Assembly Standing Committee on Higher Education

Good afternoon. Assembly Higher Education Committee is now called to order. I will establish a quorum, when we have a quorum. Welcome to the fifth policy hearing of the Assembly Higher Education Committee in 2026. This hearing is the fourth of several hearings for our measures in 2026, and we know it's a very busy time in the capital.

So thank you so much to all my colleagues, to everyone who preparing bills here today, and all the witnesses and everyone who's providing testimony. Whether you're here watching it virtually or here in person, I'm I'm glad that you have joined us. Grateful that you've joined us. Please note that a similar Jeff Gonzales has been excused from today's hearing. A similar member, Alexandra Macedo is serving as her as his replacement for today's hearing.

And we'll welcome a similar Macedo when she arrives. Additionally, please note that Assemblymember Celeste Rodriguez is currently out on maternity leave. Assemblymember James Ramos will serve as her replacement for today's hearing, and a warm welcome to Assemblymember Ramos when he arrives as well. Additionally, I'm pleased to welcome back Michael Erke, when once again is pitching for our committee secretary today. Thank you, mister Erke, and welcome back.

I will now go over some key elements of the structure of today's hearing. In order to facilitate the goal of hearing as much from the public within the limits of our time, We will not predict, permit conduct that disrupts, disturbs, or otherwise impedes the orderly conduct of a legislative proceedings. We will not accept disruptive behavior or behavior that sites or threatens violence. The rules for today's hearing includes no talking or loud noises from the audience.

Public comment may be provided only at the designated time and place and as permitted by the chair.

Public comment must relate to the subject or bills being discussed today. No engaging in conduct that disrupts, disturbs, or otherwise impedes the orderly conduct of this hearing. Please be aware that violations of these rules may subject you to removal or other enforcement actions. Bills will be taken up in sign in order. However, committee members typically will present their bills after non committee members.

Authors, you can sign in at the sergeant's desk in a Room Room 126. Further, please note that the guideline for bills here in this committee is to allow for a testimony from two lead witnesses in support and two lead witnesses in opposition to speak for no more than two minutes each. Stakeholder groups and entities that are neither in support nor not in opposition will be allowed to give testimony for no more than two minutes when I call for tweeters.

If a measure has more than two entities in a tweener category, only two will be allowed to speak for two minutes each. Colleagues, for members of our committee, member since our hearings are public and some travel far to be here, in respect of them and the author, please allow the author to complete their opening remarks regarding the bill before making a motion so that the public has an idea of what the bill is about.

If a motion is made during the author's opening remarks, I will simply state that the motion will be recognized at the appropriate time. Additionally, members, if you would like to respond to a roll call, ask a question, or provide a comment, please be sure to accurate your microphone and speak into your microphone. For authors of bills up today, authors, each member presenting today will provide an opening and a closing statement. As previously stated, your two lead witnesses will each have two minutes to provide testimony.

Please note that pursuant to the request of the authors, the following measures have been pulled from today's agenda.

File item number seven, assembly bill 2087 by Assemblymember Lee, and file item number 15, assembly Bill two, three, four, five by Assemblymember. Those two items have been pulled from today's agenda. Once again, file item number seven, Assembly Bill two zero eight seven by Assemblymember Lee, and file item number 15, Assembly Bill two, three, four, five by summer and banes.

Additionally, please note that file item 24, assembly bill 2606 by Assemblymember Ellis was not transmitted to this committee and will not be heard today. And we'll take up the consent calendar when we have a quorum.

We have 11 bills on consent today. And with that, I'd like to welcome Assemblymember Solache, presenting Assembly Bill 2528, item number 21. Welcome, mister Solache.

Good afternoon, chairman and board. My name is Carlos Lopez on behalf of the California School Employees Association here to express our tweener Position. CSC understands the need to ensure that working class people, folks who need to work more than one job to make ends meet, are not shut out of public service opportunities, like serving as a community college board of trustee.

But unfortunately, the since the implementation of AB 1390, which allowed local school boards to raise their compensation, we've seen elected officials rush to raise their wages all while laying off classified school employees and teachers. We've been in productive conversation with author's office, but about amendments to require extended public notice of forty five days prior to vote to raise Board Members' compensation.

So we'd like to thank the author and sponsors for their willingness to work with us on this issue, and we hope to see these amendments soon address our concerns. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Colleagues, any questions or comments? Mister Murasuchi.

Thank you. I I'd like to follow on the the California School Employees Association. First of all, as a former school board member, I fully appreciate all all the work that that that trustees do. And and I I understand that that people need to receive fair compensation in order to ensure representation, not just those who can afford to serve on, you know, as as a part time basis.

I I just wanna make sure that that, you know, we we keep an eye on the optics, you know, as CSEA indicated that that there are school boards that are raising their their pay while laying off classified employees, especially.

And I know that the ultimate decision to raise the compensation rests with the the local school boards or or the community college boards. But I will be supporting the bill today, but I I just want to echo CSCA's concern. Thank you.

Thank you so much, mister Murasuchi. As soon as I let you, we'd like to respond.

Thank you, mister chair. If I could respond, I thank you, mister Murasuchi. And I think you and I had a very specific conversation about this when you were supportive of our last bill and on the school board side. And one of the things that you were so supportive of is to make sure that it was a premise of whether the local boards had the ultimate decision, that we didn't impose it into our school and our school districts.

I thought that was a very, very thoughtful you to offer that conversation to me as author.

And, one of the things that I would be hopeful is our local boards make exactly that that that that local individual decision. For for a matter of fact, I told, I shared with my board to my district, hey. Make sure you, finish negotiations and work with their your your local labor groups, and then you could address this as well because this issue, as you and I know, is about equity and ensuring that we build an equitable across the board.

Everyone that's serving either in the classroom, helping our our our classrooms, or for that matter, governing our our classrooms. So I think, definitely the equity, component, and I I concur with you.

I've been talking to our our labor, partners and ensuring that their, their feedback is addressed, and how do we, potentially add additional days to have a a additional public transparent process. Thank you, mister Muratsuchi.

Thank you so much, mister Muratsuchi. Any further questions or comments? Vice Chair DeMaio followed by Asammar Patel.

Okay. So, mister Solache, I like you. We we've been on the opposite sides of a couple bills this week. So Just a couple. Just a couple.

You'll get you'll get you'll get a good one because you do have good ones. But on this one, I have some concerns, particularly as it relates to the budget. And, you know, fundamentally, when you run for office, you shouldn't be running for a salary. You should be running because it's public service. These are voluntary positions, and they're not full time.

Although, absolutely, there's no no hesitation, no doubt whatsoever that a lot of our elected Board Members across the state put in tremendous amount of time, sometimes more than their actual compensated position. I'm I'm curious because as I'm looking at San Diego Community College District, I love this little website, transparent california.com. You can look up every government salary all in with benefits on this website So you know actually what people are being paid.

And Geisel Arroyo, who's a board of trustees member, is walking out with $43,530 last year as a as a board member. Mary Beth Graham, also a board member, 36,000.

And how they're doing that is they're taking their regular pay, which they've increased by the maximum of 5% a year since we set the cap. And so their board has been voting in a cost of living adjustment, which is already in in state law. And then they're also granting themselves a tremendous amount of benefits. I know that there's a former city council member in San Diego. My colleague, miss Patel, knows who I'm talking about.

She was on the city council and receives a pension, but she wanted the free health care. So she ran for Sweetwater, Union, high school district only because they gave Board Members free health care at government expense for a part time job. So I wanna make sure that taxpayers understand these are not poverty wages that we're paying Board Members. It's a voluntary position.

It is community service, and some of them are earning for a part time position a lot, and it's the benefit side that is not perhaps seen.

You're from the Los Angeles Community College District? And what's your name?

David Vela.

David Vela. You're in this database too?

Yes.

Now how much did you receive last year?

In compensation?

Compensation, benefits, and salary.

I think net, sorry, before that, is 24,000 a year, which is our $2,000 stipend, and then we do get benefits. So it's

So what's your benefit package?

I I think it's roughly about $1,200 a month.

So you get 24,000 in direct compensation and $1,200. You also be eligible for a pension?

No. There's no pension. No pension?

Okay. But you do get the benefits package, which I I assume includes some sort of health?

Yeah. It has health care.

Okay. So, that's 38,000 a year, give or take? At a time when we are concerned about the cost of students enrolling in these schools, getting their degrees, at a time when our budget is under enormous strain. And given the fact that these are elected positions that are voluntary, and there's a lot of interest groups out there that recruit candidates for these offices and they have no problem recruiting them with the compensation scale, I I cannot support this bill, given what we know the actual compensation is.

And when we do have a discussion about this, I wanna make sure that we put full net benefits to individuals on these voluntary elected positions. Again, not notwithstanding that, many of our board of trustees, they put in so much time. It is a labor of love.

They're not doing it for the compensation, many of them. But I I just don't see a need to adjust this given the fact that we already have discretion and escalators that we have in state law. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Assemblymember Patel.

Thank you Assemblymember Solace for bringing this important bill forward. I know it's a parallel to what you brought forward last year with school boards. Speaking as a former board trustee, who did put way more than minimum attending a meeting once a month as part of my roles and responsibilities and as my way of informing the decisions that I make on the board. I know that I put in a substantial amount of work.

Can you tell me about how many hours you put in per month for this position? Either one of you.

Yeah. I'll you know, I'll just, give you my personal experience. You know, I got on the board eight years ago. We represent 70% of the county of Los Angeles. And, just to tell you, we have to drive ourselves everywhere.

We have about, I would say, a day about 10 to 15 invites to show up in person a day between the nine colleges. And, you know, if you're wanna represent the community, you really wanna represent your student body, like I do, I wanna make every single thing, you know.

And I think what happens is that then, you know, you have the fiduciary side That comes into play with, you know, an agenda that, quite frankly, can go on for twelve hour meetings for us, approving over $400,000,000 of board meeting. And that doesn't count facilities. We have our own build LACCD, which is accounts for $12,900,000,000 worth of oversight, about a 139 cap projects that are currently in place.

I have to oversee those. As chair of public affairs, I have to oversee the legislation. We've sponsored approximately five bills this year. We oversee about and, you know, support, countless bills over a 100 a year, conversations with the community about what their needs are. And then on top of that is essentially the formality of attending Board Meetings.

As you can imagine in Los Angeles, in Downtown LA, we have to, you know, go through a myriad of processing. So, all given said, I I can tell you with confidence, I spend about thirty hours a week manning LACCD affairs myself.

Yeah. Yeah. Doesn't surprise me.

Yeah. I if I could add on, I get $400 a month as a trustee. I've been on the board for eight years. I'm the current board president, which requires more time. Committees, I usually spend my lunch breaks coming to speak to student groups or cultural fair kickoffs.

