Assembly Budget Subcommittee No. 3 on Education Finance

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the assembly budget subcommittee number three on education finance. I am chair, so member David Alvarez, and I welcome you all. We'll be joined by our committee members, in a few minutes. Today, we are focused on one of the three segments, the final of the three.

We've spoken to the other two, the California Community Colleges. We will obviously be looking at the community colleges from the perspective of proposition 98 as a funded segment. We anticipate that the May revised revenues and the disposition of the proposition 98 settle up may change some of the January proposals that are before us today. So we'll take it into consideration as we are deliberating the issues before us today.

But just like in the other segments, we are seeing growth and enrollment across the system, but at uneven rates, and we're seeing some with significant growth, others with maybe flat enrollment, and others still with some decline.

So today's hearing is definitely the agenda has been put together with that in mind, and you'll hear a lot of that discussion. We obviously wanna make sure that the increase in funding reflects the need for equity across the system, and those with more enrollment should have the resources to address and to support the systems at the different districts throughout the state. We also have our third discussion on common course numbering. This is something that has been a theme of the committee this year.

We talked to the UC, CSU, and today, we will talk to the community colleges about common course numbering.

And we will consider Calbright, the common cloud, our title nine report, student support for basic needs, and, facilities as well. So trying to have a comprehensive conversation today on our California Community Colleges. So we will begin with an enrollment update and funding proposals. I ask the panel for issue number one to please come forward.

We will discuss, like I said, the enrollment at California Community Colleges and get an overview of what's happening from the Department of Finance perspective, the proposals from the, governor in the January budget.

We'll hear reflections from the legislative analyst on those proposals, and we will hear from the office of the chancellor at the community colleges. Please come forward. Welcome to, all of you. We will start with, mister Osborne with the Department of Finance.

Welcome. Hi. Phil Osborne, Department of Finance.

Just a reminder also to all of you to bring your microphones closer. This room, for some reason, audio doesn't pick up very well.

Overall, the governor's budget includes new proposals that reflect significant new resources within the prop 98 guarantee. At a high level, the governor's budget proposes just over 14,100,000,000 in prop 98 funding for the community colleges, which includes adult education funding. Governor's budget reflect reflects increases of roughly 655,000,000 in funding for the twenty twenty four and twenty five year budget year and nearly 1,200,000,000 in 2627 as compared to what was enacted in the 2025 budget act. Just some high level details.

First, the governor's budget fully repays the apportionments deferral, the 408,400,000 from the twenty five twenty twenty five budget act, and, the governor's budget does not affect any, additional deferrals.

Then we, move on to COLA for apportionments. We propose 2,240,600,000 for a 2.41% cola overall. For enrollment growth, we are proposing a 1% in the current year, which will cascade into the budget year, and then a point 5% enrollment growth in the in the budget year. The current year funding would add $55,300,000, and the budget year adjustment would add an additional 31.9 for a total of, 87,200,000.

We also propose a 88,700,000 one time in Prop 98 general fund to accommodate increasing apportionment costs and to fully fund the total computational revenue.

With regard to the Prop 98 Rainy Day fund, we propose a withdrawal of 44,500,000, which is being used to support apportionments. Aside from the apportionments, there's a few new proposed investments, some of which will be discussed later. We'd like to point out, just some of the larger ones, a $100,000,000 one time Prop 98 general fund for a, flexible block grant, a student block grant for the system, and a 120,700,000 one time Prop 98 general fund to support deferred maintenance needs at the community college.

That's my presentation, and I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you. We'll hear from the legislative analyst's office.

Good morning, Chair and Assemblymember's Lisa King with legislative analyst's office. This first issue on your agenda covers a number of proposals for the community colleges. I'll focus my comments on the cost of living adjustment for apportionments as well as enrollment growth. Regarding the apportionments cola. We recommend prioritizing this within available proposition 98 funding for the colleges.

Providing a cola for apportionments helps districts cover increases in their core operating costs. While providing them with the flexibility to address local conditions. As usual, the data that's used to calculate the colo will be updated later this month, and so you'll receive a new rate at the May revision. Turning next to enrollment growth. This is the other proposal that we recommend prioritizing for ongoing proposition 98 funding of the colleges.

As you may know, about half of districts are currently on track to exceed their growth targets in the current year. And there are a number of factors that could lead to continued enrollment pressure in the budget here. Specifically those factors include regional demographic growth, particularly in parts of the state. An elevated unemployment rate, which could lead more individuals to return to school. And recent efforts to expand dual enrollment for high school students, which has been a key driver of enrollment growth of colleges in recent years.

Depending on available funding. The amount of funding that the Legislature provides for enrollment growth could be higher or lower than the governor's proposing. Regardless of the amount we would recommend providing the funding beginning in twenty twenty six twenty seven. Without revising the current year growth target. This is because the state sets enrollment growth targets based in part on what it believes it can afford.

And our concern is that going back and providing additional funding when districts exceed that target could create an incentive for districts to disregard the state's growth targets moving forward. This issue does contain several smaller proposals for the community colleges. I'll just very briefly note that there are a couple of we have concerns about First regarding the proposed funding for the Healthy School Food Pathways program.

We recommend rejecting the proposal to make this initiative ongoing because the initiative to date has had high state costs and mixed outcomes. And second regarding credit for prior learning.

We think it could be premature to provide additional funding for this initiative in twenty twenty six twenty seven. This is because the state is just beginning to fund beginning to send funding that was provided for this purpose in last year's budget, and so the outcomes of those activities are not yet. I'll conclude my comments there, but I'm happy to take questions on any of the proposals contained in this issue. Thank you.

