Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Subcommittee No. 1 on Education

I'm going to call Senate Budget Subcommitee number one on Education to order and ask for a roll call please.

[Roll Call]

We have a quorum. And this is the Subcommitee on Education. I know, I know. Sorry, that was a lost Senator. So we have a quorum established. We expect Senator Perez momentarily. This is our second hearing of this year's budget cycle and we will concentrate on higher education issues.

Last year, the state faced significant fiscal challenges with having to solve for a projected almost $40 billion deficit in the General Fund. And despite those challenges, the final budget included a net increase in state support for the University of California and the California State University System.

As part of their compact increases this year, the public institutions for higher education are facing significant ongoing recommended base reductions of close to $770 million, as well as deferrals of compact funding. And this is all what is recommended in the governor's January 10th budget.

I personally am not supportive of these reductions and want to use the next few months in our hearing process and with stakeholders to address these reductions to see if we can make a difference.

Our institutes, institutions of higher education are widely known for their quality of education, their ability to engage in cutting edge research, being able to provide pathways for developing the state's health care, teachers and many other things that are vital to our economy and numerous other benefits to the public.

Right now, the climate at the federal level is putting at risk federal funding to our institutions, which includes research and Administration dollars and federal financial aid benefits to students. It creates a climate of fear to our lgbtq, undocumented and mixed status family students and other vulnerable student populations.

But it also, wherever the cuts might come from, the Federal Government puts the state government sideways budgetarily and will affect our ability to address the very goal I just mentioned a minute ago. So today in our hearing, we have six issues on the agenda.

And we're going to begin with issue number one, which is system updates from the University of California President Michael Drake and the California State University Chancellor, Mildred Garcia. Also participating will be representatives from the Department of Finance. And we have Gabriella Chavez and Devin Mitchell and representatives from the Legislative Analyst's Office.

And in this panel we have Jennifer Pesella from the Legislative Analyst's Office. And we will have different staff Members from UC and CSU available for questions or details. So I would invite the panelists to the table here. Last week we had a fun time with microphones selectively not working. So we just hope everything will be functional today.

And if it's not, we will pass microphones back and forth. So while I'm welcoming you to the Committee, let me ask my colleagues if there's any opening statements or comments they would like to make.

Just one brief that I'm with. I agree with you with regards to the cuts that we see in the. University level, both for CSUs and UCs. And I look forward to working with. You and the dais and Senator Perez and our universities to see how we can mitigate and lessen the impact.

Thank you. Senator Ochoa Bogh, any opening comments? Senator Perez

Now, I'll just say I'm. Just excited to be here. This is going to be May 1st Subcommitee hearing. And as somebody that's a product of the CSU system and a proud graduate of Cal State LA, you know, I know the power of public higher education here in the State of California.

I've seen the impacts on my own family to be the first in my family to graduate from college and then to have my sister also graduate from Cal State LA, as well as CSUN.

So I'm, you know, looking forward to the discussion today and, you know, consider these decisions, these investments so critical to the future of our state.

Thank you. We really appreciate your comments. Now we're going to move to the panel and we'll go in the sequence I mentioned for opening comments. And welcome. President Drake. Thank you for being here today.

Well, good morning, Chair Laird. Nice to see you and good to be here this morning. And thank you for inviting us this week on this very important set of issues.

I'm very pleased to be here this morning with my colleague from the California State University to talk about the opportunities and challenges for public higher education in our state. I've been President now for just about five years, and I've been reflecting on those last five years.

These days it's been a busy and as I mentioned to you last week, mostly wonderful time. But within that, we've had some real challenges. We've had unprecedented issues, such as the global pandemic. We've had rising costs. In California last year, we had many issues dealing with balancing free speech with inclusivity and campus safety.

With the help of the UC community and our strong partnership with the Legislature and the Governor that we've accomplished very much together during these last several years. For one, in contrast to declining enrollment trends nationwide, we've been seeing steady enrollment growth across the UC system.

We said a few years ago that we were going to do our best to add 20,000 new students over this decade Roughly the equivalent of another campus without actually building another bricks and mortar campus. And over the past five years, we've added more than 16,000 FTE equivalent California undergraduate students.

So we're well on our way to that goal. We're also serving more students from historically underserved populations. In fall 2020, the University admitted its largest and most diverse class of California undergraduates ever. 45% of first years are from underrepresented groups.

We continue to enroll more community college transfer students than any other University of our Caliber in the nation. And this is reflective of our very strong partnership with the community college system. We're working hard to create debt free pathways helping more students earn a UC degree with no student debt.

And just about 70% of new California undergraduates entering in the 24-25 year will have a debt free pathway available to them. We'd like to make that 100% by the end of this decade. In 2022, we launched the UC Native American Opportunity Plan, which covers tuition and most mandatory fees. Excuse me.

For undergraduate and academic California students from federally recognized Native American tribes. Last year, this program covered 326 students, made progress in promoting health in California and improving health outcomes. We increased enrollment in our prime medical programs and have taken steps to bring medical education fluid. Thank you very much.

Taken steps to bring medical education to the UC Merced campus. I'm getting medication and hydration. Appreciate it. But we've taken steps to bring medical education to the UC Merced campus and look forward to working with the Legislature to expand our health programs further.

In addition, the University's health system grew to be, for instance, the largest provider of medi Cal outpatient visits compared to other major California health systems. And I just was talking yesterday with our colleagues from UC Irvine who've had quite substantial growth.

Two years ago, UC Irvine was accounting for 5% of the discharges, or 1 in 20 discharges in Orange County. Today they're accounting for 1 in 7 discharges in Orange County. They went from 5% to about 14% of the discharges as they grow. And they'll bring on more beds by the end of this calendar year.

So real growth in the health services that we're providing. As you mentioned, the Governor's Budget in January proposed an 8% cut to our base budget and deferral of compact funding for the University.

And we believe very much that the magnitude and severity of these cuts would have detrimental impact on our students and on the progress that we've been able to make in many of the areas that I just described.

The funding you provided to the University over the last four years has helped us make steady progress on our commitments to the multi year budget Compact. For example, we exceeded our California undergraduate enrollment target with over 12,700 FTEs just since the compact was signed. We exceeded the non resident student replacement targets at Berkeley, UCLA and San Diego.

During each year of the compact, we significantly expanded debt free pathways as I mentioned, in many ways thanks to the state's middle class scholarship and to expanded UC Financial, our own UC financial aid packages and we've steadily added student housing. Our campuses have.

I currently have more than 5,400 beds under construction and they will be ready by the fall of 2026. During the last five years alone, we've added nearly 25,000 new student housing beds.

We have also deepened our collaborations with CSU and community colleges with part participation in the state's Cradle to Career Data system and work on simplifying the transfer process. We're committed to the compact goals through narrowing achievement gaps and to growing opportunity for more California students.

But if I use an analogy, it's like we're driving in a car on a bridge. The compact is the bridge and we're driving at a certain speed and we're looking at and the bridge is not finished yet and we're seeing that construction slow down in front of us and that worries us.

We don't want to get there with there being no bridge. And maybe that's happening a little bit this year. And I'll say we're going to really look do everything we can to make good on our commitments to students who are in the admissions cycle now.

So we're going to do everything we can to admit a full class of California first year students this year going forward. We don't want to put those dreams on hold. It's already March and those letters will be going out shortly. So this year we're going to do everything we can to fulfill our compact commitments.

Funding will really curtail the way we're able to address those things as we're moving forward. We can't survive being underfunded for long. Stable funding is really necessary for the University to serve our students and continue to meet the needs of the state. We understand of course that this is not a typical budget year.

In addition to the growing deficit and continued fiscal uncertainty for the state, there are new concerns due to things like the devastating wildfires and tragic loss of life in Southern California earlier this year.

And I fully recognize the difficult budget decisions that are facing you and the Governor, this year we also have the added complexity of Executive orders and other federal actions that are affecting higher education, including our vital research funding.

We're very carefully analyzing information coming from the Federal Government, and that's, I was going to say every day, but it's really every hour during the day.

We've been following, following this for these last six weeks and the potential impacts on the University and making adjustments even in these days to make sure that we can continue to function as we move forward. We're hoping to avoid a situation where we're facing deep budget cuts on two fronts, both the state and the Federal Government.

Let me close by reiterating how much we appreciate the strong partnership that we've had with the state Legislature. We're grateful for your recognition of the importance of public higher education to the future of our state.

We really do appreciate this and we know clearly the difference between this Legislature and how you recognize and support us and others that we see around the country. It's made all the difference over all of these years.

It's been a great honor to work with all of you and look forward to continuing our partnership with the Legislature to preserve the funding that we have so that we can continue to expand access, improve on our offerings and serve the State of California well. I look forward to questions that you may have as we proceed today, but good to see you all and thank you.

Thank you. Really appreciate your comments. We're going to hold questions until we hear from everyone and it's my pleasure to welcome the chancellor of the California State University system. Welcome to the Committee.

Good morning. Chair Laird and Members of the Subcommitee, thank you for the opportunity to speak today and I am pleased to be here with my friend and colleague, President Drake. On behalf of the CSU's nearly half a million students and 60 dedicated employees across our 23 universities.

I ask for relief from the 8% cut and deferral of ongoing compact funding set forth in the governor's proposal proposed budget for 25-26. If the proposal is approved, it will place a CSU in dire fiscal circumstances and our mission for the state and for our current students and future students are in jeopardy.

The proposed budget cut and funding deferral come at a time when the CSU is making significant progress for our state. Thanks in large part to you, the legislators and the support you have given us. System wide enrollment continues to climb with 69,000 new diverse students enrolled this fall, including a record number of first time freshmen.

For a second year in a row, we've doubled our four year graduation rate through our flagship student success effort, Graduation Initiative 2025. Innovative programs at the system level and on each of our 23 campuses are addressing opportunity gaps that remain between historically underserved students and their peers.

Our newly announced Artificial Intelligence Initiative has been acclaimed as a national model and will prepare current and future CSU students to thrive in and contribute to an increasingly AI driven economy.

The proposed cut and funding deferral not only place this progress at risk, they will force us to entirely recalibrate and rethink the way our institutions operate to serve their regions so that we can continue to meet our educational mission at its very core.

The painful yet necessary cost reduction measures recently announced at Sonoma State are a harbinger of the types of actions we will have to take at other campuses if this proposal becomes our fiscal reality. We will have to do less with less at times when our students need and deserve so much more.

Let me place a scale of the cut into context. An 8% cut represents a reduction to the CSU's ongoing state allocation of $375 million. That's equivalent to 2,400 full time faculty, one fifth of all CSU full time faculty. It is the same as the entire operating budget of Fresno State, which serves approximately 25,000 students.

The cut comes on top of reductions we have made over the last two years to cover soaring mandatory costs. 17 of our 23 universities have already been forced to reduce their workforces. More than 1,200 positions have been eliminated. 1,430 core sections were discontinued, making it more difficult for students to enroll in the courses they need to graduate.

Last year, 136 degree programs were suspended or discontinued across the system. Additional programs are slated for elimination this year. We've introduced a multitude of efficiency measures at the system level as well. A new enrollment and budget reallocation plan better aligns the CSU's fiscal resources with our state's changing demographics and shifting student demand.

A multi University collaboration initiative is developing shared services across key functional areas including procurement and accounting, information security and facilities operation. This is saving costs and enhancing service quality.

And last November our board approved the integration of Cal Maritime with Cal Poly San Luis Obispo to address the Maritime Academy's unsustainable fiscal circumstances and to preserve the merchant marine license track degree programs so vital to the state and the nation's economic and security interests.

I raise these examples to underscore the point that the CSU understands the need to modernize our system and leverage our scale to reduce administrative costs, enabling us to focus resources on our core academic mission. We are doing our part to operate as lean as we possibly can.

The Governor's proposal makes clear that our obligations under the multi year State Compact continue with the promise of funding in future years, including continuing to grow undergraduate enrollment. I respectfully assert that this is placing us on a treacherous path forward, especially in light of changes in federal policy that threaten funding and our very core values.

The combination of the cut and uncertain funding future for the CSU will take a human toll. They will be borne by our students and their families. Measured in additional time to graduation, earnings delayed and dreams deferred, many more Members of the Cal State family, from administrators and management to the Cal State faculty and staff, may likely lose their livelihoods. The consequences will be felt throughout the state as well, in every region and every community.

The CSU is California's Most Powerful Driver of Social mobility Just two weeks ago, a new ranking by the College Futures Foundation called the California Mobility Index confirmed that Cal State universities lead the state's four year institutions in delivering economic mobility for California students from low to moderate incomes.

In fact, the top nine institutions on the index were all from the CSU, as were 13 of the top 15. One in 10 Californians hold a CSU degree and we add nearly 130,000 degree holders to the state's workforce each year.