We have evening events for new faculty, new or new tenured faculty. Also, there's many Zooms that happen. I would say anywhere from ten to twenty hours a month besides our meetings. I've had a meeting that got till three in the morning before that, you know, you could pay the same whether it goes more than eight hours or not. Yeah.

And so it it is a substantial contribution. In our past elections, each year of the last eight years, there's been at least one or two seats no one even ran for. And so we we don't have competitive elections that could bring in more diversity and different perspectives.

Yeah. I think the public understands that these are pretty tough jobs that put you in the face of public for some very, very critical important decisions that are impacting people's daily lives. And with the compensation being low, it's hard to attract good stewards of the the system. Nobody does it for the money, but you don't wanna do it at a cost. If we want to have, for example, single parents participate in leadership in public education, they may need to hire care, childcare.

If we want to have those that care for their elders, we may need to have home care, and that needs to come out of their private funds. And we don't want people to have to pay for public service, right, to to take money out of their accounts to do that. We want to attract and recruit the best and the brightest to govern and oversee our public education systems. So with that, I will be supporting your bill today.

I appreciate you, Assemblymember Solache, and your efforts to work with our labor partners and make sure their concerns are being addressed.

I know that you've done substantial work and had many conversations to get to a place where, we can we can address their concerns. And from my understanding, if you can just clarify, this is an option. It's not a requirement. It's not a man we're not asking for a mandate to increase calories. Right?

So local decision making, so they would board up to a publicize the a board meeting, agendaizes on their public agenda, and let the public know that they're considering a x amount of compensation increase.

Thank you. So it seems like there are there are appropriate guardrails in place for local folks to make these decisions and what's appropriate for them at the local level. I'm a strong supporter of local control in many different ways and appreciate you working with labor as well. K. And with that, I'd like to make the motion to support.

Thank you so much. We'll take a motion in the second night when we have a a self squirm. But thank you so much for comments, colleagues. Any further questions or or comments? Sina, Summer Solacha, would you like to close, please?

Thank you, mister Fong. And I wanna just add to I know there was a couple of questions and mister DeMai would just say we don't agree a lot of things. But I think what we do agree is on I think care of people, taking care of of the public and the public interest. I think I think I know many people, all of you have been very public about ensuring that the public is always protected.

And so I know that on the on the technicalities of it, we might not agree a 100%, but I I I I am reminded by a quote that says that the art the art of teaching is what we all are in education for.

So it being you're a teacher, a classified employee, or a governing board member, you're there for the for the the ensuring that the art of love of the love of teaching is is is advanced. I remind her of that because one of the things that I'm so interested in making sure this happens is that we wanna give equity to those those individuals that are not able to serve because maybe they're not retired.

They're not, you know, they're not multimillion dollar folks that can afford to serve on these boards. And so we wanna make sure that the folks that are able to run for these seats are reflective of the community. And so if I have a parent that is more than willing and and capable and has a capacity of serving on the board, that this is not gonna take away from their household situation.

They could just help with the, you know, it's not a full time salary, but it is gonna help, with some of the compensation. I remember being a former former school member myself, getting paid for a $100 a month and having to take, you know, someone to a coffee meeting or lunch. I don't have, I didn't have a budget for that. Right? So I had to pay out of my pocket.

And those are my pretty important things that in moments that you have with community members. And so again, it's not a compensation of of a fast salary, but it's definitely gonna help, you know, help some of the individuals are able that wanna serve, that are not able to serve. And to mister Uduak's point, when these had two seats open for office and no one runs, sometimes there's not an incentive. So for them to to be able to serve.

Sometimes we have parents in our communities that have wanted more than two jobs to be able to make life, you know, especially with the cost of living in today's California.

The other thing I wanna reassure the board, I think, was already said. I'm sorry. The committee I speak of a board because I'm a former school member, but I wanna make sure that, we also, ensure that our labor partners also, have addressed some additional, time time to let the public know. I think one of the things we we wanna emphasize that it's permissible, and this is this is at a local level where decision has to be made.

And the good thing about it, they don't have to go to the Max.

Right? So at the end of the day, it's a local decision of how much they wanna increase, and it could be in phases, it can be in part. So it's truly a local a local decision, And I'm confident that, individual communities, and that's why we believe in local control, that they elect our local school Board Members or let local, college trustees. So they make those local decisions and make those decisions at the local level.

So I'm confident that we're electing and and trusting that the public is electing people that are gonna make decisions for them.

And I think the other component that I think I wanna highlight that was said by by our witnesses today, these are individuals are are are managing that are governing multimillion or billion dollars of public dollars. So I think we wanna have also people that are capable of of managing and making decisions. They're gonna be, impactful to, everyday Californians and decision making. So with that, mister chair and committee members, I respectfully ask for an aye vote.

Thank you so much, Hassan Solachi, for bringing this measure forward. And thank you to for your comments also in working with our labor partners at CSEA to address their concerns. Sounds like the conversations are to me to be ongoing. So appreciate that uplifting that. And thank you so much to our trustees, trustees Ntuk, trustee Vela, for their leadership and efforts on the respective boards in Los Angeles and Long Beach Community College Districts.

We know that, as noted in the analysis, the limits on compensation for trustees has not increased since the early nineteen nineties, and this measure will bring parity between our community college districts and the respective, k 12 counterparts. And with that, I look forward to supporting the measure, today. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, everyone.

Thank you. Next up, we'd like to welcome Assemblymember Ta, presenting Assembly Bill 2053. Item number five. Welcome Assemblymember Ta.

Good afternoon, chair, member of the committee. I'd like to thank the committee staff for their work. AB 2053 would allow cost committee college district to offer a bachelor's reprogram in cybersecurity at cost light community college. California face a growing gap between the demand for cybersecurity professionals and a number of qualified projects entering the workforce. In Orange County, there's a significant demand for workers with cybersecurity degrees.

There has been a significant increase in a number of cybersecurity and IT infrastructure businesses within the county. AB 2053 also recognize a reality many of our constituent face for working adult veterans and first generation student. The traditional four year pathway is often financially and or geographically outreached. This bill doesn't break the system. It make it better for student and workforce we need.

The CSU will mention that they're currently offering various cybersecurity program at some of their campuses. However, if that is a case, why are we at a state not meeting a demand for 81,000 estimate open position across a private and public sector? As well, these cybersecurity program are only minority attack to alternative BA program. AB 2053 also come with a strong accountability measure. This bill require the LAO to evaluate outcome including student success, workflow alignment and equity impact.

This is a really good program is it a thoughtful is it I think that that would provide opportunity for everyone so I humbly ask for your eye vote and I am honored to introduce Doctor. Vince Rodriguez, president of Coastline, Carlos and Toby West department, chair of computer and cyber science.

Thank you so much, and welcome.

Thank you. Thank you, chair and members of the committee. We appreciate being here this afternoon. And I wanna hit home the importance of cybersecurity. Think about the last time you received that letter in the mail that let you know that a company had their data breached and that your data may have been accessed.

I know I received one just last month. Data security is a big deal, and it affects all of our businesses. And higher education is not able to keep up with the demand currently for a trained workforce in cybersecurity. In fact, the workforce, those companies are demanding that these people coming to work for them now have higher education they did before.

At one time, it was a community college certificate or an associate degree was enough for them to be those experts, and now they demand cybersecurity experts with a bachelor's degree.

Cosigncom community college and our instructors can provide that education, and we can also provide it in a flexible way that helps our students. I had a chance to talk to a student just yesterday that's leaving our program. He's going to a private university, spending much more than any public institution would charge, so that he has the flexibility of an online degree program and the flexibility it provides. We have over fifty years of experience providing high quality education at a distance.

It'll be this bill would open the door so that many people can continue their bachelor's degree and improve their own future, as well as meeting the demands of the workforce.

With that, I ask you to please, support the bill, and I'll introduce doctor Toby West, our lead faculty in the area.

Thank you. Hello, committee and mister chair. Thank you for your time and hearing us today in support of AB 2053. I'm doctor Toby West from Coastline College in Southern California. I'm a tenured professor and have been at Coastline College for over ten years.

Students would be well served by the new offering of a bachelor's of science in AI for cyber operations at Coastline. We have quali well qualified tenured professors ready to teach in the program, and they have over two decades of upper division experience teaching. So offering a bachelor's degree would extend the long established associate degree that Coastline College has been offering for well over a decade.

The, sorry, the AS in cybersecurity, and then it would also provide an additional pathway for our newest degree, which is AI for cybersecurity also an associate degree. Cosign has been designated by the National Security Agency as

a center of academic excellence in cyber defense since 2014.

Cosign is the Coastline is the only institution on the West Coast with the program of study in cyber AI that is validated by the National Security Agency. This shows our academic rigor and our alignment with the workforce needs that are both state and federally recognized.

So it also shows our service commitment to students as well, and we would like to provide that professional development for them as they enter into these new what I call the new entry level because everything is sort of escalating with this AI driven cybersecurity workforce roles. So thank you so much for your consideration of AB 2053.

Thank you so much. At this time, we're gonna take the opportunity to establish quorum. Mister secretary, roll call, please.

Fong? Here. De Maio? Here. Berner?

Masito? Jackson?

Here.

Marucci? Here. Patel?

Here.

Ramos? Sharp Collins? Here. Tangipa?

Thank you so much, mister secretary. We do have a quorum. Thank you so much, colleagues. Now we'll move on to a testament. Are there witnesses in support in the hearing room?

Whitney Yamamura, chancellor of the Coast Community College District in support. Thank you.

Casey Elliott on behalf of the city of Los Alamitos. We're in support of this measure. Thank you. Thank you.

Andrea Wittig, director for the office of the president at Cerritos College in support of this bill and the effort to expand community college baccalaureate pathways.

Thank you. Are there witnesses in opposition in the hearing room?

Hello. Adam Swenson on behalf of the academic senate, the CSU. We respectfully oppose this one. Thank you.

Thank you so much. The witnesses like to take the table, please. Welcome. Do we each have two minutes? Welcome.

Good afternoon, chair and members. I'm Dr. Junius Gonzalez, the Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at the CSU Office of the Chancellor, in respectful opposition to AB 2053. The CSU is proud to partner with community colleges across the state and part of our—proud of our transfer students. They're a core part of our identity. Overall transfer enrollment into the CSU increased by 2% this year, but we welcome more than 64,000 transfer students this fall.

More than 151,000 of our students started at community college. Across California, 91% of transfer applicants are admitted to the CSU each year. In this environment, CSU has maintained a strong partnership with Coast Community College District. As we heard, this bill would allow for the Coast Community College District to offer a bachelor degree program in cybersecurity, unnecessarily duplicating existing CSU programs.