Thank you. The community college office.

Yeah. Chris Ferguson, executive vice chancellor for finance and strategic initiatives at the California Community College Chancellor's office. So I I won't get into all of the figures that have already been presented. But over time, since the pandemic, we've seen a significant increase in our enrollments in our system, which really is a a testament to our focus on recovering those enrollments, getting students back into our programs, and ultimately seeing them be successful through our programs and obtaining economic mobility and and getting a living wage.

Those remain our our core focus and our core goal as a system.

So with that that, enrollment increase over time, has gone from about 1,800,000 or 8,000,000,000 students. Sorry. 1,800,000 students, in the low of the pandemic back up to 2,200,000 students today. What that means in terms of FTES, real FTES, not the the protected levels, we've gone from roughly 900,000 full time equivalent students and actual reported, reports from colleges, and we are back up to just over 1,100,000, FTES for students. So we've seen that recovery growth.

We've seen them come into our programs on our campuses, whether it's, remote, whether it's hybrid, whether it's in person. You know, we are seeing success as a system. That said, chair, to your point, not every college is in the same position and every district in the same position throughout the state. There are some colleges that are growing rapidly, and there are others that are still continuing to see limited enrollment recovery.

A lot of that is attributable to shifts in demographics in the state in terms of where our younger families are living, you know, often moving out of the Central Coast to the Central Valley.

With that, you know, certainly strong supporters of the 2.41% cost of living adjustment for the student centered funding formula, strong supporters of the 1.5% enrollment growth, and the structure to provide resources to districts in the current year, 1% and half a percent starting in the budget year.

Our current projections show that enrollment, increases are likely to come in closer to 3%, overall, and we are working with the department of finance to provide them with the latest case load update so that they can contemplate that as they build out the May revision and as we work toward a final budget. Of that 3%. What that means in terms of fiscal cost is roughly 85 to 90,000,000 ongoing to support those additional students.

And what I can say is our college system is well aware that if we start growth in the current year and it flows into the budget year, you know, they understand that there is a risk that the state will not always be able to do something of that nature.

And if they do over enroll, they could be left having to pull from reserves or take other measures to continue serving that that student base. We remain strong supporters of the $35,000,000 investment, one time investment for credit for prior learning, and the 2,000,000 ongoing for credit for prior learning, strong supporters of the 120,700,000 for deferred maintenance, 100,000,000 we'll talk about for the student support clock grant later, strong supporters of that as well.

And what that means in particular for our system is that they're able to navigate uncertain times that that block grant. So as we're probably all well aware, some of our districts are being impacted in different ways from, you know, just changes in the economy, changes in federal policy, and this helps them navigate those waters.

Lastly, what I would say in terms of other asks, you know, just for consideration in the May revision or as we head into the final budget would be as we think about that 100,000,000 potentially providing a cost of living adjustment to the student equity and achievement program.

That is our core categorical program. By providing cost of living adjustments on categorical programs, one of the tangential benefits is that it reduces some of the pressure on request to change the 50% law or to revise the 50% law. And that is because the collective bargaining agreements tend to be position specific. They're not program specific.

So as, you know, the the schedules increase over time, it causes a pull from a general fund to support categorical program costs, specifically the the labor costs associated with staffing those categorical programs.

So there is a a tangential benefit to providing cost of living adjustments on our categorical programs. And then one last one that is not before you today, but we remain strong supporters of dual enrollment and the 100,000,000 that is proposed in the k 12 budget to support expansions of dual enrollment.

One key note is dual enrollment not only helps our system in terms of increasing the number of college going students, it also, from what I've heard from districts, helps the California State University and University of California as well as many of those students are also attending those systems, out of high school. So there's a real benefit to all three segments, from dual enrollment. But with that, I'm happy to answer any questions.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you to all three of you. I'll start with some questions. Let me first ask about Lee Alayo raised the issue of going back and increasing the enrollment growth allocation.

And I I'm looking at figure two. I think this was prepared by by the LAO on the breakdown of the new the proposed governor's proposed new ongoing and one time spending. And the on the onetime spending, we the the identify the additional enrollment growth of, 1% at a cost of 55,000,000. And then the, citation is related to the enacted 2526 budget. I I thought that in the 2526 budget, we we had approved, enrollment growth of 1.5%.

Did we not do that in the enacted budget?

So in last year's enacted budget, there were two associated actions. One was to increase the current year target. I believe it was brought up to 2.28% and then in conjunction with that there was a proposal to provide an additional 0.5% growth in the budget here. So combined, the amount was higher than 0.5%, but the amount that began in twenty twenty five twenty six was that 0.5%.

So so this 1% would be on top of the half a percent that was already provided in last year's budget, for a total of, 1.5%.

Okay. And how is it that it's, identified as a one time expenditure, but it's an ongoing, program funded for growth?

Good morning. Jessica Holmes, Department of Finance. So, when we make a current year adjustment, so the the the we go back and basically amend what we had done in in the prior year's budget. We do that on a one time basis. But in this particular case, we are also rolling that 55,000,000 forward into the current year.

We sort of colloquially refer to adjustments in in the sorry. Moving forward to the budget year, we colloquially refer to adjustments in the budget year as our ongoing, but the 55,000,000 actually is an ongoing expenditure. It's just a one time in the 2526 year.

