From this morning’s Inside Higher Ed: A Proposition They Can Refuse?:On Thursday, …California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a fiscal emergency and proposed 10 percent cuts across the state budget. The deep cuts proposed for the state’s public education system would require lawmakers to suspend Proposition 98, a 1988 measure that sets aside about 40 percent of the General Fund revenues for K-12 and community colleges.(My emphases.)
Against that backdrop, California voters will head to the polls in early February to decide whether a certain proportion of that allocation should be strictly reserved for community colleges – and whether California’s fees, already the lowest in the nation, should be reduced from $20 to $15 a credit hour and essentially locked in at such low rates….
“It continues to evolve, the political climate around the initiative. I think initially, when this initiative was first put together, there was a feeling that there would be a lot of support,” said Marilyn Grinsdale, a government relations officer for Citrus College, a community college in California’s San Gabriel Valley. “As the budget situation has gotten worse, I think people have suddenly started thinking, ‘We’re afraid we won’t get what we need.’”
“There has been, much to community colleges’ dismay, some opposition coming in from other systems.”
California’s controversial Proposition 92 has pitted the various components of California’s higher education system against one another. Among its supporters are the Community College League of California and community college chancellors, presidents and trustees. Among its opponents are the California State University and University of California Systems, and the powerful California Teachers Association. (Although CTA’s statewide affiliate, the Community College Association, broke from its parent organization to support the initiative).
The debate has largely denigrated into a turf war: “Proposition 92 if passed could result in unintended problems that will negatively impact the CSU and threaten funding for other critical California programs,” CSU says in its statement. “Proposition 92 requires more state funding and reduces student fees for one segment of higher education without regard to the needs of all of higher education. Since it does not create or identify any new revenue sources, unprotected state programs such as UC and CSU would be competing for a smaller share of available General Funds,” UC’s regents said in theirs….
SOCCCD's Faculty Association is a member of CCA (and ipso facto CTA). I do believe that our district is a member of CCLC. I recall that our trustees occasionally attend CCLC conferences.
2 comments:
The sample ballot reads "potential loss in community college student fee revenues of about $70 million annually". So why a yes vote from the community college side?
Even though I'm a community college teacher, I'll be voting against Prop 92.
1. It gives extra money to cc's over and above our Prop 98 guarantee, but it doesn't provide any funding mechanism. An extra $300 M has to come from somewhere, so it'll come from the UC system or CSU or cops or firefighters or crippled kids, but it'll come from somewhere.
Robbing Peter to pay Paul isn't sound fiscal policy; the fact that we happen to be Paul doesn't make it better.
2. Changing Prop 92 would require a 4/5 vote of the State Legistature. If Prop 92 needs fixing, it'll never get fixed.
--100 miles down the road
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