Assembly Budget Subcommittee No. 2 on Education Finance

Okay. Good morning. Let's begin our budget Subcommitee Number 2. This is our last hearing of the year before our May Revise. We have a variety of issues today with higher education, our state library, and our College of Law, the University of California, San Francisco College of Law, formerly Hastings. That's the last time I'll say that word. But just the intro there.

As well, we'll have a conversation about, deeper conversation about ScholarShare and basic student needs, a priority that we've been focusing on the last few years in the Assembly, in the Legislature, but even more so after the pandemic. So with that, we'll begin. Let's bring up issue number one, ScholarShare Investment Board, CalKIDS.

Okay, so let me set the stage here. We do have a proposal from the Governor's Budget. It's not an earth shaking proposal, but nonetheless it's a budget proposal. But this item, we really wanted to focus on kind of oversight and just information on the implementation. This was a priority of this Subcommitee. We launched this as a pilot, I think, four years ago. And then, of course, two years ago we put in quite a bit of money. And then this year we're beginning. So we want to really focus on kind of where we're at and going forward, recommendations and ideas to make this more effective for California families. So with that, let's have the Department of Finance, LAO, then ScholarShare? Yes, go ahead.

Okay, great.

Yep.

Good morning, Chair McCarty and Assembly Members. Devin Mitchell with the Department of Finance. The ScholarShare Investment Board administers CalKIDS, a college savings program created to help more children in California afford higher education. Launched last August, CalKIDS automatically provides all newborns and eligible low-income foster youth and homeless public school children with an initial seed deposit, as well as potential additional financial incentives to help students begin saving money for college. All newborn children in California born on or after July 1, 2022 are eligible for the program.

The budget increases the seed offering in CalKIDS accounts for newborn children from $25 to $100. This proposal utilizes available resources within the program that are a function of reduced expenditures on seed deposits for first grade students. The budget also includes an increase of 1 million one time General Fund to support marketing efforts intended to increase participation in the CalKIDS program. The goal of this investment is to raise awareness of the program among parents and families. Thank you, and I'm ready to answer any questions the Committee might have.

Thank you. LAO.

Good morning, Chair and Members. Lisa Qing with the LAO. I'll just comment briefly on each of the Governor's proposals so you can focus your time today on program oversight. First, regarding the proposed increase in the seed deposit for newborns, we recommend rejecting this in light of the state budget condition. As you know, the state faces a budget problem, and so there is a high threshold this year for program expansions.

At this time, we don't know whether increasing the seed deposit for newborns from $25 to $100 is likely to impact their eventual outcomes, such as whether they go on to enroll in college. We estimate you could generate about 30 million in ongoing savings, where you'd reject the Governor's proposed increase to the seed deposit and instead align funding in the CalKIDS program with the revised cost estimates. Regarding the proposed funding for marketing, we also recommend rejecting this.

The state provided significant funding for CalKIDS marketing and outreach last year. To date, those funds remain largely unspent, and so we think it's too soon to determine whether more money is needed this year. Thank you. I'd be happy to take any questions.

Okay. Thank you. ScholarShare.

Thank you, Chair McCarty and Members of the Subcommitee. Noah Lightman with the ScholarShare Investment Board. We appreciate the Committee's support for the program over the past few years and respectfully appreciate your consideration of the proposal. Happy to answer any questions.

Okay. Yeah. So maybe you can help us, Noah, Mr. Lightman, to just focus on, less on this proposal and more on the overall program. So, a couple newer Committee Members up here as well. So, you know, we started this, I think, three or four years ago, I think, maybe not five now, with seed money for smaller communities are doing it. Then we went statewide two years ago. So where are we at and where do we see us going with the infusion of one time money and then the ongoing appropriation?

Yeah. So as you recall, the program was initially conceived in 2019 with a one time budget allocation. And then in 2021, the state invested about $1.8 billion to expand the program to also include students. We officially launched the program in August of 2022, encompassing both the newborns and the school age components. We recently just surpassed over 100,000 participants, which we view as the success of the program.

Considering that the program itself has two unique components between the newborns and the students, that is a little bit more complex and harder to market when you're dealing with two different unique populations. And also, we're in the process of sending out notification letters. This is something that the Budget Subcommitee has provided funding for, and we're about halfway through our notification letters to about 3.4 million students. And each month, as we get new letters going out, we see rises in participation rates. And so, right now, we're just continuing to send out notification letters and working with schools to get the message out.

Yeah, so I'm a big supporter of this. And we spent weeks, and we'll spend a few moments later in this hearing, talking about the cost of college and just the financial piece of higher education. And research shows that students who have these college savings accounts are seven or so times more likely to go to college, whether they have $500 in their name to go to college or 50,000 or 2 million as a trust fund kid.

So it just sets up the expectations and focuses on the economics of higher education. And so we want to make sure this is a reality. We knew this when we started this, that it would be complicated for families to figure it out for one big reason. It sounds too good to be true. Like every day when you get home and you look at your mail, you never get anything, very rarely, that you're looking for. It's maybe a bill. More likely it's some advertisement from something.

And a lot of times it's some money, a credit card or this and that. And so it just goes to the side. And even for me as an Assembly Member, I put stuff to the side all the time. So I think it's going to be really hard to really crack through. And whether it's one letter or put more money for two letters or three letters, it's going to be, I think, a lot of those same issues.

So knowing that we do have ongoing money for this, we want to keep ramping it up year by year. What other strategies does ScholarShare or LAO or DOF think that we ought to be doing to make sure this is effective for California, but more importantly, effective for families that can benefit from it?

Yeah, we appreciate the question. I think our number one goal for this year is to build brand awareness. How do we do that? We do that through paid marketing strategies, through radio, video, digital display. We also do that through partnerships with community partners, and that includes schools. So we're working with schools through a top down approach. On the top end, we've partnered with the Department of Education on sending out notices to campuses.

We've also worked with statewide associations that represent counselors, teachers, school board members and PR officials as well. And then we've talked with them about, hey, this is what the program is. Here are digital assets that you all can use to get the word out. We've also engaged 30 county offices of education and have talked with them about, hey, this is what the program is. Here's how many people are enrolled in your program versus how many people have registered.

And at the staff level, we're also working at a grassroots style to reach out to the school, offer to give presentations to families, and work with schools to let them know that, hey, you have free money on the table. You just need to let your families know that, hey, this is there. Please take advantage of it.

Does Department of Finance or LAO have any implementation suggestions?

No, Mr. Chair. One thing I would like to point out is that that renewed and sort of central focus on LEA partnerships was sort of a result of our conversations last cycle. Just know that we're working together with the Committee to achieve the goals that we all share and taking the input of this Committee very seriously.

Okay, thank you, LAO.

The only thing I would add is that if you turn to page four of your agenda, you'll see a list of the actions that the Legislature took last year to support these marketing and outreach efforts. And this includes supporting financial literacy outreach for students and their families. Includes notification letters just to provide them with the initial awareness. It also includes contracts with local college savings account programs in order to leverage those programs that cities and local organizations have in this space as well.

One thing that's come up in previous conversations with the Subcommitee is that sometimes if students and families aren't familiar with the program or with the agency operating it, it could help, it could be a promising practice for them to hear from an organization that they are familiar with and that's trusted in their community.

Yeah, I just don't know if this is working. It's not an indictment on this. People get information from a variety of sources. It's different. It's 2023. Maybe we need to contract with some TikTok influencers. I'm serious. There's different ways to reach people these days, and that's something that we're interested in. And so I'm not sure, today through the budget process, but finding ways that families can tap this account that's essentially there, ready to activate. So walk us through again the one time infusion.

When we started it, obviously, we had a surplus a couple of years ago, looking for some creative things to do with one time money, versus going forward. So going forward now, the $170 million will go to create seed accounts for who? Walk us through how that works.

Yeah. So the way that the program is structured is it has multiple components. We start with newborns, and every newborn born in the state on or after July 1 of 2022 is automatically given a seed deposit of $25. And the proposal before you is to revert 30 million of that 170 million to increase that seed deposit from $25 to $100.

The second component, which was from that one time funding, was for 3.4 million low-income students who are identified in the 2021-2022 academic year. So in theory, those students are second graders through college freshmen right now. And those students were given $500. And the idea is that in ongoing years, we're going to continue adding newborns and then low-income first graders into the program. And those students who are identified as low-income in first grade will get another $500.

So the 1.8 billion, how much was appropriated but unallocated and unspent so far?

So all that money was sent to our account for the 3.4 million students.

There may be a little bit left over, and our intent would be to use that on the first.

Correct.

So of that money, how much has been activated by the families, or is it sitting there waiting for the families to activate the account?

So again, what we shared with the Committee, there's been about 110,000 participants that have actually registered.

Out of how many?

Out of about 3.4 million.

Yeah. So, well over 95% is still sitting there, right? And I think, too, just for our comfort, it says that if these are never activated by a certain amount of time, the money doesn't go to Citibank or whoever is. What bank is it? First Republic. Yeah, that's a funny one. Good one. It'll revert back to the General Fund.

That's correct.

Yeah. So how does that work? After how many years would it become inoperative for the individual?

So according to statute, the student has up until age 26 to utilize the funds.

Yeah. So it could be their newborn or it could be a couple of decades down the road. So we'll just continue to try to touch those people and hope they... What happens if they go and create a ScholarShare account on their own and they don't even know that they have this one over here? Will they be notified that, oh, you already have one for the State of California open for you.

So we are in the process of trying to coordinate all of our ScholarShare 529 marketing with CalKIDS. On ScholarShare 529 social media, we promote the CalKIDS...

I get that. But if I go to the bank today, I just have a newborn. I go to Golden 1, and I create a ScholarShare account. Would they already know when the bank goes to ScholarShare and starts one? Oh, you already have a seed account established by State of California. Let's link these two together and you'll have to duplicate.

So they may not already know. And that's why we're here before you today requesting more funding for marketing efforts.

That's not marketing. That's like a banking and ScholarShare. So when the bank doesn't, the bank have to work through the 529s through ScholarShare?

So how it works is these accounts are owned and operated by the State of California. We're the only ones that can add money to it and take money out when it's time for a student's distribution.

No, I get that. But when I walk over to a bank over here, and I create a 529, it's through... Is the state ScholarShare notified that I've created? Besides the fact that the thing that we just created, is there any touching of the information where we would know that, hey, there's another account over here created.

So I'm not sure of the sort of scenario that you're describing, but a family has an opportunity, if they choose to, to link a ScholarShare 529 account to their CalKIDS account.

Now, I get that, but what if the family never has heard of this? Which obviously they haven't, because we're here talking about this right now. So you go to any bank, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, or the State of California, through the new employee programs, have them. Maybe there isn't a solution there, but I think that's something we should think about. How can we, going forward, make sure that, even if they don't know, we have the systems in place to cross reference, to inform, and link the two accounts?

We'd love to continue the conversation, working with you all on how to best find a solution for that.

Okay. Yeah. And look, I don't think that this is something that we should turn away from. And so these are all questions, how do we make this maximize this going forward? We asked this question in the agenda, too. I know you said you reached, you thought, an important marker of 100,000. That's 100,000. But as you know, it's a long, long, long way from everyone. What do we think is a reasonable participation goal for the program going forward for year 2 and 3? And again, we're literally less than a year into implementation.

Yeah. And that's the key point. I mean, we're less than a year in. And so as we think about participation goals as essentially a startup, our goal this year is to work on building brand awareness. And as we do that, what we're able to do is create a baseline.

So I can't say, hey, we're going to reach this participation rate or that participation rate, but what we're able to do is have a better understanding of every time we do a notification drop or every time we do an ad, we get a better sense on a month to month basis what our baseline is. And hopefully in the coming years we'll come back to you with some more numbers.

Okay. And then the final question from the staff on the agenda is, as we try to find creative ways to implement and get the word out, what are we doing with or what can we do more with LEAs and CDE to kind of track the students and connect them as well? Before you answer that, one of this ideas was, literally, I created it here in my City Council district 15 years ago. We got a local bank.

We heard about the idea in San Francisco, thought hey, we should do this here. So we went to some elementary schools with the partners, had an assembly with the parents, and inevitably they thought it was too good to be true, especially families who don't always aren't super proficient in the English language and so forth. They just didn't know what this is all about. So the thing that made it successful was the messenger of the teacher.

So the teacher wrote a letter to them and said, hey, this is a great opportunity for your student. And all of a sudden, people opened up. So what about maximizing and utilizing the truly trusted people, not just community partners, like LAO said, because they might know that everyone knows who their teachers are and their counselors and their principals. So how can we better utilize that?

That's a great question Chair McCarty, and you know, as our representatives from the Department of Finance said, we're really centering our focus around LEAs. Like I mentioned before, we're really trying to implement a top down and bottom up approach with schools. We've coordinated with the Department of Education to get the word out. We've actually created on our website a marketing toolkit specifically for schools.

This includes QR codes with flyers that they can put out on campus, includes emails that the schools can send to the students and families, as well as principal robocall scripts. And we're also trying to reach out to as many districts as possible, letting them know, hey, here's what the program is, offering to give presentations to, not just families, but also staff, especially counselors and teachers, principals and PIOs, so that they can be aware of the program and hopefully get the word out.

And so as the Committee is aware, there's a lot of LEAs across the state. We're really trying to work on a county by county level and look forward to continuing that progress as we continue over time.

Okay, thank you. Mr. Alvarez.

All right, so I'm going to start probably from the beginning. I've opened a 529, actually, at ScholarShare for both my kids several years ago. Opening an account is really challenging. It's very difficult. I'm not surprised that a lot of families are not participating, given the difficulty of one, you have to do it online because ScholarShare is only online. You cannot go to a bank. So let me understand. Newborns, they're born, and they are eligible for this, but they're not automatically enrolled. There's not an account that gets created for them when they're born, or is there?

So how it works is when a newborn is born, we get their data from the Department of Public Health, and we actually do enroll them automatically into what's called a CalKIDS account. This is a separate account from their own individual 529, if they choose to create one. We do not require families to make their own 529 account.

But if the parents of a newborn do make their own account, what they're able to do is then link those accounts together online through their portal, and we'll actually give them another $50 incentive.

Okay, so they start with $25. If they have another ScholarShare and they link it, they get $75, basically. Okay. And I remember when I did those forms for these 529s. Don't you have to include the child's Social Security number and maybe the parents as well?

That's correct. If you're filling out an individual ScholarShare 529 account.

So not for CalKIDS?

That's correct. We do not ask for tax payer ID.

What is associated, just their name and date of birth. What other data do you associate with the person? To the question that the Chair was asking, how does someone potentially link these accounts? I guess if it's not a ScholarShare 529, you cannot link it. There's no way. Because you at 529 don't share that personal information with, if you go to a Wells Fargo to create a 529, there is no sharing of data.