Okay. Yeah. So in terms of what the community college system will have available for growth, I think Department of Finance's position is that it's we would consider it a a one per is it a 1.5% growth over the current year numbers? Or is it just a pipe point 5% growth over the current year numbers?

So effectively, it's 1.5% from where we're at today, but that 1.5% is occurring over a two year period. So 1% starts right now in this year, and a half percent would start next year. So similar to last year, we, from our system, would say it's a one and a half percent in total ongoing, but 1% is in one time resources that they're receiving.

So I'm trying to and I heard you state that you submitted some numbers to finance, so maybe there's still some data. I'm trying to better understand because there the the indications are that the growth will be more than

The half percent, perhaps even more than the combined two year, one and a half percent, is really, in essence, you're only I assume the 1% makes you almost whole for growth or is it still short of growth?

It it would still be short. So the governor's budget is based on projections of the 2526 year in terms of where we think we will land. We get 2526 p one data in February, and we get p two data in June.

Our office generally knows a little bit before that June date as well, and we try to provide that those latest data projections to both the legislature and finance so that there's a better sense as we head into the May revision and the final enacted budget as to what the latest and greatest data is showing for our system. So from our perspective, that additional one and a half percent would, you know, start in optimally start in the current year and roll through into the budget year.

And then we would request, you know, half percent or 1% of growth on top of that as an aspirational target in the budget year. The goal being, you know, for us, fund all of the students that we are seeing in our system and ultimately, you know, still provide a stretch goal for the system moving into the next budget year.

You know, even beyond that, we would say those are the figures that do not factor in potential policy changes like using the greater of the three year average or the current year FTS or for districts such as Southwestern that are above cap. Victor Valley is another and above cap means we have a 10% growth cap.

So once all the growth formula funding is allocated out to districts, if you still have remaining unfunded growth, but you've received more than 10%, you can't receive additional funding that that's in statute right now.

But it the the funding and the additional one and a half percent to get us to 3% would address the vast majority of what we're seeing right now.

Okay. So that that all sounds still like we we may be somewhat short. But then the LAO route a point, and I don't know if this is accurate. Did you state that we historically have not funded enrollment growth in the budget year that we are in, usually, it's just on a going forward basis?

Correct. So prior to last year's enacted budget, the practice had been that any enrollment growth would be funded for the upcoming fiscal year. Last year's enacted budget was the first time to our knowledge that the state has adjusted the current year target in addition to providing additional funding in the budget year. And the concern that we had raised was just about what precedent that set in sending a clear message to districts about how much growth the state can afford.

That's that is definitely something to think about because that just means if if we don't commit to the growth, that means less students having access. And so it's a decision point that's an important one, but understand why you why why you raise it. Let me now ask about the enrollment cap because I assume as presented in there was a bar graph somewhere. It's not a bar graph. I forget what these are called.

But what the enrollment figures, Central Valley, Inland Empire, 15% or greater in terms of of FTE growth, quite significant. And then the others are pretty either no no growth or or very, very little growth. So the issue of this enrollment cap per per district, are we seeing multiple districts? And I would assume primarily Inland Empire, Central Valley having running into the cap issue.

Yeah. We are. It it if I recall the data, it is in the single digits in terms of the number of districts statewide, but it is impactful for those districts. And I would say the way the governor's budget approaches FTES by adding additional resources in the current year and then the budget year does help resolve some of that unfunded growth issue because those districts perceive more this year and ongoing. It reduces, you know, up to that 10% cap.

Then the next year, you can get up to the 10% cap again. So it helps for those districts that are over. That said, our projections of unfunded FTES for we believe it's seven districts, comes in at around 30,000,000, ongoing if we wanted if you wanted to consider lifting that cap and adjusting law. If you wanted to consider adjusting the three year average to the greater of the three year average or current year FPS, we project that to be roughly 54,000,000 ongoing in cost.

So, you know, we have looked at it in the background.

What does it mean to your your greater point, though? What does it mean to a district if they don't see those resources? Inevitably, if they don't have locally available reserves or some other funding source, What they have to do planning wise for future years is restrict the number of course sections they can offer, and that's how you reduce some of your cost. But what that means is you're rationing access to students that could access a course or otherwise access a course they're not able to.

And that's one of the the things that we did see in the great recession is students weren't able to access all of the courses, so it can impact timely completion.

But more importantly, in some cases, if a student can access the courses that they need to complete, they stop out of our system and may not come back. So there there are some planning issues that go into this, but we are hopeful that, you know, there is sufficient enrollment growth and, you know, we'll continue as a system to advocate for lifting that cap.

In terms of budget control, you ultimately, as as a legislature and as a state, control the overall amount of growth funding that is provided to our system. So that 10% cap is a cap within a cap. So, you know, there are other budgetary, you know, tools that you would have available to you if you wanted to consider that.

So you're you're sharing that at the cost of $30,000,000, there there would be seven districts that currently are capped in terms of their ability to serve the students that are enrolled there that could potentially lead to some of those disruptions, which is is what is it then in terms of number of students that we're talking about?

I would have to get you the exact number of students. I don't have that in front of me at the moment.

Okay. And one last, I think, question on this front. What does the system do to ensure that to the concern of just enrolling for the sake of enrolling that this enrollment is leading to any set of out number of outcomes?

Yeah. Certainly, we we attempt to work with districts to have them goal set around vision 2030, both at the district and the college level. Because ultimately, when they receive resources to support students and to offer courses, it's not just about that access component. It is about the success component. It's about seeing additional students transferred to a a four year institution, additional students completing ADT pathways, additional students earning a living wage, seeing further economic mobility, seeing additional students accessing higher education from high school's dual enrollment.