They are California's teachers, accountants, nurses, first responders, engineers and entrepreneurs, as well as many of you and your staff. The CSU's positive impact to California is immeasurable. One cannot negatively impact the CSU without negatively impacting the State of California. Funding for the CSU is not just a budget line item, but a wise investment.

It's a wise investment in our state's future leaders in more vital communities and a stronger democracy and empowering California's diverse and highly educated workforce.

We are here to work alongside you, to partner with you, to ensure that every student that walks in through our doors receives their dream to reach that degree and become engaged citizens in our community. Chair Laird and Committee Members, thank you for the opportunity to address you today.

Thank you. We appreciate your comments and we'll have questions when everybody presents. I know we have two representatives from the Department of Finance. I didn't know who was going to make any comments on your behalf.

No comment.

Okay. You'll obviously be ready for questions. Legislative Analyst Office Good morning.

Good morning. Jennifer Pacella from the Legislative Analyst Office. I was hoping it might be helpful just to spend a couple minutes doing a recap of where University funding has been the last few years, then turn to the budget window and then look out on the horizon just for a moment.

So looking back to fiscal years 22-23 and 23-24, state funding for the universities did increase those years. The average annual rates of increase were between 6.9% and 9.4%. Historically high growth rates. At the same time, the segments were seeing some growth from tuition revenue.

So in 22-23, UC put in place a tuition policy that increases rates for some students annually. CSU in 24-25 also began a tuition policy that increases rates for all students. Both of the segments have been viewing those tuition policies as a way to expand their budget capacity, allow them to do more of their spending priorities.

So we get to last year, the state, as you know, was facing a large deficit. And as part of that, the state did spending reductions. About 70% of those spending reductions were removing one time spending, but nearly 30% were removing ongoing spending.

The largest portion of that was what you've heard about with the state operations reduction that affected all state agencies. And UC and CSU were the largest component of that. Last year other state agencies had to take a small state ops reduction in in 24-25.

What the state did with UC and CSU last year was to give them a year to plan for those reductions and at the same time in 24-25 gave them increases. So roughly 3% increases for UC and CSU. CSU and UC also got some additional funding from tuition last year.

So in core terms, state funding, tuition funding, together, their funding went up. So this is unusual. The state was facing a large budget deficit and at the time it didn't hold funding flat or reduce it. It didn't increase it for UC and CSU.

But as part of that plan, the State said come 25-26, there would be these reductions that you've heard about. For CSU, it's a $300 million reduction. Some of that is offset by General Fund augmentation. So there's $178 million in augmentations, mostly relating to pension and retiree health care costs, which the state pays for in a targeted way.

UC's year over year reduction is 272 million. So at the time, in 24-25, both universities did raise tuition revenue as well. So I'm sorry, turning in 25-26, they do have plans. So when you look at those state reductions and the tuition increases, their core funding is about flat.

Although it's about flat, they have certain cost increases to face, like rising health Care premiums. The segments have addressed budget situations like this before. They haven't been exactly like this because this isn't being driven again by the recession, but by these disconnects between spending and revenues. And you've heard how the universities typically respond.

They start with reducing non essential expenses, consolidating administrative services where possible, saving money on large purchases, deferring maintenance projects. But their main strategy is hiring freezes. So you've already heard that UC and CSU have started doing those things.

So just lastly turning to the year to come, you've heard about these referrals and all of this material is in your agenda. The deferrals are laid out on page eight. If you look at that deferral plan, it would take reductions in state funding to the universities in 25-26, but then give them large augmentation in 26-27.

If you add up all of that spending in 26-27, it's more than $1.0 billion. So while the state would be saying it's going to provide UC and CSU something like $1.0 billion, it's facing a $20 billion deficit that year. And the state hasn't penciled out how it would provide that Fund that funding to US and CSU.

So we recommend rejecting the deferrals. By rejecting the deferrals, the state avoids setting up this fiscal obligation that it can't currently afford. It also sends more realistic expectations to the universities as to what they might actually receive in budget year plus one.

And then when the state's fiscal condition improves, the state at that time could think about what base increases to provide the universities. Thank you.

Thank you. We're going to move to questions and I am going to lead. And let me follow up with both of you on what was just said of because it seems to me that if we're being urged to reject the deferrals because they're not real, we won't have the money.

It sort of exposes that process for being not worth anything. And my question is, if we went with deferrals, that's something that the state is really not obligated to do in the next year. It is up to the Legislature in the next year to actually make good. Is that correct?

Gabriela Chavez with the Department of Finance. The Administration is committed to funding the compact deferral. The segments can be confident that they spend necessary resources and continue planning to fulfill the compact with the knowledge that ongoing support is secure through shared commitments and goals of closing the equity gaps and increasing the access to affordable public higher education system. The 25-26 governance budget is a continuation of that commitment.

Trying to think of a way to very politely say that was an indirect answer because there is not a way you are committed, but it is not binding. If they wanted to borrow against the deferrals, it's not binding for them to be able to do that. Is that correct?

Correct. The Administration is fully committed.

I'll go with the correct. I'll go with the correct. And, and also following up just with the Legislative Analyst, you mentioned that the, of the cuts across state government in the current year and the compact was really for 5% a year, and, and the University and CSU only got 3% in this year against the 5% when they're expected to deliver on the other side of the compact. So, in fact, they did take a reduction in the current year, Is that correct?

I see you're smiling. You may frame this as you wish. Very good. I'll accept my own frame. But I just wanted to be clear about that, because it sort of was implying a justification for a further cut because everybody else took cuts when a cut was taken in the current year against the compact. And I just sort of. However, we can argue with that frame.

That is a legitimate frame. Both of you, the President Drake and Chancellor Garcia, talked about impacts. But let me drill down on the enrollment impact. And one of you talked very specifically. It seems to me that. That the state has really said one of the major reasons we're investing is to see the return in enrollment.

And so I think it would be important to understand clearly if, if these cuts were approved, what would be the impact on enrollment? And. And we have, as was said, we have made great gains, and we want to make more gains.

If, if this cut were approved, where would that leave us in terms of the gains we have made and what we want to do? And. And Chancellor Garcia seems to be leaning to the microphone first.

It certainly will impact because, as I said in my remarks, number one is we have less classes, and so it will take more time for our students to complete their degree. Secondly, it's support services. Our students need a lot of, as you all know, need support services.

The mental health, the food pantry, the advising, all of that cannot be at the level.

If we have that kind of a cut on our campuses, and then we're not hiring enough faculty and staff to serve our students, as you heard me say in my remarks, we would have to really stop and in some cases, let go of faculty and staff and administrators.

By the way, as we move forward in this plan, each One of our 23 campuses are right now planning of what that would mean. And as I said earlier, just like in. If we take Monterey Bay, for example, her enrollment is going up. She has already begun cutting almost $20 million.

You're referring to the fact that the chancellor says she. You don't refer to the campus as she per se, right?

She.

Yes. Just checking.

Yes, checking. So she has already done that and is preparing and turning the campus around. And it comes at a point that she has to stop. And each one of our campuses are working on increasing enrollment without the necessary services our students need. Does that answer your question?

Thank you. Thank you.

It does.

And similarly for us, we are expanding. The compact has 2% or 1% growth in undergraduate students per year and the growth graduate students. So we've been committed to doing that as we move along that requires faculty and facilities, et cetera. And as we lose core funding, we then have to pull back on those efforts.

So it's as I mentioned, we have 10 year goals, goals we hope to achieve over this decade. We've been making great progress toward those goals. We'd like to exceed the goals. We actually exceeded our goals under the compact, which we're pleased about. But we're now at a place where we have to dial back.

And we have we appreciated the deferral last year, the concept that we were going to have the compact funding for last year given to us this year to kind of help us with the gains we made last year, this year now we're facing reductions on top of that.

So it means that for next year we'll have to be pulling back. We met that's the all day yesterday with our chancellors, all of whom are coming to us with reduction plans for what our planning will be for next year.

And then let me ask, it got alluded to, but maybe a little more specifically with each of you, potential federal reductions. How are you starting to assess what they might be and what their impacts might be? And maybe I'll start with President.

Yeah, so these are critical. They're all day, every day concern for some of the reductions, as you know, were announced. One set on Friday to take place the following Monday. Took a court order to stop them. And we're a part of that process.

Nationally, we would have hundreds of millions of dollars of our current funding cut if there were an adjustment in the facilities and administrative costs of grants. Your grant, this is we live in this world.

It's a little hard sometimes to understand that if you don't, if you have a grant that let's say for $100,000 to do research in a lab, that grant requires there to be a lab to do the research in. And the lab has to have electricity and lights. There have to be somebody, plumbers and electricians to keep things working. You have to have an electron microscope if you're doing that kind of work.

And the grants are split one portion of the grant, the direct costs, pay for the faculty, the staff for the portion of the faculty, time, the graduate students, the test tubes, reagents, and everything that go into the to the investigatory work.

But then there's another part that pays for the facilities and administrative costs to be able to have a place for the work to be done. And those are quite substantial. And so the partnership that we've had with the Federal Government, an incredible partnership for 70 years, 75 years is that bridge building that I mentioned earlier.

There's a consistent work knowing that the government is going to help us Fund the facilities administrative costs as we then add the direct cost of grants on top of that. And it's been that partnership that's let us lead the world in things like biomedical research. It's a great and long term partnership.

The adjustment that's being suggested to change the facilities and administrative costs leaves the grants, leaves the cost of doing the research something that would be borne by the universities. We would have to dramatically cut the amount of research that we funded. I'm going to Washington next week again to talk about this.

We were there in 2017 and went through this very carefully and it resulted in a bipartisan Bill saying, gosh, we understand that well, that this partnership is a partnership and both sides have to do their part. The threats to that partnership over these last several weeks have been devastating for us.

It would be, as I said again, hundreds of millions of dollars and in per year. And one of the sort of cruel ironies of that is that the peer reviewed research like at the National Institutes of Health has been the gold standard for the best ideas coming forward across the country.

Everybody competes for the best ideas to win out and we've been the leaders in that because the quality of our research is so outstanding. Pulling that rug out from under the best quality research doesn't, it's a lose, lose, lose, lose Proposition.

Okay, I appreciate that on both of you. We'll be looking at that and hope that goes better than than. Well, actually I want to give the CSU champions to talk.

We also take have grants as much as our UC colleagues. But what we do is we engage our students in undergraduate research with their faculty. We're looking at about, we've calculated over $500 million that's coming in from indirect costs that goes back to students to scholarships, to all the things and their research is applied within the community.

They're actually doing that and preparing future researchers for our campuses. In addition to that, our students are concerned by the way our students hear this news and are very nervous when they think maybe Pell will be stopped. Pell is over $1.0 billion for the CSU just for the CSU. So that's another item.

The other thing that we're worried about in talking about Department of Education trio gear up, HSI dollars, AANAPISI dollars, tribal colleges, African American initiatives, all that come out of the Federal Government that help our students. You understand that our California students are the most diverse in the country.

And all of these funds are helping our students through those federal dollars. One thing we are doing, we're also going to Washington in a couple of weeks to talk about this. But the other thing that we're trying to do is partner with our national organizations, Aplu, which does land grant and research universities. Ask you that.

Does our colleges and comprehensive colleges and universities like ourselves at the CSU, partnering with them to ensure that we're advocating together for the funds that our students need in order to finish their degrees.

And I know there'll be some additional information provided and we'll talk about that. I want to give my colleagues a chance to answer questions, but I just make a brief comment on two things. One is I appreciated the mention of the California Maritime Academy and the merge with Cal Poly.

And I know that I and some other Senators together are going in a couple of weeks to visit. And one of the common themes about the University of California is that the three most underfunded campuses are the ones that don't have a medical school or a law school.

And I know UC Santa Cruz is just starting down the road to a medical school and is looking for $40,000 in this budget to do the first tranche. And I am hoping to work on that and try to work with you to see if there's ways to make that happen with that. And I'll come back if some things aren't asked. Let me ask my colleagues. Would Senator Perez.

Well, first of all, thank you for your presentations. This is, you know, incredibly helpful. You know, I want to acknowledge a couple of things. You know, first of all, budgets are statements of our values.

And I do find it very concerning that if you look at this proposed budget that, you know, CDCR, which is essentially our state's partisan system, is only facing a 2% budget cut, but the CSU and UC are facing close to 8%.

I mean, we point this out a lot, but if we really want to be serious about, you know, uplifting our young people, investing in the future of California, that those dollars need to be going towards education. And, you know, I think just that in itself is a bit concerning.

I also feel, you know, very full circle in this moment as I sit here. When I first came into the CSU system as a Cal State LA student back in 2010, the state was proposing major budget cuts after facing the financial crisis in 2007.

And what happened as a result of those budget cuts was we saw students leave campus, we saw progress, professors be laid off, and we saw critical resources that our students need be cut. And because of that, students left. There were student.