So if a person wants to log in to view their CalKIDS account, just to see for that newborn, to see the $25, what they would need is three pieces of unique information. Their date of birth, their county where they were born, and then what's called the local registration number, which is on their birth certificate.

But we're also, like I was talking about before, in the process of sending out notification letters to families as soon as the baby is born, and so on that notification letter, we have a unique code. And so if the family doesn't have their birth certificate with them. They can utilize that unique code.

Okay. And to further understand this program that was started, was it always intended that you would get the $25 at birth, or whatever, an amount at birth, and then an additional amount if you are a low-income family or a student in the first grade? Is that how this was planned out? So you're born, and seven years later you're in first grade, if you're a low-income student, you get $500 more?

That's correct.

Okay. So the 1.8 billion that was authorized for this would be able to cover all newborns for how many years? And first graders for how many years?

So the 1.8 billion was used to cover 3.4 million kids in the last academic year who are identified as 1st through 12th graders. And the idea is, for first graders ongoing, it would be about 140 million if the Committee were to accept the proposal brought before you.

On an ongoing basis. Got it. Okay. Now, talking about the first graders, who would probably face even a higher barrier because you don't get any information because you don't get the birth information, because they're already seven years old. My children attend a title one school, so we received a letter notifying, obviously, we don't qualify. But outside of the letter, what is specifically being done in schools where we know there's a high concentration of students that should qualify for this funding? What has been occurring in those schools? Or is there nothing happening at the school site level at the moment?

Yeah, that's a school decision, how they choose to promote the program. But our...

None of the funds that were appropriated for this program are being utilized at a school site level. If a school does it, they do it.

That's correct.

Okay. Got it. Is the 1 point, rough number from what you said, is being spent, 1.5 billion that is still unutilized in this program. What kind of account is that in? Is that like in an interest-bearing account or is it a cash?

Yeah. So how we've structured these accounts is in such a way that for newborns and younger students, they're in an enrollment year portfolio, which kind of works like target date funds for retirement in the sense that it's more aggressive as they're younger, more conservative as they're older. And for the older students, it's in a more conservative account to maintain capital preservation.

But the funds that you haven't actually allocated because there hasn't been an enrollment above 110,000. So you've got, sounds like, again, rough figure, 1.5 billion. I'm just doing this math in my head, so it could be off, but certainly over $1 billion that hasn't been. You don't have accounts for all that billion dollars, that's sitting somewhere else? That's sitting in an interest-bearing account with you? Is that still with the state? Where is that funding?

No, we have spent that money for this 3.4 million students. There may be some leftover, and that would be in an interest-bearing account.

How have you spent this money if there's only 110,000 enrolled students?

Yeah. Maybe you can take a step back and just walk through how that goes. So what is the financial institution that we contracted with?

So our plan manager is TIAA-CREF.

TIAA-CREF. So we gave enough money for these students, and then it sits there. It reverts if they don't go to college and open it by the time they're 25. So that potentially is two decades from now.

So you created 3.4 million accounts. Those accounts exist today.

But maybe you can clarify for Mr. Alvarez. Sorry to interrupt, David. Is that they're open, but they're not quite, like, open. It's like you create a bank account, you have to press this little button for it to activate. So maybe walk through the mechanics, how that works.

Chair McCarty described it exactly how it is. We created this big account, and within the account, we divide it into, for all the kids that are eligible, and we call that their personal CalKIDS account. And then the family has to go online to actually activate it, as the Chair stated.

Okay. If a first grader gets, I just did the quick math on a compound calculator. If a first grader gets $500, and they cash it out, I just use 18 years later, it'll be about $1,500 is what's going to be in their account. Is that what the expectation is in some of these? At a 6% interest rate growth annually.

That's possible. There's a lot of factors, the time they actually choose to go to college and use the funds, market condition. But we want to make sure that there's opportunity for growth for these funds.

So could they move the funds into a more aggressive target date fund or a more aggressive fund generally?

For these CalKIDS funds, they cannot. If the family chooses to create their own ScholarShare 529 account, they can choose any investment offering they'd like.

What is the work being done on non-English speakers in terms of families that would qualify for this?

Yeah, that's a great question. So we have actually translated our parent portal into Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Filipino. We're in the process of translating more materials. We have a call center with agents available in Spanish, as well as a language line with a variety of other languages. And we're continuing to look at different pieces of collateral that we can translate.

And then from the budget request from the Administration. So the $140 million annually, that should theoretically cover the number of first graders and newborns every year. How many newborns are estimated and how many first graders?

I don't have that projection on hand. I can certainly send your staff a note. But broadly speaking, what we've been able to figure out is, we work with our forecasting folks to determine roughly how many first graders we're expecting. We have a birth rate calculator, so we are checking the birth rate, Department of Finance does create a forecast for that as well.

Using that information and the sort of the structure of the program that we've described here, we come up with an estimate. Which is why when we ran those numbers, we identified fewer first graders than we initially projected, which is why we shifted some of those available resources to support the newborn side by increasing that seed deposit. So I can get you our latest on our latest newborn and first grade projections. I don't have them on hand, but I'm more than happy to share them with you. And that is how we build that.

And that figure, obviously, now also includes this proposed increase from newborns from $25 to $100.

That's right.

If I may, Mr. Alvarez, there are some figures in your agenda on page four regarding the first graders. That 140 million is expected to support about 255,000 low-income first graders moving forward. In addition to that 140 million, there is also about 45 million ongoing in the Governor's Budget for the newborns. So that 45 million is what would support the $100 deposits.

I see that now. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Yes. Mr. Fong.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to everyone for the presentation here today. Just in following my colleagues' comments. In terms of the marketing outreach, I know a million was set aside to increase outreach, but it sounds like there's different opportunities to partner with the CDE, with leas, with different agencies, but how are we utilizing those funds to really augment the outreach efforts? And are there local LEAs that are doing this better than others and those best practices that we can learn from?

That's a great question. I think there's two ways to answer the question. First, to focus on the marketing dollars, we just released an RFP and selected a firm for media buying and advertising services to utilize those funds from the last year's budget. And we just need to formalize the contract and expect to encumber those funds by the end of the fiscal year. And to your second question about working with schools, it really depends on the LEA. There are some that are more interested than others.

We've worked with some schools on doing presentations multiple times throughout the academic year. Some schools have sent out targeted emails to students that they know are low-income. One County Office of Education has gone so far to create a fake check that says CalKIDS sent to inspire families and give them hope. And so we've just been doing our due diligence with our limited staff of trying to reach out to as many LEAs and statewide associations as possible to expand our outreach.

Thank you for that update. In terms of the media bias, also, as Mr. Alvarez has stated, there's a lot of diverse communities in California. We really want to make sure that we're reaching out to you communities in the respective native languages. A lot of times different communities will get their information in local newspapers that are not English. Put it on that they might be in Chinese or in Spanish or Korean or Tagalog. So I think those are opportunities that whoever you contract with that, hopefully that's part of their campaign as well, to reach families in different languages. Is that something that is possible?

Absolutely. That point is well taken.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Yes, Mr. Alvarez.

So given the report saying that there's largely unspent funds on outreach, why are additional dollars needed at this time?

Yeah, California is very expensive. We're talking about a community that's part of the CalKIDS population that's very diverse. We've worked with our ScholarShare 529 Marketing Director, who has suggested that for a two week aggressive campaign in California, it can cost roughly about $2 million. Right now, we have about $1 million that we're working with, provided in the last year budget. And so our ability to continue demystifying the myth of free money through this program is really incumbent on how much money we'll have available. And so that's why we're here before you today.

Yeah. Go ahead, Mr. Alvarez.

I'll just end with this. I remain unconvinced that a media buy, especially of only a million dollars, is going to be reaching the people that need to be reached. I think, we've seen it time and again, and certainly over the last couple of years, whether it's testing, vaccinations when it came to Covid, if you're not talking to people where they're at, it's hard for them to engage and participate.

And so I think there needs to be some more focus on how do we touch people in a personal way at the school site with trusted sources. Otherwise, these numbers, I think, are going to continue to be pretty, not where we want them to be. So I would suggest we reconsider that and what.

What we're going to be doing in terms of on the ground, true grassroots level of outreach and, otherwise, I think we're going to see ourselves here next year with some growth, probably, but mainly due to the born. Do we have that breakdown? By the way, how many of the 110,000 accounts are first graders versus newborns?

I don't have that number on hand, but I'd be happy to share information with you.

So it says approximately 450,000 newborns.

So very few newborns, mainly students.

Interesting. Okay. All right. Thank you.

Well, just remember, David, obviously, when our spouses had kids, when we went home, we were focused on survival, not opening some letter with some money on an offer that's too good to be true. I'm thinking what you said about COVID and also when we did the Affordable Care Act and anything big, we have a broad campaign for public outreach. And this is nice, but it's woefully insufficient. A million dollars is, like, barely Sacramento, not even San Diego's media market.

So this is a $2 billion plus program. It's 1.8 plus 170 million a year for a couple of years now. So maybe we should invest in it if we want to get a better outcome. So I think that, I know in the years past we hire firms and do this multimedia in diverse languages and broad effort to focus on implementation.

I don't know if we're doing it here, and I'm not saying it's their fault here, but something that if we want this to really succeed, I think we need to think about options. So we will do that, and maybe we can partner together to look at some ideas.

Okay. Further questions? Seeing none. We'll hold this issue open. Issue number two, we have our California State Library folks here, and a few proposals from the Governor's Budget.

Good morning, Mr. Chair, Members. Jennifer Louie with the Department of Finance. The state library's augmentations for Governor's Budget are a continuation of the administration's emphasis on access, innovation, and equity. The Governor's Budget includes the following four proposals. The first is $462,000 in ongoing General Fund to expand and support the Wiccan State Law Library and personnel support.

The second proposal is a General Fund increase of $597,000 to expand the California history room, special collections and personal support and within that augmentation, $357,000 in ongoing General Fund and $240,000 at one time, respectively.

The third proposal is $168,000 in ongoing General Fund to support the State Library Audit program and lastly, 100 million one-time General Fund shift from the 2022 Budget act to the local library infrastructure program, which shall be reallocated in a three year phase period with 33 million in 24-25 and 33 million again in 2025-26 and 34 million in its final and third year in 2026-27. With that, I shall conclude my presentation and be happy to answer any questions. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, Members. Ian Klein with the LAO. Our comments on the State Library begin in your agenda on pages 15 and 16. With respect to the California History Room, we recommend rejecting this proposal and revisiting when the state's budget condition improves. We do acknowledge that shortcomings exist in the special collections portfolio. However, other funding sources exist for special collections acquisitions, such as federal funding and foundation funding.

We also identify that the workload for the California history Room has recently fluctuated both in terms of requests received and hours spent on research. However, the current year's data is more in line with levels that were seen pre-pandemic. When the state's budget condition improves, the Legislature could consider potentially funding a senior librarian to work on outreach and collections.

As such, we recommend to continue to monitor librarian workload and when the fiscal conditions improved, onetime funding could be provided for collections purchases, but until that time, we recommend that the history room utilize non-general fund sources for these acquisitions. With respect to the Wiccan State Law Library, our comments are found on page 16. We recommend rejecting this proposal. Revenue from the California State Law Library Special Fund is intended to cover the law library's operating expenses.

Currently, $65 of certain civil filing fees are deposited into the law library special fund. This fee amount has been flat since 1999 and could be reauthorized in 2025. There is no clear justification for replacing special fund support with General Fund support. Furthermore, workload has increased for the law library but remains in line with job expectations.

Though staff hours spent on research have increased, the average share of time each librarian spends on research remains below 40%, which is the target level the state library specifies in its librarian job duty statement. We recommend considering increasing the share of the civil appellate filing fee that is deposited into the state law library fund. With respect to the audit program, our comments can be found on page 17 of your agenda.

State law requires agencies to have internal controls, and the state library currently utilizes its executive management team to complete this function. This team is comprised of the state librarian, the deputy state librarian, and the bureaus of its five main divisions. The executive team then delegates authority as it deems appropriate to supervisors and line staff to complete audit responsibilities. State law also identifies that agencies with ongoing budgets of $50 million or greater should consider establishing an ongoing audit program, and this proposal would accomplish that end.

However, a strong case has not been made. The state library is only $1 million over the $50 million threshold at which an agency is to consider establishing an ongoing audit program, and of this amount, less than 25 million is associated with ongoing General Fund support for local assistance programs.

New ongoing positions may not be necessary in the long run, as much of the recent large increase in General Fund support for local assistance programs is for onetime initiatives with funds that must be expended by the end of the upcoming fiscal year. The state library has also recently seen an increase in staff over the past five years, with 20 FTE added in the 21-22 Budget Act and 17 and a half added in the 22-23 Budget Act.

So perhaps redesignating existing personnel would accomplish the same end. With that, we recommend two options. The proposal could be outright rejected, and the library could continue relying on existing staff to complete its audit functions. A second option could be to convert the requested position into a term limited position that would focus on ensuring that the local library infrastructure grants are used in accordance with state intent. Thank you very much.

Okay, thank you. State Librarian Mr. Lucas.

Greg Lucas, State Library. I don't really have anything to add to the LAO or the Department of Finance comments, but to your point, Assemblymember Fong, during the scholarship discussion, we administer an ethnic media grant program, and so when we're done here, I'll reach out to the scholarship folks. We can put them in front of 70 or 80 media outlets for just kind of the cost of an email or a phone call. Okay.

Thank you for being a good team player, Mr. Lucas, valued state employee.

We're libraries, that's what we do.

True. We're all on the same team here. Questions? Maybe, Mr. Lucas, if you can kind of walk through, especially for some of the newer Committee Members, the last couple of years. We have given, with a one time infusion, some money in the state library to help our local libraries throughout California and variety of things we list them here. How has, maybe just kind of broad picture, how has that been going and successful and maybe give us a few narratives.

Yeah, I'd be happy to. It's been incredible. I mean, the State of California made the largest single investment it's ever made in local libraries in, what are we at now? 173 years, and that was 489 million primarily focused on library facilities, and it focused on the way the Legislature wrote, it focused on least resource communities and the most dire sort of deferred maintenance. Or, I mean, in many cases it was like fire and life safety sort of issues.

We made a conscious decision at the state library not to spend all of it the first year because of the structure of the program, which said we should focus on the least resourced communities. And I'm telling you what you know already, a lot of times those are the folks that can't get together an application in a one year process. So we gave out 313 million in funding last year to, let's see, 232 library projects in 184 cities and 30 something counties. There's 175 million left.

