California Alliance of
Massage & Bodywork Schools

Mid-December Update on AB 1388

AMTA-CA representatives have announced that they have decided to table AB 1388 for the time being. This means that at this time they will take no action on the bill, although it could be revived for this legislative session or reintroduced in 2005. Massage therapists and school owners and directors who are concerned about the bill should still write letters to the Assembly Business and Professions committee as well as their own representatives and the governor until there is an official announcement from the Assembly that the bill will not be voted on.

Lou Correa, chairman of the Assembly Committee on Business and Professions, intends to hold an informational meeting on AB 1388, likely in March 2004. Even with the bill tabled, additional letters are still important input for this meeting. The informational meeting, in turn, will likely have substantial impact on legislative consideration of any reintroduced bill. According to Correa and his Principal Consultant David Pacheco, such informational meetings are a common follow up to a regulatory bill not having consensus within the affected profession.

Many thanks for your efforts and participation in shaping the future of massage training and practice in California.

Sunrise Questionnaire Response / CAMBS Guestbook

CAMBS now has online both the introduction and main body of the response to the sunrise questionnaire. You can leave us comments on these and other concerns in our new guestbook.

Portability of Transcripts

CAMBS is committed to encouraging portability of training hours between member schools. This was an important item of discussion at the 7-8 November semiannual meeting. The basic consideration is that something like 50% of equivalent hours filed as a transcript from any state approved school would be transferable to a member school. Transcripts from schools approved by other states would be included. Transcripts from nonregistered workshops would not be transferable.

The 50% requirement is similar to the policies at colleges and universities. It means that the school issuing the final transcript will have an opportunity to provide supervision and evaluation of skills, knowledge, and abilities before issuing a certificate of completion or final transcript and that the graduate will be significantly representative of their training.

You can comment on this policy and other CAMBS activities in our new guestbook.

Update on AB 1388

Assembly Bill 1388 was introduced early this year to establish licensure for massage therapists in California. After a landmark outpouring of protest, it has been revised substantially, thanks to the work of a coalition representing massage schools and professional associations. As of mid October there is very little time left for schools to comment on this bill, and it is very important for us to do so. If school owners and their students don't act now, this bill could easily become law, without your input. Please see the discussion in our October newsletter. Details of the proposed bill can have significant effects on the viability of school programs of specific lengths, school viability as a whole, and assessments via the Student Tuition Recovery Fund (STRF). Getting it "right" does affect you!

AB 1388 is currently under review by the Assembly Committee on Business and Professions (B&P) . If it survives the sunrise review there, AB 1388 has to make it out of the State Assembly by January 31, 2004 or it's a dead bill. If it does make it through the Assembly, it has until August 31, 2004 to make it through the Senate, starting in the Senate Business and Professions Committee. Since, AB 1388 can't be amended again until January, the implication is that there will be little time for review and iterations. There's probably one more shot at amendments in the Assembly. Waiting until January to provide input is likely too late to have much affect on the Assembly process. If you have any opinions on the fate or content of AB 1388, please make them known to CAMBS and the Assembly Committee on B&P now.

Coalition Letter on AB 1388

On August 12, 2003, a coalition of various members of the massage community representing AMTA, ABMP, CAMBS and other schools met in Oakland to create a list of proposed changes to AB 1388. Please see our September newsletter and the letter sent by the coalition to Assemblymember Christine Kehoe and her chief of staff, Michael Miiller.

AB 1388 has been substantially amended and has been submitted again to the Business and Professions committee of the State Assembly as of 9/18/03. You can read the amended bill online. A recent posting to the Massage Politics Sheet contains some independent commentary on the current bill. Contact us with your thoughts about the amended bill.

CAMBS Hours Analysis

In 1998 the Bureau for Private Postsecondary and Vocational Education (BPPVE) formed a task force in an effort to create a minimum curriculum standard for massage schools. The question the task force grappled with was, "how much training, and in what subjects, is necessary to turn out graduates that are competent in one modality, safe (no harm to public or selves), and marketable (able to get a job.) Although the task force never finished its project, CAMBS has been working on it since then. At almost every CAMBS meeting, school owners and managers have discussed and outlined the topics that at a minimum should be taught to every massage student. Currently CAMBS is trying to determine the length of time it takes to cover this specific material in a basic massage course. Such a content-based curriculum would be based on needs of student and school, rather than creating an artificial curriculum in an attempt to fill up the number of hours required by a round-number established before content and needs were analyzed. More details on these efforts are now available in our library.

 

© California Alliance of Massage & Bodywork Schools

Websmithing by Keith Eric Grant — The RamblemuseSM
Last modified — 09 March 2004