Section 78260.

(a) (1) In order to further the state's interests in a major expansion in the number of educated nurses in California, the Legislature finds that it is necessary to ensure a significant expansion in the number of qualified nursing faculty at California Community Colleges. Therefore, the Legislature hereby creates the California Community Colleges Nursing Faculty Recruitment and Retention Program in the Chancellor's Office of the California Community Colleges for purposes of facilitating the recruitment and retention of qualified nursing faculty. The Chancellor of the California Community Colleges shall allocate funds on a competitive grant basis to community college districts that commit to sustained increases in the number of full-time equivalent students taught in the district's nursing programs, as specified by the chancellor, and that also commit to the terms and conditions specified in this section.

(2) It is the intent of the Legislature that the grants awarded under this article should be one-time grants and that the total amount of the funding for this article in any fiscal year should be limited to the amount appropriated for that purpose in the annual Budget Act. The Legislature finds and declares that the initial funding for this article is the appropriation contained in paragraph (30) of subdivision (a) of Section 43 of Chapter 79 of the Statutes of 2006.

(b) (1) (A) The grant amount to each participating district shall be based on the number of full-time faculty at the district who are in their first through fifth year of service as an instructor in a California Community College registered nursing program in the fiscal year for which funds are disbursed. Notwithstanding any other provision of law, a community college district that receives an allocation for the making of grants under this article shall have up to five years to disburse these funds.

(B) Except as provided in paragraph (3), the amount granted to any person under this article shall not exceed a total of twenty thousand dollars ($20,000) disbursed over a five-year period with a maximum of six thousand dollars ($6,000) in any one year.

(2) Disbursements under this section shall be based on the following schedule:

(A) Six thousand dollars ($6,000) for each instructor in his or her first year.

(B) Five thousand dollars ($5,000) for each instructor in his or her second year.

(C) Four thousand dollars ($4,000) for each instructor in his or her third year.

(D) Three thousand dollars ($3,000) for each instructor in his or her fourth year.

(E) Two thousand dollars ($2,000) for each instructor in his or her fifth year.

(3) Notwithstanding the amounts listed in paragraph (2), the amount granted to a person under this article may be supplemented, in any year of the five-year cycle of disbursements under paragraph (2), by up to one thousand dollars ($1,000) in local matching funds, plus an equal amount of funds disbursed pursuant to this program.

(4) A person who receives a grant under this article shall not be eligible for participation in the State Nursing Assumption Program of Loans for Education Chapter 3 (commencing with Section 70100) of Part 42.

(c) Each district is authorized, through its shared governance and collective bargaining relationships, to allocate actual payments to faculty in their first through fifth years of service as a nursing instructor on a different basis if the district finds that its ability to recruit and retain nursing faculty is thereby enhanced.

(d) Each district may use a portion of the grant proceeds to offer incentives to either full-time or part-time nursing instructors for the purpose of instruction in clinical settings during weekends and evenings. This subdivision shall not construed to be limited to faculty in their first through fifth years of service as nursing instructors.

(e) As a condition of receiving grant funds under this article, each district agrees to provide the chancellor with all data requested by the chancellor on the expenditure of funds and program outcomes.

(f) The chancellor shall report annually by March 1 to the Legislature and the Governor on program expenditures and outcomes by participating district and college.

(Added by Stats. 2006, Ch. 837, Sec. 18. Effective January 1, 2007.)