Community colleges: Baccalaureate Degree in Nursing Pilot Program.

Assembly Member Soria, with principal coauthors Senators Cervantes and Reyes, advances a Baccalaureate Degree in Nursing Pilot within the California Community Colleges that would permit up to ten districts to offer a Bachelor of Science in Nursing while maintaining existing associate-degree programs. The pilot would operate in a separate track from the broader statewide baccalaureate program, overriding the usual constraints for this limited, time-bound initiative and preserving the ADN pathway in participating districts.

Key provisions establish the pilot as a distinct authority under a new education code article, limited to ten districts, with selection criteria designed to promote geographic balance, focus on underserved nursing areas, and consider persistent poverty alongside districts with nationally accredited programs. Participating districts must continue offering an ADN program, and the pilot’s combined ADN and BSN enrollment in a district would be capped at 25 percent of the district’s approved ADN class size (or 35 students, whichever is greater), with total participants not exceeding the BRN-approved ADN class size. Districts without national accreditation may participate provisionally if they are in candidate status, with priority given to districts in the Central Valley and Inland Empire and with a mechanism to withdraw provisional selections for untimely accreditation progress. A process to assist districts pursuing national accreditation is required.

The bill specifies that priority enrollment in the pilot go to students who hold an ADN from the same district, and it requires ongoing regulatory oversight by the Board of Registered Nursing to define and enforce capacity limits tied to ADN class sizes. The Legislative Analyst’s Office is tasked with a comprehensive evaluation, covering district applications, pilot implementations, enrollments, degree recipients, geographic reach, cost, delivery modalities, completion rates, and compliance, with results due to the Legislature by July 1, 2033. The article remains in effect until January 1, 2035, when it would be repealed unless extended, and the measure does not include an explicit appropriation, leaving financing to be considered in future actions.

In implementation terms, the Chancellor’s Office administers the pilot, coordinates accreditation assistance, and manages priority-registration rules in concert with BRN, while LAO evaluation data and Government Code reporting requirements provide external oversight and transparency. The definition of “underserved nursing area” relies on DHCAI’s nurse shortage designations, focusing the pilot on areas identified as having need. Taken together, the measure creates a bounded, evidence-driven experiment to determine whether placing locally delivered BSN programs within the CCC system—maintaining ADN options and tightly controlling capacity—can inform future decisions about expanding bachelor’s-level nursing within the state.