And the applications for that close on May 18. Our expectation is that we'll get requests for at least 600 million in projects and as much as a billion dollars. We send out letters in advance saying, 'Here's what's left. You intend to apply'. In part, that was the genesis for our idea that we ought to have an Auditor because we went from, I think it's in here somewhere, but like 240 million one year to almost 600 million in money passing through the library.

And so rather than risk something going wrong, we thought it'd be better to have somebody focused on that. The second thing we're doing, and hopefully we can get your help in this, is California is doing a statewide Dolly Parton Imagination library, which, and I was reminded of it during the scholarship discussion, it's every kid from zero to five is eligible. You sign up and you get a book every month that kind of stepladders up in comprehension until you turn five.

And it's, I mean there's a lot of moving parts, but it's like, you know, it's like one of those great challenges to have. And so that we're probably going live with that on June 6. And the Legislature and the Governor put in $60 million to cover the cost. For each kid it's about $3. Excuse me. Yeah, each kid is about $3 a month. And so there's 2.4 million California kids under the age of five.

And so our goal is to get as many of them signed up as possible. And it's been a pleasure working with the Dolly Parton foundation. And they're always upbeat, and it's hard for me to fall back on my former cynical, reporter-like personality working around them. So hopefully, we can get your help in doing some outreach in your districts to make sure as many people sign up as possible.

We're also having conversations with these ethnic media outlets to make sure that we can touch as many California kids as possible. Am I filibustering, Mr. Chair?

You're doing a fine job. Yeah. But I will note that tonight at our, mile from here or less, our city hall, the agenda has an item to apply for the said state grants for a couple of libraries, one in North Sac, one in South Sac. So, yeah, a lot of communities have a library plan on the books, a dream whether they're in all of our districts. And this is a place where they can go to help make those a reality.

So just a reminder, next time we have an opportunity for one time funds, like the last item, it was a vision for California, and we're still trying to make a go of it. And this is a great place to effectively invest one time dollars.

Well, thank you. I couldn't agree with you more.

Okay, questions for our state librarian. Okay. Everyone loves their library, but no questions for you right now, Mr. Lucas. Yes, Mr. Muratsuchi?

Thank you, Mr. Lucas. I appreciate many of the programs that the state librarian does. You mentioned the ethnic media outreach. We've also been working on the California Civil Liberties Public Education Grant. And so I very much appreciate your work in that respect. I was just curious, in terms of the Auditor position, why that would require a position rather than just contracting out an audit.

I don't know the answer to that. I don't think that's really an option for state agencies, but I don't know. Smart people at the Department of Finance, you're on.

Jennifer Louie with the Department of Finance. There has been no identified mismanagement. This is more of a preemptive accountability approach, given the annual acceleration of funds and the importance of providing local assistance, for example, the local infrastructure grants. And so this is just to ensure long term accountability for state funds for providing to local libraries.

And given the frequent funding to local libraries, the Administration thought it would be prudent to provide a permanent position for the State Auditor, not State Auditor, a librarian-based auditor at the state library.

I'm sorry, did I misunderstand your question? I thought you were asking why wouldn't we contract with some outside entity to come in?

That's right.

Okay. Yeah, I don't know. I know that most state agencies of a certain set, over 50 million, have somebody on staff that focuses on that, and I imagine the state must do that, but I'm not aware of that.

Mr. Muratsuchi. Jack Zwald, Department of Finance. Having worked with other departments in the past that have a similar contracted audit capacity, the state library is going to be better served because they're going to have someone in house that's looking at kind of their whole house, as opposed to when I've seen that done in the past. It's usually more of an issue specific one time, and then we're going to come back and do another audit of another thing.

So this is going to give them a lot more consistency and a lot more eyes on. So in that case, kind of the cost I've seen is that for not a lot more, they're going to get a lot more service.

Okay, thank you. Often we have audits about IT sorts of things from the Military Department, but there are other state agencies that come and audit our security and things of that sort.

Jennifer Louie with Finance. One last note. Every five years, the library is expected to provide an accountability report when they receive federal funding. And so with the expectation of having an in-house auditor, there is also potential for that collaboration, alignment, as the library receives frequent federal funding on a year to year basis with the IMLS grant. And so the expectation is when you have those alignment with state, federal, or state funding to locals, as well as federal funds that go to locals as well.

And so the ideal potential is that that state-side person would work with the federal expectations as well, because it's serving the same population, the local libraries.

Okay, thank you. Okay. Yes, Assemblymember Dahle.

Mr. Lucas, I want to thank you for coming out, and I know you travel a lot to libraries. Thank you. And out to my district.

Makes me feel good about the future.

Yes. Good. Maybe you could just run through, because you said you're going to have applications of upwards to, you think, 60 million? 600 million.

600, yes.

For this, with the remainder dollars, can you run through the guidelines of how they were chosen, the original 232 projects.

The criteria is based on the budget item that created the program, so it's least resources communities. The way we measured that was using something called the California Poverty measure, which is a little more precise than the thing that the Federal Government uses, whose name is escaping me at the moment. But that, plus the- Gosh, it's an acronym. I'll think of it here in a second. The per capita spending on libraries within a jurisdiction.

And then it's whether the project fits within the parameters that the Legislature established. So, in the first round of funding projects, like, I know there's places in your district, like in Truckee, for example, that would like a new library, but the funding in that first round didn't allow for things like constructing a new library. It was more like- In fact, most of the applications we got were for security systems, outdated HVAC systems, energy efficient things, roof replacement.

I think the only check that we wrote for a portion, I'm telling you what you know already, but, I mean, the state doesn't pay 100%. We're like a piece in the funding jigsaw puzzle. So I think the only check we paid towards, and I could be wrong, but the one I remember is a check for $7 million to Porterville, whose library burned to the ground a couple of years ago. Remember, it had killed two firefighters. So this year's funding is-

You all change the rules slightly to allow a broader array of projects, right? So to enhance digital connectivity, to enhance physical access, new construction, right. A brand new, build a new library, energy efficiency. And there's another one I can't think of, but it's a broader range of applications, and that's part of the reason why the universe has expanded, is because the way the law was written previously didn't allow those kind of projects. But there's a need. The need is estimated, like, $5 billion.

Right, that shows the need. And so, in the governor's proposal. So delaying just the 100 million over the next two cycles, correct? So the 33 million, or is it three?

The three year phase. So, in 24-25, it'll be 33, and then the following fiscal year will be 33 again. And then the third final year, it'll be the remaining 34.

That money will be underneath of the new application.

We have 175.

Right. But it will be for new construction. Okay.

It would be subject to the same eligibility rules governing the program now.

Jennifer Louie, with Finance, the statute doesn't change. So it's the shift in funding, but the expectations do not change.

Okay.

Okay. Thank you.

Yes, Mr. Muratsuchi.

Thank you, Mr. Lucas. I just wanted to also add that this California History room looks fascinating. I've never been there, but love to arrange a visit.

Anytime. It's your library. We just take care of it for you.

Okay. All right.

Is that that fellow that everyone knows here in the Capitol who's always tweeting amazing stuff about the Legislature? Mr. Vassar? Is that where he is?

He works at the state library, yes. He's not old enough to be in the California History room. Only I am.

Yes, he's quite amusing, and he's well known in the state Legislature among the Members. Maybe has higher name ID than you, Mr. Lucas. Among us.

Just letting you know. Want to ask you one of the other investments we made the last couple of years that we're really excited about, we gave a one time appropriation to focus on. Speaking of California history, some of the oral histories of political figures in California that may not be around forever, and that's so important to attempt to document that and them. Can you give us a little rundown of that and how that works?

I would hope so.

Yeah. The funding that came to us, we've basically transferred to the Secretary of State's office, which has an ongoing oral history program. And they've added a lot more oral histories, and they're doing a lot more work on that than they have in the past.

Does that go back? Will it be housed with you all in the state library?

Actually, most of them are put online now. And so, I mean, whether the archives does it or not, they're accessible online. But UC Berkeley does a fair number of them. Cal State Fullerton just did a series on women legislators that are really cool.

Yeah, and one of the reasons that we went with you and I appreciate, understood- I forgot that, that we had, that we worked around with them to do it, too, is that people wouldn't intuitively know to go find them there. They would go look for them at the California History Center, so that's kind of the purpose, too. After we're gone, we want to plant a seed of a tree that we'll never see, you know, the next generation.

We've been working with the archives to make sure that's less of an issue.

Okay, thank you. Thank you very much. We'll hold these issues open. Appreciate your participation today. Thank you. Issue number three.

Starting with Department of Finance.

Good morning. Gabriela Chavez with Department of Finance. College of the Law, San Francisco is affiliated with the University of California system, but is governed by its independent board of directors. The college primarily enrolls students seeking a juris doctor, but it also offers three law-related master's programs, including a joint Health Policy and Law Program with UC San Francisco. The College of the Law, San Francisco expects to enroll approximately 1,199 students in 2023-2024 out of which 1,139 will be JD students.

The total residence fees for the JD program in 2023-24 is 48,273. The Governor's Budget includes an increase of 2.2 million ongoing General Fund to support operating costs. This represents a three percent increase in base augmentation. The budget also includes an increase of three million General Fund over three years to continue supporting a campus safety program known as Urban Alchemy that employs formerly incarcerated individuals and/or have experienced homelessness. Thank you, and I'll be happy to answer any questions.

Thank you. LAO.

Thank you very much. Ian Klein with the LAO. Our comments on the College of the Law, San Francisco can be found on pages 23 and 24 of your agenda, and as Finance just mentioned, there are two main proposals that I'll be speaking about as well as an update on the institution's name change. The first budget item concerns the 2.2 general million General Fund base augmentation. The College of the Law has provided a budget plan that identifies the anticipated expenditures for the upcoming year.

This plan includes core cost increases such as new faculty hiring and salary increases as well as lease payments for the new student housing facility. This budget plan provides some transparency as to how the college anticipates it will allocate the proposed base increase and other core funding. We recommend treating the proposed base increase as an upper bound given the state's fiscal condition, and should the condition deteriorate, this increase could be potentially revisited at a later date.

With respect to the three million in one-time funding for the Urban Alchemy program, as Finance just mentioned, this is one-time funding to be spread equally over the next three years for the campus safety program. Campus safety is a key part of the school's ongoing core operations, and as such, we recommend that the school use core funds to pay for these program's costs.

Additionally, three million in one-time General Fund was already provided for the program in the 2021 Budget Act, of which one million is still available for the upcoming fiscal year. Options exist to fund the program if current core funds are not sufficient, which include either increasing student fees or tuition costs. With respect to the name change, 885,000 dollars was provided in the previous Budget Act to help offset the costs associated with the institution's name change.

The college has identified that additional costs have now been incurred which total roughly 1.4 million. Options exist to pay for these remaining costs, including the Legislature potentially providing additional one-time General Fund support. However, campus reserves are available and could be utilized to pay for these costs. Thank you very much.

Thank you. I would like to welcome the representatives from UC College of the Law.

Good morning, Committee Members. I'm David Faigman. I'm the Chancellor and Dean at UC Law of San Francisco, and I'm joined by my CFO, David Seward. UC Law of San Francisco finds itself in a time of great transition, one that provides extraordinary opportunities and some challenges. To begin, of course, we have a new name. The former Hastings College of the Law is now College of the Law, San Francisco with our working title being University of California College of the Law, San Francisco.

We are indebted to the California Legislature, including in particular Assembly Members James Ramos and Phil Ting for their considerable support through the legislative drafting of AB 1936 which amended the Education Code to align it with UC Law's Board of Directors' choice of a new name. We also wish to acknowledge your colleagues on the Senate side of the aisle, Senators Scott Wiener, Thomas Umberg, and Bob Hertzberg for their support.

AB 1936, in addition to putting our new name in the Education Code, also identified areas of restorative justice that the college might pursue in collaboration with the Tribes of Round Valley as well as other native Californians. We welcome these collaborative opportunities, and indeed, many of those outlined in AB 1936 were already part of our existing outreach to the Round Valley Indian Tribes. We have been very fortunate to have the state's generous support of our plans to build an academic village in the heart of San Francisco.

The law school is the cornerstone of the academic initiative. The campus received its biggest boost from the state's funding of a new classroom building at 333 Golden Gate Avenue in the 2016-17 budget. This allowed us to demolish our old six-story classroom building at 198 McAllister which is being replaced by a 14-story building which will be completed this fall. The new 198 McAllister building will have 656 units of housing, making it the largest housing development project in San Francisco.

We will share housing primarily with UCSF, but 198 McAllister will also offer below-market rates to UC Berkeley, UC Davis, and San Francisco State graduate students. The housing at 198 McAllister now allows us to undertake a critically needed seismic upgrade and renovate our 27-story residence at 100 McAllister. This project was generally supported--generously supported by the state and we have begun work on that project.

This work is essential for the seismic safety of the building and will provide approximately 270 additional units of academic housing when it is completed. One fact I am particularly proud of is that we are adding or upgrading nearly 1,000 units of housing in the Civic Center-Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco without displacing one resident from the neighborhood. We thank the state for supporting our efforts to both help address the housing shortage in San Francisco as well as the need for more student housing across the state.

The projects at 198 and 100 McAllister enable us to carry out the vision of the Academic Village to give multiple University of California and California State University campuses a footprint in the heart of San Francisco. UCSF, of course, is a primary partner in this vision of a great urban campus. The transitional moment we find ourselves in, however, presents certain challenges as well. We have been incredibly fortunate to have the California Legislature and Governor's Office as partners in all that we are doing.

In particular, the Governor's Budget allows us to ensure that our staff and faculty are compensated at fair and competitive salaries. In addition, the Governor's Budget provides support for our partnership with Urban Alchemy. As you know, the richly diverse and dynamic Tenderloin neighborhood faces particular challenges that are unmatched by most college campuses. Urban Alchemy provides an alternative to conventional policing whereby formerly incarcerated individuals are trained as street ambassadors to help ensure the safety and security of the greater UC Law, San Francisco Community.

We further support Governor Newsom's recent decision to direct the California Highway Patrol and National Guard to assist San Francisco authorities in combating the fentanyl crisis in the city. UC Law is all too familiar with the impact the fentanyl crisis is wreaking on the social fabric of our community and stand at the ready to support the Governor's efforts however we can.

Having these two agencies partnering with the San Francisco Police Department and the District Attorney's Office to stem trafficking of the deadly, synthetic opioid offers a measure of hope that rampant, open-air drug dealing can be curtailed. With these positives, we must note that the current budget does not provide any additional sums to support the school's name change that was effectuated by AB 1936.

We received, as was noted, 885,000 dollars in last year's budget which was only enough to change the digital footprint, email addresses, web page, URL, et cetera, for the college. No funding has been included to replace signage on and throughout the buildings or to communicate our new name to prospective employers, prospective students, or the greater legal community.

