Senate Bill S5104

                                
 
BILL NUMBER: S5104

SPONSOR: LIU
 
TITLE OF BILL:

An act to amend the education law, in relation to the transfer of
certain funds from the licensed private career schools tuition
reimbursement account to the proprietary vocational school supervision
account

 
PURPOSE:

To allow the State Education Department to transfer funds from the
tuition reimbursement account to the proprietary vocational school
supervision account when the balance of the tuition reimbursement
account exceeds $2.5 million.

 
SUMMARY OF PROVISIONS:

Section 1 of the bill adds a new paragraph (i)to subdivision 10 of
section 5007 of the education law to allow the State Education Depart-
              

ment to transfer funds from the tuition reimbursement account to the
proprietary vocational school supervision upon request by the Commis-
sioner when the balance of the tuition reimbursement account exceeds
$2.5 million.

Section 2 of the bill provides for the effective date.

 
JUSTIFICATION:

The State Education Department's (SED) Bureau of Proprietary School
Supervision (BPSS) is responsible for licensing and monitoring the
private "proprietary" schools in New York State to ensure that students
receive a quality education and to protect the students' financial
interests. BPSS is also in charge of investigating student complaints
and conducting comprehensive investigations of proprietary schools to
assure compliance with Education Law and SED regulations.  Unfortunate-
ly, BPSS has been faced with limited resources making it difficult for
the office to carry out its functions. Currently, there are nearly 500
licensed proprietary schools in New York and that number is growing each
month. BPSS is facing extremely high caseloads for educational technical
assistance and backlogs in licensure renewals and investigations of
complaints. BPSS has no resources to investigate unlicensed proprietary
schools engaging in unlawful activities.

This legislation would allow SED to transfer funds from the tuition
reimbursement account, which has funding above and beyond what is needed
to ensure student protection, to the proprietary school supervision
account. Transferring this funding to the proprietary school supervision
account would allow BPSS to work to reduce educational technical assist-
ance caseloads, reduce backlogs in complaint investigations, improve
licensure renewal and other vital services, improve the quality of guid-
ance provided to the public regarding this sector of higher education,
and improve the fiscal tracking of assessments, penalty payments, and
review of annual financial statements. BPSS would also be able to estab-
lish a more innovative me thod of curricular review and method of ensur-
ing the continued educational quality of proprietary schools.


Enacting this legislation would enhance BPSS's ability to fulfill its
mission and would provide tremendous benefit for the students attending
proprietary schools and the proprietary schools themselves.

 
LEGISLATIVE HISTORY:

This is a new bill.

 
FISCAL IMPLICATIONS:

None to the state.

 
EFFECTIVE DATE:
Immediate.