There were tuition increases, student success fees, if you will remember, that were instituted, and that caused many students to drop out of Cal State LA. And it meant that many less students were getting that quality education that so many of us aspire to, want students across California to have.

And I remember being a student in my freshman year and feeling so frustrated and shocked watching that happen. And, you know, sitting here today as we have this discussion when we're looking at 8% cuts, you know, my problem with that is it doesn't tell the full story.

It doesn't tell the full impact that that's going to have on our college professors. It doesn't tell the full impact that that's going to have on staff, on the services that our campuses provide, the impact that it will have on a student. And, you know, whether or not that student is able to stay on campus.

And I think that that's how we need to contextualize these cuts is what is that ultimately going to lead to? It's going to lead to less students being able to have access to a UC degree, less students being able to have access to a CSU degree at a time when, you know, I personally believe that attaining that degree could not be more critical.

There are very few things that young people right now that are in our high school spaces, you know, have to look forward to in this time period as we're facing a Trump Administration that is making threats to DEI programs and to public education and actually being able to pursue and achieve their higher education dreams is.

Is one of the few things that we as a state can provide, and we have some of the best public education institutions and the entire country. We should be enrolling as many students as possible into these institutions as we can, not less, because we know that we turn away talented students every single year from being able to have an opportunity to go to the UC system or the CSU system. So I just want to highlight that.

And, you know, I've seen the real cost. I've been a student on campus when we had major budget cuts, and it is. It is not fun. It is also. It has a real impact on those students that do have to make that difficult decision to drop out on those professors that are laid off.

And I want to make sure that we recognize that. And so when we talk about these 8% cuts, I really want to understand what is that going to mean in terms of the impacts to students? What is that going to mean in terms of the impacts to faculty?

What Will that mean in terms of the impacts to institutions, how many less students are we going to be able to enroll in the UC and the CSU system if we do approve 8% of cuts? And in addition to that, you know, these compacts are non binding agreements.

We've continued to defer the promise and the commitment that we've made to both the CSU and the UC system, but yet we've continued to expect that they increase their enrollment.

And that is also something, as I mentioned before, that's a major priority to me is that we're ensuring more students, students are having access to that degree, not less.

And so as we keep pushing back this timeline beyond the original scope of the compact and the original commitment, you know, what assurances are we going to have that, you know, that money's actually going to come to fruition for them that that's we're actually going to follow through on that, especially if we go beyond the kind of timeline that we laid out for them that this compact was going to be in existence.

So those are my two questions. I'd love to hear feedback from you all around that and for us to better contextualize what these cuts would actually mean to students and to faculty and to campuses on the ground.

And to whom do you want us to direct the questions?

I would love to hear from the Department of Finance as well as from the Legislative Analyst Office as well as from both the Chancellor and the President.

And let's go in that order. Let's start with the Department of Finance and then go to the Legislative Analyst and then go to our guests.

Gabriella Chavez, Department of Finance thank you. Senator. On your first question about the specific percentage on the cuts, the 2024 Budget act included a control section 4.05 instructed us to do a 7.95% reduction to the base of the segments and all the entities.

I'm not able to speak specifically about other departments budgets, so I can't really speak about the determination on that 3%. What I can refer back is that in 2024 we made that commitment that it was going to be a 7.95% reduction under budgets.

Given that UC and CSU were already way ahead in their budget planning, the Administration decided to do a smaller cut. So rather than receiving a 7.95% last year, UC took a 125 million cut and one time and CSU 75751,000,001 time. And then on your other question.

Just. For the record, the Legislature was involved in that as well, correct?

Yes. Thank you. Yes. The 4.05 was the 2024-25 Budget Act. Correct. And then your other question was referring to. Remind me please. Sorry.

So I had asked about like contextualizing what some of those cuts would mean in terms of, you know, the impacts on enrollment and the impacts on, you know, the institution. So I'm not sure if you're able to speak to that or a particular segments.

I think there was another second question.

But yes, and that was in regards to the compact and you know, given that the compact's a non binding agreement, you know, understanding what the insurances are that you know they're going to receive this money, we're continuing to defer it and you know, at this point, you know, we're on track to potentially push these compacts back beyond the original timeline that was intended and the original commitment.

So the compact with the Administration is until 26-27. From the Administration perspective, we're fully committed to the compact and we see this deferral as an expectation on a future priority. We will continue to support the funding to the segments for the durations of the compact.

Senator, if I could just. Devin Mitchell with the Department of Finance. We don't I think dispute what the segments are saying about the programmatic impact, but the Administration, I mean we remain committed to these goals, but there is just a reality of needing to address the budget shortfall.

And California is a state where revenue sources are volatile year to year. So there is just a dollars and cents component to this.

About the Legislative Analyst, I think you've heard some about the impacts as a little bit of context because CSU's enrollment did decline during the pandemic. They were seeing student to faculty ratios fall and they were seeing admission rates increase. They were effectively seeing less selectivity.

Now that has begun to turn around in the last few years and GOC didn't have as significant of an impact during the pandemic. So as you've heard, they've continued to grow and are not facing that particular issue.

And so as you've heard in this situation where they're facing base reduction, their core fundings about flat, they would presumably the core of what they do is fewer course offerings and larger class sizes. So the main impact would be students having more difficulty finding classes and having larger classes when they do have them.

When it comes to this compact, the original compact again is due to end next year and the Governor is saying next year there's not enough money to make true on the compact. So he's pushing a chunk of those expenses out to 2728 when this particular Governor won't be there to see that happen.

Moreover, as we've been indicating next year, this $1.0 billion payment to the segments, there's nothing penciled out to provide it. So when there's 20 billion of cuts that the state needs to make or revenue solutions that the state needs to generate, there's nothing penciled out that would give them the assurance that payment would be there for them next year.

So finance is saying there is some budget reality, like how does the state face this difficult situation of balancing the budget and minimizing impacts across campuses and sectors of the budget.

So maybe a comment. You know, what happens when we are not funded adequately is the, the services that we provide to students decrease. So class sizes, class offerings decrease, class sizes increase. Particularly the services, the teaching, the support that students get decreases.

The ancillary service support that we provide, basic needs support, et cetera, et cetera, those things all get squeezed when we don't have the funding to support them. And it's when we, our base is about 300,000 students.

So if we apply this to 300,000 students, it's, you see it as something that happens to a large cohort, but the actual effects are to individual people, and particularly students who are on the edge, who are just about able to succeed are the ones who are the most vulnerable. And I'm going to share an experience.

When you were speaking about your experience at Cal State LA, I was thinking of experience I had. I was at a different University for a while as a. Whatever interlude, I think is the word I'll use. I was out of state. Yeah, out of state. Out-of-state interlude is how I will describe it.

But a very intense out of state interlude. And we were having a meeting in 2018 at my office table about this size. And I was sitting where I would sit, and then around the table were a group of African American students who had participated in a protest in 1968.

And the protest had crossed lines of acceptability for the school at the time. And the group had been expelled. Some of them had gotten then over time back into college and gone on and finished college.

These people are now in their 70s or late 60s, 70 years old, had gotten back into college, had gone to law school, one had been elected to office. They'd had a variety of jobs, but two or three of the people around the table when they were expelled never got back to college into college again.

And their lives were incredibly different than the other people sitting around the table. And I was struck by how that one act and those things that happened took them off the conveyor belt, move forward and they somehow never got back on. And we were sitting here 50 years later and they'd had a life on the outside.

And it just struck me how important the decisions that we make and the things that we do in supporting individuals every day to get through, to get that degree, to be graduated and to go out there then really do affect the rest of their lives.

Senator, I appreciate your question very much. Let me put something into context as we talk about COVID The students that we serve are first generation, undisturbed students of color who are at the edge working two to three jobs during COVID Many of them lost family, lost jobs and didn't have the money to come to the CSU, although 7 out of 10 do not pay tuition and 9 out of 10 of our students pay partial or no tuition.

But it's about cost of living. It's about how our students are supporting their families and themselves in order to get this degree. So did we lose enrollment? Absolutely. Just like every institution.

I was in Washington for 6 years working with 400 institutions very similar to a CSU with the same kind of students, not as diverse as we are, that had also lost enrollments. And now they're coming back. They're coming back with the dream of either finishing it or entering it.

And so I want to just place that into context. We're talking about families who will be the first in their families who have come to this country for the American dream to get their degree.

And so let's put that into context as we talk about who we lost during COVID at our institutions and we talk about what the CSU is doing. It's exactly what President Drake has talked about. And I have numbers. But we're reducing hiring, eliminating positions and conduct layoffs. We're increasing class size, we're reducing courses that reflect student demand.

We're letting go of part time faculty and lecturers that are so important to our students. We're reducing the service levels provided by staff. And I talked about the mental health that our students need, the food pantries, the advising our students need.

We're deferring capital and maintenance projects, we're consolidating programs, we're restructuring departments, we're reducing travel and we restrict non essential purchases, all of that.

And when you look at 375 million we've been planning, that's equivalent to 2,481 faculty positions, or 9% of the faculty workforce, or 3,300 staff positions that include administrators, or 17% of the staff workforce, or 19,800 courses, affecting 455,000 seats. And 12 of our campuses have operating budgets that are less than 375 million.

And as I said earlier, it's akin to the size of Fresno. So that is the impact, and we are really hitting the most vulnerable of those institutions that are coming to our institution. So that's the humanity of this and who we are affecting.

I do. I'll start with comments and thank you for letting us know how this would actually affect in real life. Let me just begin and I'll follow up with some other comments regarding here locally in prioritizing.

But you know, we keep hearing about the Federal Government and the impact that that may or may not have on our institutions here in California. Lot of conversation about the Federal Government in various spaces. But let's bring it back home to California and kind of highlight what we've done here in California during this Administration.

During Newsom's Administration General Fund support for UC and CSU has only grown by $2.7 billion, which is about 35% or just a little higher than the General inflation which is about approximately 26%. In contrast, the non education General Fund budget grew by about 62%.

So the current Administration, Governor Newsom, it appears that there hasn't been much of a public priority for our university system. So we can refer to the Federal Government but we have to talk about what California has done and when we look at these numbers, when we look at, you know, when we compare between these funds and what we've allocated.

As my colleagues had stated about priorities, I think we, and I say we, we're part of the Legislature but also the Department of Finance needs to really consider about where our priorities are because as we move forward, when we look to see, and I have here, I'm also very concerned about the students ability to afford public education, especially at our UC and CSU.

We have right now CSU raising tuition about 6% a year for our students and our UC raising tuition of about 5% a year for each incoming class. So when we take in consideration what we, and I say we part of the Legislature, the Governor Newsom's priorities in allocating funding for these students and looking at what our systems are charging our students to compensate.

And then in a follow up hearing we're going to hear about what this Administration and the Legislature will be doing to allocate funding for our grant system to help students financial and financial aid that's a separate but also I think very relevant to contextualize this funding.

I think we really need to figure out where we're putting the funding and how everything is just being shuffled around in order to help our students. So if we're trying to cut cost in one area, increase it in other to make it up and then having the trying to allocate more funding towards grant funding, is it efficient what we're doing?

And so I just want to highlight some of the concerns that I have because as I'm looking and putting a whole context into what we're doing financially, it's a little messy to say the least. We have to, in my opinion, really try to have conversations as to where do we become more efficient and really implement it.

Is it best that we allocate more funding towards our University so we don't have to worry so much about tuition increases or to ensure that we're not allocating more funding having. Having the need to allocate more funding towards grants because that takes a lot of money also to administer programs.

So as I'm looking at where we're going to put funding, I'm also looking. We can create different departments, but that creates more cost. So do we need to reconsider restructure that the system actually so they become more lenient and more efficient in the way that we're spending these dollars.

Because when we look at, you know, the universities one. Another thing that I would love for you folks to prioritize is that at the very, very bottom, our students are impacted by the class options that they have next our staff, the faculty, because we need those faculty members in order to create those classes in order to graduate the students.

Because it is a loss for all of us when those students have to stay longer in our educational system and the cost impact that that will have in our system. Also inefficient student priority classes, our faculty because we need them to be able and then admin and really lean out or ween out anything.

That is what I call this is my word fluffy essential needs versus fluff needs versus wants. And with the Department of Finance and the LAO and the University really look at the whole system as to are we creating more admin cost or can we actually reallocate the funding to where it's really making an impact in the overall system and prioritize in reassessing whether or not we're going to just increase 35% budget allocation towards a University system versus the non education of what?

62%. So we talk about priorities. This is a whole picture. I'm looking at the whole picture right now. And so as we move forward, just some comments, no questions at this time. But something just ceased to think about as we move forward in what we're doing. Thank you so much. I will have to leave, unfortunately. I hate to leave, but it's not personal.

Put that on the record.