So we do have them goal set around our vision, and the intent there is to see that we're making progress toward consistently better serving our students and consistently focused on seeing better outcomes for our students. Are we getting perfect outcomes today? Absolutely not. But I can tell you that our system is laser focused on helping our students succeed and trying to get them into a good position within their communities, and that's universal across all districts.

I I see and I hear the LAO's point on this. I would ask, though, your assistance in in coming forward with the proposal to fund the districts with as it relates to the enrollment cap issue, but ensuring that there's outcomes associated with that in a way that it's not just, again, a a a mass chase of enrolling students for the sake of it.

I I think I'd like to to see if if you and the administration will certainly check-in with the LAO, see if there's a way to bring forward a proposal to fully fund that growth, but, again, ensure that it's tied to to some outcomes in some way and some some accountability there. The other question I had is regarding the student equity and achievement categorical COLA and probably other categorical to the Department of Finance. Has this been reviewed at COLA for some of these important categorical programs?

If if it has, what is your determination on why COLAs are not necessary?

Traditionally traditionally, the, the student achievement student equity and achievement program hasn't received COLAs. There there are other categoricals that have received those. And so, we have been hearing from stakeholders both within the chancellor's office and outside that that is it is desired. And we can always look into it as part of it.

Historically, let me ask you, do we see colas some years, obviously not other years on programs, and it just depends on the the length of the that has passed, the time that has passed since the last COLA. Like, how how do those decisions get made as to when COLA is appropriate or not?

So as as my colleague mentioned, this program traditionally has not received a COLA. So there there hasn't been sort of a sometimes COLA, sometimes not sometimes not cola.

Oh, and for others, it was at the same

It's pretty much the-

Yeah. We've it's been pretty consistent over the last several years, although I do believe there may have been one or two that have received one time augmentations. But I think, you know, for us when building this package, we certainly have a limit on expenditure within Prop 98 and the amount available for Community Colleges.

And so the package that we put together maximizes both, you know, as much we as we can provide in terms of resources for the Community Colleges as a whole.

You talked about, you know, the funding cap and funding above that.

I think, you know, there are certainly proposals and ways to spend money that create winners and losers. Obviously, the seven growing campuses would benefit from that, the other campuses would not. And so, you know, in trying to build our package, I think we were trying to meet both the needs of the entire the entire system as well as providing some growth for those that are growing, but recognizing that our our revenues are limited.

And so in terms of things like discretionary colas, that just wasn't something that we were able to do in this package.

Is it remind me, I should know this, but there's a lot in the budget. This there's a discretionary funding for K12 under 98. We have discretionary funding here for Community Colleges?

Correct.

And what amount?

It's a 100, it's a 100,000,000.

A 100 student block.

Yeah. Go ahead.

Well, that's the block.

Yeah. For the, discretionary, if you're are you talking about the student block grant? That would be a $100,000,000.

A $100,000,000 one time is your discretionary funding this year? Okay.

Yeah.

Okay. That's it for me on this, I believe.

I'll turn it over to Mister Fong.

Thank you so much, Mister chair, and really appreciate the Chair's comments and uplifting a number of the requests here and up and as well to all the panelists. I wanna follow-up on the question of growth and economic growth as well, and the Chair really teed it up. This is to the Chancellor's Office. I know we talked about the .5% last year and the 1% this year. So over two years is 1.5%.

But in terms of the growth of the Community Colleges, especially a number that in the inland areas and other parts of the state, we are seeing significant growth trends. In terms of the percentage increase, you kinda touched upon it, but what is the actual, like, enrollment growth percentage that would have been needed to actually cover actual enrollment growth?

Yeah. So based on the existing wall, we would view it as roughly 3%. It it's literally a couple hundreds of a percent below that. And that's based on our P1 datasets. So that's roughly one and a half percent more than has been proposed in the Governor's budget, and we put that cost at around 85,000,000 to 90,000,000.

I did look up the cost above the 10% growth cap. There's roughly, 1,563 FTES above, the growth cap system wide, and again, we put that at roughly, 30,000,000 in cost.

So thank you for that context. And you mentioned that a lot of us do the dual enrollment and other opportunities as well. And so when we look at the funding for dual enrollment, do you see if that's adequate? I think you mentioned a 100,000,000.

I think so based on existing law, we can't we with the CCAP program, we can't displace a traditional community college student by increasing dual enrollment. So for many colleges that are experiencing significant growth at the moment, effectively what that means is whatever base they're serving right now, they're somewhat limited in growing that dual enrollment base. Others absolutely have capacity to increase dual enrollment. You know, it would be predicated on getting, CCAP agreements in place.

And we have been seeing a significant increase in dual enrollment. So pre pandemic, we were around 30,000 FTES system wide. Today, I believe the projection puts us at about 65,000 FTES, so about 35,000 more dual enrollment students, a roaring success. And for us, our goal is if we could get every high school freshman to 12 units of, you know, transferable credit, you know, that increases timely completion in our four year institutions. It increases, college going great.

So we see this as a real benefit, from our system to all of higher education.

And thank you for that context. And then just as a question, I heard for the districts are are being held on their hold harmless. Do we have an end date for those districts?

We're hoping that, eventually with colas, you know, ongoing that a lot of these districts that are currently on hold harmless will eventually transform over to the SCFF. Okay. But we don't have any specific proposals.