Serranus Hastings committed despicable acts in the 1850s, 20 years before the law school was founded, including providing initial funding for militias that committed the atrocities in the Eden and Round Valleys of Northern California. Hastings was the first Chief Justice of California. He was ultimately reimbursed by the State of California for his outlays to the militias that had massacred native Californians. Removing the name Hastings from the law school is the right thing to do.

However, it would be manifestly unfair to expect our current students' tuition dollars to be spent to remedy the atrocities committed 160 years ago. We thank the Legislature for supporting the passage of AB 1936. We hope to work with the Legislature to secure the approximately 1.9 million that it will cost to realize the vision that is encompassed in AB 1936 to remove the name Hastings from one of the great law schools in the state. Thank you for your time and attention, and I welcome any of your questions.

Thank you. Questions from the Committee? Mr. Alvarez.

I have some real basic questions because I'm not at all familiar with the school. The report that we have says that the tuition, the tuition rate is, I believe, 43,000--yeah--44,000 for this current year. How does that compare to, like, UCLA Law and the other UC schools?

We're about 12 to 15 percent below our fewer UC schools.

Okay. And what do you attribute that to?

Well, we are, I like to say, the Legislature's Law School. So I'm the only Dean that appears before the Assembly and Senate Budget Committees. Over the last decade, until last year, we didn't raise tuition one dollar, so we tried to maintain accessibility as best as we could given the economic circumstances. So we really run parallel to the University of California on tuition and we do the best we can with our budget to support our students.

If I may add, we have a different cost structure, and in some ways that's a challenge, and in other ways, it gives us higher levels of control. We strongly believe that it's our public mission to provide quality legal education at the lowest possible cost, and we take that responsibility seriously and that affects our budgeting, our spending plans, and the like. So it is in part a function of a different cost structure, but it's also a reflection of our leaner cost structure than one might find in the other segments.

And there's about 1,200 students? Is that what it is?

Basically.

Okay. Also--because I didn't go to law school--how large are the law schools in the other UC system in terms of numbers?

We are the largest. UCLA, I believe, is around 360 in a class. We aim for around 390 in a class. Davis is much smaller. I think it's about 160 in a class, and I believe Berkeley is in the 325 to 330 range.

And what are the demographics of the school?

This year, 54 percent students of color, 58 percent women.

How does that compare to the other UCs? Do you know?

I can provide that information. I don't know the exact numbers. I think we're probably closely in line with the other University of California schools.

What about--how much of the 54 percent--how is that broken down in diversity?

I'd have to supply those numbers. We have historically had difficulty attracting African American students to San Francisco for several reasons. One: we don't have as large a professional class of Black professionals because of the cost of going to school in San Francisco.

However, the Legislature several years ago funded a program called the Cal Scholars Program for California residents who graduate from a historically Black college or university to come back to UC Law, San Francisco. It pays their tuition and gives them a living stipend, and that was originally funded at four and a half million dollars and then was re-upped last year for another four and a half million dollars.

So that's anticipated to be an ongoing program?

That's right. That's an ongoing program. There are one-time allocations, but they provide ongoing support, and it's created really fantastic opportunities for us with the HBCUs. So last year, we created what's called a three plus three program with Spelman, one of the great HBCUs in Atlanta. The three plus three provides that they go to Spelman for three years, come to UC Law, San Francisco for three years, and get both degrees. They'll get the undergraduate baccalaureate, they get to JD, and they save one year of tuition.

And did you say that was for California students?

Yes, it's for California--they have to be California residents that very often leave the state to go to an HBCU, and the idea is to bring the talent back to California.

Do you have that similar setup with HSI schools?

No, we don't, but I'd be more than happy to talk to you about that idea. Thank you.

All right. Thank you for all that information.

Thank you.

Okay, further questions? Mr. Muratsuchi.

Thank you. First of all, welcome, Chancellor Faigman. I note that you have the joy and privilege of being the only UC Law School that has to appear in front of the Legislature.

I always consider the privilege. Thank you, sir.

I also wanted to focus on the--start off by asking about the tuition charges. I'm going to sound like an old man, but when I graduated from UCLA Law School, the tuition, I believe, was in the neighborhood of 7,000 dollars a year, and I believe the way that the UC professional schools in particular responded to the Great Recession was to dramatically increase the tuition costs, basically to stick it to professional school students much more than most of the rest of the higher education population. Is that generally correct?

We are just a professional school, so we don't have either the benefit or the disadvantage of having an undergraduate campus to compare ourselves to. We really operate on an overall budget cost. As a standalone public law school, we, of course, have to run our buildings. We have to run security. We don't get certain benefits that would come from being on a campus.

At the same time, being able to come to the Legislature and be supported by the Legislature is a great advantage. My understanding--because I talk to a lot of alumni who graduated back in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, and they also comment on the tuition.

90s. I'm not that old.

No, no, no, and they comment on that. Of course, that's a reason that they should give back and pay it forward to the school and encourage students, but we really do set it on just the cost of higher education today.

Okay, but I guess what I'm trying to get to is my concern is that I was able to enter into public service. I worked in the La County Public Defender's Office then the La County District Attorney's Office then the California Attorney General's Office before I served here, and my concern is that with a three-year cost of over 120,000 dollars just in tuition--not to mention housing--that how can we expect any of our law school graduates to go into public service nowadays?

Yes, sir, it's a very good point. It's one that keeps me up at night. Our average indebtedness upon graduation is 136,000 dollars, and so it really does drive them into the private sector. We have adopted several programs. We, first of all, do participate in Public Loan Forgiveness Programs. So if you're in public service for ten years, you get that benefit.

I've created and dedicated a good deal of money that's been given to the school to public interest fellowships over the summer to really show students the benefits of working in public service and public interest, and then I've also created what's called a Bridge Fellowship Program which provides a year of funding for students that get positions in public defender's offices, DA offices, or work in state agencies, city attorney's offices, and so forth, and that has been very popular.

And as the name suggests, it operates as a bridge, so they may very often start in, say, a city attorney's office where we are essentially paying the cost of their employment, but then if there's a position that opens, they demonstrated their talent and they get hired by that agency. So that's been very successful over the last five years or so, and we'll continue that.

But with the dramatic increase in the tuition after, say 2008, 2009, has the former Hastings College of Law, now UC College of the Law, seen a dramatic decrease in the number of graduates going into public sector jobs?

I'd be happy to supply that information. I don't have that at my fingertips. My sense is that it probably has dropped, as you would anticipate, but I'm more than happy to actually get those numbers. We, of course, track them very carefully, so I'll supply them to you in your office.

Okay. And finally, I've been off this Committee for a couple of years, but I remember maybe about five years ago, there was a trend toward not enough law firm jobs for the graduates. Has that trend continued or what is the state of the legal job market and why does that necessitate increasing the enrollment at UC College of the Law?

So we are holding pretty steady in our enrollment around 390 to 400, so we're not increasing it above that number. We did increase it about four or five years ago. The market has been very strong over the last several years. This year, there are signs of weakening, especially in the tech sector. So several firms, Gunderson, for example, has put off their starting class.

At the same time, other firms--Goodwin Proctor that we supply a number of graduates to--one of our graduates is a new managing partner there--they hired very heavily in the tech sector several years ago then had some layoffs, but they are now hiring again. So I think that the perception is that tech will rebound, especially with artificial intelligence, but the litigation sectors and some of the transactional sectors have been very strong.

So right now we're fairly optimistic. Last year's overall employment was around 94 percent. This year, I just talked to our Director of the Career Development Office. It's around 91 percent, and if you include those who are going to graduate programs, it's about 93 percent. So it's pretty good. We are aiming for 100 percent, but students, if we can't find them after graduation, they get counted as unemployed.

So the perception of more--the argument of too many law students for the job market would perhaps impact lower ranked schools?

I think it probably does. I'm not sure that that's an accurate perception. In my experience, when I talk to judges, especially in the family courts, there are too few lawyers. In rural areas, in the Central Valley and other areas internal to California, there are too few lawyers. So I think that the market is pretty robust.

Part of it is--I think it's your earlier question suggested--is having these graduates do areas of public service and public interest where there's a great need, especially in areas of family law and other areas that may not compensate as much as mid-level large law firms would.

Finally, I've heard people talking about how ChatGPT is going to put lawyers out of their jobs. What is your general sense in terms of the future?

I'm an optimist at heart. I think I have to be, maybe, for this job, but I think ChatGPT--I've been working with it. I actually gave it one of my old exam questions and it would have gotten about a B plus, which is pretty good.

Better than I did in law school.

I'm sure not, but I think that as it improves, it's going to be a challenging platform to deal with. I do think it still provides a platform on which we can build good lawyering and good lawyers. I remember when I went to law school--which was way back in the 1980s--we used to do what's called shepardizing, which I know you know by hand. You actually had books in front of you. Then Westlaw and LexisNexis came along and nobody uses books anymore, and that's a great tool.

And then eDiscovery changed the whole process of litigation. I think ChatGPT is going to change business, finance, and law in difficult to ascertain ways, but we're on top of it, we're paying attention to it, and I think it'll make law school more collaborative, actually. I think right now we spend a lot of time making sure they understand black-letter law and the common law subjects of contracts towards property and so forth.

I think that ChatGPT will provide more doctrinal information and then the real skill set, the soft skills, so called soft skills of interpersonal skills, negotiation skills, judgment skills, responsibility skills, those are the skills that when I hire a lawyer that I care most about, and that's what we need to be training the next generation of lawyers to do.

All right. Thank you.

Yes, good questions. I just have one simple question as far as the name change. We are concluded now, and I know it was a couple of year process and I think it all worked out. I will say that there are still some alum that lament and focus on history and the names and what that all means. What about the other California law schools that have the city behind them, like University of California Irvine School of Law, UCLA School of Law, UC Davis School of Law?

Yeah, they call it Berkeley law, Berkeley Law.

And so this is just now University of California School of Law. So are there issues? Are there concerns? Did you hear? Granted, you're on your own. That's why you're here today and not them. Did they kind of backdoor? Hey, that's not fair. You're taking the name brand to California. What about us?

It's a great question. Originally, of course, we talked to President Michael Drake. We talked to Sam Halgood, a good friend of mine who's the chancellor at UCSF. And the original perception was that there was concerns with UCSF because we were going to be University of California law, San Francisco. And the question was where to put law, whether it be between UC and SF or after UCSF. And of course, UCSF is a great institution, founded in 1868.

So when I talked to Jennifer Manukin, who was a good friend, who was formerly the dean at UCLA, and she's now the chancellor at the University of Wisconsin Madison, we've been a co author for many, many years, and I referred to us as UC law, her first response was, well, what about us? And I said, well, you're UCLA. You don't need anything more than that. You're such a great institution. So it's a really great point.

I think that my defense, and with our alumni as well, is if you go back to 1878, when we were founded by the State of California, we were the first law Department of the University of California system. And so if you went back to 1878 and Soranus Hastings was not part of the equation, we would have been the University of California, College of the law at San Francisco. And so we're actually going back to first principles.

And so our full name is University of California College of the Law, San Francisco. UC law, San Francisco. But I will admit that we do shorten it to UC law, which may give heartburn a little bit to my friends at Davis, Irvine, Berkeley and UCLA.

Yeah. And so essentially you have standing, right?

Yes, exactly.

Not a lawyer, but that was well played. Right. Speaking of the UC alum who was torn, the Hastings alum that was a little torn, this process was my dad, who I told you about, who as an African American man and very cognizant about history and rights and civil rights. And even he was thinking about what these name changes mean in this era. That being said, he went to Cal undergrad and then to Hastings. So he went to the University of California.

And that's what the football team is named as Cal. And so I think there is confusion there. I'm not saying we're not going to do this, but UC Berkeley, the flagship campus, is known as University of. But, but they go by their law school, as you said, Berkeley School of Law. And now this is now the University of California School of. Yeah, there'll be some growing pains, but I think there is a little bit of confusion.

Well, I do think that where every campus has been and Hastings was not, was a geographic designation. And so as you said, San Diego, Santa Barbara, Irvine, Davis and so forth. And so we actually are going back to the fold of being designated by our geographic location. And so being, it's just that I think for some people it ends up being a mouthful. And so that's why we get shortened to UC law. But you're right, there'll be a little bit of brand confusion.

But outside of California, there's brand confusion among all the University of California.

Yeah, we'll figure it out. So I guess the big question is, are we right sizing law schools in California? We added another law school in the UC system, Irvine. A decade or so ago, we had some flattening in law school enrollment, in large part what Mr. Martin Suti said, just the cost. And some of the larger firms, they weren't always hiring people to do, they were hiring more people with accounting and business stuff to do some of that work.

So where is the future of law school in California?

I mean, the way I see it is that it used to be that the MBA was a real platform degree. And I think increasingly the JD is becoming a platform degree. And what I mean by that is. So one of our graduates is George Roberts, the RFKR, who spent his entire career in business, Fritz Duda, his entire career in real estate.

And what we're seeing more and more in the tech sector, and we obviously want the tech sector to rebound, is that people that are JD educated are being hired to sit at the elbow of software engineers and coders to figure out what the regulatory structure is going to look like in the future. So what we saw early on in the tech sector was Uber and Lyft and Airbnb and others essentially running roughshod over the legal framework that exists at the time.

So Airbnb didn't worry about local zoning. Uber and Lyft didn't worry about taxicab medallions, and they didn't worry very much about antitrust. And what we're seeing now is kind of a legislative pushback, whether it's state or federal. And what the tech companies are realizing is that they need technically sophisticated lawyers to be in the room at the beginning when you are designing these disruptive technologies.

And so I think that as we think about AI, artificial intelligence, you have not only cybersecurity and privacy and antitrust, you have all these ethics issues, you have all these legal issues that are impacted by these advances in technology, and AI is just going to explode. You need lawyers to figure out what the regulatory framework and the ethical framework is going to be going forward.

And I think that is part of the future, and that's certainly the way we see our role at UCLA San Francisco, being in San Francisco, and being at the top of Silicon Valley, we have a unique opportunity to educate our students to be active in those areas.

Okay, thank you. Further questions? We will hold this issue open. Thank you. Issue number four, student basic needs. This is an informational item. We have two panels. One, students. We always want to hear from the student perspective, from community college, CSU, and UC. We have three students here to represent the voices of students throughout California. And then we'll hear from the segment. So this is an issue that we weren't talking about eight years ago.

I'm not sure when you chaired the Subcommitee, Mr. Martsucci, in 2013, 14 if it was on the agenda, student basic needs. But the issue has been there, and it's frankly grown in the past 10 years. It's just the needs of college students, more than just being able to pay for class. It's food and books and transportation, housing, and just some students needs, whether they're in mental health or just housing in General. And we never talked about students being homeless.