Yes, it's not personal. I really wish I could. If. Wish I could stay for the rest of the hearing but I do look forward to our collaboration and continued conversations in this.

Can I have 30 seconds while you're leaving? Just to say about tuition, we do all we can to manage tuition because we want our students to graduate without debt so they can go out and use their degree.

We want them to graduate and then use their degrees to uplift the quality of life for their families and their communities. Our tuition plan, you mentioned 5%, but it's only for the incoming class. And once it's that level, it stays level for six years. So it's a tuition stability plan. And so a 5% increase actually is a 1.0.

It stays for six years, but you hope they don't necessarily stay for six years.

Well, we want everyone to graduate in four years and we're shortening time to degrees, but we have that time just in case you have that guarantee. But it turns out to be 11/2% increase to the overall level of tuition because it's just for a single class out of the four. Just to mention that nuance.

If I may, I just want to say about tuition. 7 out of 10 of our students do not pay any tuition. The issue in California is cost of living for our students.

And we've put together a group including trustees, faculty and administrators to look at how do we look at state, federal and our own students financial aid system, which is about $760 million, and how do we put that together to help students to look at cost of attendance rather than just tuition. So we hear you, we're on it and we're working on that. So thank you, Senator Ochoa Bogh

Thank you. I'm going to shorten this. Let me just ask two quick questions, although maybe the answers won't be quick on the issue of repatriation of Native American artifacts. With each of your systems, where do we stand right now?

So we are fully committed to repatriating in a respectful and efficient way as quickly as we can, all of the material that we would hold. I wish we could do it yesterday.

And it's, as you know, extraordinarily complicated process because the material, the artifacts, the remains have to be identified and then we have to have the right place for them to go to. And there are thousands and thousands of these remains or artifacts that have been collected over 100 years. So the process is ongoing, it's engaged.

I wish anything we can do, we've invested millions of dollars in trying to speed the process up. And my wish would be that we could do that as quickly as possible. I'm entirely in favor of that.

We are on working very closely to make sure that our campuses have someone in charge of tribal relations on their campus. We've also opened up an office in the chancellor's office who will oversee that this is happening. We are very working very closely with the tribes since we need to get them on our committees.

And we can't continue with the committees until we get them on our committees. So we're on every single one of our recommendations and we are working as quickly as we can. As President Drake said, it is about repatriation and people being ready to accept and to do.

But we've done our inventory and we know what's happening on each and every one of our campuses.

Senator Perez had a follow up question on this.

So I hear you on that. There's a process in place. President Drake and Chancellor Garcia, what can be done to make that process faster and more efficient?

Because I think, you know, in talking with some of these tribes who, you know, this is a very personal issue for them and this is obviously in many cases what is rightfully theirs. What can be done to speed up that process so that we can ensure that we are getting these items back to these tribes where they belong?

Yeah, I'll just say we've invested money. We have a liaison looking that works for us system wide. We have representatives on every campus. The challenge is the time it takes to identify a particular item and then where does that item go?

And the receiving groups are sometimes not agreed on that and then what will be done as the transfer takes place. So we have transferred thousands of items, but it's a painstaking process that just, it takes a long time to make sure we get it, get it right.

So we, it's more, more funding would make it go more quickly. But again, we're spending millions of dollars already. We want it to happen as quickly as we can.

We're spending money as well. In addition to what President Drake says is how do we compile the committees as quickly as possible that has a native voice and that has to go through a process that has to come to us and then we work together.

So we must have the native voice with us as we negotiate, which tribe gets what and how they bring it in and how do they take care of it.

Okay, I'd really like if we had a follow up conversation on this because I know we have other agenda items to, you know, and for us, I mean, even if you have documentation of where you're at in the process with all of these items, what's left to Be like assessed so we can have a clear, a clear tracking of this.

And the one thing I would suggest suggest is there was a rather animated public hearing in front of the Legislature on this I believe last year with both of them present where they walked through this in great detail. And I think that would be helpful.

But your point is the reason I asked the question is just the urgency of getting to the end because we hear about it all the time. And just that before she goes, Senator Ochoa Bogh had a follow-up question on this subject.

Just follow up question on this. Has there been any discussion as to perhaps maybe there could be a cohort of our tribes coming in and taking ownership and having them do the work of identifying and dispersing the materials rather than having the State University continue to keep them and you finding a way to identify and disperse them.

I'm just thinking that there's an urgency for the tribal folks to be able to have access to them. So maybe perhaps a cohort just transferring the work over to them. It might actually be less for of a heartache for the State University to. To do that. So maybe transferring the responsibility over just a discussion. Just. Just a thought.

Let me go back to the staff that's in charge of doing all of this, see if they've already done that and we'll get that information back to you.

Thank you. We'll distribute it to every Committee Member. We appreciate that. And then one last question for the chancellor. Could you update us on the status of Sonoma State and the reductions? You mentioned it in your opening statement. There was overusing this word. There was a rather animated five hour community meeting. And what's the status of where the status?

Status is that there is a Committee putting together a plan forward. President Katria has agreed to stay through December 2025. What they're looking at is the programs that will be of interest to the community and the students. That includes things like health care, which is needed, behavioral sciences, logistics and hospitality to better serve the regional workforce needs.

That Committee is working as we speak and there will be a plan out of the steps forward as we go forward.

Okay, thank you. And then because we're really running behind it, I need to move us along. I'll just make a statement about two other things I was going to ask about. UC Cooperative AG Extension. I met with the Vice President of Agriculture and Natural Resources. Got an update on the number of positions that are filled.

But I understand that the cost of living increase was not put in the budget again. And while I understand the budget issues we have now. It not being in there for 20 years is the reason we did the huge augmentation in 2021. And I just don't want us to fall behind again. That's just a statement.

And secondly, I was going to ask you about the University of California System of Reserves and the funding. And I know that the Hastings Reserve in Monterey County is looking to acquire the 2,500 acres that are from the former San Clemente Dam. And there's issues there.

I know there's over $10 million for 41 reserves, and that seems like it's a stretch. And then for those listening at home, if you wonder why the one slide that is keeping the highway closed on Highway 1 and Big Sur is called the Regent Slide, it's because it goes across the UC Reserve.

So they named the slide after the Regents because of the Reserve being there. But I think I always worry there's adequate support for the that Reserve system, which is an amazing research network that I'm not sure exists the same way with other higher education systems.

With that just last call before we move on because we're running late and we've kept our people here for a while. Then thank you for being here and we will work really closely going forward on.

Thanks. CSU staff will give more detail on this.

I understand the UC and CSU staff is going to give more details on some of the issues we raised. So we will make sure that that is available. Thank you again for being here. We're going to move to item number two, issue number two, which is the higher education student housing program.

And joining Gabriella, Devon, and Jennifer will be Seija Vertanen from the University of California. And Paul, I apologize if I'm messing the name up. Paul Gannoe from the California State University System. They were going to give more detail on.

Okay, then let's go. Department of Finance, Legislative Analyst, University of California, California State System. So who wants to go for the.

Devin Mitchell, Department of Finance. We have nothing to add. Yeah.

Okay, then we'll go with the Legislative Analyst Office.

Just as. Jennifer Pacella, Legislative Analyst Office as context, the state provided UC with 51 million in ongoing General Fund to cover debt service on $727 million worth of projects. That was eight projects, five UC projects standalone, three UC Community College intersegmental projects.

And then the state provided CSU with roughly the same amount, 52 million in ongoing General Fund for debt service. That was for 655 million in projects. That was 12 projects. We just have one comment on this.

As you may recall, the state provided UC and CSU with the ongoing state General Fund appropriation before the universities sold their bonds. And at the time we had expressed some concern that the state funding was being provided before those costs were known and incurred. And so I think you're going to hear a little bit more this morning.

That last Friday UC notified legislative staff that they ended up having some debt service savings. Savings. And they decided to use that for a new student housing project.

But they didn't come before the Legislature and the savings didn't revert to the state first and they didn't ask for approval before they went ahead and did that review and approval of a new project.

So we have requested that UC provide the Legislature with a sheet that would show when they sold the bonds, what the timing was, what the cost was so that the Legislature could know if there are any additional funds that are unspent and how long UC held the money before the monies were spent. But I think now they'll be able to share much more on the updates of each particular project.

Thank you very much. Then we'll go to the University of California.

Good morning, Chair Laird and Senator Perez. I'm Seija Virtanen for the University of California. The University of California views student housing as a key component of an affordable education. By providing students with campus housing, we can ensure that rents remain stable and provide students with an option to the private rental market near the campus.

Providing campus student housing is even more important now with recent rapid increases in private rental market costs. The high cost of construction coupled with limited availability of undeveloped land have made development of Low cost student housing projects a challenge.

Many of our campuses are largely built out with available sites only on the campus perimeter or in the surrounding community. Still, the University has successfully added significant capacity to our student housing Stock in the last decade. Given the complexity of student housing projects, there is no one size fits all to a student housing project.

The University has utilized multiple financing mechanisms to support new student housing projects, including reorganizing auxiliary debt and partnerships with private developers. With P3 projects, President Drake prioritized student housing completion and during the last five years, UC campuses added over 25,000 new student housing beds.

Across our campuses, on average, we currently offer housing to 43% of undergraduates and 28% of graduate students. Right now, there are an additional 5,400 student housing beds under construction that will open by fall of 2026, adding even more capacity for students.

The state's Higher Education Student Housing Grant program helped by providing funding that covered significant portions of the construction cost. The state funds allow for a smaller share of the project cost to be passed on to the students as rent. Through these subsidies, it's possible for campuses to offer student housing beds at a drastically reduced rental rate.

The Student Housing Grant Program bond funding has paid for six projects for the University. One of these at San Diego is already housing students and two more will open this fall at Santa Cruz and Irvine. UCLA project will be completed in fall of 2026. And after some delays, the Berkeley People's park project will open fall of 2027.

I love the way you say after some delays.

Yes, thank you to the Legislature for your help. Yes, thank you to the Legislature's help in helping to resolve some of those issues that we were having. And the UC Davis project that was recently added will open in fall of 2027 as well. Together, these projects will provide over 2,600 affordable student housing beds for UC students.

In addition, in the Budget act of 2024, the state shifted the funding for three community college student housing projects into the UC budget. These projects are underway and the one in Riverside will open this fall and the other two, Merced and Cabrillo, will open in the fall of 2027.

Despite these significant efforts to expand student housing demand far outpaces availability. At the start of Fall 2023 term, UC campuses had over 16,000 students on waitlist for student housing. Additional state support for student housing construction would help in developing more affordable student housing.

One option would be a revolving loan Fund that would make student housing construction funding available for higher education segments in perpetuity. Affordable on campus housing aids in the recruitment and retention of students. It also expands opportunities to fully engage new students in the academic and social life on campus.

The University will continue to prioritize new student housing and we look forward to discussions of how the state can partner with us in these efforts. Thank you for your time.

Thank you very much.

Good morning. Chair Laird and Senator Perez. My name is Paul Gannoe and I'm Assistant Vice Chancellor. So the S is silent. I think the S was a typo, so. Oh, okay, then it should be silent. It should be. I'm easy with the typo. Good.

I'm some Assistant Vice Chancellor of Capital Planning, Design and Construction for the California State University. I'm pleased to be here today to represent the California State University System on the critical initiative that is supporting the success of higher education in our state, the Higher Education Student Housing Grant Program.

As you're aware, affordable and stable housing is essential for student success. Yet many students across California struggle with housing insecurity which impacts their ability to focus on academics and fully engage in their educational experience.

Through the funding provided by the Higher Education Student Housing Grant Program, California State University System has successfully expanded student housing projects across 12 campuses. The initiative will result in the addition of 3700 affordable student housing beds and about 1300 standard rate beds, bringing the total increase to just over 5,000 new beds across the system.

A key factor in achieving this expansion was the CSU's programmatic requirement that participating universities contribute approximately 35% of project costs from their housing programs, which allowed us to maximize the impact of the grant funding the projects. The 12 projects are currently in various stages of design and construction.

Two projects are already occupied, three additional projects are expected to be complete and operational within the year, and the majority of the remaining projects are scheduled to open in 2026, with one project slated for completion in 27.

The availability of affordable on campus housing is a critical factor in fostering positive student outcomes and the projects supported by this program will provide significant benefits to the state.

While some early delays occurred due to supply chain disruptions and the overall constraints of the construction market, the program has been highly successful and the universities that received grant funding had demonstrated strong implementation efforts ensuring the effective development of these housing projects. And thank you and I'm glad to take any questions.

Thank you. I think I'm going to just make a few comments because actually the statements across answered some of the questions I was going to ask. First is that I know my home campus. The University of California at Santa Cruz has sort of made a commitment that they will not admit new students unless there's housing units.