Yeah. If I could be helpful here. So the the cola effectively stopped being provided on the hold harmless amount this budget year.

Yes.

So '25-'26. There are roughly 13 districts in the state that are on the hold harmless as of our, '25-'26 P1 data run. Of those thirteen, two we believe our Basic Aid District. So the impact in terms of, you know, fiscal isn't the same for those two districts because they're funded on property tax amounts. That said, there's and this is sort of, you know, long term state policy direction to us.

Of those other districts, we do see a strong correlation between enrollment levels prior to the SCFF and, you know, enrollment levels in those districts today. So there's a strong correlation there.

And, you know, based on state policy effectively, we've been told over time whether it's stability, which is our version of declining enrollment or the three year average protections or even the hold harmless, those are all designed to provide a soft landing for districts that are seeing those sustained declines to adjust their operations to those new enrollment levels.

So it's very harsh and very hard for those districts that are on the hold harmless because effectively we are asking them to right size their budgets to serve the student populations that we have. It's often not of their doing or not because they don't want to serve more students or wouldn't serve more students.

Those students just aren't enrolling or may not be demographically in those residential areas anymore, and it is very tough for those districts to have to take those actions. There are a few that I would highlight for you though.

In particular, there's the prune to grow plan at Peralta Community College District where they have worked with their community, they've worked with their campus community, and they have a plan over time to convert one of their four colleges into a center underneath one of their other colleges.

And, effectively, they're consolidating Laney and Merit, and they would call that Oakland City College moving forward, which is actually a historical name in the district. But it is, you know, one example of a district having those tough conversations, working with their community, and ultimately crafting a plan to true up their local budget to match where they're at.

Thank you for that context. It's very helpful. I appreciate the insights there. And then lastly, I just wanted to up uplift the Student Support Block Grant. I think that's so critical for our to make college districts up and down the state.

That's been an opportunity to relay consider support our most impacted students, most vulnerable students, and I really wanna uplift that request as well. Thank you, Mister chair.

Thank you, Mister Fong. Doctor Patel?

Thank you for being here today and for your testimony. I also took a look at staff's very thorough agenda and appreciate that work that goes into putting those agendas together. I do have some questions, and some of it's a little bit higher level. I wanna take us up.

Looking at the relatively flat budget for our community colleges tied in with the Prop 98 withholding, enrollment growth, also the addition for some of our campuses of baccalaureate programs, What is the outlook for what you're putting together for the budget?

And do you have any thoughts additionally on the Prop 98 withholding specifically?

So we defer on the policy outright to the administration. I think from our perspective, so long as we are funded for whatever the minimum guarantee is at whatever point in time that occurs, I think that is our core focus. We will absolutely acknowledge that those resources could be put to good use, but we also acknowledge that the state is using those resources for other significant priorities as well.

That said, we are fortunate in this budget because it is crafted in a way where the traditional split is 10.93% for Community Colleges, 89.07% for K-12 Education. And in the prior year, the administration has actually proposed an 11.26% split, which for us actually means about $391,000,000 in additional resources that are supporting community college investments.

So for us, we find this to be a relatively positive package for the colleges. It is stabilizing. I think our current, our current focus though is, again, you know, how do we increase growth funding? How do we support a cost of living adjustment for our categorical programs?

But the largest feedback that I hear from a lot of our campus community is appreciation for the investments in growth, for the investments in deferred maintenance, for the investment in the Student Support Block Grant, investing in the common cloud data platform and credit for prior learning.

There's a lot of appreciation for those investments.

Thank you.

You talked about the outlook. So looking forward, and I think our big focus in building this package was really stability. Certainly, we, as you know, it would be great if in education, we could just sort of stay in our lane and not have to worry about the rest of the budget. But because of Prop 98 in particular, we have a lot of conversations with our forecasting folks about outlook for revenues.

And so our focus really in this budget, understanding that just last year, we had to take on deferrals in order to maintain funding for both our K12 and our Community College system was paying off debt, providing new ongoing funds to help all of our institutions deal with rising cost of doing business, providing some funding to recognize that, you know, Community Colleges, especially if there's an economic downturn, tend to have increases in enrollment.

Yeah.

But also ensuring that as we move forward, we're not making decisions that put us in a really difficult position. So to that effect, we do have some one time investments in our ongoing to provide a little bit of a buffer. It's not a big one, but it's a little bit of a buffer to ensure that we can continue to meet our ongoing commitments of that base funding that is so important.

But you will also see that we are also trying to make some smaller investments in the future. And so really it's a mix.

I think, in regards to the $5,600,000,000 certainly, and the settle up, certainly, you know, we understand the concern there. One thing I would note, however, is those are one time funds, not ongoing funds.

So we've gotten a lot of feedback from folks about, you know, adding to folks' salaries or you know, increasing pay and and that's really not those funds would not be available for that purpose.

And that's not to say that, you know, we don't understand the concerns, but they just wanna mention that as a common piece of feedback we've gotten.

And I think that's why I found the LAO suggestion of putting some of that in the Prop 98 rainy day fund made a lot of sense to me Because we do have an outlook where there's a possibility that we're gonna really face tougher economic times. And I know the Governor has stated directly in meeting rooms that he doesn't wanna create unnecessary obligations for a future governor. To have to then settle up.