And now it's an issue that we are talking about as far as success of college students and what we need to focus on them. So in the last few years, we've increasingly made it a priority, and now we invest nearly $175,000,000 to support student basic needs and a variety of efforts.

And so we realize that all campuses are different and all segments are different, but it is now a recognized and valued priority of the state Legislature, and we put those values in the state budget every year with that appropriation. So want to hear from you all as far as the investments that we've made, what's happening, and where we go from here. So we'll start first with our community colleges. We have Zachariah Wooden, student Senate for California community colleges. Please proceed.

Thank you, chair and Committee Members. My name is Zachariah Wooden. I serve as the Vice President of legislative affairs with the student Senate for California community colleges. We do represent officially the 1.8 million community college students across the state. I just wanted to start off by thanking you all for reviewing this issue.

As was mentioned by the chair, the basic needs are so incredibly important, especially when you consider in community colleges, 95% of the total cost of attendance is not tuition, it's books and fees. It's basic needs, which is what we're discussing here today. And also, of course, the incredible investments that have been made over the past couple of years into basic needs for community colleges has been extremely helpful. But in my role, of course, I've talked with students, I've spoken with students.

We've had multiple events where students can come up and say, this is what's going on on my campus. And so in that respect, it's definitely been a conversation about the demand for services outweighs the services that are provided. There's so many community college students that are in our system and that will continue to enroll in our system that need these basic needs fulfilled. Essentially and thankfully, the agenda covers what we consider to be the basic definition of basic needs.

Housing and food security, transportation, financial stability, health and wellness, child independent care, and then technology and broadband access. That is the framework, that is the outline that the community colleges also community college students also see as basic needs to be provided as well for housing. You see that one in five community college students in California, or 20% of all California community college students, are facing housing insecurity.

And I'm brought to mind about an instance earlier this year where, at an event where we were celebrating college affordability, a colleague in the higher education space notified me of a San Diego City College student who was on the side of the road living in an encampment, a full time student. This was not a part time. Whether it was a part time student or not doesn't matter.

But at the end of the day, this was a full time student who was found on the side of the road, passed by, was recognized by a fellow student, and this issue was brought up to me and we reached out and submitted a case file to hopefully utilize the rapid rehousing, utilize these programs that are available on campus.

But it just brings to mind that those instances do occur on a regular basis for at least according to the one in five fact of housing and security, that at least 360,000 community college students at any given time. Of the 1.8 million community college students do have these experiences daily. And then to move on from housing with regards to food security, most community colleges do have food pantries.

They do, especially with the work that the Legislature has done in recent years, provided Calfresh options and data sharing to help eligible students utilize those Calfresh opportunities on campus.

But especially with the Calfresh eligibility exemption from the Federal Government closing soon, those options will narrow and those students will become less eligible for those Calfresh options, which ultimately limits the food security that these students will be able to enjoy on campus, which is ultimately a problem in the long run, because if these students are not having food security, their immediate concern will be taking care of food security before continuing their path in higher education, which, of course, we would like for both to happen.

Additionally, health and wellness the basic need centers have cooperated a lot with health. I know for my campus, we have health, we have dental care available for students. And this may not be the same case across all community college campuses, but the fact is that college campuses are recognizing that these health and dental needs are there.

But also as students, we recognize that the mental health crisis that students are facing could do with, and as was mentioned in the agenda, integration of student wellness centers into these basic needs centers on campus in order to allow for a greater accessibility.

Earlier this year, actually, the student Senate delegates at our General Assembly just passed a resolution to ask and cooperate with the faculty of our community college campuses to put the basic needs center's information on their syllabi, which hopefully we hope would help students identify and be aware of the resources that are available on these campuses, whether it has to do with housing, whether it has to do with food security, health and wellness, and just to name the other ones, broadband and technology access.

Our rural colleges, our urban colleges, our suburban colleges all suffer from broadband access issues. Not all colleges are able to regularly or consistently utilize broadband, especially when it comes to a system that is transformed, really into a system that is able to do hybrid or online only classes.

Additionally, with regards to childcare and dependent care, we have so many student parents and guardians in our system that have dependents, that have children in the community college system that really are served partially, but not to the fullest extent that they could be, in order to provide modular options for these student parents or student guardians in order to attend classes at a schedule that works for them, especially if they're also working to sustain their dependence and their children at the same time.

So those are just a few of the issues that I kind of wanted to highlight as community college students. As a community college system that we face, particularly, that are close and near and dear to our heart, we really do appreciate the time again spent to review this issue and look over the information and continue to look forward to the action that the Legislature takes.

Thank you. Just a reminder, what campus where you from?

I go to San Joaquin Delta College.

San Joaquin Delta. Okay. Thank you. Okay, next, let's hear from CSU.

Yeah.

Thank you, chair Mccarty and Members, it's a pleasure to be here today to talk about such an important issue. My name is Trent Murphy. I am a student at California State University, Stanislaus. I also serve as Vice President of legislative affairs for the Cal State Student Association, the official voice of the nearly half a million students in the CSU. First off, I just want to talk about CSSA's definition of basic needs.

We define it as the fundamental and logistical needs a person may need met before and during their educational pursuits. This includes, but is not limited to, food, transportation, health care and childcare. It is impossible to pay close attention in lectures if a student hasn't eaten that day or didn't have a safe place to sleep the night before. It is impossible to get your classes if you don't have a way to physically get to campus or someone to watch your dependence.

That's why we are so appreciative of the investments that the state has made in basic needs in the last few years. This includes the $25 million for basic need centers, the $6.5 million for rapid rehousing programs, and the $15 million for mental health resources.

Studies have shown that these programs directly increase retention and graduation rates, as well as their sense of belonging on their campus, which is why it is critical that we continue to Fund these programs and to ensure that our funding levels keep up with inflation and the rising cost of living. There is no automatic increase in these basic needs funding levels currently, and which is something that we urge this Committee to consider.

We've appreciated efforts in the last several years to increase and promote access to Calfresh for our students, but also would encourage the Legislature to consider access to health insurance information for CSU students. This is particularly important for some of our most remote campuses, like Humboldt, where care options are severely limited. Participation and collaboration should be increased in both of these areas.

We also agree with the Committee analysis that it's critical to truly understand the status of basic needs for students on our campuses and the impact that these services have. The last in depth basic needs assessment at the CSU was done in 20185 years ago and pre pandemic. Finally, we at CSSA truly believe that the Cal grant equity framework will help address many of these non tuition costs for our students in a meaningful way.

The fixed financial aid coalition, which is made up of the three student associations you see here today, really came from students'frustrations over not being able to meet our basic needs and wanting to find an equitable way to address the problem. We don't want to lose the momentum we've built and the commitments made in the last year's budget, and we really do appreciate your leadership on this issue.

Chair McCarty, CSSA looks forward to continued partnership and collaboration with the Legislature, the CSU, and other stakeholders to continue to address Students' basic needs and financial aid reform. Supporting basic needs directly supports student academic success. Thank you for this opportunity.

Okay, thank you. Next, from our UC student.

Hello. My name is Anaya Raiza. I'm a second year undergraduate student at UC Berkeley. I'm the UC Vice Chair for the UC Student Association, and I'm here to underscore the need for additional funding support from the state for UC basic needs centers. I myself am a Low income student. I, in my first semester, faced a lot of food insecurity and found myself having to skip meals often to make sure that I was able to plan for the day ahead.

And it was through my food pantry on my campus that I was able to alleviate these problems. When I was denied housing from on campus, it was the basic needs center, again, that was able to alleviate those problems. And it's not one story. It's not my story. It's the story of many of my peers. And too often, we're made to choose between whether we should pay tuition or feed ourselves, and the resources on our campuses are limited, and we have to make that choice.

And students who have their basic needs met, as you should all know, have better first year retention rates, graduation rates, and are obviously faced with less stressful situations. And we are so, so appreciative of the $18.5 million that the state has allowed at us. But we are also cognizant that basic needs support ties into enrollment, retention and graduation. And this has been a goal of the state and in addition, has been a goal of this Committee.

And these funds do help alleviate food insecurity, housing insecurity, and other issues. But with the huge influx of the tremendous influx of students utilizing these services usage, basic needs centers serve about 40% more students than they did when the funding was first allocated. So what this means is that per student, the funding used to cover about $38, and this has now been reduced to about $24 per student. In addition, as you sure know, housing is a crucial basic needs for students.

And moreover, UC campuses are usually located in an area that is central and highly urbanized and extremely expensive, forcing students to enter a housing market that is incredibly shaky. And so students, thousands of students, are forced to experience houselessness and housing insecurity, and being in an environment where you are not certain where you will sleep at night or even if you have a place to sleep, creates an incredibly stressful environment for students.

The UC currently only has beds available on campus for housing about 35% of their students. In addition, on campus housing is not affordable to students. The lack of housing also causes students to have to pursue off campus housing options that are incredibly unaffordable or operated by predatory landlords or put them in unsafe conditions.

In order to ensure that the UC does not fall further behind in starting student housing projects meant to create more beds and address some of these affordability issues, it's imperative that funding be provided for these projects from the Higher Education Student Housing grant program and the student housing Revolving Loan Fund. They are not delayed and as proposed in the Governor's Budget. So, lastly, we are asking that the Legislature address the basic needs centers.

The issues that the UC basic needs centers are experiences have been experiencing, as I've highlighted before, and provide a $5 million increase that we believe is a good start. So it would increase the funding from 18.5 million to 23.5 million. That would be in line with the cost of living adjustments that it takes to account for inflation and the growing number of students in these centers.

We applaud the Senate for including the rejection of the governor's proposed delay in student housing funding and additional funding for basic needs center in the budget plan and would love to see a similar adjustment in the Assembly budget plan. Thank you so much.

Okay. Thank you. Okay. Yeah, we have another panel with the segments, so why don't we bring the segments up, and I think we can get one more chair up here, and then we'll have them go, and then we can ask all of you questions. Yeah, maybe just scoot over a little bit. Sergeant, we have one more chair, if we can squeeze up here. Yeah. Or one of you could go up on the dais. Yeah, maybe from the UC. I apologize. Can you go up there real quick on the dais?

Perfect. Thank you. Okay, we'll start again with our community college representatives, then CSU, then UC.

Great. Good morning, Chair McCarty, Members of the Subcommittee. My name is Rebecca Ruan-O'Shaughnessy. I am the Vice Chancellor of Education Services and Support at the California Community Colleges' Chancellor's Office. We're grateful today to have this very meaningful conversation on this critical issue, and thank you for including student voices in this conversation. Without their leadership and advocacy, we will never fully understand the complexity and nuance in the obstacles that they have to overcome to persist and complete this portion of their higher education journey.

And also by centering student voice in the policy making, we collectively are in the best position to make progress not only on the issues of basic needs by providing support to the most pressing needs, but also understand and alleviating the financial, administrative, and psychological burdens that students have to shoulder in their journey to get the need that they deserve.

And we have always known that basic needs insecurity exists, and it disproportionately impacts members from the marginalized communities, which is the majority of the students we serve at the community colleges. We also know that the basic needs insecurity significantly undermines one's educational success and creates additional barriers to social and economic mobility. And on top of that, there is the COVID pandemic that exacerbated the inequity.

So we're very, very grateful to this Committee, to the other members of the state Legislature and the governor's office for committing to equity and student success and investing in ongoing basic needs support, including basic needs centers, mental health and affordable housing, and rapid rehousing interventions, many of which started in the 2021-2022 fiscal year.

These interventions not only provided the much needed resources, but the ongoing nature of these funding has really brought the sense of certainty to the system, allows colleges to be more strategic, engaging in local planning and conversation, and invest in building out the necessary infrastructure to deliver student services. We're happy to report that by July 2022, every California community colleges were providing basic needs services to our students, and within that, there are many services that we provide.

It's really a wide variety of services, including food security, transportation, technology, health and mental health services, and housing security and child care services. Every college also has engaged in strategic conversations locally and with students and submitted basic needs program plans detailing their program implementation strategies and priorities and intended outcomes.

At the system level, we're utilizing a social determinants of educational success framework to push for a paradigm shift in a way that we offer services to our students, really from the separate programs and pilots operating on their own, to a more student-centered support ecosystem approach focusing on shifting burdens from students to institutions.

What we are communicating to the field is the fundamental belief that every student needs to have a baseline level of financial stability, health and mental well being and support network to be able to prioritize higher education and to successfully engage in our institutions. And with that, we're pushing institutions to clarify problems, maximize resources, and shifting structures to advance student experience in these areas.

In particular, pushing institutions to seek solutions more upstream in the student support continuum, such as maximizing student receipt of financial aid and categorical support programs and services, removing structural barriers that impose undue burdens for students to access these services and then also connecting them to safety net programs outside of higher education. Proactive approaches such as Cal grant reform, including the framework approved by this Legislature, are still the most valuable and proactive way to support student outcomes.

Since these programs are still fairly nascent in our system, we have to develop a new data set to capture system level student level data, and this is our first year of reporting and with the timing of report submission deadline, the data only reflects the summer and fall terms of 2022.

But based on this partial year data, we're seeing that system wide average course success rate for students receiving basic need service was 66%, which closely track our system level data for all students, which is in the low 70%. So, given all the compounding challenges these students are facing, we're seeing this data as a promising sign highlighting the importance of addressing student basic needs and other social determinants of educational success in advancing equity and student success.

Lastly, I would like to thank this Legislature, as well as the Governor, for your commitment to California's 1.8 million community college students and for your leadership and continued support for student basic needs, security, financial stability, and college affordability through efforts like basic needs centers, affordable student housing, and Cal grant reform. So this concludes my presentation, and I will welcome any questions or comments at the conclusion of this panel.

Okay, thank you. Next, let's hear from our CSU representative.

Good morning, Chair and Members. Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today. My name is Dilcie Perez and I am the Deputy Vice Chancellor of Academic and Student Affairs for the CSU Chancellor's Office. I have spent time in both the CSU and community colleges and in a previous position had the wonderful opportunity to co-lead the opening of California's first housing for students who are experiencing homelessness for this is a topic that's dear to my heart.

Thanks to continued support from the state, we have grown significantly in our ability to provide basic needs services for our students. In the past few years, our primary focus has been on building the systems and infrastructure necessary to support these services. We have worked diligently to establish relationships across our universities, with our intersegmental partners in higher education and with community based organizations to further this work and create effective practices to address the student needs. Across our system, we have made great strides in these areas.

