AB 181: an appointed Education Commissioner runs California’s Department of Education from January 1, 2027

On July 10, 2026, the governor signed AB 181 (Chapter 66, Statutes of 2026). It carries no urgency clause, so it takes effect on the January 1 that follows 90 days from enactment: January 1, 2027. It creates an Education Commissioner to run the California Department of Education, and leaves the elected Superintendent of Public Instruction with a different job. These are the five questions we expect your board to ask about it, each with the source you would need to answer it.

1. Who runs the Department from January 1?

The Education Commissioner: appointed by the governor, confirmed by the Senate, serving at the governor’s pleasure, and “directly responsible to the state board and the Governor” for the operations of the Department (Education Code 33302.5, added by AB 181). The commissioner is the State Board’s executive officer and holds all the Department’s executive and administrative functions (33301, 33302); the State Board remains its governing and policy-determining body. The statute strongly encourages the governor to appoint someone with experience running a large organization and in public education leadership, but sets no term. The governor elected on November 3 takes office on January 4, 2027, so the commissioner will serve at the pleasure of the new governor.

2. What does the elected superintendent still do?

The office stays, in a new Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (Education Code 33101), and the superintendent elected on November 3 takes office on January 4, 2027, already in the new role. AB 181 makes the superintendent a 19th voting member of the Community Colleges Board of Governors (71000) and, from January 15, 2027, a voting member of the State Board (33000). The State Board grows from 11 members to 13 that day: the superintendent takes one of the governor’s ten regular seats, and the Senate President pro Tempore and the Assembly Speaker each appoint a new member. The superintendent already sits, ex officio, on the UC Regents and the CSU Trustees. The Constitution creates the office without listing its duties, which leaves most of them to statute. AB 181 also reassigns two duties the Constitution gives the superintendent by name (33124): the quarterly Education Protection Account allocations under article XIII, section 36 go to the Department, and the determination under article XVI, section 8.5 is made by the Director of Finance and the commissioner. The candidates on the November 3 ballot are Richard Barrera and Sonja Shaw. By October 1, 2027, the commissioner must recommend, in consultation with the superintendent, how the superintendent’s responsibilities should be refined in a second phase of the changes.

3. Who do we deal with now, and who from January?

AB 181 amends 67 Education Code sections, adds or replaces seven more, and amends five in the Government Code. Everything else it handles by two lists. Education Code 33110 moves 517 sections, in the Education Code and other codes, to the commissioner, among them the Uniform Complaint Procedures (33315), Williams complaints (35186), the LCAP sections (52064, 52070, 52075, including appeals of LCAP complaints), CAASPP (60640), the annual audit provisions (41020), and special education monitoring and enforcement (56125). For a district, the county superintendent still approves the LCAP. Education Code 33110.5 moves 344 sections to the Department, among them LCFF and apportionments, district budget review, attendance, audit findings and repayments (41344), instructional time, and special education funding (56836.02 onward). Until January 1, 2027, the superintendent and the Department keep their current roles.

AB 181 touches private schools in one place. From January 1, 2027, the annual private school affidavit, filed between October 1 and 15, is filed with the Education Commissioner, who also publishes the list of private schools (33190, 33191), and the reference in Education Code 48222, the compulsory-attendance exemption that depends on that filing, moves to the commissioner. The first affidavit filed with the commissioner is the one due in October 2027.

4. Does anything we hold lapse, and is there anything we must do?

For the 861 listed sections, an action the superintendent took before January 1, 2027, “shall instead be deemed to have been taken by” the commissioner or the Department (33110(c), 33110.5(c)), so approvals, determinations and apportionments under them carry over. We found nothing in AB 181 that cancels an earlier action, and no section that requires a district or charter school to act because of it. What changes is who signs, who hears a complaint or an appeal, and who issues guidance.

5. What changes in guidance, and in a fiscal emergency?

The commissioner must review every program guideline the Department prepares before it goes to local educational agencies, and approve it only if it is necessary, within the Department’s authority, and clear and consistent with statute and regulation; guidelines stay “merely exemplary”, not mandatory (Education Code 33308.5). A school district in fiscal distress requests an emergency apportionment “through the Education Commissioner” (41320.2). The county superintendent and the commissioner jointly appoint the trustee from a pool vetted by FCMAT, and the State Board president no longer has a part in it; if they do not tell FCMAT of their appointment within 20 business days of receiving the pool, FCMAT appoints the trustee within 10 business days (41320.1).