And as much as I have appeared to be a supporter of the University today, when I was mayor in the 1980s, we sued and we sued over not adequate housing being provided. And so I think this is a great program and great progress and the need is still out there.

As was said, I know for community colleges that was the one piece of the two and a half $1.0 billion where some was given back in last year's budget. And yet Gavilan, others I meet with have projects that are ready to go.

And we, given the budget issues, have just basically stopped forward movement trying to implement just what's there. But they're still very much an identified need out there. And the question I was going to ask was answered by the Legislative Analyst.

But I want to give the full context if for nobody else, the Member that was not here when we did this, because when we authorized, I believe it was two and a half $1.0 billion that was supposed to be over three years for the three different segments, the Administration wanted to take it back and due to budget shortfalls and in the end they took the cash back.

But the agree was to bond finance instead so that the projects could move ahead. But the agreement was is the budget would reflect the financing costs for the bond finance. And that's what was mentioned. I was going to ask to make sure it was in the budget. It is.

And, and that is actually making hold the deal that was made at the time that we wouldn't step back from the housing.

But we would do that because if in fact the individual projects had to absorb the bonding costs, they would not pencil out and the cost for students would not be what it was and maybe not affordable.

And so it was very important in keeping the promise for the housing that we keep the promise that the bond financing be in the budget every year so that that doesn't happen. So I just wanted to acknowledge that I appreciate the progress report and I really hope the University of California representatives sort of went by very quickly.

But they are to be complimented for the fact that when the community college part of the button bond financing was sort of stuck for a while, they stepped up for the joint projects that involved UC and community colleges and offered the University of California's bond financing for those projects to be able to move them along.

So I'm just glad everything is still moving in the midst of all the budget craziness and hope we hold to the bond financing amount and hope that someday the sun shines and we can move further forward with the housing that we need to provide at the different campuses. Are there any questions or comments from the remaining Members of the Subcommitee?

Well, one, I just want to acknowledge just how important this is you know, as was mentioned earlier, I think one of the biggest costs that our students face when choosing to attend a University is no longer navigating tuition costs. It is housing. You know, rents have skyrocketed, they are out of control, rents are too damn high.

And that impacts our students too. And you know, as I talk to students, whether it be at UC Berkeley or UCLA or UC Santa Cruz, wherever they might be placed across the state, including our CSU systems, it is harder and harder to find housing.

And being able to afford housing that's nearby, that's on campus just provides so many benefits. So I'm really happy to just see the multitude of investments that have been made across the CSU and the UC.

I've started visiting campuses, I've not gone through all of them, given that I was just elected, but just started visiting campuses and seen some of the construction that is happening across the systems. And it's exciting to see.

And you know, my hope is that this leads to further increases in enrollment, both of incoming first-time freshmen, but also of transfer students that we know are so eager to move on to four year institutions. So I really see this as a key component to the affordability issues that so many of our students are facing. And just, you know, happy to see that these, you know, that we have so much that we're investing in already that's on the docket.

So thank you very much. We appreciate your comments and thank you for being here today. We appreciate the reports and if there is any dramatic change in status, please let the Subcommitee know because we will have a great interest, especially leading up to the may revise and the following final budget.

So thank you for, for being here today. We're going to move to issue number three, which is the Underground Scholars and Project Rebound Update. There are three people that don't have to switch out here. Well, actually are four. And then we'll add Ray Murillo from the California State University System.

And we just wanted to do oversight and update on this item. I don't know if there are any.

Gabriella Chavez, Department of Finance. No comment.

Okay. And I don't know if the Legislative Analyst has any.

There are no new budget proposals for either of these particular programs. We did review a Governor's Budget proposal on Rising Scholars, which is a similar community college program that you'll hear about later. I also just wanted to spend a second or a minute to remind you.

We released a report last year that looked at community college programs inside of state prisons and we identified that the state was missing an opportunity to draw down public grant funding. The way it would work is the college would charge for the Pell charge for the costs of instruction, textbooks, computers.

The Pell Grant funding would reimburse the college for those costs. The student would still incur no out of pocket costs. There are CDCR reports that there are six universities in California, five CSUs and one UC who currently are pulling down Pell Grant in that way. So it remains an option for you to consider for the colleges in a different venue.

Thank you, we appreciate that. University of California any comments?

Thank you Chair Lardam, Senator Perez, I'm Seija Virtanen for the University of California. I apologize that our speaker Eric Heng was unable to travel to Sacramento today. I know you were looking for a program expert and I am.

I recognize an inadequate substitute, but I will hope to provide you with a statement of what the program has achieved to date and we can set up individual briefings with campus experts.

We can bring somebody over when we don't have travel issues so the budget act of 2022 allocated $4 million for the underground Scholars Program as an ongoing state General Fund allocation. This was to sustain the Underground Scholars programs across all nine undergraduates serving UC campuses.

These programs serve as a centralized hub for incarcerated, formerly incarcerated, and carceral system impacted students. They embody the campus's commitment to educational equity and social justice. The entire $4 million was provided to UC campuses for programming.

In distributing the state appropriation to campuses, each campus received a base allocation of $250,000 with the remaining funding provided based on the number of undergraduate at each campus. For instance, UC Berkeley, with 14% of the undergraduate population, received a total of $492,000, while UC Merced, comprising 4% of undergraduates, received 313,000.

These funds have been instrumental in establishing dedicated support services tailored to the unique needs of the University's carceral system impacted students. Later this year, we will begin revisiting the allocations by location to incorporate updated data on enrollment, student participation and outcomes. We will continue to revise these allocations on a three year cycle.

In addition to the state funding, campuses have secured support from various sources, including campus funds, grants, private donations. To enhance the sustainability and reach of these programs. Underground Scholars programs are actively identifying and engaging students through self identification, referrals from community agencies and campus partners, and in some cases students through financial aid and admissions data.

Campuses employ a variety of outreach methods including newsletters, social media, information sessions, and partnerships with local community colleges. As a result, these programs have successfully engaged a diverse group of students across the system. Underground Scholars programs have been instrumental in recruiting, retaining and advocating for carceral system impacted students.

Each campus has tailored itself services to meet a unique needs of its student population, offering a range of retention and support services including professional development workshops, academic advising, transcript analysis, alumni network connections, conference participation, support, community meeting spaces, basic needs support, social events, fellowship opportunities and student employment opportunities.

The ongoing state funding has been pivotal in establishing and enhancing support services for incarcerated, formerly incarcerated and carceral system impacted students. Students across the UC campuses. Campuses have thoroughly implemented their plans, expanding necessary support, programming, engagement opportunities that have proven impactful.

As we move forward, these programs will continue to evolve, ensuring that all students have the resources and supports they need to succeed in their academic and personal endeavors. Thank you, thank you and welcome.

Good afternoon Chair and Senator. My name is Ray Murillo. I'm the Interim Assistant Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs, Equity and Belonging for the California State University as Background Project Rebound was founded in 1967 by John Irwin at San Francisco State University and has really expanded tremendously over the with the commitment from the student state legislators funding base on here.

Its purpose is to provide formerly incarcerated individuals to access higher education and help them successfully integrate or reintegrate into society. The program offers support through early outreach, transitional support, academic advising, mentoring, financial assistance, and a warm handoff and referrals to on-campus services and off-campus community agencies and community-building activities.

The CSU's Project Rebound campus programs continue to focus on the following five key objectives fostering a college-going culture and building recruitment pathways for currently and formerly incarcerated people Helping prospective students prepare, apply, and matriculate into the CSU Supporting enrolled students to persist in graduate Supporting enrolled students to take part in student life, leadership, community service, and civic engagement.

Lastly, it is also establishing and fostering empowering networks among Project Rebound alumni and students. The program has grown to a statewide initiative under the California State University with a critical budget allocation from the Legislator, currently at $11.2 million as of 23-24 academic year, Project Rebound has expanded to 19 CSU campuses.

Originally we started with eight campuses in 2016 and for 2425 this current year we've also expanded to another campus, Sonoma State, which brings us up to 20 out of our 23 campuses. The program served 1,522 students in the 2324 academic year.

Since receiving the consistent state funding beginning in 2019, the program has seen substantial increase in the enrollment and support services. Enrollment went from 219 students in 2016-17 to as I noted to 1522. In 23-24.

In 2324, the program saw a record high in student participation, demonstrating its success in both expanding access to higher education and fostering long term academic achievement. Most notable, Project Rebound has a 0.4 recidivism rate as compared to the California at 42%. In addition, feedback from students and staff indicate positive outcomes in retention and academic achievement.

At several campuses, retention and persistence are high being over 90% with many students persisting into graduate programs. Programs have reported 44 to 52% of their students enter graduate programs. The graduation rates range from 63% to 88%. The programs have a strong community and legal support networks and opportunities for career development.

Programs begin outreach practices in juvenile system encouraging people to pursue higher education. And in addition, the recruitment efforts also include the rising scholars at the community colleges.

One opportunity that we're working on is a growth opportunity or development opportunity is in fact looking and strengthening our centralized data collection so we can continue to measure the success of the students in the programs. The CSU is encouraged by these positive impacts of Project Rebound programs and are having that they're having on our students.

This concludes my report. Happy to take any questions or provide feedback at the appropriate time.

I'll just make a comment which is thank you for being here and thank you for the reports. You both referred to the $4 million and the 11.2 or 3 depending on how we round on the two items. That is flat funding.

But I think I wanted to make sure that we highlighted the impacts of that funding, that it's here we get questions about it and this was just very helpful and you know, we will want to support this going forward. Are there any comments or questions? Yes.

Senator Perez, appreciate the presentation. The Underground Scholars Program as well as Project Rebound are both incredible programs. I've had the pleasure of working with students that have gone through both of these programs, partnering with them to produce research and reports and previous work that I've done.

And you know, if anything, I'm interested in seeing how we continue to build upon the good work that you all are leading.

You know, as we think about the importance of public safety and reducing recidivism, we know programs like this are really effective with preventing crimes from being repeated again and you know, helping to give people opportunity and hope and get them into good paying careers and jobs, it can just completely transform somebody's lives.

So I, I really appreciate what you all have been doing for many years already and you know, look forward to seeing how we can continue to expand the good work that's already happening.

Thank you. Appreciate your comments very much and thank you for being here today for this item. We really appreciate it and we will just have our eyes on this going forward.

Do you have an additional comment?

Thank you, Chair Laird. I just wanted to also point out that the University of California has the LIFTED Program at UC Irvine that works directly in prison facilities to provide college education. That is on one time funds so that that program will unfortunately be expiring.

I'm sorry to hear that, but I'm sure the former chancellor of UC Irvine, like, wanted you to make that comment. We'll move to item number four, which is the enrollment issue for the California State University System. We're going to still have Devin Mitchell here from the Department of Finance. We'll have Natalie Gomez... Gonzalez, excuse me, from the Legislative Analyst Office, and April Grommo from the California State University System. We'll begin with any comments from the Department of Finance.

Devin Mitchell again, here to answer any questions, but no kind of presentation for the committee.

Thank you. Anything from the Legislative Analyst Office? It should work if you start talking in to it. Let's see.

Hi. Thank you, Mr. Chair and Senator. Natalie Gonzalez with the Legislative Analyst Office. I do have some comments to make, but first I'm just going to provide a little bit of background on CSU's enrollment. As you can see on page 14 of your agenda, CSU's total resident enrollment was generally trending upward from 2014-15 through 2020-2021.

CSU then experienced some notable declines in its resident enrollment the following two years, but enrollment has since increased in 23-24 and is expected to further increase in 24-25. Despite CSU's enrollment being below its 2020-2021 peak, CSU reports that it is exceeding the state enrollment expectation for 24-25 set forth in the 24-25 Budget Act.

Specifically, the 2024-25 Budget Act directed CSU to increase resident undergraduate enrollment by approximately 6,000 full time equivalent, or FTE, students. CSU reports that it will exceed this expectation, growing by approximately 9,000 resident undergraduate FTE students in 24-25. The 25-26 budget plan includes enrollment expectations for CSU as well.

Specifically, CSU is expected to grow its resident undergraduate enrollment by approximately 10,000 FTE students in 25-26 and by another approximate 10,000 FTE students in 26-27. We recommend the Legislature hold CSU's resident undergraduate enrollment expectation for 25-26 flat at CSU's projected 24-25 enrollment level.

We recommend holding resident undergraduate enrollment expectations flat given the budget plan as discussed does not provide CSU with additional state General Fund support in 25-26. Therefore if CSU were directed to enroll more students in 25-26 with the absence of associated funding, it could possibly need to make further budget adjustments, including additional spending reductions that could impact students. CSU's 26-27 resident undergraduate enrollment target should also be revisited if the state's projected fiscal condition does not improve. Thank you, and happy to take any questions.

Thank you. Appreciate your comments. California State University System. Welcome.