100% of our campuses have food pantries, all offer CalFresh application assistance and on-campus emergency housing. 96% of our campuses offer fresh produce or farmers markets and 96% also offer broadband and technology needs. 91% of them offer transportation needs and 87 offer programs and services for parent students. And as you may know, eight campuses have participated in the rapid rehousing pilot that began in 2019.

Today, I would like to share what all 23 of our campuses are doing related to two specific areas, food pantries and housing. This past year, our food pantry served over 20,000 unduplicated students. Each University has worked hard to establish partnerships with community based organizations to ensure that our students have access to fresh food and vegetables, diapers, personal hygiene products, as well as numerous other items to provide a myriad of resources to students. In the past year, we have also focused our efforts on housing affordability.

While all of our campuses offer emergency housing, we are seeking to strengthen our housing support to increase longer term housing solutions. In 2021, the CSU had 42,678 students who lived on campus and 38% of those students were low income receiving Pell or Cal grant.

With the $10 million that we received from the 22-23 basic needs budget allocation, the CSU, in collaboration with CSSA, asked each University to apply 50% of that allocation towards supporting students with placement in on-campus housing and off campus housing as appropriate. We also continue to support students through the rapid rehousing program and to date, we have housed 324 students through this program. As I mentioned earlier, we have identification numbers for approximately 20,000 students who utilized our food pantries this year.

While this number does not represent all of the students served, it is a large enough sample for us to review a few demographics and trends. We found that this data I will share closely aligns with our overall student population. So this data indicates that in the 21-22 year, 89% of the students that were served with Food Pantry Dollars were undergraduate students, 11% were graduate students, 65 were female and 35 were male.

Latino students were the largest ethnic group utilizing services at 50%, followed by white students at 22%. 56% were Pell grant recipients, and this is higher than our Pell grant average in the system, which is 43%. The average GPA was 3.0, and 90% of the undergraduate students and 86% of the graduate students persisted, which means they were either retained or graduated from one year to the next.

While these demographics provide a good profile of the students served by basic need efforts on the campuses, it is still too early to make any definitive conclusions about the direct or corollary effects these services and supports may have had on the student's engagement or persistence. Even knowing this data limitation, we are encouraged by the cohort size of 20,000 students and the economic, ethnic, and gender diversity of the cohort. In closing, moving forward, the CSU will prioritize three areas.

First, we will engage in a longitudinal research that follows students who utilize basic needs services throughout their academic journey so that we can measure matrix such as engagement, persistence, and graduation rates over time. This will also give us a better understanding of the true number of students supported and the impact of those services. Second, we will continue to strive to support students with affordable housing options. Through our rapid rehousing program, we have learned that partnerships with community based organizations are essential to our housing efforts.

Exploring the availability and affordability of on-campus housing is another important effort. As a result, the chancellor's office has developed a cross functional, system wide housing affordability workgroup to explore our housing demand and affordability and to conduct a student needs assessment. Third, we will conduct intentional and proactive outreach to be sure our services are reaching the students who most need them. Thank you again for the opportunity to address our basic needs efforts in the CSU, and I'm happy to answer any questions that you might have.

Thank you. Lastly, no, two more. Next, we'll hear from UC and then specifically from a CSU representative on CalFresh issues.

Good morning, Chair McCarty and Members of the Committee. Thank you for the opportunity to present today. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Genie Kim and I serve as the systemwide director for Student Mental Health and Well-being for the University of California Office of the President.

Members of the Assembly Budget Committee Two on Education Finance, on behalf of the University of California, I would like to extend my gratitude and appreciations for the support this Committee has shown us in our ongoing efforts to end college hunger and recognize basic needs as more than just an isolated issue.

In my career, I've had the opportunity of working directly with students experiencing basic needs challenges on some of our campuses, and in my current role, I am honored to work alongside our students, our staff, our faculty, our segment partners and advocates as we continue to learn and develop approaches to meeting students basic needs. Basic needs are defined within the University of California as an ecosystem that supports financial stability, equitable access to the minimum resources necessary to holistically support all students in their daily lives.

In 2019, the UC received 18.5 million in permanent funding from the state to establish basic needs housing and rapid rehousing services. With these funds, each campus has established basic needs centers offering in person and virtual services, resources and supports, including food assistance programs, housing assistance programs, and economic crisis response teams. Each campus has coordinated close partnerships with local community-based organizations and local counties to ensure equitable access to public assistance programs.

Each campus has tailored its basic needs services to the unique needs of their student body, including the provision of wraparound clinical and nonclinical case management support to help students navigate academic needs, well-being services, supports and resources. Last year alone, the UC Basic Needs Center served over 72,000 unique students, which was a 36% increase from the previous year. In addition, the UC served over 8000 students through housing services, which includes, but is not limited to, emergency grants and short and long term housing.

While we are seeing an increase in student utilization of basic needs services, I want to acknowledge that we are still just beginning these efforts. It has only been three years since the UC received the state funding and during that time we experienced a pandemic and are continuing to learn and grow from our efforts.

In addition to food security and housing investments, in 2019, the Legislature began to support UC student mental health services and in an initial appropriation of 5.3 million and funding was increased to 20.3 million in 2021. With these mental health funds, campuses have hired new behavioral health clinicians and critical staff and developed new innovative mobile crisis response programs on each campus. The campus continues to grow and expand prevention, early intervention and treatment and recovery services to holistically support students' mental wellness needs.

The UC continues to provide essential basic needs services and is moving towards a more sustainable growth opportunities within the expanding definition of basic needs. Specifically, the UC is committed to continually improving policies, procedures and practices to best support the basic needs of students in accordance with their lived experiences. These efforts better enable us to provide services for our most vulnerable student populations, including students from underrepresented student groups, partial impacted students, former foster youth, students with dependents, and first generation students.

The UC is also committed to elevating research and scholarship in the field of basic needs, which will contribute to workforce development needs and inform promising practices for practitioners. Faculty and staff across the UC system have already conducted research on the various drivers and mechanisms that contribute to student basic needs challenges. These promising practices have been shared nationally at the White House Conference on Food, Nutrition and Hunger and within the state through various professional conferences and system wide meetings.

As an institution of higher education, the UC plays a key role in advancing the economic well being and mobility of college graduates and plays a significant role in reducing economic inequities. While the nation is experiencing a dramatic increase in the cost of living. This impacts students' ability to meet their basic needs related to food, housing, transportation, energy, and childcare. When costs increase, particularly in high expense areas like housing, without proportional levels of support, a larger proportion of students will likely experience basic needs challenges.

The state and the University are trying to meet these growing needs through additional financial aid, such as the expanded middle class scholarship program and a larger proportion of tuition set aside for financial aid. This may also impact a student's ability to academically perform to their potential and may cause students to stop out and not complete their degrees. Basic needs programs are integral to assess the impact of and develop better metrics for students' rising costs of living as they balance against their educational costs.

The UC believes that better data collection will provide a better understanding of the interventions, drivers, and mechanisms that prevent and alleviate basic needs challenges. As a public institution of higher education, it's UC's commitment to support all students in gaining the resources they need to succeed in their academic goals. I thank the Committee for your time and I'm available for questions.

Okay, thank you. One final speaker. We have a representative from CSU Chico, and really wanted to focus on what we can do related to CalFresh and hunger.

Absolutely. Thank you Chair and Members of the Committee. I appreciate the opportunity to present today on behalf of the Center for Healthy Communities, or CHC as we call it. Grateful for your support of college basic needs as well. I'm a project director for the center and me and another co-director oversee our CalFresh outreach work across the state.

So first, I'm going to give you a little background of who CHC is, what we have accomplished, our current ongoing work, key challenges, and some future opportunities as well. So CHC is one of the largest centers in the CSU system. We have a variety of grants and contracts focused on health and basic needs, but our largest population served is college students.

We have 14 years of experience as a California Department of Social Services prime contractor and are considered the leader and content expert of CalFresh outreach in the state and the nation. Thanks to AB 85 funds received in 2021, we expanded our support beyond our current contract with CDSS to all 149 public college campuses. This means that we provided technical assistance to any college campus that needed it. Throughout this time, there's been a number of accomplishments.

Specifically, between 2019 and 2022, we've seen over a 264% increase in the number of applications submitted across college campuses on our current contract. We do believe this number can be applicable to other campuses as well. Again, due to AB 85 funds, we were allowed to build the CalFresh Outreach Resource Hub website. This website has easily accessible resources to improve CalFresh outreach on college campuses.

Additionally, we developed the support desk, which is essentially an online platform where any college campus staff can get their questions answered by a live person about CalFresh outreach activities. We also helped with AB 396 implementation, which required identification and submission of local campus programs that increase employability to CDSS. This effort, along with the segments here today, added 7,797 campus programs, a 3000% increase to the state list in less than one year. This work continues as we continue to identify AB 396 campus programs every month.

In addition, we've developed a guidance letter for college, campus and county partnerships to aid in the implementation of AB 1326. That will be released later this month. We continue to organize and facilitate collaboration between the CSU, UC and community colleges, and at no other point have the three segments been as unified as they are in the effort to address food insecurity. Now, despite this effort, there are some challenges.

As mentioned already today, the federal SNAP college student eligibility rule is preventing hardworking students from being able to receive federal food benefits. This adds an exorbitant amount of administrative burden to costs to campuses, counties and states. Secondly, we have a significant burden for the lack of available CalFresh college student data, in particular approval and denial data by campus. Now, as mentioned today, there are some campuses that do have access to this data with agreements with their individual counties.

But we need all counties and all campuses to have access to this data to be able to elevate our efforts further. There are also opportunities. We know CalFresh has a significant economic impact on our state and our agriculture sector. With your continued support, we will not only increase this economic impact, but we will help food insecure college students obtain the food needed for academic success and graduation.

Although we have made great progress and lead the nation in this effort, we cannot afford to leave any student behind. As we obtain access to wider range of approval and denial data, we will be able to strengthen and build upon our current momentum, increasing our already efficient and effective practices further. Thank you for your time today, and I look forward to answering any questions you have.

Okay. Thank you. And again, we apologize for the pain of the progress behind us, but from what I hear, we're almost done, the tear down part. I have a series of questions, but I'll open up to Committee Members first. Assemblymember Cervantes.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. First, I want to thank the students, the students for your advocacy in this process. We, as legislators, are always encouraging student involvement, right. We need to make sure that we have students at the center of these conversations, because these are your experiences that you are living today. And I just want to note that you all are just a shining light of what's to come. And I appreciate you being here and traveling to Sacramento.

I know this is a commitment from my colleagues that are up here today, our commitment to support all students in their educational journey. And that includes looking at ways that we can improve student basic needs, which is a priority for the Assembly. I would like to get a better understanding of how student outcomes are being measured as it related to basic need services. If anyone could touch on that today.

I can touch on it for CalFresh from the CalFresh perspective. So, as I mentioned, one of the main challenges is access to approval and denial data for Calfresh. And so that makes it incredibly difficult for us to explore the impact of our efforts, right? And we want to make sure that we are being held accountable ourselves, that campus partners are being held accountable, that our county partners are being held accountable. And we do that through transparent data.

And so that is one of the challenges with CalFresh, is that it's hard to get access to that data. There are efforts being made currently to do that, but it has not come to fruition as of yet.

Understood.

I think, on behalf of the CSU, I would say that when we first received the money, the primary focus was to get direct service and support into the hands of students as quickly as possible. And I think that now, as we're coming out of the pandemic, as my colleagues alluded to, we're all stepping back from systemwide level and really thinking about how to access that data. There are challenges, right? Oftentimes, students do not want to be stigmatized as a student who needs basic needs.

As I shared, we have some data that we were able to receive. But what's difficult is a lot of our students participate in many special population services and support, could be EOP, could be foster youth, right? And so part of what we have to do is begin to decipher which service is supporting them to achieving that goal. Is it specifically basic needs? Is it this intervention, or is it this one?

And so I think that, as you heard, I think all of us said that really the commitment is to longitudinal studies that really unpack not only academic persistence, but also engagement of students and that sense of belonging. So I think that this is a goal with, I think we have CHEBNA and the work that we're doing across our systems to partner together, to really begin to collect more data and to analyze it.

I'm happy to add on behalf of the University of California. I mean, I think one of the areas that we've done an incredible job is assessing the need, right? So we're able to use our undergraduate student experience survey or graduate student experience survey to ask questions about what the rate of food and housing insecurity is across our campuses.

But I think exactly to the point that my colleague is making, we're now beginning to peel back the onion and look at what are the drivers and mechanisms that are actually preventing basic needs challenges that our students are experiencing, but then also those interventions that we've set up on the campuses, the food pantries, the food distribution sites, CalFresh, our emergency grants programs, right? And starting to evaluate the effectiveness of the interventions across all the campuses.

I'd like to also highlight that we're working really closely with faculty researchers to really build out the depth and breadth of understanding higher ed and student basic needs challenges, because it's kind of a new emerging field that we're in here, right. I talked a little bit about needing to provide promising practices to our practitioners, but we're creating that new professional group of individuals who are providing basic needs services across the campuses for our students as well. So I think it goes hand in hand.

We need the data, we need the research, and then we also need the practitioners on the ground helping to inform what's working for our students.

And if I could just follow up very quickly, where does mental health play a role in all of this conversation? Because I know that this is a conversation that I have with many students back home and just with COVID everything has been exasperated. And we know that the numbers aren't great when it just comes to the health and well being of our students, given many factors, and so just want to have a better understanding of if you can touch on that.

Thank you.

But also, what are the challenges that campuses face when providing mental health services.

So I can just add to the question above and then tag on the mental health responses to your question. So from a community college perspective, we have implemented this new data set SG 23, essentially are tracking student level data to the basic need services we're providing. Obviously, this is the first year of data launch and typically takes about two years to mature. We are having the two terms data only, and the core success rate is really the only data we have right now.

And as I mentioned previously, our students receiving basic needs services are about 66%, which closely track our system level average for all students, about 70. We see the range between 70% to 72% range. So this is really a promising sign for us to really see that basic needs services are really helping and supporting students. I think another piece, I think, as my colleagues from other segments have mentioned, this is emerging fields for us. A lot of continuous improvement needs to be happening.

So when we are allocating the basic needs funds, we ask colleges to submit a basic needs program plan, really being intentional about how they want to provide services, and in a way establish hypotheses in terms of the strategic priorities they want to allocate the dollars towards. And then hopefully then we can collect data later on to compare that to really facilitate that learning based on the local realities.

And then on the third piece around mental health, again, through the social determinants of educational success framework, we're really looking at this as a continuum, right? So these $30 million into an entire system of 1.8 million students is not going to be enough to address the mental health needs. Our students have told us over and over again, that's the number one challenge that they face. So what we are really thinking about is a system approach. So what happens in the classroom?