So hearing these words together may be in different context, but certainly hearing them together, I think there's something to be said about putting Prop 98 money where it belongs, even if it's not for ongoing costs to make sure that those that are entitled to those funds receive those funds in one way or another. I think a rainy day putting some of that because of the uncertainty around it, putting that in a rainy day fund for Prop 98 makes sense.

Just as, you know, being fiscally responsible and prudent, we don't wanna end up the same place we were years ago where we over allocated and then have to have those difficult conversations.

So I'm very sensitive to that situation as well. I would like to ask you about SCIF. I was not very familiar with that funding formula prior to being a legislator. So I, how effective is that in producing positive outcomes and pushing us in the direction that we wanna go? And is this, is there some learning in that that we can apply to K through 12?

So I would say the two funding formulas, the LCFF and the SCFF are they're very similar in construct with the LCFF having base supplemental and concentration grants and the SCFF having base supplemental and success grants.

I would say on the, you know, success side of the equation, we've certainly seen increases in our success metrics since the start of the SCFF to today. We can see significant increases in the number of ADTs, increases in transfer overall, and degree completion overall.

We can see increases in the number of students completing transfer level Math and English.

So we are seeing a lot of those efforts. That said, it usually is all correlated back to enrollment because at the end of the day, we have to have the students enrolled to be able to see those successful outcomes.

The other piece that I would say that we've certainly watched is the equity component of the formula, which is the supplemental metric. And ensuring that districts have an incentive to serve those students that are often from those populations that may be less likely to attend higher education or that may have, you know, further economic challenges attending higher education. So from our perspective, it's worked relatively well.

I think the distribution of resources, you know, from a very technical standpoint has worked it the way we would have expected.

Are there colleges that disagree with the way the funds are distributed between districts throughout the state? Certainly. But I would say, you know, overall, it's relatively positive. It's provided significant stability. I think we're the only system of education that has an absolute hold harmless, so we know if you're a district, it will not go below that amount in any given year.

But, again, to your point, we would always take it back to vision 2030, which is all of these resources are about seeing the broader long term goals around transfer long back glory to team, whether that's through our system or through our four year partners.

You know, and with a specific focus on UC and CSU, I think they by far, take the majority of our transfer students and we're highly supportive of our partners. But it's also reducing excess units.

It's seeing additional living wage and economic outcome, and it's closing equity gaps. So within our vision 2030 plan, it's not just that higher level of serve more students and serve them well.

It's also make sure that all students are being served well and seeing those, outcomes.

Thank you. And then my final question does go back to the dual enrollment component. Do we see our students that are high school dual enrolled with community college? Are we able to track whether they're completing their bachelor's degree more quickly? It is trying to think of the efficacy of the program or the variety of programs.

So not to my knowledge, but that should come online shortly with the cradle to career data system and the longitudinal capacities that it will offer us. And by the way, while that is, you know, very much a point in time data system, most of the segments are working in the background to inevitably support real time data through or access to real time data trends through cradle to career as well. That's a long term vision.

But with that, there are some unique situations where we can absolutely say it does. So for example, there is a partnership between Bakersfield Community College and McFarland Unified, and they have a number of students that outright complete their AA degree while they're in high school and transfer directly into CSU Bakersfield or potentially UC Merced.

So we do know from that perspective, there are situations in which absolutely we're positive that it expedites degree completion.

Okay. And I would love to see that if it's ever possible on a granular level between the different varieties of programs. Because some of them, you know, the dual enrollment's embedded on the high school. Some of them, the kids have to go there directly. There 's a whole variety of different ways we structure dual enrollment.

We give local communities that local control to build their own programs, but I would love to see if there are patterns or trends or something that's more efficacious.

You don't have to answer that today, obviously, but keep me in the loop. I'm excited to see what's working and what's not. Thank you.

Thank you, Doctor Patel. Let me go back quickly to the student equity achievement categorical. What is the projected cost of a cola at the same rate of the 2.4%?

What's the base cost? What's the base funding?

Back of the envelope math, we put that at around the $12,500,000. That's it's roughly a a $500,000,000 categorical program at 2.4%.

Okay.

That's rough.

And it would you'd actually, obviously, would be seeking this because it's resource intensive as an ongoing augmentation, not a one time?

That's right. So our that is correct. What I would say to that is our official system ask requested 11.6% for cola, and that was representative of the past three colas that had been provided to the system and the cost of doing that would be $62,300,000.

Oh, because you were seeking the past three. Got it. I see. The program came into existence in 2022. Is that why you went past three or?

I think we were just looking at, since the the pandemic, what has the cost of living adjustments been? We did not go back to the start of the program. I believe this program originally came to be out of two prior programs and that was in the, I believe, '15-'16, or '16-'17 fiscal year that they came together.

Yeah. One thing we haven't talked about today that Mister Fong brought up and I think is very important is this conversation, and it was I guess it was assumed with the topic of enrollment and the decline in some of these and the hold harmless. And it's not just happening to some of the colleges. It's happening to some of our universities, and it's happening to some of our K to 12 schools as well.

And I think I intentionally, when placing this on the agenda, wanted to to have a deeper level conversation that I think it is something we need to talk about.

I heard you say testify to us that, which is no shock to anybody, the hold harmless often allows people not to make difficult decisions that need to be made. And we're seeing that certainly at some CSUs where difficult decisions are probably not being made. And at some point, we probably face the same thing at some of our K12 schools.

So I guess as a parting comment for this issue, what would you say for your segment particular would be the right approach to ensure that we handle enrollment in the appropriate way, whether it's growth or you know, in this case, it's the focus is on some of the decline to not create any, you know, harm or to chaos for campuses, we don't wanna do that.

