New California law takes aim at homework burden on students

(KTXL) — Many Californians can look back at their time growing up and remember spending hours after school bogged down in homework, but one lawmaker hopes to change that for the next generation.

When the bell rings and the school day is over, for students like Sofia Johnson, the day is nowhere near over. The sixth-grader blames that on hours spent doing homework.

"Homework is exhausting. It's overwhelming," Johnson said. "It's depressing that my whole day from when I wake up to when I go to bed is taken up doing school work."

That's why Johnson's mother, assemblymember Pilar Schiavo (D-Santa Clara) says she authored AB 2999, also known as "The Healthy Homework Act." It was signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom earlier this year to take effect in 2025.

The legislation will not ban homework, but it formally encourages local school boards and educational agencies to establish homework policies that consider impacts on students' physical and mental health all with input from parents, teachers, and students themselves.

"It's addressing homework, which is the top stressor for kids," Schiavo said. "It's often number one."

The new law comes as a survey of more than 300,000 American students conducted by Stanford University and the nonprofit organization Challenge Success found that 45% of students say workload and homework are their number one source of stress. The average time spent on homework each night was 2.5 hours across the 13,000 California high school students who took the survey.

"I just toured a school in my district where they talked about how they are trying to reduce the kids who are missing school or dropping out of school. The top reason they hear is because kids are getting behind," Schiavo said. "They just get into a hole when you miss homework. You have homework the next day, you are trying to catch up from the old homework - too much homework can overwhelm them."

Schiavo said the bill was also tailored around equity – something California teacher of the year Casy Cuny believes is crucial, noting students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds may not have access to resources at home like high-speed internet.

"A child's grade should not be dependent on the resources they have at home to do the homework," Cuny said. "I truly believe the resources should be dependent on the learning that takes space in the classroom with the professional. That's why I support this bill - because in the end, it will be what's best for kids."

The legislation calls for the California Department of Education to put homework guidelines on its website for the upcoming year. It also requires school districts to come up with a homework policy by the start of the 2027 school year. It has no formal opposition.

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