How do we embed DEI curriculum in our classroom to avoid unnecessary stressors for our students, right? To avoid re-traumatization in the classroom. And then how do we support the student senate in there to support local level review of student grievance policies? So in case of classroom failure, students are having another method to again address their concerns so that enhances the sense of unconditional belonging on campus. And then we move into the mental health intervention, right, through prevention intervention, and also for complex health care challenges.

Referral to the county mental health systems, we do see there when we are referring our students to services, obviously, I think the overall landscape in terms of the gaps in mental health services and culturally responsive mental health interventions, we've seen a gap and also the misalignment in terms of eligibility and priorities that sometimes the counties are placed in kind of their proactive population selection. Sometimes we see the gap.

So those are the places and areas where colleges have to pick up the slack and/or partnering with additional CBOs and other partners. So we're actively looking at various solutions there to address that gap.

I guess I would add briefly that as we all know, that we just went through Covid, which is a medical and mental health pandemic, quite honestly, and I think that we have just seen the surface of the mental health challenges that not only students, but society will face in this area. And I think specifically in the CSU, what we are committed to doing is creating access to mental health opportunities for students.

What we all know is mental health crises do not occur between the hours of 8 and 5. It's critically important that we offer as much after hour access as possible for our students. And I think, quite frankly, and this may be across the other segments, hiring qualified individuals has been challenging to find and specifically qualified professionals who can relate to our students, whether by their identities or their diverse needs. And so we continue to face those challenges.

And as, you know, demand for mental health services, sometimes the capacity is reached on campuses, and so continuing to look for innovative ways to partner with community-based organization and others to make sure that our students have what they need when they need them.

I would just add really briefly, I think there's two sides to the mental health and well being kind of perspective to take into consideration, right. There's the more upstream resilience building that our colleges and universities contribute to supporting our students, and then there's the very real mental health crisis that a student's faced with, right.

And so when we look at student basic needs and you're asking about the intersections between basic needs and mental health, we really want to think about how a lot of the basic needs services serve as protective factors for our students, which may prevent them from experiencing further mental health crisis down the road, right?

And so as a preventative strategy, financial aid, basic needs, other supportive services, really do provide that social safety net for our students, and then our campuses do offer and provide mental health services for those students who are in crisis and need.

Thank you. Assemblymember Fong.

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair, and thank you so much to the students for the presentation and to all the segment representatives for the presentation. We know that student basic needs are so critical to students' education, and their educational journey and really appreciate the testimony from our students and the segment representatives. As former trustee for the community colleges in Los Angeles, we know that basic needs, we had a study and assessment that said one out of five students experience student housing and security.

And we know that students of color, low income students and document students, LBGTQ students, parenting students and justice involved students are underserved and underrepresented and we need to continue to expand resources for our students. And on page 30 with the John Burn advocates for youth, including one recommendation to have a specific linkage with our financial aid centers on our campuses. So my question leads to how are some of the basic needs centers integrated with financial aid and other student support services?

I know some of you touched upon it, but really would love to see how we can expand and have tighter linkages with those services.

I can get us started. This is exactly what we're pushing under the social determinants of educational success, where we're hoping and pushing colleges to really integrate efforts to create that unconditional belonging for our students. And we're seeing a tremendous stride towards integrating services. 98% of the campuses express plan and immediate action to integrate with other student support services, although there are some limitations, including really the bill language from this original funding that actually prohibits our ability to colocate financial aid and basic needs.

So really when we're listening from the students, when you're looking at a financial stability pie, right, a student has, financial aid is a big piece of that. Basic needs serve some of it, but it needs to come together as a complete picture towards financial stability. So what we are doing right now on campus is to have, for example, community practice to bring the staff from financial aid and basic needs together to think about ways that they can really enhance financial stability.

But I also welcome this Committee to really consider the opportunity to think about a better integration from a policy perspective between financial aid and basic needs.

On top of that, we're also very working closely with JBAY in addition to creating holistic support for foster youth, but also thinking about best practices from a removing friction point perspective, specifically focusing on how do we support financial aid staff to exercise professional judgment in a way that's not arduous for our students, and then also thinking about various touch points that we should create across the system to highlight the importance of financial stability for all of our students.

There are a lot of different levers we're pushing on to support colleges in integrating these services, but a critical piece also is thinking about the burdens that students have to shoulder to access these points. So how do we ensure a no wrong door approach and removing these? If students are already qualified to receive all these services, do we need to have them go through various application steps and verification steps to receive these services?

I would say for the University of California, our financial aid, as well as our basic needs centers are very much integrated in terms of partnering on the campus to support students. A prime example I had mentioned very briefly in my remarks was our economic crisis response teams.

Those economic crisis response teams are made up of multiple practitioners across the campus, including our financial aid colleagues, basic needs case managers, housing folks, dean of students office folks who come together to look at a case that a student presents when they're experiencing a basic needs crisis and are able to work closely in a little bit of a tiger team to respond to provide emergency grants to those students, right?

And we want to ensure that we're not accidentally burdening our students by giving them aid that may impact their financial aid as well. So being in close concert with our financial aid colleagues is actually really key and a really good, promising practice for this area.

And briefly, like my colleagues, I think that financial aid is part of the holistic team and they meet to identify students and think about the individual impact that grants will have on a student's package. I will tell you that as we look to the next phase, and when I talked about doing intentional proactive outreach to students, financial aid office holds a lot of data and information that will help us get to students early, students that obviously could benefit, particularly from a CalFresh perspective.

Why wait for them to come to us and ask for help? We can go to them and share that resource early. I would also say that we are focused on creating strong financial literacy programs across the state. It's important that we help students understand that it's expensive to be poor, right?. And the cost that that burden carries. And so we have found that students have appreciated that knowledge and want to expand that systemwide.

But lastly, what I would share is that as we know, the cost of attendance doesn't necessarily reflect the true cost in some of our areas for housing. And so as we think about partnering with financial aid, it's important that we begin to address that so that when a student gets their financial aid package, it reflects what is truly needed to support them in housing.

Thank you. Thank you for that information. In terms of the transit passes as well, I know Los Angeles is a partnership with Metro in the LA County area, and I know Assemblymember Chris Holden has Assembly Bill 610 that will look at transit passes across the system in California. I think that's something that we need to continue to do and advocate for in addition to housing and to mental health and to food, is looking at continuing to push envelope on transportation as well.

So I definitely want to appreciate everyone's efforts around those efforts as well. And lastly, around student housing, we've heard a lot of conversations about potential delays in student housing funds and then also looking at the student housing projects that are ready in all three segments of higher education. We know that we just had a presentation earlier from UC Law Center as well, and some of the student housing projects they're doing.

But we know that there's a lot more work to be done around student housing in all three segments. So really want to continue to amplify those efforts as well. We have a facilities bond on the ballot potentially next year as well that we're looking at. So anything we can do around student housing going forward is something that's critical. So I just want to appreciate everyone's efforts around that. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman.

Yeah, thank you. I think this addressed the majority of the questions. I just have two kind of going forward, actually, three questions going forward. One, I assume most colleges now have a basic need center on campus. All the nine UCs have them. Every community college have one, we think? Okay.

Sorry, Mr. Chair. So because of our data cycle, so the most recent data cycle, it was July 2022, so two thirds of the community colleges had basic need centers, and so many of them have come online between then and now. And all of them plan to have a center by June this year. So we will have an update.

They have or they will within a matter of weeks, pursuant to last year's money.

Correct.

And then, number two, what is my third one, before I forget, it's for you. Number two, a lot of the efforts here are- It's very broad. Basic needs, housing, mental health, food, a variety of issues. How much of it, kind of going forward- Today's May the 2nd, so we can only go forward. So going forward, is it kind of the conduit, like the people, like a person to help somebody. What do you need? Oh, you're looking for food. Okay, over here. Oh, we're looking for housing.

Rapid rehousing over here. Or is it direct services? Because some of the camp, we do have some of the rapid rehousing, a little bit of the food pantry. So going forward, what is it that we need to be focusing on knowing we don't have unlimited resources?

I'm happy to start. I love this question, quite honestly, because what I don't know if you know, but our interim chancellor, Chancellor Koester, just convened a black student success workgroup across the system to identify how we will become a nationwide leader in black student success.

And I share that story because through that process, what we learned about our students is that what they need now is, a one size fits all approach will not work, that what we have to do is create systems and structures that has the ability to look at the student, to talk to the student, to meet their individual need, and to really do, as we've talked about, high level, high touch case management.

Many of the students who are suffering from basic needs often need a myriad of services, not just one. And so the goal for us in the CSU is to really identify what a specific student needs, triage that need, but then also get them connected to a community-based organization that can help meet that long term need. Our goal and our efforts are really to. We are experts in helping students graduate and achieve their educational goals. We want to remain with a keen focus on that.

But what we understand is that they face many barriers that we can help make that connection to the community to get those long term needs met. We do not want students to have to choose between living and learning. We want them to do both. And so our efforts are really to assess those needs and provide high touch service and support through case management models.

Yeah. So I guess the question is, we have these centers, I'm not sure, are they housed Monday through Friday from 10 to 2, or are they there- Do we need to make sure we have more time and hours and staffing? And maybe it's not just one person at the campus. There's 30,000 people. Maybe you need several people. So we need to have more personnel to work, or do you focus on if we ever do have the opportunity to invest more services?

Maybe you don't know the answer to that, but that's the question that we need to figure going forward. Frankly, this isn't the year anyway, that we're going to be investing in more basic need services, not because lack of the amazing testimony, and just the reality check of this year's state budget, but that's, I think, the question that we need to answer going forward. And I'm trying to wrap up because we do have our caucus in a few minutes, and then maybe could you give us do we have any hope or optimism?

I know several years ago, we tried to enroll people in I guess it was free lunch or something like that, and we said, 'oh, if you're Medi-Cal eligible, it's automatic'. And so we just simplified it. And so the thing for CalFresh is like, why don't you just have it universal, if you're a Pell student?

Get not free lunch, you get the food programs, CalFresh. So maybe there's people above Pell. Maybe it's Cal Grant, but that's not a federal thing. Cal Grant. It's Pell. So do we have any hope or optimism that the Federal Government would have a simplified rule for college students for Pell? And I don't know, this week it looks like some people in Congress want to get rid of some CalFresh benefits, but there's always love and support for college students, kind of bipartisan. Any hope on the horizon that we'll have a fix to this?

You know, I try to be an optimist. Right now I'm not sure there is going to be a quick fix. That being said, with the emergency exemptions that were in place that are ending or have ended, there seems to be understanding that that did help a lot of students. And so there is hope from at least some of the advocate groups that I'm part of that maybe seeing that impact that it had, and now that being taken away is going to have a detrimental impact on college students and their ability to be eligible.

So that's just a temporary thing for the pandemic. But going forward, hopefully there's at least at the minimum, like nationally, Pell. So what's the pushback to that on the national level, like when they're in Congress, when that comes up, what is the issue?

So for Pell, that's based on income. And so this is exactly where you're touching on. So for the college student eligibility rule, there are requirements. There are work requirements or 20 hours a week work requirement or you have to meet an exemption.

No, I'm getting that. So why won't I know people have asked Congress for, hey, if you're Pell automatic eligibility, wipe out the work requirements because your work requirements probably wouldn't work. Yeah. So that's been tried and we keep getting stonewalled. So do you have any information? What is it? Because they're afraid of being on the hook at the federal level because there is an allocation per state every year for CalFresh, so why can't we just stay within that allocation?

So as far as on the federal level, I think that the concern is the cost related to additional benefits. Now, that being said, I feel that there hasn't been an assessment on the cost for implementing the rule to states and to campuses and counties. So I would be very curious to see an analysis of the cost to implement that college student eligibility rule versus the increase in benefits for those college students that may now be eligible and then also the economic impact of that.

We already know there's a significant economic impact for CalFresh and for SNAP in general. So there would be a benefit and there would be a return on investment for those dollars going to college students, on top of the fact that we would have more college students having their food security needs met and more college students graduating, entering the workforce, and then again contributing to their community and to the economy. And that is what the FNS USDA is looking for. They want self-sufficiency. So I would hope that there would be support for a change like that. But there has been pushback, as you mentioned.

Okay, thank you. This again was helpful for us. An informational item. We appreciate your participation, everybody, especially our next generation of leaders, our students. Thank you. With that, do we have any public comment in the audience for today's hearing? Please line up in the middle. And you have one minute or less, please. One minute or less. Please proceed.

Awesome. Hello, my name is Bianca Torres Murray and I'm a current UC Berkeley student. I am a recently elected UC Berkeley Latino community-endorsed and queer community-endorsed ASUC senator with our student government at Berkeley. Today, I'm speaking on the importance of the Cal Grant equity framework, and I urge you to make the decision this year to fund the Cal Grant equity to ensure that over 150 prospective students have access to the Cal Grant and thus access to higher education.

It's important to highlight the impact of race in this conversation because this is also a conversation about racial justice as well. Black and Latino students are disproportionately those impacted by the current limitations of the Cal grant as it currently is. They represent 7.7% and 62.8%, respectively, of the additional students added to this program. Higher education opens so many doors for students, especially students who are marginalized. Accessing higher education should be a right and a top priority for the Legislature. I urge you to think about the thousands of very competent youth across California who dream of accessing a higher education at our great in-state colleges such as the UCs and CSUs. So thank you so much and I hope you decide to fund this more.

Thank you. Great example. It's exactly one minute. One minute or less, please. Thank you.

Thank you. Hi everyone, my name is Ryan Enriquez. I'm a fifth-year transfer student at UC Davis, double majoring in political science and communication. I'm excited to continue my UC education at the Goldman School of Public Policy this fall at UC Berkeley. Currently, I serve as disability rights and committee and advocacy Committee chairperson for the Associated Students of UC Davis. And prior to that, I served as the first transfer student and first physically disabled student body President in our 116 year history.

Right now, I believe we need to shift our perspective and thinking when it comes to serving this disabled student community in the UC and all of California and higher education. Right now, I believe we have a clinical approach with how we serve that population, and I believe that we need to shift our perspective into more of a holistic approach. I can't tell you how many times I've been in an admin meeting where they say holistic, holistic, holistic.

But what that looks like is really creating disability cultural centers on all nine of our campuses. And Berkeley has already done this. It's one of the reasons, my main reason, why I chose to go there for grad school. But we really need to commit to changing this narrative, because the only services that students really get at this point, if they have a disability, are accommodations for classes, accommodations for housing.

Right now, we've been able to make this change at UC Davis, providing the first ever disability Davis commencement ceremony, which is a private disability commencement, for that community. Events like these celebrate the culture of disability are ones that really change and bring that community together for how we serve it. So I just want to echo the sentiments that are going to be made by my peers today to increase funding for disabled student programs across the UC. Thank you.