Good afternoon, Chair Laird and Senator Perez. Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today. I'm April Grommo, the assistant vice chancellor for strategic enrollment management. Despite significant budget challenges, ongoing debates about the value of a college degree, and growing competition from out of state institutions for California state students, the CSU Chancellor's Office and our 23 universities remain committed to demonstrating the impact of a CSU degree on students' future success. We continue to innovate, expand programs, and enhance services to support student achievement.

I would like to share a few key examples of our efforts. Last fall, the CSU partnered with the Riverside County Office of Education to launch California's first ever direct admissions program. As part of this initiative, we sent mailers to over 17,000 students, notifying them of their immediate conditional admission to one of our ten participating CSU campuses before they even applied. This proactive approach significantly reduces student anxiety by reassuring them that they have already met the admissions requirements.

Building on this success, we are expanding our outreach statewide through our partnership with the California College Guidance Initiative. Starting this fall, we will start communications to 9th through 12th graders, including direct admissions offers to eligible 12th grade students.

The CSU is collaborating with the California Community Colleges and high school counselors to ensure that students beginning their education at a community college are aware of their eligibility for the Transfer Success Pathway Program, the CSU's dual admission initiative. Early indicators of success are promising, with several hundred students already applying for admission at a CSU campus.

Additionally, we have launched the CSU Transfer Planner, a tool designed to help community college students map out their transfer pathway while enabling us to engage with them earlier in their transfer journey. To date, over 32,000 students have created accounts, demonstrating strong interest.

Although the CSU does not receive funding for dual enrollment, our universities recognize the importance of providing these opportunities. In spring 2024, over 3,700 high school students enrolled in courses at a CSU. With external grant funding, Cal State San Marcos has launched a program focused on public health and human development with a concentration in counseling.

This program equips high school students with the qualifications to earn a Community Health Education Specialist certificate, preparing them for careers as community health educators. Additionally, students in this program can complete their degree in as little as three years, providing an accelerated pathway to the workforce.

The CSU empowers students, families, and communities to thrive, and we have made significant strides in our enrollment. However, budget cuts to the CSU could jeopardize this progress. Thank you once again, and I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you very much, all three of you. And I have to say that enrollment was a major piece of our very first panel, and a lot of the things that you just commented on were reflected on that. I really appreciate the Legislative Analyst comments because it made the point we were all trying to make in the first issue, which is if the proposed budget is enacted, then there will be fallout all the way through the enrollment issues and that we will have... Obviously, as I said at the beginning, I want to reverse that.

But if we were, for any reason, unsuccessful in a piece of it, then we will want to have the conversation about the impacts on enrollment in a way that make it fit together. My one question is for the CSU representative, and the chancellor brushed by very quickly.

The 2025 initiative, which was designed to get people to finish in shorter times to be able to create enrollment slots. Where is that right now? And even though you've reached the date that was the goal of the program, what's your initiative or goals going forward with that?

The CSU is coming to a close and finishing strong with Graduation Initiative 2025. We have had a year long engagement with the CSU community, both internally and externally, to to talk about our new definition of student success. The CSU has significantly increased our four year graduation rates, and we hope to meet the goals that were set out in the Graduation Initiative 2025. And we still are moving forward with trying to decrease equity gaps in our graduation rates.

Okay. And if we had more time, I would drill down much more on the diversity of some of the new enrollment. And I know there have been issues, and I have had great conversations with the president of Cal Poly about the African American enrollment there, and in some of the issues, but that just always remains a concern here. Are there any questions or comments on this?

Yeah, a number of things. You know, as I shared earlier, being a product of the CSU system and directly understanding the value of a CSU degree, your institution is one that's incredibly important to me. And so this funding, you know, discussions that we had earlier is something that's very much top of mind for me.

But these enrollment issues are as well. And making sure that we're seeing those numbers go up. I love what you just shared about making those conditional offers to students. I'd love to know which 10 campuses those were that participated as a part of those programs. That's excellent. And I think it's having those kinds of robust partnerships with our local school districts that will help with increasing the number of students that we're seeing go into the CSU system.

But there's also another pathway that I see for us increasing enrollment, and that is through the associate degree for transfer that's been in existence and making sure that we have more transfer students that are coming in from the community college and enrolling into the CSU. These are students that are primarily black and brown. If they've completed an ADT, then they've probably completed the minimum amount of requirements that they need to be eligible to your institutions.

And you know, what better students to have that have already completed a large chunk of their coursework and that are on their pathway just need two more years in order to achieve, you know, their baccalaureate degree. So, you know, I'd love to hear what you all have done to further enhance those partnerships that you have with some of your CSU institutions.

I'll tell you, just based off of work that I've done previously, some of the campuses that you have listed here that have their funding up, such as, you know, CSUN, Cal State Long Beach, or Cal State Fullerton, have very strong partnerships with their local community colleges. They have very strong partnerships with their local school districts.

And so I think really building on some of those relationships and creating that kind of seamless pathway so that students know if I get my ADT, I'm going to get to go to the CSU system. And I could do that going through the community college system and save money.

And there's a spot for me guaranteed when I get to that institution. I know that, you know, we are time limited here. And what Senator Laird just mentioned in regards to the 2025 Initiative is something that's of great interest to me as well. And seeing how we came out of that process.

I think you began the 2025 Initiative shortly after I graduated. And so now we're at the end of this process. And I would love to take a look at what those numbers look like overall in terms of us getting, we say six year graduation rates and folks should really be graduating in four.

But seeing what those graduation rates looked like and seeing that data disaggregated by race and, you know, seeing where we have room for improvement. If we have more students that are utilizing their ADT if you're enrolling more students that are on that guaranteed transfer pathway.

You know, as I mentioned before, so many of those community college students are students of color. They are those black and brown students that we want to see higher numbers for. So I would think that that's a ripe opportunity for us to see some of those numbers increase.

So would love to again hear about those 10 campuses that you utilized for this partnership that you did with those high school seniors that were graduating and also hear about what you all are doing to further build out some of those partnerships that you have with local community colleges.

Oh, and one other point before I forget. I did notice, and we just talked about housing in the last discussion. That, you know, there's a correlation, I imagine, between campuses that are seeing a dip in enrollment and also housing. Right. I mean, it looks like San Francisco had the largest drop in enrollment. And I imagine that... Well, I know, I don't imagine. I know that it is incredibly expensive to live in the City of San Francisco, period. It looks like there is one, and this is incredibly tiny text here. It looks like there is one campus project for housing at San Francisco State.

So just how are you all being intentional about the fact that it is external cost, it is cost of living that are really driving those expenses for students and ultimately impacting their decision as to whether or not they're going to be attending your campus? Obviously, financial aid plays a huge component of that, but you all as institutions can take that into account as well in helping to meet some of those basic needs for students.

So you asked me a number of questions, so I'm going to start at the top. For the direct admissions program, we are working with Riverside County, and so we are working with the two local campuses to Riverside, Cal State San Bernardino and Cal State San Marcos.

And then the other eight campuses that are in the program are those that have seen sustained enrollment declines. So Maritime, Chico, East Bay, Cal Poly Humboldt, San Francisco State, Monterey Bay, and Sonoma State, and CSU Channel Islands are the other eight campuses participating in the program for direct admissions.

So we are still early in the process, but we have seen an increase of 22% in admissions applications year over year from Riverside County. And we are working with Riverside County actually this week to do what we're calling Discover CSU Days.

One is happening right now as we speak at the Riverside Convention Center where they are bringing the students to an event to hear from alumni and students and also learn more about the 10 CSU campuses. If you look at direct admissions programs around the country.

One of the things that we see is that it does increase enrollment a little bit, but for underserved students, it doesn't move the needle. So we are trying to be more intentional around programming for this pilot. But of course, there's a scalability question as far as partnerships go, most of our CSU campuses partner with their local school districts. The CSUs are also regionally serving institutions. So all of our CSUs have what we call local admission areas, if they are impacted, which are only five of our campuses, and then local service areas. And in those service areas, our campuses do outreach.

They do presentations about admissions, they do financial aid nights at high schools, so they're providing services within their region. They're also signing a number of MOUs and guaranteed admissions programs for their local students. As far as the ADT program goes, the Transfer Success Pathway Program. The ADT is one of three pathways that students can take to the CSU. So they can also transfer as what we call a lower division transfer or an upper division transfer, which also includes if they have an AA degree.

One of the challenges with the ADT program is only about 50% of students that receive an ADT actually apply to the same pathway at the CSU. So they may have an ADT in communications, but then apply to a business program. So then they don't have that two year guarantee to move through the bachelor's degree.

So that is something that we are trying to partner with the community colleges on to make sure that we are advising students earlier what their pathways and options are. And that's also why we have created and invested significantly in the Transfer Planner. Because up until recently, we didn't know who those students were until they applied to us.

And it's too late by then. They've already had units. They've been at the community colleges for a significant amount of time. Some of them have already used all of their financial aid because they only get four years of Cal Grant and six years of Pell Grant.

And so the Transfer Planner allows us to work with those students as well as the Transfer Success Pathway Program at the beginning of the process. As far as the GIR graduation numbers, we can share with you. They were recently announced at our Board of Trustees meeting. So we can give you that written item. It does break down all the numbers of graduation by race and ethnicity. I don't have those numbers with me, but we're happy to...

If you get it to the committee, we'll make sure all the committee members have it.

And then as far as, Chancellor Garcia mentioned a little bit about financial aid. The CSU has very limited resources from a financial aid perspective. We have one institutional aid program. The rest of financial aid comes from federal aid and state aid.

So we are trying, as part of our tuition increase that went into place, one third of that money is going to increase our, what we call our State University Grant or Institutional Aid Grant. And we are looking at how we could potentially use some of that funding for cost of living allowances.

The other piece is that Cal Grant reform, our students currently that get Cal Grant B also get $1,648 in what we call an Access Award. Under Cal Grant reform, our students will not receive that funding. So we also need to figure out how to replace that funding for our CSU students.

And let me say that a week from this moment, we will be sitting in this room having a complete hearing on student aid. And so whether it's the framework or other things, we will be talking about that next week. We appreciate the comment on the unique CSU program that we wouldn't be hearing next week. Did that complete your questions?

I think so. The one other piece that I had brought up was just in regards to the housing. And understanding that so much of a student's choice as to whether or not they're going to be attending a campus now is, you know, is going to be taking into account some of those housing costs.

And if that is kind of part of the assessment that you all are making as you're, as you're looking at, you know, enrollment declines at these different campuses, like how to better provide affordable housing, particularly for those students. Right? Because I think it helps with them ultimately making the decision to attend one of your campuses.

And then I, I hear you on, you know, there are partnerships or there should, there should be strong partnerships, right, with every, between every institution and community college. It just, even in looking at these numbers, you know, I wonder if, if there's maybe something to be learned from, for example, you know, Fullerton, you know, Northridge, I think we've continued to see, you know, their enrollment steadily increase over time over the last several years. They're doing something right.

And I've noticed that CSU, Northridge in particular, in meeting with them and talking with them in the past, several years ago, that they enroll quite a large number of ADT students, of transfer students. They have very strong partnerships with their community colleges.

And it's not simply, you know, every now and then we visit on their campus, but they actively work together. You know, their transfer centers are coming in and partnering with staff members at CSUN, you know, to coordinate services, to communicate with one another, if there's documents missing, to make that process as seamless as possible for students. And so I wonder if there are things that can be learned from success cases like Fullerton, success cases like CSUN. There's a reason their enrollment's increasing, and they offer fabulous programs, but so do so many of these other institutions too.

One thing to remember is that two thirds of the State of California population is in Southern California and that is where we are seeing the most demand from an enrollment perspective. As far as housing goes at some of our Northern California under-enrolled campuses, they have housing sitting empty.

So they are trying to make sure that students are aware that they have housing available. But the cost of student housing really is also close to market value in some cases. There's not as much affect affordable student housing since the last couple of years with the initiatives that have moved forward. So the population that we serve today is very debt adverse. They are looking at the cost and they know that if they stay home, and that happens to be in Southern California for a lot of students, it's going to cost them less to go to school.

So it is something that we are definitely looking at in our financial aid strategic workplace group is how we can address more of the cost above tuition to help support students. I will also say, I know you're going to talk about financial aid next week, but the Middle Class Scholarship... Yes, the Middle Class Scholarship has helped significantly in those costs for our students.

And that is a major proposed cut and will be a highlight of our hearing next week.

You Good? Great. Thank you. Thank you very much. Because we know you had to wait for this, so. Well, Devin didn't. He's just been here all along. So thank you very much. We're going to move to issue number five, which is the Capital Fellows Program. Devin will be here again and Natalie Gonzalez will be here again.

We'll be joined by Leonor Ehling, a former Budget Committee employee who has been dying to return to testify in front of a Budget Committee from the Center for California Studies at Sacramento State. And the issue here has been that there's a proposed increase for the Fellows.