The CSU offers a variety of cybersecurity baccalaureate and graduate programs at seven of our universities, including a fully online baccalaureate and master's program open to students from across the entire state.

Three of the in-person bachelor degree programs are in Southern California campuses, such as San Marcos, San Bernardino. These partnerships improve access, affordability, and degree completion by giving students a clear, efficient, and predictable route to a CSU bachelor's degree. AB 2053 would undermine the collaboration at the heart of these partnerships. We remain committed to working with the author's office and Coast Community College District to ensure their students have access to high quality cybersecurity bachelor's degrees.

However, contrary to existing state law, this bill establishes a precedent for other community college districts to create additional bachelor's programs without regard to duplication or the inefficient use of state resources.

For these reasons, we respectfully ask for your no vote on AB 2053.

Thank you. Welcome.

Thank you, Mr. Chair and members. Chris Morales the CSU Office of the Chancellor here to provide any answers to any technical questions.

Thank you so much. Are there any tweeners in the hearing room?

Eric Paredes with the California Faculty Association, respectful opposition. Thank you.

Thank you. That was opposition anyway. Tweeners? Okay. Colleagues, any questions or comments?

Vice Chair DeMaio.

Thank you, and I will move the bill. I wanna thank the author for taking a strategic approach to this. There's been this long-standing debate over the process by which community colleges can have degree, degree programs approved. There are certain regulations, and your bill is very laser-like in its approach in terms of one degree, one campus, and you include tuition caps to make the degree affordable.

I like how it is tailored and customized, and so, I'm gonna support the bill. I'm also supporting a similar bill by our colleague, Ms. Soria, who has a bill on the nursing side, which, again, is very strategic. It's a pilot project. It's focused. I would urge the Governor to look at both of these bills and let these very narrow strategic approaches meet the needs of our students.

There's another bill that we have under consideration today that's sweeping, and I won't be supporting that bill for that purpose. I, I like the idea that these authors are looking at a specific degree, a specific high demand area of the workforce that is not—clearly is not being met—and trying to figure out how do we best position our community colleges to backfill capacity in providing this opportunity for these degrees. So, I will support this bill.

I appreciate you working with the committee on amendments, and I urge my colleagues to advance this bill out of committee.

Thank you so much. We have a motion and a second. Any further questions or comments? Dr. Patel followed by Dr. Sharp-Collins.

Appreciate your intent in bringing this bill forward. I do have a question around funding. How is—how are these programs gonna be funded?

I believe that Coastline Community District, they already repair the funding, but I, I'd like to respond if I may. May I respond to the concerns and opposition from, from the CSU?

Please.

I understand your concerns. However, that—a few, a few CSU campuses in my, really close to my district, they do not offer any program in cybersecurity. But at the same time, my district community college, they already built in the program, and they offer the program to everyone, and I think that is a right opportunity for every student, for every family, to register in a program.

And actually, my bill, we have we also put a sunset on it, and we also have the office of LAO to evaluate if the program is really successful, so I think we will continue that. But if not, hey.

So, I think that at state, we have, we, we have a saying into it. But to respond to your question, so, I, I think that, plus, I already have a funding.

My understanding is there's a—Chancellor's Office apportionment has been paying for the other bachelor's degrees that have already moved forward, and they have a system in place for as community colleges come on board to offer these, to be able to fund that so that the community colleges can provide the support for our students.

So, to clarify, and I know this is policy committee, but I have serious concerns around the voter initiative, Prop 98, and how, constitutionally, those funds are allocated and where those funds are supposed to go. And I believe they're not intended for use for, for bachelor's program, so, I just wanted to clarify conversations around that.

I don't know if I can address that. I know, again, through the state, they've already identified funding for the bachelor's degrees that have moved forward already. One very similar to this. And so, I know that through the system office, there is funding available as far as the details of how what is used from prop 98 or if there's other funding, I would need some assistance from the Chancellor's Office to address that question.

I would certainly appreciate hearing the response from that as well, because I'm very protective of prop 98 funds. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Assemblymember Patel. Assemblymember Sharp-Collins.

Thank you, Chair. So, Assemblymember Patel, thank you for asking the question because that was—that was one of my questions in regards to the funding. I do appreciate the goal of expanding access to workforce alignment, looking at the cybersecurity section, especially as the demand, as you talked about, has continued to grow. However, some of the concerns that I have with, with the implementation also, in a broader context, as, as was already mentioned, was dealing with the actual funding for this.

But, also, I am concerned that we need to be very deliberate about how new academic programs are developed and also evaluated.

I've noticed a lot this year so far. We, we're trying to—there's a lot of carve outs, a lot of individual degree programs being asked for, for different institutions and etcetera. The main question still becomes, how is it gonna be funded? What is the impact it's gonna have on our CSUs and in our UC systems? And having been an adjunct professor and also a department coordinator, it is concerning, especially when we look at enrollments for universities and numbers going down, people actually becoming majors, you know, within different types of degree programs.

It's, it just, for me, it's just kind of a big red flag. And so, it is important that we ensure as we move forward that we have strong alignment with our industry needs. And I believe that it's imperative that we avoid duplication of any existing programs and confirm that regional partnerships are truly effective in that expanding.

And I'm saying that having been there and have—and having had to be there to fight to maintain the validity or viability of, of, of a department.

You know, when you get below a certain percentage of, you know, of, of, of professors or you get below, you know, students and so forth, there's a, there's a push to change it from a degree and from actual degree program to something else and all this other stuff.

So, I'm just concerned about things being duplicated and do what we can to strengthen the current structure that we have, but make sure that we have strong partnerships that are, that are currently there to do what we can to expand that. But with those things in mind, I do look forward to having a continued discussion.

I hope that you guys will continue to talk with opposition as well on how we can strengthen cybersecurity education, I mean, ways that's gonna be responsive and appropriate to the segmental, you know, responsibilities that currently exist. So, I just wanted to share a little bit of that of having been in the classroom and understanding and in a department position and understanding why there has been pushback from the CSU, why there has been because we're doing everything.

And I'm saying we, as if I'm still there, but doing everything they can to maintain the viability of their departments. And if we continue to push out programs to other areas, it's now still taken away from, from their overall university structure. So, that's just my two cents.

Yeah. I understand your concerns, Assemblymember, but, however, like I mentioned earlier, this is not a duplication. The issue right now, as I, I'm strongly aware that there's issue in my area, not, not really in my area, but really, really close in my district. They do not offer any, any program in cybersecurity, and then Coastline Community College.

They already built in that program for years, and I think it's a rep opportunity. And my office, we continue to work with CSU or any concerns or any opportunity in the future, but I think that this is a pilot program. This is a rare opportunity for everyone, so I respectfully ask your aye vote, and I rather thanks as assembly member, Assemblymember DeMaio explained really well. My bill is really, really specific.

So, this is a district bill. So, I humbly ask for your aye vote.

Oh, please.

Can I?

May I ask? So, I appreciate the comments. In fact, within our own district, we often have the same conversations of are we duplicating programs and spreading them out and not having enough for one valid program, but we also know that this is an industry of which we can't keep up with the demand. So, it's not as if by us having a degree takes away from the other colleges, whether they're in our region or throughout the state.

There's not enough students being graduated to meet the demand at this time. As far as the duplication or we consider that to not be duplicative, I'll ask Dr. Toby West to address that. We discussed that with each of the Cal States when they met with us about how we saw our programs different. But even if they were different, we aren't keeping up with the demand in the state of California.

Very true. So, one of the comments to your point is that our nearest neighbor has been impacted for over a decade in computer science. So, they, they cannot keep up with, like we're saying, the student demand for the program. And ours is not a duplicate because it has AI organically built in. So, by design, as opposed to cybersecurity with AI bolted on, ours is very different.

And we do have.

Just speak into the microphone.

Offer this to students in a different way. So, we, we just wanna keep up with what students need, essentially.

Thank you so much. Assemblymember Muratsuchi.

I wanted to address my, my comment to the California State University. We had this conversation before, but it seems like this rush of bills to try to create these one-off programs is a reflection of a collective frustration with the California State University being perceived as not being responsive to the demand for the workforce, either local workforce or regional access.

And I, I, I know that there's a number of bills that are proposing alternatives today, but, yeah, I, I, I, I just wanted to express my opinion that this is a statement on the current state of the California State University in terms of being whether or not it's being responsive to the, the needs and the demands of Californians. I wanna give you either of you an opportunity to respond to that.

Sure. And Chris can also respond. Thank you very much for the comments, etcetera. I was not in those meetings. I'm a believer in potentiation, that one plus one should equal three. And having been in other states where there have been very creative collaborations, in part to leverage the resources existing at four or five institutions, community colleges as well as four years, that's a whole another area to discuss.

I think there is this perception issue and some of it is related to the process that was put forth through 927. 81% of the proposals that were put through, we had no objection to, and a couple more that just came in similarly. I think, in part, this does merit a bigger discussion about very specific high need workforce areas sort of in a regional way, because there's also, I'm sure, stuff going on with the privates, which I don't know, having been here all of six months.

I will say since I've come, we've done deep dive in taking stock of what's happening relating to transfer, etcetera. There are 391 active collaborations or apart—or about to start—that the CSUs are offering, including, for example, colocation or going in the second part of the four years to teach in remote rural community colleges, etcetera.

So, there is a much bigger picture here, I think, at play. Quite frankly, it's exciting to hear something about the AI-infused piece, but we also know that the challenge of AI is going to be hitting everybody. Right? So, again, why not put things together? Love to hear about what the previous dialogues have been in order to help facilitate that, and I think there is a way to increase the workforce perhaps even more rapidly than with one program.

Thank you so much, Mr. Muratsuchi. And any further questions or comments from colleagues? Seeing none. Assemblymember Ta, would you like to close, please?

I really appreciate the committee staff for their hard work. I want to thanks all the concerns from, from the member for the committee. I really appreciate that. I think that you, you also raised the concerns in my office. We continue to work with CSU or any, any concerns that you may have in the future, but I hope that the committee will allow my bill to be out because they did a district bill.

I think that this is, this is high demand right now in issue of AI and cybersecurity, so I respectfully ask for your aye vote.

Thank you so much, Assemblymember Ta, for presenting your bill this afternoon, and to all the presenters on both sides of the issue, to everyone who provided public comment. I'm very concerned that about this committee passing district-specific bills. As you, as you mentioned, this is a district-specific bill, and the district specific-work around the community college bachelor degree program, where this is a district-specific bill, and so, from that standpoint, I will be staying off the bill today.

You and I have had conversations on this, and I really appreciate the context and look forward to further further conversations.

With that, Mr. Secretary, roll call, please.