Thank you. So that was almost two minutes. So the first one was 1 minute. So let's try to get back to 1 minute or less, or else we're going to have to cut off public comment and leave early.

Okay.

So thank you. 1 minute or less. Thank you.

Good afternoon. My name is Vicki Mendez, and I'm an undergrad student with a disability at UC Riverside. I'm here today to ask for funding for the disability services because on campus and in the UC system, we are treated less than human. I feel, and that's been my experience on my campus at UCR from the last two quarters. So we're only like halfway through this quarter.

So last four months, one month between that whole thing time I've been basically trapped in my apartment because the elevator has been down and nobody's reached out to us to get us into subunits that we can be able to get to classes and be able to achieve our goals at the UC system. And so that affects us to the point where it's hard to do our classes, hard to be good students. And I'm succeeding despite the UC system at this point, I am the President of DAPi, which is. I'm sorry. Well, thank you. And just. Thank you.

Thank you. Next, please. 60 seconds or less, please. One minute or less. Thank you.

Good morning. My name is Gwen Chodur. I'm a graduate student at UC Davis, and I am here to thank you for your continued support of basic needs across the UC system. The UCs have continued to enroll students in line with the goals of the Legislature and with the governor in making more spaces available to California residents.

But in that time when that growth of student population, and with the growth and costs and inflation and in the growth of services provided on our campus, our initial funding hasn't increased. We are being forced to do less for more students. And so I understand that this is a fiscally difficult time, but I think that it should be a priority to continue to support our students by increasing our basic needs allocation within the state budget in line with the cost of living. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi there, my name is Cyn Gomez. I'm a student from UC Berkeley as well as one of the legislative directors from UCSA, and I'm speaking here today in the hopes of additional funding of 5 million available for UC basic needs centers. I'm a disabled, low-income, queer, and trans first-generation student, and for me, these services are life-saving. So there have been times where I show up to the basic needs pantry and there is literally no food to serve students.

And I ask for full attention because this is our lives on the line. I've also experienced and witnessed the inability to meet our basic needs with supporting the costs of medically necessary procedures, supporting undocumented students with sufficient resources, and the ability to sustainably have housing accessible to us, to not be forced to live on couchsurfing and living in our cars. I would applaud the Senate for including additional funding for basic needs in their budget plan and urge the Assembly to do the same. We cannot dream of bringing more students to higher education experiences without investing in their ability to survive.

Thank you. Well done.

Hello, Chair McCarty, and what remains of the Sub 2 Committee. My name is Golsar Abari. I'm a first-year undergrad student at UCSD. I would like to talk about the Cal Grant, and I think that as an Iranian immigrant who has seen the positive impact of the Cal Grant on my community, as well as other communities such as the Black, Latino, API, undocumented, and even White communities allowing such students to seek higher education, I urge you to fund the Cal Grant equity because it will allow for an additional 150,000 students to gain this education and work towards making a better environment for all of us to live in. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello, Chair McCarty. I'm Tracy Wang. I'm from UC San Diego, and I do urge for the basic needs funding to be increased. I understand that fiscally we are in a deficit. And I've been told over and over again in lobbying meetings, I am a student lobbyist, but I have struggled as a family, from an immigrant family, as a daughter from an immigrant family is a struggle to get food every day. I am scared to get food because I know that I don't want to put that burden on my family. And food insecurity is a real thing, especially during these times. As we are dealing with inflation, we are dealing with grocery prices going up. Students deserve to go to school and not be hungry during class, and they deserve to get their basic needs met through these pantries, through these resource centers.

Along with the mental health crisis that we are facing, I think that we should address this and that basic needs resources are able to combat these issues. If we do fund these resource centers and continue to support our UC basic needs hubs, I just really do urge that, and I think it's really important that we are supporting our students and not continuing to burden them, even though we want to continue to give them these opportunities in higher education, and they aren't able to successfully do that without.

Thank you.

Good morning. My name is Diana Frias. Today I'm speaking on the need to make additional funding for the UC basic needs centers. I'm also here representing my community of City Heights in San Diego. Among that population consists of many low-income students and first-generation college students. As first-generation college students, we're already facing a lot of different obstacles, whether that's financially just trying to figure out the system. UC system is already complicated on its own, trying to figure out classes and coursework, so we shouldn't have to worry about any other basic needs such as food, housing, transportation, and others that were mentioned before. So I do urge you to support this increase of funding. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello, Chair McCarthy and members of Sub 2. My name is Eduardo Tapia and I'm a second-year student at UC San Diego. This committee and its members have committed to increasing admissions for Californians into the UC system. But the state has not increased the resources that students need to succeed in these institutions, which is why I ask you to prioritize basic needs funding and implement the Cal Grant equity framework.

As a low-income student that attends a UC institution in a high-income community of La Jolla in San Diego, assistance like Cal Grant and basic needs services allowed me to be successful as a student and to succeed in a competitive institution. So please stand by your commitment to increase access to UC campuses but also ensure that students have increased basic needs access and secure Cal Grant equity to allow students like me to succeed in their educational careers. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello, Chair McCarty and members of the Senate Subcommittee 2. My name is Jose and I am a student from the UC Davis School and a member of the UC Student Association. Today I'm here to speak on the need to make additional funding for the amount of the 5 million available for the UC Basic Needs Center. There has been an increase in student population assessing basic needs centers across the UC campuses, with centers serving around 40% more students since the original appropriation by the state made in 2019. The basic needs centers have served 48,000 students, whereas in 2022 they have served over 72,000 students. Although there has been an increase in students over the past few years, there has been a decrease in resources for the UCS. Today, I'm here just to speak about how it is crucial to recognize that basic needs is important for society, especially where there are factors that serve as barriers, such as an increase in cost in living and as well in grocery prices that prevent students from achieving their dreams of pursuing a higher education. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker please.

Hello, my name is Sergio. I'm a current third year at UC Davis. I would like to urge the subcommittee to provide additional funding for disability services across the UC. On average, there's a 300 to 400 caseload, up to 1000 sometimes where students could get derailed from their accommodations because they're not receiving them in a timely manner. Their quarters of semesters are looking like no accommodations for half of the time. The effects of this underfunding has caused literally at UC Merced, a one-person office to provide accommodations for the whole UC. For the UC Merced, at UCLA, there's unaccessible infrastructure for those with physical disabilities, that there are potholes, cracks, and neural sidewalks at UCLA and in the Westwood community. At UCSD, Trident mobility services do not have employees that are well-equipped to deal with any emergency health crisis that may happen at that time. As I mentioned here, these aren't unique stories to these campuses specifically, there's a story like this at every single campus. I would like to applaud the Senate for putting this in their budget priorities, and I urge the Senate, the Assembly, to do the same. Please fund disability services across all the UC. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi everybody.

No worries.

Thank you. My name is Sophia Lee-Park. I'm a fourth-year student at the University of Santa Barbara, California Santa Barbara, and I just want to say that the University of California does not have a comprehensive and opportunity-focused, personalized, holistic, and intersectional support system. We deserve staff that reflect our identities that are disabled women of color like myself. I've had to fight for myself and my peers dignity and human rights with limited support. Staff have massive caseloads helping 400 to 1000 students each.

This causes access fatigue for us as well as distress per staff, preventing us from thriving in our education, in our communities, and beyond. We deserve better for our dreams, especially for my fellow scholars that are not in this space as I speak. While doing my honors research at UCC, I discovered that DSP specialists could not implement my access needs to complete my honors practical classes. We need staffing capacity with the time and the money to truly advocate and uplift our cultural wealth alongside us. Compliance does not equal happiness nor everyday discrimination. I thank the Senate for including funding for disability services and I urge the Assembly to do the same.

Thank you. Next speaker please.

Thank you.

That way it makes it easier for you.

Chair, my name is Weyon. I am a student and a part of the basic needs family at UC Davis. I'm here today to speak about the critical needs for additional funding to support UC basic needs. So access higher education is essential for a bright future, but many of my peers are struggling to meet their basic needs along the way. At UC Davis, around 2000, students went from not knowing where the next meal was coming from to not eating. And that's on top of the 12k already food-insecure population who need nutritional support. Rapid rehousing had nearly 100 applicants at the beginning of the year compared to 18 previous year. I was one of the students who were housed insecure, and afraid that I don't have any affordable place to live. And as someone who works one one-on-one with peers, it's the first time that we had to turn student away and ask if you can stay with a family member or a friend in Davis.

And those people are actually peers that I see every day on campus. So given the increased cost of living and housing crisis, we need additional funding to combat the recent inflation and better support our student population. No student should have to choose between their education and their basic needs. So lastly, I would like to thank the Senate and urge the Assembly for including additional funding for the basic needs in their budget plan. And thank you so much.

Thank you. Next speaker, please.

Hello, Chair McCarty and committee members. My name is Jeffrey Villalobos and I'm a fourth-year public policy student from UC Riverside. I've been a student employee in the UC Riverside Basic Needs Department for the past three years, where I've had the opportunity to hear about the challenges that many of my peers face when it comes to basic needs insecurities. It's hard to focus on your homework when you're hungry and don't know where your next meal is going to come from. It's hard to rest and study for an exam when you don't have a safe place to sleep at night. Basic needs centers like the one I work in at UCR and the ones in the rest of the UC system exist to support students dealing with these tough circumstances. And the demand for our services has only increased since our inception.

Increased by approximately 40%, but with no commensurate increases in funding, the proposed addition of $5 million in funding for UC basic needs centers would go a long way in ensuring we're able to continue supporting the success of students and affording individuals the right to pursue higher education without the worry of basic needs insecurities being a barrier. We applaud the Senate for including additional funding for basic needs in their budget plan and strongly urge the Assembly to do the same. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker, please.

Hello, my name is Karine Cuevas and I'm a third-year public policy student at UC Riverside, and I'm also employed under UCR basic needs. I'm here to speak about the increasing need for funding towards our basic needs center. As we all know, there is a severe housing issue across all UCs and that's ever present at UC Riverside. At UCR, nearly three-fourths of our students do not have secure housing and the number is only increasing. Due to this, our basic needs center is struggling to keep up with the amount of students who are in need of emergency housing. I personally am one of those students. I am unsure if I will have secure housing next quarter. I'm unsure if I reach out to basic needs if they will be able to assist me due to the lack of resources.

So an increase in funding would help me find secure housing, and it will also help the variety of students who are in search of housing in order to complete their degree. If I do not have secure housing, I'm unsure if I'll be able to continue my education. It would force me to put my education on hold. So I hope that with this increase in funding, we'd be able to offer more resources and also reach out to more students.

Thank you. Next.

Hello, Chair McCarty and members of Sub 2. My name is Brian Nguyen. I'm a fourth-year sociology student from UC Riverside who works in the UCR Basic Needs Department. Today I'm here to urge you to support the increase of $5 million in funding to UC basic needs centers. Basic needs centers help ensure that all students have an equal opportunity to achieve their goals, regardless of their financial circumstances. I work at the UCR's Basic Needs pantry program and while we try to accommodate every student, many needs are not being met at all. Despite recent appointment slots increases for our pantry visits, we still reach full capacity quickly with students expressing concerns about availability. Overall, the provided funding could be used to hire additional staff, expand food pantry offerings, and provide more emergency housing options, which in turn will enable the UC basic needs centers to assist a larger population of students. Thank you to the Senate for including additional funding for basic needs in their budget plan, and I urge the Assembly to consider taking the same action.

Hello, Chair McCarty and members of Sub 2. My name is Ricardo Lara-Berrueco and I'm a third year at UC Riverside. I'm an R'Pantry intern which is part of the Basic Needs Department at UC Riverside, and I speak today on the need to obtain more funding and the amount of $5 million for the UC basic needs centers that would help students exponentially. I've seen firsthand how many students we help at UCR, especially with our efforts to reach out to students who require our resources that may not have heard of them, to fight food and housing insecurity.

Specifically, international students require our resources specifically because unfortunately they do not qualify for government assistance like CalFresh. Our goal is to help students who need assistance with their basic needs, and the more we reach out to these students, the more we see ourselves stretched thin because of the lack of funding, the UC population is expanding at a rapid rate while the basic needs funding has not expanded at the same rate.

With this increase, we see housing issues developing in many UCs because we cannot allocate for all the students, and with this difficulty, food insecurity and housing insecurity arise. I think I can speak for our UC basic needs departments when I say we're motivated to help as many students as we can, but this motivation also needs funding to be successful in achieving this. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Next speaker, please.

Hi, my name is Noah Stahlheber. I'm the co-coms director for UCSB Lobby Corps. I'm here today just to quickly speak about the Cal Grant equity framework. Supporting the framework would hopefully allow access for 150,000 more students to be able to access the Cal Grant framework. In doing so, you'll see benefits that pay dividends back to the state in the long run, making UCs, CSUs, and triple C's more accessible for all. You allow more students not just to dream of college, but to afford it and to attend it. Thank you.

Thank you. Two more speakers, please.

Hello, my name is Monica Mekhlouf and I'm a student at UCSB, here to urge you all to pay attention to the dire lack of funding being invested in the UC wide basic needs program. Basic needs centers are serving exponentially larger student populations with the same budget that's been allocated to us in 2019 when we served around 52883 students. In the last year alone, we have served 72213 students, which is a 40% increase that has not been accounted for. As a result, there are now less dollars per student seeking services. If additional funding is not provided. As our student population continues to grow, this deficit will only intensify. Funding basic needs is funding graduation rates, better academic success, and better retention rates. When a student's basic needs are neglected, everything, including school, comes second.

As a leader in my community, I have seen my peers struggle to find stable housing, walk away from food banks empty handed that have been exhausted halfway through the week, and regularly skip meals just to get by. Each has suffered academically as a result. I would like to applaud the Senate for including additional funding for basic needs services in their budget plan and urge you all to do the same. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker, please.

My name is Marvia and I serve as the UC Santa Barbara external vice president for statewide affairs. There are an estimated 19,000 students with disabilities in the UC, and I say estimated because many of people of color, like myself, are often identified as having a disability later in life, newly entering the world of academic accommodations in our college career. But does the UC employee specialists enough specialists who acknowledge this reality? Do our disability services have staffing capacity who can offer career and academic advising catered to our communication access needs? Who knows that our surgery schedules our transportation needs and can coordinate hybrid access to our classes? The answer is no, and for California's public university to lack these services is shameful. Disability services across the UC are overworked and understaffed, limiting the resources available to support my community's presence and belonging on our campus. I would like to applaud the Senate for including funding for UC disability services in their budget plan and urge the Assembly to do the same. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you all for your participation today. I appreciate it. And we'll see you soon. With that, we are adjourned.