We just wanted to make sure that we heard it and called it out. So we'll just ask in that order. Are there any comments from the Department of Finance?

Yes, Good afternoon. I think I can say now. So the budget includes approximately 1.3 million ongoing General Fund to support a salary. Increase for the Capital Fellows who are. Employed through the CSU Center for California Studies. These funds would allow Fellows salaries to. Increase from the current level of $3,253. Per month to $4,888 per month.

The center has indicated the current level of compensation is an obstacle in recruiting and retaining Fellows in the four programs across state government. Thank you.

Thank you, Legislative Analyst.

Hi. Thank you. Natalie Gonzalez with the Legislative Analyst Office. I'm going to first start with just a little bit of background. Apart from CSU's main state General Fund appropriation, the state separately funds CSU Center for California Studies. One of the main programs administered by the center is its Capital Fellows program.

The program consists of four fellowship opportunities, the Assembly, Senate, Executive, and Judicial Fellowships. These are all 10 to 11-month fellowship programs with the goal of training young professionals interested in a career in public service, specifically in state government. Fellows receive paid full-time employment with a monthly salary, as the Department of Finance mentioned, of $3,253.

Most fellows are required to be based in Sacramento, except for Judicial Fellows that are placed at Superior Courts across the state. As mentioned, the Governor's Budget includes a $1.3 million ongoing General Fund augmentation for the Capital's Fellows Program, which equates to a 50% salary increase.

The center indicated that the 50% salary increase was needed due to two reasons. First, due to a new federal regulation that increased the salary threshold for employees to be considered salary-salaried employees. However, this regulation was vacated at the end of 2024.

Nonetheless, the center has shared with us that a salary increase is still warranted to help Fellows afford rising costs of Living as well as keep the program competitive with similar programs in the state. We recommend the Legislature approve a 10% salary increase for Capital Fellows and two main factors underlie our recommendation.

First, the center has shared with us that some applicants turned down the Fellowship. Given its current salary level. It is difficult to compare Capital Fellows to other Fellowships given different work requirements, different educational requirements, and possibly located in different city or state.

However, when looking at the programs that the center has shared with us are the biggest competitors to Capital Fellows. Capital Fellows salaries are lower. Secondly, to raise salaries for Fellows, the Center must submit a budget request. As a result, salaries are not adjusted annually for inflation. The last time salaries were increased was in 2022-23.

We evaluated what the salary level would be today if adjusted for inflation and we calculated about a 6% increase. Yet we recommend a slight.

I think the analysis is in inverse proportion to the amount of dollar amount that is available here. So if you could start to wrap up. I really appreciate the analysis.

Yes, thank you. So I'll just end by saying we recommend a 6% increase slightly or sorry, a 10% slightly higher than inflation to keep the program competitive. Thank you.

Thank you. We appreciate your comments.

Leonora Ehling with the Center for California Studies. I'll just add that we understand our mission is to recruit individuals, very talented individuals who represent the diversity of the state, racial, ethnic, geographic, life experience diversity. And it's difficult to do that at the current level, which equates to about $18.77 an hour.

So I have those figures on diversity if you're interested. But thank you very much. Thank you. Support for an increase.

I would just say that as somebody that has on his staff a current fellow and former Fellows, it's one of the rare times I've been lobbied by my staff and I think they are really feeling the inability of the salaries keeping up to what the the cost of living is. Any questions or comments?

And I appreciate the analysis, but I support the General recommendation that's in the budget and hope we get there. Thank you very much and thank you for waiting through. We're going to move to our last issue, UC enrollment and we will have Gabriela Chavez back. Ian Klein from the Legislative Analyst Office from the University of California.

So welcome and in a couple of cases. Welcome back. Let's go. In the order of Department of Finance, Legislative Analyst and University of California Gabriela Chavez.

Department of Finance Good afternoon, Chair Laird, Senator Perez Gabriela Chavez with the Department of Finance. The Governor's Budget maintains the multi-year compact with the University of California in Exchange for clear commitments to expand student access, equity, and affordability and to create pathways to high demand career opportunities.

The Governor's Budget reflects the four year of the multi-year Compact with the University of California. UC will receive $240.8 million in ongoing General Fund support. The payment of the 2526 compact amount has been effectively deferred to 2027-28 in alignment with the language that was included in the 2024 Budget Act.

The budget also maintains the Plan 25-26 deferral of $31 million to offset revenue reductions associated with the replacement of 902 non-resident undergraduate students enrolled at the University of Berkeley, UCLA, and UC San Diego with an equivalent number of California residents.

The Budget maintains efficiency reductions included in the 24 Budget act intended to address ongoing statewide budget pressures. As a result, University of California should continue planning for a reduction of 7.95% in ongoing General Fund support totaling approximately 396.6 million beginning in the 25-26 fiscal year.

Lastly, I would just like to point out a drafting error in our budget Bill language pertaining to the non resident enrollment. We will work with the Legislature in UC to address the drafting error and happy to answer any questions.

Thank you. Legislative Analyst Office.

Good afternoon Chair Laird and Senator Perez Ian Klein with the LAO to provide some background. The 24-25 Budget act set resident undergraduate enrollment growth targets for UC for 25-26 and and 26-27. The state budget plan this year maintains those growth expectations. Specifically, UC is expected to grow its resident undergraduate enrollment to 209,535,000 students in 25-26.

UC indicates it will likely exceed this target. Anticipating that resident undergraduate enrollment will reach over 211,000 students for that year. UC is planning to apply the excess growth to the following year's growth target in 26-27. UC is then expected to grow to 212,503 resident undergraduates.

This growth would be inclusive of nonresident students being replaced with resident students at three high-demand campuses. Over the past several years, the state has acted to reduce the number of nonresident undergraduate students at three campuses, Berkeley, Los Angeles, and San Diego such that more slots would be available for resident students.

The state budget plan this year identifies that these campuses are to continue reducing these students that would be 902 full-time equivalent students in 25-26 and once again 902 students in 26-27. UC also indicates that it expects to achieve the 25-26 replacement target as you heard in the first panel.

The state budget plan does not provide UC with a base augmentation in 25-26 to support resident enrollment growth, nor will there be nonresident replacement funding in 25-26 under the state budget plan. Funding for this purpose was deferred to 27-28.

As you just heard, despite funding not being provided for these purposes in 25-26, the state budget plan maintains the resident undergraduate growth targets and the nonresident reduction targets. Given the projected deficits, future funding will likely not be available to continue to support enrollment growth and to replace nonresident students.

With this context, we have the following recommendations. First, we recommend the Legislature Revisit the 26-27 resident undergraduate enrollment target with 25-26 admissions decisions already being made. Modifying the 25-26 level at this point would have little impact and as previously mentioned, UC already has indicated that they are likely to exceed that target.

The Legislature can still influence the 26-27 enrollment level. With this in mind, the Legislature could consider a couple of options. First, the Legislature could hold UC's resident enrollment flat at the 25-26 level, understanding that UC would likely continue implementing cost-saving measures that you heard about earlier, larger class sizes, fewer course offerings, and so forth.

Alternatively, the Legislature could lower UC's resident enrollment level to one deemed appropriate given UC's core funding. Second, we recommend that the Legislature pause the nonresident replacement plan for 26-27 similar to what you just heard for resident enrollment 25-26 admissions decisions have already been made and the Legislature has a greater ability to impact 26-27 levels in light of the state's projected deficit.

We recommend that the Legislature pause the expectation that UC continue to replace 902 nonresident students with resident students in 26-27. The Legislature could revisit this plan if the state's fiscal condition improves.

And finally, we recommend that the Legislature adopt provisional budget language that directs UC to maintain the existing progress that campuses already have made, replacing non resident students with resident students at its high demand campuses.

Specifically, the provisional language would stipulate that campuses exceeding the 18% non resident undergraduate threshold shall not increase the percentage of non resident students above their 2425 levels. Adopting this language would ensure that these campuses do not undo the progress that has been made over the past three years. With that, I'll conclude my comments and I'm happy to answer questions.

Thank you very much. We'll move to the University of California.

Thank you, Chair Laird and Senator Perez. I'm Seija Virtanen for the University of California the University has made significant progress in increasing the student access to our campuses since the Compact was signed in the spring of 2022.

Under the Compact multi-year funding Agreement, the University would receive 5% ongoing State General Fund based budget increases and as part of the Compact, the University also agreed to prioritize advancement of student-focused shared goals between the 2023 between 2022-23 and 2026-27 years.

These goals included increasing California undergraduate enrollment by 1% annually and replacing nonresident students at UC Berkeley, UCLA, and UC San Diego. The University has met the undergraduate enrollment goals that were set forth in the Compact and articulated by the Legislature and the budget bills.

In Fall of 2024, the University had record-breaking California undergraduate enrollment at 60,644 students. The proportion of students from underrepresented groups and transfer students increased with this incoming class. While the full-time equivalent student number is not yet final, we estimate that we will see a 6209 FTE California undergraduate growth in 2024-25.

This level of enrollment growth is significant enough to meet our Compact goal of growing California undergraduate students by 1% for not only 2024-25 but for 2025-26 as well. The University of California will increase enrollment further for Fall of 2025 in order to provide opportunity and access for California students.

Even though we have already met the California undergraduate enrollment goal for this coming fall, UC campuses intend to grow by an additional 1,500 students. For fall of 2025. The University continued to decrease nonresident undergraduate students at Berkeley, UCLA, and San Diego and will replace them and replace them with California undergraduates.

We have now done this successfully for all three years of the Compact. In fact, the three campuses have replaced more non residents each year than required by the Legislature. The University requests that the Senate approve budget Bill Language to allow UC to count those additional replaced students toward a future year target.

In addition, there was an inadvertent addition of budget Bill language that I've been assured by finance will be reconsidered.

But since it's problematic for the University, I need to articulate our objections, our concerns and request that the Legislature reject the budget Bill Language that will remove all of the non resident replacement funding from the three campuses if they fall even one student short of the 902 student FTE replacement goal.

I will just stipulate that that's what the error in drafting says and you oppose that.

I We we agreed to speak and we would like to have it.

It was not clarified. It just said that it was a drafting error. Yes. Fix it. And I was going to do what you just did.

Yeah.

Which is clarify that if you get one under the drafting error, you get one or two below the 902, you lose the whole 31 million. That shouldn't be. I'll just stipulate you oppose that and take them at their word that they'll fix it and I will be the enforcer.

Thank you, sir.

They have to do it.

Thank you, sir. Let's see. The University continued growth in California students reinforces our dedication to expanding student access and fulfilling the compact with the Governor and the Legislature to grow in state enrollment. However, the University cannot afford to keep increasing enrollment with less funding.

The Governor's Budget proposes to defer the compact funding from 2025-26 to 2026 to 27. The Governor's Budget also proposes to cut the University's ongoing General Fund budget by 8%. This proposed cut will make increasing enrollment unaffordable.

If the state cuts the University by 8%, we will be forced to consider decreasing enrollment for the fall 2026 admission cycle. The University requests that the Legislature reject the governor's proposal to cut the UC budget by 8%. The 8% cut is calculated from the entire University of California State General Fund appropriation and is a 396% cut. Just trust me.

We talked about this in the first item. We're good.

Oh, yes, but we're good. Can I point out something about how so?

I wanted to let the Committee know that because the University of California has old GEO bonds and lease revenue bonds and current AB94 bonds in our budget currently accounting for $637 million of our annual state General Fund appropriation, that really pushes down onto the campus budgets, the 300.

What you're really saying is there's a certain percentage of bonded indebtedness in the UC budget and if the budget shrinks, the percent of bonded indebtedness against the total budget will go up. And that's untenable. Is that what you're saying?

That's what I'm saying. I'm also saying that it makes the actual cut on campus operating budgets greater. So while it sounds like it's an 8% cut on our campus budgets, it's actually an 11% cut when you account for the bonds and the legislative earmarks that we cannot reduce.

And you're not taking into account increased salaries and inflation, which factors into that too. That's correct. But I'm not giving Your statement. You're giving your statement.

Thank you, sir. I will, I will skip ahead to make certain you don't have to listen to that a second time. But like I was saying, it really becomes an 11% cut on our campuses, which means that there will have to be very difficult decisions made on services to students.

And our campuses can't absorb a cut of this magnitude. We have about $155 million in unallocated reserves on our campuses. So $396 million, it's not absorbable. We have to make some difficult decisions. Also during the compact period, we've seen the increase in Enrollment has cost us about $222 million.

So the cut of this magnitude eliminates those funds for all those students that we've enrolled newly since the start of the compact. Something to consider on the impact to enrollment and students.

I also wanted to briefly mention that we are requesting, our regents are requesting 4.3 million for three new health equity programs modeled after the successful prime program. And these programs would increase enrollment in programs of dentistry, pharmacy, and veterinary medicine while training students to work with underserved populations. Thank you for your time and available for questions.