[Roll Call]

That measure has two votes and two noes and a couple no vote, but we'll keep the roll open for additional members. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Next up, we'd like to welcome Assemblymember Soria. Presenting item number 14, Assembly Bill 2301. Welcome Assemblymember Soria.

Welcome, and you will each have two minutes.

Good afternoon, Chair and members. I'm Doctor Junius Gonzales, Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at the CSU Office of the Chancellor in respectful opposition to AB 2301. The CSU shares the author's goal of expanding the nursing workforce. We are proud to work with our state's community colleges, which educate and graduate thousands of nurses each year. Many go directly to the workforce and others subsequently transfer to the CSU to earn their BSN.

Instead of expanding existing efficient effective ADN to BSN programs, this bill aims to add BSN capacity without addressing the real structural constraints such as clinical placements, faculty capacity, and associated infrastructure further complicating the problem of access into pre licensing- pre licensure nursing programs across the state.

For students beginning their nursing studies at a Community College, CSU Universities offer several in person and online associate degrees in nursing to be ascend programs 19, which serve rural students and also allow them to fulfill all upper division coursework remotely while a community health clinical requirement is completed in the student's local area.

These campuses offer these ADN to be a send programs and the CSU partners with 49 community colleges, including in the Central Valley on concurrent ADN to be a send pathways to further shorten time to completion. Since 2017, the CSU has consistently graduated more than 1,000 students each year through these programs. These programs are not impacted and can grow because the predominant required placement and faculty hiring bottlenecks are at the lower division level in the prelicensure programs, which is where hours of clinical time is needed.

We believe these partnership programs designed in collaboration with the community colleges are the most appropriate and proven path forward to achieving an increase in the number of Nurses without creating further competition, where they already limited clinical placements and qualified faculty particularly in pre licensure BSN programs.

I would also like to share with the committee that while we have our concerns with this bill, I'm working with my colleagues at the Community College Chancellor's Office in an effort to identify specific ways we can work together in the near- and long-term future to grow the nursing workforce across the state. For these reasons and more, we respectfully ask for your no vote on AB 2301.

Thank you, Mister chair members. Chris Morales at the CSU here for any technical questions. I did want to add one of the questions we get on this bill as we have for the past few years is why can't the CSU simply increase the number of nursing students it enrolls?

And the issue facing the CSU and all other higher education institutions in the state is that the available number of nursing students trained in California is currently impacted by one, the lack the limited availability of clinical placements and the lack of qualified faculty. And this challenge is compacted by strict regulation of the clinical placements by the Board of Registered Nursing, which approves all the placements made available to nursing schools.

And this bill does not address that problem. It would result in increased competition for these limited resources of limited clinical placements and the qualified faculty.

But we do know, as we mentioned, that these partnership programs, these ADN to BSN pathways that we have at 20 of our institutions that graduate over a thousand students each year since 2017, allow students to get that bachelor's degree, do it in a timely manner, and most importantly, do it in a more affordable manner than we have seen in some of the private institutions as one of the witnesses mentioned.

And we really do believe that these programs are the most appropriate and proven path forward to achieve an increase in the number of bachelor's and nurses. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Are there witnesses in opposition in the hearing room?

Good afternoon. Eric Paredes with the California Faculty Association, respectfully in opposition. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon. Alex Graves, the Association of Independent California Colleges and Universities in opposition.

Thank you. Hello. Adam Swenson, the Academic Senate of the California State University. We respectfully oppose this one. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Are there tweeners in the hearing room? Colleagues, any questions or comments? Followed by someone talking about.

I'll move the bill. Is this your third time with the the bill? Maybe the third time is the charm. I'm not gonna repeat some of the comments I made under Mister Taz Bill.

It's but it's for the same reason. The author is not doing something crazy and sweeping. It's a very nuanced, very focused bill. It's a pilot project. It involves a handful of the universities.

It's in a massively underserved degree area. We have a nursing shortage. My sister went to a community college, and she runs her own hospice. Not one of the fraudulent ones, but a real one. Real patients, real medical supplies.

But the community college system, this is, like, the perfect fit for this degree program. So, I know that the Governor has been reluctant to move forward on these sorts of bills and that there's bureaucratic infighting. Again, the institutions need to put aside the bureaucracy points of view and look at the labor market, the fact that we have- we don't have enough nurses. We certainly, in Mister Ta's case, did not have enough IT cybersecurity professionals.

And I would like to see us try some of these very tailored strategic bills.

I appreciate the author's diligence and commitment in trying to see this through. And my hope is that we will continue to show on the floor in the legislature that there's wide set spread support for this and that the Governor may reconsider his opposition to the bill that he vetoed the last the last round. So, thank you very much for bringing us back, and you've got my full support.

Thank you so much. Assemblymember Tangipa? Second.

Well, first and most second the bill.

But I do just wanna again echo the same comments, some that I had last year. In the Central Valley, we have about a 1,600-bed shortage, not because the beds don't exist, but because there's nobody to work the beds. And I, during COVID, was working for the Fresno County Board of Supervisors, and we were paying traveling nurses $10,000 a week.

And the contract actually went viral because it was one of the most expensive contracts in the entire state or in the entire United States just trying to get people to the Central Valley to just come and work. And so while I understand the concerns of the opposition, the position that the Central Valley is in right now is life or death.

And it's either we do something or we don't. And while I get all of these problems that the opposition lays out, you know, there is a structure that we have when it comes to community colleges, CSUs, and UCs, and we should respect that. But when I have to make the decision of whether people should be able to have medical services or not, there is a responsibility upon the legislature to make sure that we can act.

And while we're looking forward to other solutions that I would recommend the opposition to put in front of us to say, this is how we'll get more done. This is what we're gonna do.

Today, we have to make the decision to move this bill forward, to make sure that we're prioritizing lives over legislative scarcity. So thanks to the author. I know it's a priority bill for the for the district, and this is the difference between, again, life or death. So thank you.

Thank you so much. Any further questions comes? Assemblymember Patel.

Thank you for being super persistent and making sure that your constituents in State of California are getting the highly skilled nurses that we need. I do have a couple questions for you similar to what I asked the member before you. What is the funding mechanism? I and I know this is policy committee.

I'm just very concerned about protecting Prop 98 dollars, and I would love to hear from you what is the funding mechanism for the students in this program if tuition you know, what they're paying for tuition doesn't cover the cost of their instruction.

Yeah. No. And I and I thank you for that question. I think Imran spoke a little bit to that, but just, you know, to make it very clear, there's no intention to use I think one of the concerns has been the Prop 98 funding. For this, we've always been we've have always been in the discussion with campuses looking to host the pilots, what other funding mechanisms are out there and I think Imran, you laid out some of the funding mechanisms.

So maybe if you can repeat those again.

Yeah. I can add. So as I mentioned, we have a couple of categorical programs such as the strong workforce which again is about developing curriculum, working with local employers to actually build up pathways to degrees. So we believe, you know, all of our bachelor degrees that we've established right now, we have about 60 have leveraged strong workforce finding to establish that. That is, I would say, the main primary source for our existing bachelor degree programs.

As I also mentioned, we had the Rebuilding Nursing Infrastructure Grant Program. That's, again, about developing pathways and partnerships, you know, with CUC, with UC. And then lastly, I would just say that, you know, within this within the current bachelor's degree authorization that we have, colleges are allowed to charge a higher tuition fee rate. So, $46 per unit, that is the current fee for all community college courses, and that revenue stays or is actually reported as part of a district's total computation revenue.

It is used to calculate that under the student center funding formula.

But then the districts are allowed to charge an additional $84 per unit for upper division courses, which are intended to satisfy the baccalaureate degree, and that revenue actually stays with the college. And so that's all local revenue. Altogether though, just to put that into perspective, students will be paying about $10,500. For all four years, a 120 units of getting that BSN.

So that is a much affordable and accessible pathway. You know, as my colleague sort of mentioned, you know, we have students attending private universities who are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars and going into debt. And so this, again, is really about providing that accessible and affordable pathway.

I appreciate that clarification and that assurance. And thank you for pointing out about how much it would cost to attain the degree. That's also very important for us to consider. In another question, are and this is just my lack of knowledge.

Are there going to be facilities improvements that are gonna be required, the program? Are there specialized classrooms? And then if so, where does that funding come from?

Yeah. So there's, I think, you know, a couple of different funding sources. Most, you know, we have Proposition 2, which is intended to support facilities projects at community colleges. And then we also have, you know, colleges and districts have the option of passing local general obligation bonds.

But I would say, you know, specifically as it pertains, you know, to this bill and to this program, you know, the intent here is really to be operating within the existing infrastructure for the associate degree for nursing. And so when we actually look at the curriculum that is required to actually move students from going from the ADN to that bachelor's degree in nursing. You know, they're not taking all these extra courses in nursing. It's mostly about ethics and leadership and humanities courses.

And so it's not as I would say field like, you know, clinical placement driven as the ADN is.

And so, you know, students actually are completing their clinical placements within the first 2 years. And so, again, we don't really see this as having any type of impact on clinical placements. Community colleges have already have strong partnerships with working with, you know, hospitals in the region to ensure that students have access to equitable play clinical placements. That's not to say it's not perfect. There are definitely challenges there.

Right? But we have that partnership already, and they're completing it within the first 2 years. This is really about the second 2 years that we're trying to get students to.

Thank you. I did hear the opposition testify that there are challenges with clinical placements, and you mentioned that just now. For the number of graduates, we are putting out from the existing programs, CSUs, etcetera, and as well as the educator workforce for this. Is there a way can you just speak a little bit to that and maybe address how you're working towards showing that side of the equation up?

Because if we're just turning out more students with degrees, but we don't have the appropriate clinical placements for them, they're gonna have spent their time doing this and feel very sorely disappointed at the other end of it when they can't find work.

Yeah. Well, I think we're obviously, we're very supportive of any way we can ensure that we are increasing that supply and opportunity for clinical placements, recognizing that we don't want it to serve as a bottleneck. What I will say is that, you know, under the rebuilding nursing infrastructure grant program that I mentioned, colleges are really looking at innovative ways they can help students meet clinical placement requirements by using specialized equipment.

You know, I would say, I'm not a health care expert here, but like, mannequins and other types of simulations that they can actually use to fulfill clinical placement requirements. So, again, we're obviously wanna ensure that we are working with our four-year partners to ensure that really public universities are the ones public universities and colleges are the ones that really have priority access, I would say, to clinical placement opportunities.

And that is really, I think, a shared goal between us. But like I said, you know, as it pertains specifically this bill, we don't really see it having any type of impact because the students the students who complete their pre licensure and earn their associate degree for nursing would have already completed their the clinical placement requirements.

