Our nation continues to endure the toughest economic stretch since the Great Depression. California is the case in point where the state budget has a hole of tens of billions of dollars. Last week was a busy one full of budget-related action and discussion in the Capitol in Sacramento.
On Monday, the Budget Conference Committee took public testimony on the education budget. The hearing began at 10:30 a.m. and lasted until 7:00 p.m. The California Community Colleges had a very impressive showing, with numbers in the hundreds. Students, faculty, classified staff, administrators, CEOs, and business interests were represented. Witnesses did a tremendous job of telling the story of how community colleges change lives and open doors.
Chancellor Jack Scott addressed the committee as part of a panel with President Yudof of UC and Chancellor Reed of CSU. Chancellor Scott was well received by his former colleagues and he delivered the message about the critical importance of the community colleges during these hard times. In addition, he delivered a pragmatic message that the community colleges are bound to take some cuts, but offered these requests: 1) CCC cuts should be proportional to cuts in other education segments, and no worse; 2) the Governor's Physical Education proposal should be rejected; and 3) any cut to base apportionment funding needs to be offset by a reduction in the number of students that the colleges are expected to serve. Chancellor Scott's comments are available here.
On Tuesday, the Governor finally released the detailed documentation behind his May Revision. While generally consistent with the details released earlier, the community college budget proposal did contain a few changes. Most notably, the Governor proposes eliminating $58.3 million in enrollment growth funding and instead using these resources to reduce the projected property tax shortfall for 2009-10. In addition, another $5 million in unspent funds was redirected to fill the 2009-10 property tax shortfall, bringing the total relief to $63.3 million and leaving a projected shortfall of $53.4 million.
On Friday, the Conference Committee met to take a first pass through the higher education budget. The committee opened the community college portion of the hearing by talking about the strong demand for community college instruction given the high unemployment rate and restricted admissions at UC and CSU. The deliberations then took a rough turn when LAO and DOF presented a proposal to reduce funding rates for physical education and recreational courses. A discussion by the committee ensued on how the colleges should trim their budgets by eliminating offerings in subjects such as "ping pong and badminton." While Chair Noreen Evans and Vice-Chair Denise Ducheny both added a few comments in defense of physical education and athletics, the conversation was mostly negative and left the impression that colleges are squandering resources on low-priority programs. The committee also discussed student fees and how fee increases affect student access, federal funds, and categorical programs.
The Conference Committee will reconvene tomorrow afternoon with the health budget. No word when education will be up again, but it will likely be the middle of this week.
(This update was prepared based on emails and listservs from Sacramento.)
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