But, to ensure that the right thing is happening with the right sizing of what they the realities of their demographics as you stated.

Yeah. I would say there there it's a two pronged approach, that I'd recommend. You know, first and foremost, the state is providing you with time. Time to have the conversations locally, time to develop plans and to make those adjustments. So we're starting to see that across districts.

So, you know, I gave the example of Peralta. We know that in the San Francisco Community College District, they're looking at shifting one of their programs and closing one of their their facilities because the cost of keeping that facility open is higher than the FTES revenues effectively.

And then the second piece to that, and I think this is the the important piece is in buying time. It also provides you with time to think strategically around how can we partner with our schools?

How can we partner with our communities?

Knowing that there are changes in HR 1 that that change, you know, work or sorry. Eligibility criteria, You know, how can we work with our cities and counties to enroll those students and see positive outcomes? So, you know, they're also providing you with time to think strategically around what else can I do to serve the students in my community or the potential students in my community?

Are plans being required of these campuses now?

In terms of what they do, no. We don't have specific plans as to you most do.

I'd like to continue that conversation with Ray outside of here, because in the current year, we did have a requirement for CSUs at the declining campuses to provide some pretty robust turnaround plans. I think they're really well done. But even in some of those plans, they identify they're not gonna get the enrollment targets that are assumed.

And so the decline continues, but at least there's a very transparent public available approach of what they hope to accomplish so that there could be accountability, and also rightsizing that happens along the way to really get to where they actually think they can go.

And what was really interesting to see is that some of these campuses I think the CSU system was assuming they just hit those enrollment targets the way they fund, but the campuses themselves said, we're lucky if we get there in three years.

And in some cases, we're not gonna hit those numbers. And so I think it'd be a a an important conversation. Maybe we can have some other time about how do we do the same for some of these campuses.

Yep. Happy to have that conversation, but would also note for our system, each local board and each district is having that same conversation.

Yeah. Okay.

That's it on this item. Thank you. We will hold this issue open, and we will go on to issue number two. If I can ask the panel on issue two to come forward.

Let me get to the right page.

Oh, this is a common course numbering. So we'll hear from Finance, LAO, and the Chancellor's Office on this. Again, we've heard from the community as we've heard from the University of California and the California State University system on these two. And we're learning a lot of what's happening and a lot of what's not happening. So I'd love to hear the perspective of the community college. Department of Finance, do you have any comments on this?

We don't have any comments, but we'd be happy to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you. LAO?

Similarly, just available for questions. Thank you.

Thank you. Then we'll turn it over to the Community College Chancellor's Office.

So, Good morning. I'm James Todd. I'm the Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs at the California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office, and I wanna thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today. I'd like to start with a student. And if you can imagine for a moment, a first generation college student, we can call her Elena.

She's majoring in biology. She's the first in her family to go to college, and she's been very intentional about her path. She meets with counselors. She follows her education plan closely, and she takes the courses that she's been told will transfer and prepare her for transfer in biology, in chemistry, and in calculus.

And at one point, she even takes a course at a second community college that's nearby that had openings closer to her home over the summer because she's been working and trying to stay on track.

From her perspective, she's done everything right. The course has the same name and even now increasingly, it has the same number. So she assumes something completely reasonable, that the credit she earns will move with her and that it will count in the same way when she transfers. But when Elena does transfer, she learns that one of the, one of our courses doesn't apply to her major the way that she expected. And another one isn't recognized the same way at a receiving institution.

So the credit moved, but the value didn't. She has to retake coursework, spend more time in school, and takes on additional cost. And so like so many students, she doesn't understand why. And I can tell you that story go comes over and over to our office and in our campuses as well. Because from her perspective, she did everything right.

And the problem really isn't Elena. The problem is that in our, public higher education systems in California, we don't consistently guarantee credit mobility. Credit that not only transfers, but transfers with meaning and applicability. That's the problem that common course numbering is trying to solve. It it was established in AB1111, and it brings clarity to one of the most complex parts of higher education transfer.

It ensures that comparable courses across a 115 California Community Colleges share a common number so that students can understand what they are taking and, how it should apply as they move throughout the system. And the progress I do wanna recognize across, the California Community Colleges has been extraordinary.

All 115 community colleges have implemented common course numbering. The first course is launched in fall 2025. And in just one term, more than 550,000 students enrolled in the first six commonly numbered courses.

Those course courses alone are expected to serve over a million students annually. And across the first three phases that we've, planned, CCN is projected to impact nearly 4,000,000 student enrollments. So this is not a pilot. It's one of the largest coordinated academic alignment and first efforts in the country. And I really believe it's been done thoughtfully so far.

CCN focuses on the courses that matter most, the high enrollment transferable courses from the that form the backbone of both general education and STEM pathways. Roughly 76 high impact courses across 24 disciplines have been developed, which will result in changes to at least 9,000 courses system wide.

This includes critical stem sequences, courses like biology, chemistry, calculus, where credit mobility matters most because these are tightly sequenced and directly tied to major preparation. And this work has been done, been faculty driven at scale.

Nearly 60 or 6,000 faculty have participated through surveys and development, and hundreds have worked across the segments, including the CSU and the UC to build these templates.

So when were talking about CCN were talking about a reform that is grounded in data, built by faculty, and it's been implemented across the entire system. And I will say, community colleges have absolutely delivered on on that promise. But the issue is this and why it matters the most.