And just to add to that point, because I've had many many conversations with, like, even in my region because I'm hoping that if this bill does get signed that our region gets selected as part of the pilot program. And we've had these conversations on the ground about, you know, this statement of work we're gonna make it harder for the CSUs and we're gonna be competing. But I don't think that that's completely accurate.

You know, what I've learned in kind of this three year now I think this is my fourth year kind of working on this issue, but third year bringing the bill is the additional curriculum to get the RN to a BSN involves more theory, clinical hours that don't need to be performed in the hospital, which makes it a lot easier and more flexible. We've had several conversations with clinics, the community clinics, especially in rural areas.

They are hungry to have these students be placed in those clinics, in those settings, and it provides that flexibility not competing with these other hospital clinical placements that folks are talking about. But even in my area, for example, Madera Community Hospital just opened. They would be a perfect location where students from that community, if they're attending that community college could actually do their placements. There are no placements there currently right now for you know, BSN. So, there is significant opportunity and so, yeah.

I wanna thank you guys for for hearing this piece of legislation again.

Thank you for the opposition. Do you have any response to the lack of clinical placement in what you are doing to help in in that area as well?

So, yes. A couple of things. Some of you know nursing has a very special place in my heart because of my training and many, many years of working in health care. There are a couple of things, and I appreciate the bill because of the workforce demands. There's another particular issue I'll get to clinical placements.

It is for the required clinical placements, particularly in the pre licensure years. Right? The community colleges graduated of nearly 35,000 ADNs in the last three years. The question is why to me. The question is why many more are not entering ADN to RN to BSN programs.

Right? Because we've got over 3,000 currently enrolled in the 19 institutions just did an analysis about scaling up, etcetera. So I think in the shorter term, there is the potential to be much more effective and efficient. Where are the 35,000? Right?

It was 11,100 three years ago, 11,400 two years ago, and over 12,000 in the last reported data of2024, 2025. And so that's something we're looking at because they won't need the traditional early clinical placements to go in. And since they're offered hybrid online and face to face, that really, particularly in a shorter time frame, to me anyway, seems to be the most effective way to scale, for the demand of bachelor's level nursing.

And then if I if I may, someone may remember. Thank you for the question. I think one of the issues here is that we're we're talking about two distinct things. The pre licensure students and the post licensure students. And as a witness has mentioned, the student has presumably completed their ADN.

They completed their licensure hours. And now for the community college to offer the BSN, they don't need the clinical placement hours, and the student can easily get into that. The problem with that is that doesn't create a new nurse. That's still the same nurse that was already licensed. It does not address the nursing workforce shortage need that the Central Valley, that these areas are critically facing.

The nurses this the number of nurses in the area remains the same. While their qualification goes up, the real issue about the sword is not addressed. And I think when we talk about that increase from ADN to BSN, we talk about the partnership programs that already have that we're already doing, the build rebuilding nursing infrastructure grant program that facilitates that increase.

But as and going back to the assembly member's point in terms of perhaps solutions, ways to address that need, we've been exploring that as well about how we can leverage existing funding to perhaps increase those kinds of nurses specifically to these challenge areas like the Central Valley and Northern California where we do see a shortage of nurses. And whether it's ADN or BSN, there's a need to get more nurses in that in that area.

But I did wanna address that because it's talking about two, I think, distinct students, those who need the clinical placement hours and those who do not. And I think for those who do not, the BSN students, there is sufficient capacity throughout our campuses that offers that opportunity.

Thank you for those responses. I before I pass the mic over back to Chair Fong, I wanna say that I will be supporting your bill today, but I have a lot of concerns. I know you've been working very hard on this issue, addressing a very critical need and wanting to make sure we have the appropriate workforce to deliver high quality care.

I do wanna verify that there is budget allocated for this increase in number of students so that we do make sure we don't encroach on the Prop 98 funds. And also, that we're taking a holistic approach and making sure that our nurses get those placements that they need, as we move forward.

And I appreciate you. I know you're very diligent, and you work well with all sides and all parties involved in your legislation. And I wanna commend you for continuing to work with the opposition. So, thank you.

Thank you so much, Doctor Patel. Any further questions from colleagues or comments? Seeing none of someone who would like to close, please.

Thank you, Chair. I just you know, wanna, thank even the opposition. I know that we've been engaged in this in the last, few years. And you know, there's been a lot of progress, and I'll recognize that. But it's just not been enough.

Not enough for my community. And I think that this bill is not about the CSU versus the community college. At the end of the day, it's about increasing access.

It's about growing the pie, and it's about making sure that in a time when there's affordability issues in our community, and I think about the people that live in Colinga, and Huron, and Mendota, where their closest point of higher education that is closest to them is a community college, and they could stay in their communities to continue to not just get educated, but train in the clinics that are there. And so today, you know, I bring this again.

I know that you guys have supported or folks that have previously served in this committee have supported in the past. I'm hoping to continue to work on this issue until we get a Governor that will sign it because that's how important it is and how dire we need it for my region in the state. So, thank you so much. I respectfully ask for an aye vote.

Thank you so much, Assembly member Soria, for your tremendous leadership and efforts in the space. You and I have had many conversations around the nursing healthcare workforce shortage, and how do we continue to address those gaps, especially in our rural communities up and down the state. And thank you for authoring this. I know this is the third year, I believe, and appreciate your tenacity.

And I believe that moving forward, it's important that we continue to address issues with the community college bachelor degree program directly as opposed to creating separate public programs.

But with that, I look forward to supporting the measure here today. I appreciate everyone's comments and all the testimony on both sides and all the comments from my colleagues as well. And with that, mister secretary, roll call, please.

File item number 14, AB 2301. The motion is do pass and we refer to the committee on appropriations. Fong?

Aye.

Fong, aye. Demaio?

Aye.

Demaio, aye. Boerner? Macedo? Jackson?

Jackson, aye. Muratsuchi? Patel?

Aye.

Aye.

Patel, aye. Ramos? Sharp- Collins? Tangipa?

That measure is four votes. We'll keep the rope in for additional members add on.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay. Next up, we'd like to welcome Assembly member Alvarez presenting item number 26, Assembly Bill 2694. Welcome Assembly member Alvarez.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, committee members. Thank you all for the opportunity to talk about Assembly Bill 2694, which very conveniently fits into your prior two conversations and a prior conversation that we had here on a bill that I brought forward that came out of this committee, which was exactly the same bill that Mr. Ta brought forward today for a different community college and a bill that Ms. Pacheco I know has before this committee as well.

And you are seeing—I think Mr. Muratsuchi mentioned this earlier—you are seeing these bills come forward for a very particular reason. The workforce demands and the needs of our different industries up and down the state are unmet.

They are not being reached by our current system of higher education. And our community colleges can play a very pivotal role, as they are closer to many, many communities than our, our CSU or UCs in the entire state.

So, I am proud to bring forward what I think, thanks primarily to the work of this committee, to your committee consultant, really, in true nature, collaborative work here, is a bill that we hope fixes a problem of uncertainty that I think is created by the good work of Assembly Bill 927 that I think requires us to revisit and so, that we can perhaps avoid future one-offs, if you will.

Like, you've heard one today and you've heard one before and you'll hear more of unless this issue is addressed. So, that is in the spirit of this bill, and I think we, we get very close to accomplishing that.

So, Assembly Bill 2697 is a workforce-responsive baccalaureate expansion act bill that is targeted to—it's a targeted effort to modernize how California delivers affordable workforce-aligned bachelor's degrees through our community college. The bill is about access, it is about equity, and it's about economic responsiveness. We wanna, again, thank the work done by this committee and the continued dialogue.

The committee and I agree on the importance of including language that reflects good faith process, and we will, we will work collaboratively to develop that appropriate language as we move forward. For the time being, there are other changes that we are going to be making with amendments today, which I will get into in a second.

California faces persistent workforce shortages and fields that require bachelor's degrees. This is especially true, as you just heard in health care and applied technology, but also in public service. At the same time, we know that students who are at our community colleges are often place-bound students, meaning they are living at home mostly or close to home. They're usually working adults, caregivers, and tend to be overwhelmingly lower income Californians.

These are individuals who often cannot relocate, cannot move their lives, cannot uproot their families to go to a CSU hundreds and hundreds of miles away, or UC programs that are also further away from home.

A January 2026 survey commissioned by the Community College League of California found that roughly eight in 10 voters support expanding community college bachelor's degrees, with strong bipartisan support driven by affordability, no surprise there, and workforce needs. Yet under the current law, a strict duplication prohibition can block new programs, even when the local California State University or the local University of California campuses are not even enrolling students in that degree, or when regional employers are struggling and calling out for help to fill jobs that remain vacant.

The result is a system that can unintentionally limit opportunity and reinforce inequities, and, again, prohibit economic development throughout our state. AB 2694 replaces this rigid rule with a clear, practical standard. Programs are only restricted if they are duplicative within a region, not simply because they overlap in the naming of the degree.

This means it allows programs to move forward when universities are not serving their local students or when there is documented unmet workforce demands. The bill also strengthens accountability by requiring employer consultation, workforce board input, regional labor—labor market data—and clear evidence of demand, such as hiring challenges or wage premiums. This is all information that is required in order to pursue these degrees.

Again, there are others that have been—amendments that are before you today—which we are definitely accepting because they do make this a stronger proposal. The amendments now allowed the bill to require community college districts to meet performance benchmarks before they offer bachelor's degrees.

That is something that's not required today that this bill will now require. This will ensure that student success remains a central focus and key component of these programs. A very important change, the bill reduces the cap on the number of baccalaureate programs from currently 25% at a community college to 15% of the associate degree offerings there.

And it adds annual reporting that also does not exist in law today to the legislature on the outcomes, workforce alignment that occurred with those bachelor's degrees, and all partnership efforts to ensure transparency and oversight for the legislature. This bill is not about pitting systems against each other.

In fact, it promotes coordination, another important key component that this committee worked on to raise, as part of this bill. The CSU and the UC can still raise objections to a community college who's seeking to offer, and the Chancellor must convene all parties, the community college itself, the UC, and the CSU, to work toward agreement before approval. Here, I wanna underscore that the goal is alignment, not duplication, and certainly not competition. AB 2694 remains—maintains—key guardrails including accreditation requirements, again, statewide cap that already exist of 30 new programs per year, and a new cap of 15% of bachelor's programs, compared to the associate degrees that are offered at a specific campus.

Community college bachelor's programs are uniquely positioned to serve underserved and nontraditional students. You know that already all too well. They provide affordable local pathways to high demand careers, especially in regions where students cannot uproot their lives to pursue a four-year degree hundreds of miles away.

California's economy depends on a workforce that is educated, skilled, and regionally distributed.

