The California Community Colleges Initiative is a three part piece of legislation that seeks to drastically change the way that community colleges are funded, lower overall student tuition fees, and alter the way students are represented on the Board of Governors.
The portion of the initiative dealing with tuition rates proposes resetting the tuition back down to 15$ per unit across the board, for all state community colleges. Instead of setting a cap to future tuition raises, the initiative compromises with a formula that raises tuition at a rate proportional to the average state income increase/decrease.
According to Alan Crane, BC’s Legislative Liaison and recently elected student representative to the CCLC Advisory Committee on Legislation, this means that the populace of California would have to receive an average 3% raise in income in order for the tuition rate for community colleges to be raised 3%. Likewise a raise of 5% would result in a tuition raise of 5%.
However, there is no drop in tuition if the average income for the state drops. Also, there is language in the bill limiting the yearly tuition increase to 10%.?Currently, community colleges in California are funded based on a Full-Time Equivalency Standard (FTES) shared with Kindergarten through 12th grade, essentially making it a K-14 system.
In the most basic sense, (FTES) the total number of credits being taken by students at a community college divided by twelve, since if a student is to take twelve units, they are considered to be a full-time student. 1 FTES = 12 units.
The flaw in this, according to the initiative, is that enrollment at community colleges and public schools fluctuates at different rates.
For example, if the K-12 enrollment was down 3%, and Community College enrollment was up 4%, a 1% increase in funding would be spread across the board, rather than specific to each group’s enrollment.
Crane believes this is important in order to “equalize the budget process for the public school systems.”
The budget model provided by the Community College League of California (CCLC), the main lobbying group behind the initiative, shows that K-12 enrollment is growing at a rate of 1%-1´% a year with a steady decline over the past 2 decades. Community college growth, according to the same report, is growing at a rate of about 6%, which has been increasing steadily. The discrepancy between the two rates leaves funding at about 1´ to 3%.
One of the more significant aspects of this bill is that it will write these changes into law permanently by changing the California State Constitution to reflect the actions outlined in the bill.
One potential drawback to this portion of the bill is that by writing it into the state’s constitution, it will ensure that California will never again have free community college.
The third major section of the legislature reassigns the terms and limits of the two student representatives to the California State Board of Governors. Currently there are two students serving staggered two year terms. While there is only one vote, which belongs to the senior student representative, the staggering of the terms allows for a training period for the junior member.
The legislation will alter this so that the two students will serve single year terms. According to Crane, this limits the effectiveness of the student representatives because of the elimination of the year of training. For this reason, Crane was until recently one of the most outspoken critics of the bill. However, after a discussion with CCLC Chairperson Scott Lay, he decided that it was more important to “take the money and run” rather than dispute this piece.
Crane also feels that the California Community College system cannot survive without this money, which will add up to around $850,000 for Bakersfield College, and over $51 million statewide, according to a document citing projected district impact of the bill, distributed by the CCLC and available at www.californiansforcommunitycolleges.org
While the CCLC is currently requesting a donation of $5,000 from each school to pay for professional petitioners to gather the required 1 million signatures to get the bill on the November 2008 ballot, it is also organizing a grassroots student effort for signature gathering.
Bakersfield College is in Region V of the California district of community colleges. All the community colleges in the state are organized into these regions for the purpose of discussion of legislature and policy pertaining to community colleges. Region V was the first region to endorse the bill, with a majority of 9 (out of 10) schools voting in approval.