Click to enlarge. Source: California Department of Finance Credit: Lillian Mongeau/EdSource Today

Source: California Section of Finance. Credit: Lillian Mongeau/EdSource Today. (Click to enlarge)

Community colleges will receive millions more to begin to restore cut classes, rebuild flagging enrollment and strengthen pupil back up services under Gov. Jerry Brown's revised budget released Tuesday.

Brown would add an additional $thirty million to the system's 2013-fourteen apportionment, raising information technology to $226.9 meg from the Proposition 98 school funding guarantee. Unlike the January upkeep proposal, still, when Gov. Brown left it to the California Community Colleges Board of Governors to decide how to spend the coin, the revise spells information technology out.

The budget calls for $89.four one thousand thousand to get toward rebuilding enrollment, which fell by nearly half a million students in the past four years due to cutbacks in classes. The increase would provide enough money to pay for nearly 40,000 additional students.

Community colleges will receive some other $87.five million in cost-of-living increases, which would add less than 2 percentage to the base of operations funding corporeality, merely will allow colleges to keep step with rising costs of electricity and other services and supplies, said Paul Feist, the vice chancellor for communications with the community higher chancellor'due south office.

Brown also wants to take $50 million and add information technology to the matriculation upkeep to meliorate and aggrandize programs to help students reach their goals, raising the full to $99 million. This volition assist fund the trifecta of support services in the Student Success Act of 2012 : counseling and advising services, orientation for every educatee, and having each student design an pedagogy plan with a path to a degree, certificate or transfer to a four-year college.

Rich Copenhagen, president of the Student Senate for California Community Colleges, opposes the governor's plan to ask students to fill out the federal student aid form, or FAFSA, to get a fee waiver.

Rich Copenhagen, president of the Student Senate for California Community Colleges.

The community college proposal was part of a budget generally seen every bit favorable for teaching. The proposal also calls for increases of up to 20 percent in the general fund apportionment to both the Academy of California and California Land University systems, and calls for freezes on tuition increases in both those systems through 2016-17.

Jessie Ryan, associate manager of the nonprofit Campaign for College Opportunity, which advocates for more college opportunities for youth, said her organization is very happy with Brown's focus on access and student success.

"I recollect much of his proposal reflects his willingness to ask the organization to be more accountable for improvements in graduation rates, in amend transfer rates, in the number of low-income students who are successfully completing their degrees, and nosotros think this is a critical direction, because nosotros know nosotros're going to have this workforce shortage," Ryan said.

Brown also withdrew several proposals that generated a backlash from his Jan budget for community colleges. The most strongly criticized was his plan to motion adult education from G-12 schoolhouse districts to community colleges.

He also withdrew an earlier recommendation to move what'southward known every bit the census date, when schools take a count of their students for state funding, from the fall to the spring, which would essentially fund colleges based on student success rates rather than enrollment. And he backed away from his proposal to require students with more than 90 units to pay the full unsubsidized price of classes, which would toll between $127 and $190 per credit instead of $46 per credit.

Students lobbied against the unit cap, arguing that sometimes they're forced to enroll in classes they don't desire or demand because their required courses are full and they could lose their financial aid by dropping to part-time status. The chancellor's office estimated that about 117,000 students could be affected.

"Nosotros saw this as an insidious proposal," said Rich Copenhagen, president of the Student Senate for California Community Colleges and a educatee in the Oakland-based Peralta Community College Commune. Educatee leaders are concerned that anytime there'south another requirement fastened to financial aid it creates a two-tiered system of access, he said.

"Then we're always fighting against proposals that would create opportunities for those who are privileged with money and shutting out those that don't have money," Copenhagen said.

But students say the governor didn't budge enough on his Jan proposal to require all community college students seeking fee waivers from the Board of Governors to commencement fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Assist, or FAFSA. They're concerned that some parents won't provide the financial information needed to apply on the federal form; the Board of Governors waiver does non require the information. Chocolate-brown is now recommending that the federal application process be phased in over the next year to give the customs higher system fourth dimension to figure out another way to help those students gather enough documents to meet federal requirements.

The Campaign for College Opportunity supports the plan, Ryan said, because FAFSA opens the door for low-income students to receive federal Pell Grants that cover more than just tuition, which is the only particular now covered by the Lath of Governors fee waiver.

"I retrieve it's also actually important to recognize that right now community college students are leaving large amounts of federal aid on the table," Ryan said. "I know it's millions of dollars." Nevertheless, Copenhagen argues that Congress reduced lifetime Pell Grant awards and that could prevent community higher students from being eligible once they're enrolled in a 4-yr higher.

The Legislature could make the final determination on the aid requirement when they finalize the land upkeep in coming months, but lawmakers aren't nevertheless in accordance. In subcommittee hearings final month, the Assembly recommended against the proposal while the Senate has and so far put off a vote.

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