That's what got us to where we are as a fourth largest economy in the world. However, we must adapt. We cannot afford policies that slow down our response to the workforce needs that are everchanging and leave talent on the sidelines. The bill is supported by a broad coalition of community college districts of leaders, statewide organizations across California, reflecting strong, system-wide support for expanding access in a responsible and accountable way. And again, hopefully avoiding more one-off conversations, as this committee has had.

I'll now like to introduce Mark MacDonald with MGI Advocacy. But before he speaks, I understand that Assemblymember Pacheco would like to join on as a coauthor to AB 6—2694, and I would be happy to add her as well. Mark?

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you so much and welcome. Did you—just to clarify, is that coauthor or joint author?

She would like to be a joint author.

Okay. Perfect. Thank you so much. Welcome.

Thank you, Assemblymember Alvarez. Thank you, Chair Fong and members. Good afternoon. My name is Mark MacDonald, and I'm here to testify on behalf of the California Community College Baccalaureate Association and its President and CEO, former San Diego Community College District Chancellor, Constance Carroll, in support of AB 2694. I also represent a number of local community college districts that are in support of the measure, including San Diego, Southwestern State Center, and San Bernardino Community College districts.

I wanna thank Assemblymember Alvarez for carrying this important measure, and, Chair Fong, commend your staff for the work that they did on the bill and bringing it to its current form. That was yeoman's work. AB 2694 would establish two important exceptions to the current process of authorizing community colleges to offer baccalaureate degrees. It does not bypass that process, I will emphasize, but just creates two minor exceptions.

Number one, first, it would change the definition of prohibited duplication from statewide to a community college district service area.

This is an important distinction for many community college place-bound students. Under current law, a community college student living in San Diego, Los Angeles, or another Southern California community may be precluded from accessing a baccalaureate degree program just because that program is offered at one CSU in Northern California. Further, this bill would authorize a community college district to offer a baccalaureate degree that may duplicate a UC or CSU regional baccalaureate degree if there is documented unmet regional workforce need.

And the Assembly Member explained how that would have to be determined, and that is an important point. This will enable community college districts to be partners with the CSU and UC in expanding baccalaureate attainment to meet the needs of their regions.

These are two very important student-centered workforce demand amendments to the current law that will ensure affordable access to baccalaureate degrees for California community college students. And so, I wanna say thank you for your consideration of this important measure.

Thank you so much. Are there any witnesses in support in the hearing room? Welcome.

Hello. Andrea Wittig, Director for the Office of the President at Cerritos College, in support.

Thank you.

Crystal Padilla with the Community College League of California. Looking forward to supporting the...as this bill advances.

Thank you so much.

Alicia Nakpal with the Student Senate for the California Community Colleges, in support.

Thank you.

Jason Henderson, on behalf of the Faculty Association for California Community Colleges, in support.

Sabrina Means, on behalf of Pasadena City College, in support.

Thank you.

Chair and Members, Austin Webster with W Strategies, on behalf of the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges and the California Community College Association for Occupational Education, in support.

Thank you.

Casey Elliott, on behalf of South Orange County Community College District, in support. Thank you. Thank you.

Ashley Walker, on behalf of North Orange County Community College District and Citrus College, in support. Thank you.

Thank you.

Trustee Peter Hidalgo, Mount San Antonio College, in support. Thank you.

Hello. Wendy Brownweincoop, College of the Canyons, in support.

Thank you.

Anna Matthews, California Community College Independent Union, in support. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon. Imran Majid, on behalf of the California Community College's Chancellor's Office, in support. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hey. Uduak-Joe Ntuk, President of the Long Beach City College Board of Trustees, on behalf of the college, in support. Thank you.

David Nevin, on behalf of the Los Angeles Community College District, Santa Monica College, and El Camino College, in support.

Thank you so much. Are there witnesses in opposition in the hearing room?

Oh, sorry.

Did you guys wanna?

Sorry. We're in the zone. Sorry.

I'm sorry. I thought.

No, you, you each have two minutes. Welcome.

Alright. Thank you.

Good afternoon, Chair and Members. I’m Dr. Junius Gonzalez, Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at the CSU Office of the Chancellor, in respectful opposition to AB 2694. The CSU recognizes that access, affordability, and workforce needs are real issues that must be solved and that our institutions must all be nimble enough to meet these needs, especially for students who are place-bound, working adults, or looking to continue their education.

We accomplished this through a wide transfer pipeline, as well as through targeted programs developed collaboratively between the universities and partner institutions, most commonly with the California community colleges. Our existing transfer pathways remain the most affordable, proven, and scalable route in the state to attain a bachelor's degree in the CSU remains of leading destination for transfer students from the California community colleges.

As recently as this fall, 91% of transfer applicants from the community colleges were admitted to the CSU. Of the nearly 120,000 new undergraduate students enrolled in the CSU this year, 41% transferred from a California community college. We also have our—the third best in completion rates for transfer students in the nation, second only to the UC and University of Washington, both large...institutions, but by scale, far eclipse those.

The CSU is not opposed to bachelor degree programs at the California community colleges, and we have not objected to the vast majority of programs proposed 81% through the existing AB 927 process.

However, the expansion proposed by AB 2694 and other legislation heard by this committee raised several concerns and unanswered questions about the impacts this may have on our institutions.

We believe that any proposal that shifts segments roles should include at a minimum, one, objective standards of what constitutes the actual programs, two, objective analysis of workforce needs both regional and statewide, three, a full fiscal analysis to understand how these expansions will impact existing funding distributions, including the role, as we've heard before, of proposition 98 funding, and four, a focus on student outcomes, including reporting of metrics, such as completions and time to degree and examination of admission requirements as well.

We are committed to working with the author on identifying the best ways to streamline the AB 927 process, provide better outcomes to the CSU, UC, and community colleges students, while preserving the values and fiscal sustainability of California's higher education system. Changes of this scale warrant a larger discussion to ensure these questions and concerns are addressed, and we are committed to engaging and leading on those efforts and so, respectfully ask for your no vote on AB 2694.

Thank you, Mr. Chair and members. Chris—Chris Morales of the CSU Office of the Chancellor. Firstly, let me thank the committee for the amendments. We look forward to reviewing the language and in print, and let me thank the author for maintaining a consistent conversation with us on this important issue. We are absolutely committed to serving these rural and place-bound students.

And one thing I'd like to reiterate, as, as was mentioned, when the program is not available nearby for these students, that does not mean that the door is closed for these students. We do this through hundreds—we address these students through hundreds and hundreds of partnerships across our state that includes online offerings, satellite campuses, co-located bachelor programs, post licensure programs, even sending CSU faculty to teach at the community colleges, and we want to ensure that that collaboration is being supported and bolstered and not diminished.

And we appreciate the committee for raising the importance of these partnerships. We'll continue to work with the author who's been a strong facilitator for those partnerships, especially in his region.

And we wanna thank the committee for, for allowing us to testify here today.

Thank you so much. Are there witnesses in opposition in the hearing room?

Hello again. Adam Swenson, on behalf of the Academic Senate of the CSU, and we respectfully oppose this one. Thank you.

Thank you.

Eric Paredes with the California Faculty Association, respectful opposition. Thank you.

Thank you. Are there tweeners in the hearing room?

Colleagues, any questions or comments? Seeing none, somewhere we'd like to close, please.

Yes. I was looking forward to the discussion. Shame that our colleagues are not here on this one. Look, I I think the CSU system talked about the partnerships, and I think we we have to recognize the work, again, done by your committee and your team. There is incentives in the language, in the amendments, and then what we are discussing still to continue that.

I think right now, there really aren't that many incentives for that to occur. I'll share with my experience. I think I've shared this with you personally, chair Fong, and I have with some of the colleagues. Getting to a point of partnership, locally at least, with the work I'm trying to do in higher education back back home in San Diego has been a tremendous challenge.

It has been very consuming in terms of time, and it has been challenging financially to find the resources to identify programs to grow access to higher education through these partnerships.

Because with no you know, I'm not blaming them, but CSU needs money in order to grow programs is what their response always is when I ask them to come and increase their their foot presence, and their presence in in my part of the district, and they'll probably be the same response to any of you who wanna bring CSU programs to your communities. I understand as chair of the subcommittee, the fiscal challenges, as you know well, mister chair, as well.

And I'm trying to identify ways to create opportunities for students in the least resource intensive way. And I have come to appreciate AB 927 and the work that went into creating that. And I also appreciate your your vision of trying not to create a system, that is, a little more chaotic and less less, streamlined and less, intentional.

And I think that's what this bill is about. I'm trying to be responsive to what you heard earlier from our colleague from Orange, what our other colleague from, the Downey area, what you heard from me, and what you heard from others because it's not the first time that this conversation has come forward. And that is how do we actually incentivize and create a structure where the CSU and the UC do come and figure out a way to partner? This bill creates the incentives to do so.

And it also recognizes, and this I will not shy away from, that if your local CSU serving your students in your region is not offering a degree that is in high need because remember, we're talking about degrees only that are have unmet workforce needs.

This isn't just any other degree. It's one with documented the data has to be provided as required by the statute here. If you are able to demonstrate that and the local CSU is not offering that degree, then we have to have a response for our students. We have to provide them a pathway. That's what this bill is about.

And, you know, if if our public institutions can't do it, from the UC and CSU level, and our community colleges for some reason can't do it, then we're gonna have to look somewhere else to identify how to provide what our students are expecting of us and what we should be doing, which is providing with higher education opportunities in their own communities.

So, for that reason, I hope that we can have your support and not only your support now, but your ongoing appreciate I know the ongoing work that will go into making sure that this is the right balance to not duplicate degrees, but to actually create more access for students as that's the ultimate goal. Thank you, mister chair.

And thank you so much, chair as well for your leadership and efforts around the space. We've had many robust conversations, and thank you so much for working closely with our committee staff on this as well. Just for the record, the amendments that you had mentioned earlier, just wanna verify it's one, two, and four as delineated on pages eight and nine on, attainment accountability as a condition of eligibility. They're requiring a good faith partnerships between independent program approval and annual legislator reporting. Is that correct?

I'm just confirming, I believe, that that would let me

let me I'm sorry. One, two, and four. Let me back up. I apologize. The attainment and accountability is a addition of eligibility on the bottom of page eight.

And then the one on page number two, reduce the cap that you mentioned in your remarks as well. And then number four, the annual legislative reporting.

That is correct, mister chair. And also state for the record, you know, your item number three is work that remains to be done and looking forward to figuring out how to ensure that this is reflective of the final version. And I know that we are continues having conversations about that. That commitment remains.

Absolute. Thank you so much. I thank you so much for all the robust conversations on this bill and for working closely with our committee staff and for your leadership benefits. We've had many conversations around this whether as we continue to expand opportunities, and we know that there's still elements to work out, but I believe this bill is making progress. And the change of this magnitude as proposed in this bill requires thoughtful deliberation.