Thank you. Appreciate all three of your comments. And I would make two comments. First, I appreciate the, the correction on the budget Bill Language. But secondly, I would just note that it was a hard fought agreement to at the three campuses mentioned lower the number of out of state students to provide more slots for in state students.

That was over multi years. And I don't know if I'm being impolite by saying UC was dragged kicking and screaming to agree to it. But the very witness sat in the chair here and said one of the reasons they had real doubts about making that agreement is we would get to a bad budget year and the state would threaten to pull that money after that agreement was made. Made.

And so here we are that we are threatened just with a down budget. And I just want to remind everybody that agreement was made in good faith to be able to provide more slots for California students. And so I hope we do what it takes to hold that agreement in place. Any questions or comments, Senator Perez?

Thank you. Yeah, I just want to echo Senator Laird's comments. You know, obviously especially as we see a number of campuses struggle with declining enrollment for them to make the decision that so many of us fought and advocated for to reduce the number of out of state students and increase the number of in state students.

Students like they're trying to make these numbers all work. And so I want to make sure we give them credit where credit is due and funding as well. So I just want to highlight that it's great to see your numbers and that we're continuing to see enrollment increase, which is fantastic.

And I also want to acknowledge and appreciate just what an excellent job the UC system has done in enrolling more transfer students.

And I can actually see here, just from your growth, as you saw those first time freshman numbers decrease, you all made a concerted effort to increase the number of transfer students that were coming into the UC system, which is going to lead to an increase in the number of diverse students, black and brown students, low income students that are then being enrolled into your system.

So I think that's excellent. That's exactly what you all should be doing. And if anything, I want to see us continue to build upon pathways just like that. The transfer pathway that you all have is the igetc. It is something that is, you know, very specific to the UC system.

You know, I mentioned the Associate Degree for transfer previously. You know, making sure that we have one clear and easy to use pathway for all of our community college students so that they know if they complete it, that they are eligible to both UC and CSU institutions is something that's a priority to me.

I know each of our institutions would like to be unique and special in its own way, but it is also important to make this program process as seamless as possible for community college students that already have so much difficulty and face so many challenges with graduating, even in a six year time period when they're supposed to be transferring in two years.

So I just really wanted to highlight that. I think these numbers are great. I look forward to seeing those numbers increase. The value of a CSU degree, the value of a UC degree. We have some of the best public institutions in the entire country and you have some of the most reputable UCs in the entire world, arguably UCLA, UC Berkeley are universities that are sought after by people worldwide.

So happy to see, you know, these numbers continue to steadily increase and to hear about the increase in numbers for some of those diverse students. Students as well.

Thank you. And you look like you have a comment. Do you have a comment?

I wanted to respond to Senator Perez and said that as part of last year's budget trailer Bill, the University of California was directed to start work on ADTs for some of our majors. And that is now underway.

Just for the record, we still have an acronym thing here.

Oh, Associate Degree for Transfer. So these are community college pathways.

No problem. Just define your acronym so people know what you're talking about.

And that work is underway. We're working with almost 70 community colleges right now in order to increase transfer rates.

Great. Well, thank you for waiting all the way through this and the fact that this discussion was actually over a number of different, different issues. But I think whether it's fixing the budget Bill Language or doing our best to stick to the deal, we will work on this as we move toward the.

The May revice and the June budget. So thank you very much. We appreciate that. That completes our last of the six issues. I wanted to note for the record that Senator Perez is here for the roll call, so she is present. And we are going to move to public a comment.

But first I'm going to ask for a show of hands of. Of who wants to make public comment. zero, no, I'm sorry. Because we're about five minutes from our ending time, so I'm counting. 12345678910111213141516.

I'm gonna respectfully request that you do your best to be within 30 seconds. And we will allow people to write and send us additional comments. We know that you're strongly held and we know that our Committee hearing has run really long. So welcome to the podium.

Thank you, Chair and Members. Tiffany Mok with CFT Union of Classified Professionals and Educators. To be succinct, we oppose UC cuts and. Thank you.

Thank you very much. We appreciate your comments and your brevity.

Good afternoon, Senators. President, Chair Laird. I'm Catherine Hutchinson. I'm the statewide President for CSU Employees Union. And of course, we deeply concerned about the cuts that are coming. And we respectfully request that the Legislator provide oversight and direction to CSU leadership on how to avoid these cuts. Because we're here for all the students. Thank you.

Thank you very much. We appreciate your comments.

Ryan Lightsinger from CSUMB speaking on the same topic. Thank you, Chair Laird, Senator Perez, for your time today. Chancellor Garcia's words earlier spoke powerfully about the circumstance that we're in where we're close to an all time peak for enrollment in the CSU. And at the same time, we're facing the prospect of a significant cut at csumb.

We already have a travel and hiring freeze that's impacting our campus significantly. As a faculty member, I know that an 8% cut in state appropriations means fewer items in the food pantry, fewer appointments for students with academic advisors, fewer courses available to students.

We know that investments in the CSU lead to benefits for the California economy as a whole, that each dollar Invested has a significant return. So, as a CSU faculty member, thank you for your careful consideration on the upcoming state budget. Thank you.

Sorry you had to pay for your own trip up here. Welcome.

Hi, Senators. I'm Dom Romesburg, the Chair of Women's and Gender Studies at Sonoma State University. I'm an award winning Professor, and for the last 15 years, I've been a lead scholar helping to implement the Fair Education act and bring LGBTQ inclusive history education to our K12 schools. The SSU President is firing me.

She's eliminating my Department and all of our tenured faculty. I urge you to fully fund the CSU and to provide specific earmarks for women's and gender studies and LGBTQ studies. Systematic federal efforts seek to erase LGBTQ people and histories from public life, constrain women's reproductive freedoms, and eliminate women and LGBTQ people from research.

Republican state legislatures are eliminating gender and LGBTQ studies in California. The reasons are different, but the effects.

Are the same because the two Members here will not be erased. Just for the record. Absolutely. We're both in that category. We will not be erased.

Thank you for saying that. So please make our state a bulwark against these attacks on women, LGBTQ people, and the scholarship and teaching about us. Thank you. Thank you very much. Welcome.

Hi, I'm Lauren Williams. I am a student at UC Davis, soon to graduate. I did not apply for my PhD program due to the funding that is the issue for our campuses. I'm also Underground Scholar. So I would like to thank y'all for committing to contributing to the Underground Scholars Program.

And I really like to say I'm a community college transfer. All of this funding really matters. I also work with the UMOJA Community Education foundation and the California Student Parent Alliance. And so ensuring that our student parents and our students of color have this funding is very important. And please don't get the funding for our colleges. Thank you.

Thank you very much for your heartfelt testimony.

Hi, good afternoon. My name is Azadeh Zohrabi. I'm the Executive Director of Underground Scholars at UC Berkeley. And I'm also a product of the UC system. I earned my degrees at UC Riverside and UC Law Sf. I wanted to highlight a couple problems that we're having with the implementation of the Underground Scholars Program funding.

One is that we're not. UC Berkeley is not getting an equitable allocation of the funding. We got less than UC Davis and UC San Diego did, and we serve 10 times as many students as those programs did. We haven't heard from UCOP since we got the funding allocation, there's no ongoing communication with them.

We only hear from them once a year when they're asking us for our program data to be able to report back from you all. So we're also asking for continued collaboration with UCOP as the undocumented students have foster youth programs, have student parents have ongoing relationships and conversation to make sure that our programs are implemented in the way that you please.

Feel free to follow up with our staff on those issues. We appreciate it. Thank you for your time.

Good morning. My name is JP and I'm a formerly incarcerated and system impacted professional working policy to drive systemic change. I appreciate the Legislator's continued investment in programs like Underground School Dollars and Project Rebound. It's a critical support system for UC. Berkeley formerly incarcerated students providing academic, financial and wellness resources.

Yet, despite serving one of the largest populations of systemic impacted students of the state, UC Berkeley does not receive funding proportional to its impact. Ensuring equitable funding is essential to sustaining and expanding these efforts. We also urge UCOP to collaborate with us on a statewide strategy to implement Underground Scholars across all UC campuses.

As more formally incarcerated students seek higher education and every campus must have the infrastructure to support them. A system wide approach developed with those leading this work will ensure long term success. Higher education is one of the most effective tools for breaking cycles of incarceration and economic instability.

We really appreciate your comments.

Hi. Good morning Senators. My name is Lily Clements and I'm actually a 2014 Sonoma State alumni of Dawn's Women's and Gender Studies program. I just wanted to share that since its inception, WGS students have collectively volunteered over 30,000 hours of internship hours at local Sonoma county agencies and community based organizations that serve marginalized communities.

And these career readiness experiences create direct pipelines to high needs fields including education, social services, health care, mental health, and advocacy for sexual assault survivors and historically marginalized people. So I urge you to fully Fund the CSU with specific earmarks for WGS and LGBT studies at cs. Thank you very much. Save WGS. Thank you.

Welcome.

Good morning. My name is Larissa and I'm a system impacted student at UC Berkeley and a Member of Underground Scholars. First, I want to thank the Legislature for its continued investment in programs like Underground Scholars and Project Rebound.

Your support has been life changing for students like me who are committed to higher education and creating a better future for ourselves and our communities. Underground Scholars is more than a program. It's a community that provides essential academic, financial and wellness support to formerly incarcerated and system impacted students.

The Holistic services provided in USI provide the support that ensures students like me can complete their educational goals and return to their communities to contribute to equitable change. Thank you again for your leaders.

Really appreciate your comments. We apologize for. For the brevity and that you had to wait so long to be cut off.

Good afternoon. My name is Ines Alvarado, and I'm a formerly incarcerated student at UC Berkeley. First of all, I would like to take the time out to thank all of y'all for being here. And from merely for me. Second, from merely surviving to finding purpose through education, I'm embracing the growth and setting an example.

As a single parent, without the undocumented student program or Underground Scholars, I wouldn't have the support to continue my education. Underground Scholars gives me a sense of belonging which continues to fuel my passion for, For. For learning. Thank you again for your leadership and commitment to higher education. And we ask for equitable funding for UC Berkeley's Underground Scholars Program.

Thank you very much. Right on the button. Appreciate your comments.

Hi, my name is Victoria. I am the prime example of those people who are being given opportunities because of all of the CSU classes available to us. And my point being that you already mentioned all of the possible cuts of courses because of the layoffs of potential faculty.

And not just the cuts of the courses, but also mentorship because of the wonderful faculty that I've had at Monterey Bay. I have been able to apply to multiple PhD programs and I've been accepted to three of them, which is UC Davis, UC Irvine, and UTEP.

And I am, as a parent who also has a student at the CSU system currently and three younger ones that are expected to be using the same system in their education. I am terrified of the possible consequences.

I don't want to cut you off, given the heartfelt comments, but we really appreciate them and thank you very much.

Thank you. Thank you for listening to us.

Yeah.

Hello, my name is Raina, and I'm here today as both a passionate educator and an undergraduate student at csumber. I urge and implore you to reject the governor's proposal to cut the CSU budget by 8% and invest more in the CSU and the future workforce in California.

The CSU has worked tirelessly to provide opportunities to underrepresented students, and we cannot allow these efforts to be undone. Senators, we need your leadership now more than ever. Thank you for your time, your continued and your continued commitment to higher education.

Thank you very much.

Hello, I'll be quick. My name is Dr. Renee Penalver. I am a CSU Bakersfield alum and I'm a faculty Member at CSUMB and a proud Member of CFA California Faculty Association. At csumb, we are already facing a travel and hiring freeze where faculty, staff and students are deeply worried about what these cuts mean. For me personally.

This travel freeze could have devastating consequences for my promotion, tenure, and ultimately my ability to remain at CSU and be as an educator. Recently, CSUMB earned a prestigious Carnegie Classification. For research institutions, recognizing our contributions for innovation and discovery. Research is a fundamental part of our.

Job and sharing our findings at conferences is critical not just for academic progress. But for public knowledge. The travel freeze has already hindered my ability to present important scientific work and. Installed my own career advancement. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Appreciate your comments.

Welcome, welcome. Good afternoon. My name is Amy Escalante. I'm a lecturer at CSUMB. I teach in the Liberal Studies Department and had the I was fortunate enough to have Raina in one of my classes. I'm deeply concerned about the potential for layoffs for other lecturers. It's already happening.

If I were to be laid off, it would impact my family greatly. I have a lot of my daughter has a lot of health expenses that aren't covered by insurance. I have a son at San Diego State and fortunately my husband was a veteran so Cal Vet pays for him.

But not all my students would be that fortunate. I teach future teachers. They're having difficulty getting classes, some of them are having to drop out and it's affecting the K to 12 teaching system as well. Thank you.

Thank you very much.