window capped at 120 minutes in the welfare and institutions code variant, and a similar framework in the education code variant. The permit may not confer the rights of higher-permit holders, and it is not renewable after its two-year validity. Implementation is targeted by early 2026, with the arrangement set to become inoperative after a sunset tied to the state’s revised permit matrix (ultimately by 2029) and repealed at that time.

The bill also imposes data-reporting obligations on contracting agencies. Officials at the Superintendent of Public Instruction and the Director of Social Services may require agencies to provide counts of employees holding the assistant teacher permit or waivers, with data collection allowed by surveys or other methods. The data would be incorporated into agencies’ program self-evaluation plans or existing reporting processes. The framework envisions informal directives or bulletins to facilitate early adoption prior to formal regulations, and it requires agencies to implement reporting and supervision provisions within a defined implementation window. The measure is enacted as an urgency statute to take immediate effect, and its governance relies on the Commission on Teacher Credentialing coordinating the permit pathway alongside related credentialing standards and supervision requirements.