While I believe that the committee analysis highlights multiple points of consideration going forward, I believe it's time to continue to take a look at the bachelor degree program and really think about how we can address the regional the the duplication challenges. And this bill, you've been tremendous leader in working around these issues here. And thank you so much again for working with our committee staff and for the many conversations around this, and I look forward to supporting the bill today and look forward to continued collaboration.

Thank you so much. Thank you.

With that, mister secretary, roll call, please. I'm sorry. Can we have a motion on this, please? Move the bill. Second.

We have a motion to second. Thank you so much, colleagues. See no further questions or comment. Mister secretary, roll call, please.

File item number 26AB2694. The motion is do pass as amended, and we refer to the committee on appropriations. Fong?

Aye.

Fong, aye. De Maio? Berner? Macedo? Jackson?

Aye. Aye. Jackson, aye. Marisucci, Patel, Ramos?

Aye.

Ramos, aye. Sharp Collins, Tengi Pa?

That measures three votes, and we'll keep the row open for additional members.

Thank you so much. Next up, we'd like to welcome Assemblyville Garcia presenting item assembly bill two one four two. Welcome Asama Garcia. Welcome.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, chair members. Thank you for the opportunity to present on AB 2142, a bill that ensures that temporary classified employees, that are employed longer than 75% of the school year are given the benefits and protections they are entitled to as permanent staff. I want to thank the chair and committee staff, for all the work on this bill, and I accept the committee amendments.

Existing law allows school district boards and community college boards to employ in lieu of traditional classified workers, quote, short term employees. A short term employee is anyone who does classified work for up to 75% of the school year.

These individuals are exempt from virtually all protections guaranteed specifically to those in the classified service. Although these positions are deemed, quote, not needed on a continuing basis, they are in fact utilized continuously for many years. Many such situation include people being, worked as a short term employee in the same position for ten years or more. This practice of maneuvering the law denies employees the status and benefits of regular employment.

AB 2142 creates a rebuttable presumption so that a school district and community college is required to replace a short term employee position with a position in the classified service if the employee works beyond 75% of the year.

While this bill does not raise wages or create any new benefits, it does help simply guarantee that workers, at a minimum, will earn the benefits and rights established under current law. Such a reform will help us keep the classified workers we currently have, attract new ones, and better protect the workers doing and devoting so much to keep our education system running strong. And joining me here as primary witnesses is mister Mitch Steiger from CFT and mister Carlos Lopez from CSEA.

Thank you so much, and welcome.

Thank you, mister chair and members. Mitch Steiger with CFT, Union of Educators and Classified Professionals, proud to cosponsor this bill along with with CSEA for all the reasons stated so well by our author as it's a problem that we hear about pretty relentlessly from our membership where, we have this section of the education code, very well intentioned, that's

designed to account for what happens when you have a short term need. You have classified work that needs to happen, but someone doesn't need to be there for very long. Matter of days or weeks, where it doesn't make that much sense for there to be calculating sick leave or figuring out what their seniority is because they're just not gonna be there long enough to really take advantage of it.

But the way this section is written currently, it says that the worker, cannot be there longer than 75% or one hundred ninety five days of a school year.

And it's that of a school year that we would argue has been sharply misinterpreted by some employers to lead to the frankly absurd outcome where we have some people, and this is a very real example, someone in a community college bookstore that has been there for thirty seven years being fired at the end of every year, brought back the next year, and on and on, getting no benefits, getting no raises, getting no sick leave, no nothing.

And it's not an isolated example even on that campus where we have people who've been there for multiple people who've been there for over twenty years. There's a custodian who's been there for eleven years, all doing the exact same work as the permanent classified employees, but getting none of the benefits. And so while, you know, one can argue, reasonable people can disagree about what qualifies as short term or temporary.

Hopefully, all reasonable people could agree that there's nothing short term about thirty seven years, and there's nothing, God willing, temporary about a community college bookstore. And so we think that when you kind of compare where we are now versus what the law was intended to address, it's pretty clear that something has gone wildly wrong, and this bill is our attempt to make it right.

It's already been amended pretty significantly to make it, we would argue, much easier for employers to comply with, but still achieve that primary goal of making sure that workers accrue and are able to take advantage of the benefits that they've earned. We urge your support. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Welcome.

Hello. Good afternoon, committee member or chair and committee members. My name is Carlos Lopez. I'm here on behalf of the California School Employees Association, a union that represents over or nearly 300,000 school employees, a proud cosponsor of this bill.

And I just wanted to highlight, where this bill exists in current law for education code four five one zero three says that in short term employees are to perform a service for the school district upon completion of which the service required or similar services will not be extended or needed on a continuing basis.

So that's really kind of where the need for this bill comes as Mitch brought up. If someone's being brought back twenty years in a row, that's a foreseeable thing that should be planned and budgeted for. We've made meaningful amendments in the past few weeks to try to address the committee and some of our opposition's concerns that we believe provides a lot more flexibility to districts. It shifts the onus for a portion of the bill from an individual worker to the position.

So if a position that's being filled by a short term is filled for 50% or more of the year, three out of five years in a consecutive basis, that then needs to become a permanent position because we believe that's a standard that you know this is likely to happen.

It's taking up a majority of your school year, and it can be planned for, and the employee doing that work should be receiving basic benefits, retirement, rehire possibilities. I'll keep it at that. We're here if there's any other technical questions, and we urge your aye vote.

Thank you so much. Are there witnesses in support in the hearing room?

Good afternoon, chair and members. Connor Gessman on behalf of Teamsters California and the Malcomated Transit Union in support.

Thank you so much. Are there any additional witnesses support? Are there witnesses in opposition in the hearing room? Welcome. You each have two minutes.

Good afternoon. Andrew Martinez, behalf of Community College League of California. We respectfully must oppose AB 2142. We appreciate the author and the sponsor for their engagement and for bringing forward amendments, reflecting the analysis. However, we do not believe the amendments address our core concerns with the bill.

We remain concerned that this bill significantly narrows district's abilities to respond to short term fluctuating and often unpredictable student needs by establishing rebuttable presumption that certain positions must be treated as classified based on multiyear workload patterns. Community colleges rely on short term employees to meet dynamic student needs. As an open access system, we serve all students and deliver a wide range of programs, including associate degrees, dual enrollment, career tech, education, and online instruction.

Flexibility and local control are critical for colleges to make effective support, our student enrollments, outreach, and services, and respond quickly to avoid disruptions. Many of the needs are driven by funding sources beyond the control of our locally elected boards.

This bill would require districts to make ongoing staffing commitments without new funding to support the hiring. It would note that the community colleges are the funding lowest funded segment of education among our peers per student when it comes to our higher education four year institutions in k 12. Bill also introduces ambiguity, administrative burden, increasing the risk of compliance challenges and disputes. In practice, this effectively requires districts to treat these positions as classified even when they are underlying needs that may not be ongoing.

While the bill does not prohibit rehiring, it decrees a strong disincentive to rehire short term employees once they approach that threshold.

For those reasons, we must continue to be opposed.

Thank you so much, and welcome.

Good afternoon, mister chair and members. Dorothy Johnson with the Association of California School Administrators. Also respectfully oppose on behalf of our TK through 12, school leaders, and we very much appreciate the conversation with the sponsor and author's office about their narrowed effort to address the stated concerns. We're reviewing the language, but see two outstanding points remaining, echoing my colleague from the community colleges. The bill still has the unintended consequence of blocking short term employees from returning, in multiple years.

That is a loss for the school. That is a loss for students, and we believe also for the individual who may wish to continue in a short term position over multiple years. In addition, in our, TK12 setting, we have a March 15 Layoff notice requirement. When someone is serving and potentially reaching that threshold of becoming a permanent employee, we have concerns about over-noticing or under-noticing.

The March 15 layoff period is a very tough time on staff morale, and this would further confuse not being able to know the full length of their service because, of course, it's not only time in the position, but also leave time as part of that calculation.

So someone could cross over in January or March, they would be triggered for a layoff, and then in fact, perhaps not reach their full time for permanent employment. So, for these reasons, we do remain respectfully opposed, and my colleagues from the Central Valley Education Coalition and Kern County superintendent of schools would also like to express their opposition. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Are there additional witnesses in opposition in here, Ramm?

Good afternoon, mister chair. Misha ... behalf of California Association of School Business Officials in opposition.

Thank you.

Mister chair, members, Nick Romley here on behalf of the Small School Districts Association. We are in opposition.

Thank you. Are there tweeners in the hearing room? Colleagues, any questions or comments? Seeing none, there's somebody who would like to close, please.

Thank you, mister chair. No. I do appreciate all the work that's been done on behalf of the sponsors, and also the concerns brought up by the opposition, and I thank the committee for their amendments. I do think this is a much better bill, so I respectfully ask for your aye vote.

Thank you so much, Senator Garcia, for working with our committee staff and for amendments. I concur this measure as a clarification of existing law that community college districts should not continue to hire a short term employee for a job that is ongoing in nature even if it's sickly glow. Thank you for bringing this measure forward and ook forward to supporting the measure today. With that, do we have a motion? Yeah.

I'll second it. See no further questions or comments. Mister secretary, roll call, please.

File item number 10, AB 2142. The motion is do pass as amended, and we refer to the committee on appropriations. Fong. Aye. Fong, aye.

Di Maio, Berner, Macedo, Jackson, Marzucci, Patel, Ramos. Aye. Ramos, Ayesha Collins, Tengi Bhai.

That measures two votes, and we'll keep the roll open for additional members. Thank you so much.

Thank you, mister chair and members.

Okay. Next up, we'd like to welcome Summer Brian presenting Assembly Bill 2114. Welcome, Summer Brian.

Thank you, mister chair. It's good to be before the committee again, and thank you, colleagues. I'm proud to present AB 2124. Over the last two years, more than a dozen states have enacted legislation or executive orders that have limited, instruction around diversity, equity, and inclusion in our institutions of higher learning. In Texas, SB 17 was signed into law, and it requires that schools in the Texas University System cannot establish or maintain a diversity, equity, and inclusion office.

In fact, the University of North Texas became the first state university to announce the elimination of DEI programs, saying it would dissolve its division of inclusion, diversity, equity, and access. Iowa in 2024 passed SF twenty four thirty five, which banned DEI offices, but it also limited types of positions and viewpoints and institution can promote viewpoints and concepts that the schools cannot promote include allyship, anti racism, systemic oppression, gender theory.

All of these attacks on our institution of higher institutions of higher learning inevitably become attacks on our students and their ability to develop consciousness and participate in an inclusive society that is diverse, inclusive, and equitable, based in history and culture and community representation. That's why in AB 2124, we're seeking to create an education asylum program.

If you are studying in one of these states where your education has now been outlawed, you are studying diversity, equity, inclusion, black studies, gender studies, any of these disciplines that are now actively in protest by leaders in your state, we welcome you to transfer to a California university.

And we are offering California universities the opportunity to to participate in this asylum program and incentivize students to join with in state tuition. If you cannot find the education that you are seeking in the state that you are from because diversity, equity, and inclusion have become politicized, California will take you. Joining me in support, brand is Brandon Green with Western Center on Law and Poverty, and Candice Phan, the chair of the UC Student Association.

Thank you so much. Welcome.

Good afternoon, chair Fong, members of the committee, and staff. My name is Candice Fan. I'm a third year undergraduate student at UC Davis studying sociology, and I currently serve as the UC Student Association's government relations chair.

As a student who has tangibly benefited from UC Davis' diversity and cultural initiatives and also works at one of our retention programs that has advanced educational equity, I'm here today to urge your support for AB 2114 as I strongly believe that in a time when these very programs are being actively dismantled in other parts of the country, California has this opportunity to step up and reaffirm our commitments by creating accessible pathways for students to meaningfully pursue higher education in safe and academically stimulating ways.

As a sociology student, I cannot emphasize enough just how much this discipline has changed my life.

I say this with a clear mind and with conviction that it's not that I've been indoctrinated, but rather that it's been precisely sociology and all these robust programs that have made me a deeper critical thinker, a better communicator, and more civically engaged.

I probably wouldn't even be able to sit here in front of you all today if it weren't for these programs that have helped me with my confidence and sense of belonging, or the programs, and the educational instruction from my incredible sociology professors, lecturers, and teaching assistants who absolutely should have the academic freedom to teach and create course syllabi in ways they deem appropriate based on their years of expertise.

You know, I don't want to increase any type of political polarization, but when I look at other states like Florida, which just recently decided to remove sociology from their GE course list, I'm stunned and I'm heartbroken because I can't even fathom being a third year undergraduate student in one of these states one year away from graduation, and all of a sudden I'm left questioning the status and legitimacy of my degree.

Students in these states are being deprived of the opportunity to study ideas that foster open dialogue and engage in programs that prepare them to interact with an increasingly diverse world.

It's these culturally relevant and critical theory curriculums that, as research has shown, improve academic success and college completion rates. And therefore, in a time when other states are rolling back these essential programs and in the age of AI and continuing devaluing of the social sciences and humanities, California can instead choose to continue being a leader in higher education by preserving and opening up these academic environments rather than caving to political pressure. Thank you all, and I respectfully urge your aye vote. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Welcome.

Good afternoon, chair and committee members. My name is Brandon Greene. I'm the director of policy advocacy at the Western Center on Law and Poverty. We are proud sponsors of this bill because our country is in an inflection point. Not only are our long standing institutions under attack, but so are fundamental civil rights.

The greatest threat to the encroachment of fascism and the resurrection of ghosts of the past is a well educated populace that knows and understands its history and the import of lessons learned from its previous mistakes. Critical thinking, civic engagement, and civic engagement and multifaceted analysis are prerequisites for fully engaging in the American project, a form of the more perfect union.

AB 2114 seeks to do this by extending opportunities to students and states that are actively disenfranchising them and barring them from the education necessary for their full development. Students' ability to engage with enriching culturally relevant curriculum should not be dictated by political winds. California has an opportunity to stand up in this moment and offer interested students solace and a place to be.

I urge your aye vote and you choosing to be on the right side of history. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Are there witnesses in support in the hearing room?

Thank you, mister chair members. Mitch Steiger with CFT in support.

Thank you so much.

Eric Paredes with the California Faculty Association in support.

Thank you. Are there witnesses in opposition in the hearing room? Are there tweeners in the hearing room? Colleagues, any questions or comments? Seeing none.

Do we have a motion? There you go. I'll second it. House member Brian, we'd like to close, please. Absolutely.

A lot of students don't feel safe learning in the country right now because the president has demonized diversity, equity, and inclusion and targeted our institutions of higher learning under his administration. In fact, abolish the Department of Education at the federal level.

And lackeys for this administration that are in leadership positions around this country and other states are enacting similar policies in their states and at the university level, making it increasingly dangerous for students who want to learn about culture, who want to learn about gender studies or critical race theory or any of the disciplines that call to them in a better understanding of the world.

Here

in California, we're not afraid of higher education. We're not afraid of diversity. We're not afraid of equity or an inclusion. We know that these things are actually our strength. So if you are a student in Texas who's afraid to take black studies, if you are a student in Florida who is afraid to take gender studies, come to California and receive in state tuition.

That is what this bill is calling for, and I respectfully ask for your eye vote.

Thank you so much, sir Brian, for your leadership and efforts on this bill and for bracing diversity, equity, inclusion until your your witnesses as well to everyone who's provided comments. And thank you for providing amendments as outlined on page four of the committee analysis that addresses some of the concerns shared by committee staff. And with that, I look forward to supporting the measure today.

Thank you, sir.

Mister secretary, roll call, please.

File item number eight, AB 2114. The motion is do pass as amended and we refer to the committee on appropriations. Fong.

Aye.

Fong, aye. De Maio, Berner, Mesito, Jackson, Versucci, Patel, Ramos. Aye. Ramos, aye. Sharp Collins, Menjivar.

That measure is two votes, and we'll keep the rope open for additional members. Thank you. Okay. Alright. We'd like to welcome Asumara Stephanie presenting item assembly bill two five four zero.

Welcome Asumara Stephanie. Thank you.

Okay. Hey. How are you? Great.

Alright. Ready? Okay.

Okay.

Thank you, Mister Chair and colleagues. Today, I'm presenting AB2540, the Community College Student Right to Access Act. And I wanna start by, thanking the Chair and the Committee staff for their feedback and collaboration, and I will be accepting, the committee amendments. AB2540 will expand equitable access to medication abortion services for students attending community colleges across California.

California has long made access to reproductive health care a core value, and this bill will move us closer to that goal by requiring community colleges that have existing student health centers to provide these services.

While similar services already exist at the University of California and the California State University campuses, community college students currently face significant gaps in access to reproductive health care. Reproductive health care is essential health care, and access to this care should never be dependent on the type of college a student attends. It's past time for us to do right by all California students.

With the community college student right to access act, we are closing a critical gap by ensuring that community college students, one of the most diverse and economically vulnerable populations in our state, have the same access to care as their peers at four year institutions. This legislation would allow services to be provided specifically on college campuses that have existing health care centers via telehealth or through contracted providers.

It also improves transparency by requiring colleges to publish information about available services. I'm committed to working with the leadership and administration at the community colleges to address any of their concerns. With me testifying today is Claire Densmore, legislative affairs director at the student senate for California community colleges, and doctor Michelle Gomez, a family physician with over twenty years experience providing primary and abortion care in California.

Thank you so much, and welcome.

Good afternoon, Chair and Members. My name is Claire Densmore. I'm a student at Sacramento City College and the legislative affairs director for Region 2 of the student senate for California Community Colleges. I'm here today in strong support of AB2540. At a time when reproductive health care, including medication abortion, is increasingly uncertain or out of reach for many, it is critical that we strengthen access where we can, especially for students who already face significant barriers.

For community college students, access to health care isn't just about what exists on paper, it's about what's actually within reach, and too often it isn't. This became real to me through a friend of mine and fellow community college student. She attended a campus where the nearest planned parenthood was over two hours away. When she experienced an unplanned and unwanted pregnancy, she needed care, but didn't have reliable transportation, was working multiple jobs, and was a full time student.

What should have been a straightforward health care decision became overwhelming simply because care was out of reach.

That is the gap AB2540 addresses. This bill expands access to medication abortion at Community College Health Centers and ensures that students are clearly informed about the services available to them. It helps make reproductive health care not just legally available, but practically accessible. Community college students are balancing work, school, and real financial pressures. Leaving campus for care can mean delays or going without care altogether.

AB2540 is more than a bill that just closes this gap. It brings reproductive health care to the forefront of health equity. It centers students by ensuring campuses have accessible, well supported reproductive health care resources within reach. At its core, this work is about protecting geographically siloed communities by bridging access, supporting students, and ensuring that wherever you go to school does not undermine your right to whole person health care. Thank you, and I respectively urge your support for AB2540.

Thank you so much, and welcome.

Good afternoon, Chair Fong and Members. My name is doctor Michelle Gomez, and I'm a family medicine physician who has provided primary care and abortion care in California for over twenty years. I'm also a proud mother of two teenagers, including a daughter in her first year of college, so this bill is particularly important to me. My daughter's two best friends from high school are both children of immigrants and are attending community colleges in California.

They're both like daughters to me, and they deserve access to the same excellent health care that as their peers in four year colleges.

If we truly believe in reproductive freedom, justice, and equity in California, we must pass this bill. Approximately 40% of counties in California lack an lack an abortion provider, so community colleges can be a lifeline. And I understand that the idea of providing medication abortion might feel daunting to people who haven't been active in this work over the last several years, but it's simpler than ever.

My tiny primary care practice started offering medication abortions in 2000, twenty six years ago, right after mifepristone was approved by the FDA. I was also honored to help Sonoma State University integrate medication abortions after SB24 and recently helped the UCSF women's health primary care clinic to do the same.

What has been universally true in my experience is that it feels scary before starting, but afterward, providers come to me and tell me I was right, that it's really not medically or technically difficult at all, and that it's extremely rewarding to help a young person think through their options, and if they decide to end the pregnancy, to either provide them with care directly or give a warm handoff to someone who can help. Routine ultrasounds and routine follow ups are no longer required based on real data.

And if providers have questions, they can call the California state funded UCSF reproductive health hotline for immediate free help. There are also call services to help patients with questions after hours. The benefit to students is enormous by not having to delay care and interrupt studies because they can get what they need from trusted providers right on campus.

I know that everyone working in the community college system is committed to providing the best education and health care to their students, and I strongly urge a yes vote on AB2540. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Are there witnesses of support in the hearing room?

Hello, Alicia Nagpal, vice president of legislative affairs for the student center for the CCCs. Proud cosponsor of this bill, and in strong support.

Thank you.

I'm Angel Villanilla on behalf of Sacramento City College in strong support. Thank you.

Thank you.

Jason Henderson on behalf of the Faculty Association for California Community Colleges in support. Thank you.

Hi, Julia. I'm with Access Reproductive Justice, and I support.

Thank you.

Hi. Natalie Stollman with Access Reproductive Justice in support.

Thank you.

Hi. Colette Geers with Access Reproductive Justice in support.

Thank you.

I'm Isabella Voe, a medical student at California University of Science and Medicine and on behalf of Access Reproductive Justice in support.

Thank you.