Common course numbering creates clarity in what a course is, but it is does does not, by itself, ensure that the credit attached to a course, a credit attached to that course moves with the full value across systems.

And for students like Elena, that's everything because credit mobility is not just about whether a course transfers, it's about these things, and I think this is the crux.

It's about whether that course fulfills general education requirements, whether it's recognized as transferable, whether it applies to a major, and it keeps a student on track. And achieving that at scale requires something we don't fully yet have, a clear reliable system level mechanism for articulation, and that's the central, issue that's before us.

And so we're very supportive of moving in a direction that will help us do this. Today, transfer and articulation decisions are still largely made campus by campus and course by course and oftentimes inconsistently.

So even with common course numbering in place, there's no fully aligned statewide mechanism ensuring that all common CCN courses will be approved for CALGETC for general education, be recognized for UCTCA, for UC transferability and be consistently applied across majors and degrees.

So without that system level articulation mechanism, we cannot guarantee that a commonly course numbered course will produce the same outcome for every student. And that means we cannot yet deliver credit mobility at scale. So it means we're also operating in a system right now that's incredibly and deeply inefficient.

Right now, commonly course numbered courses developed by a 115 community colleges must be reviewed separately by receiving institutions. And if you think about that at scale, this is I couldn't believe when I did the math too.

A 115 community colleges sending courses to 22 CSU campuses and 9 UC campuses results in over 3,500 individual course reviews for essentially the same course. 3,500. And that's the current model. So it's duplicative, it's time intensive, and it produces vastly inconsistent outcomes for students. Instead so by contrast, a template based system level articulation approach would allow faculty across segments to agree on the core elements of a course once and apply that decision broadly.

And instead of thousands of repeated reviews, we can create a process where alignment happens upfront, expectations are clear, and outcomes are consistent. It does not eliminate faculty review. It actually makes faculty review more meaningful, more efficient, and more equitable for students. So it and the consequences of not addressing this are real. Students in California already accumulate more than 20 excess units on average in the transfer process.

That's an average course of near a cost of nearly $66,000 per student. But when you think about that in STEM pathways where sequences are tightly structured, losing even one course can delay progress by a full year. And when we're talking about 20 excess units, that's almost a year worth of full time work for a student. And tax payers contribute over a $147,000,000 per core cohort of transfer students for courses that they are forced to retake. And that, for me, is unacceptable.

We're also seeing early evidence that without consistent alignment, articulation can shift or be lost even for courses that students reasonably expect to count. So the issue before us is not whether CCN is working. I wanna be really clear on that. We've done an incredible amount of work for alignment in getting us as ourselves to this position. Right now, it's whether or not we can put in place the mechanism that allows CCN to work as intended at scale and across our intersegmental systems.

And finally, to be clear, doing so does not compromise academic standards or faculty authority.

It this effort is not requiring UC or CSU to change their curriculum, renumber their courses or lower any expectations. Faculty retain full control over academic judgment. But what this effort does is much more practical. It establishes a system level articulation approach where faculty developed intersegmental CCN templates are used through aligned CALGETC and UCTCA processes to produce consistent transfer and degree outcomes.

Instead of reviewing the same course hundreds or thousands of times and arriving at different answers, we create a system where one decision can apply broadly and predictably.

That is not a loss of academic freedom. It's a shift from fragmented decisions to coherent student centered outcomes. This is also really ambitious, transforming forming transfer in California, especially for STEM pathways is complex work. It requires an incredible amount of coordination across our systems, and alignment, a sustained faculty engagement. But that ambition reflects the scale of the opportunity.

If we get this right, we'll create something that California has never had. True credit mobility at scale where students can move across institutions with confidence and their work will carry forward. I'm gonna make a side note on this. There was a state audit for transfer as well, that came out recently over the last few years. We've been working on it.

And the number one thing that I think they looked at is how are you examining articulation gaps across your systems. This will fix that. It is designed to fix that, of which that audit showed was one of the most important things that we can do for our students to, increase equity.

So there's one clear additional event a benefit that this reform improves efficiency with little to no additional investment. By reducing duplication and aligning decisions at the system level, we're streamlining processes.

We're reducing workload for UC and CSU faculty and maximizing the return on the state investment. So we're here to close, finish what we started. We're not being asked to start from scratch. We have an incredible amount already accomplished. And I'm gonna close with where I began with Elena.

She's not asking for a simpler system. She's asking for a system that works and is promised to her. That she's asking that her credits move with her and they don't just carry units, but they cut carry meaning and they apply towards her degree.

Common course numbering will give her that clarity and a system level articulation mechanism gives her credit mobility at scale. And that's what we're really ultimately asking, allowing students like Elena to reach a baccalaureate degree and change the trajectory of lives like hers.

So thank you.

Thank you. We've had good input from UC and CSU, but I feel at least in this committee, the most comprehensive reporting and I don't know how I feel about all these things you just stated. I feel hopeful and then you say something else, and then I don't feel as hopeful.

So please, let's get to the place of where we're always hopeful, by the questions that I ask. So CCN to date, has three, sorry, six courses which among the entire community college system and with UC and CSU, you've named and numbered the same. Is that accurate?

Yes.

Then there's going to be a phase 2, which I believe, has been testimony here before by I think UC said this coming fall, this phase 2. So, we'll have eight or is it the phase 2A and phase 2B that's in our report? Additional courses.

When we get through that, yes, they are split up into two pieces. One is phase 2A, which we will be having this fall and then the next fall will be phase 2B.

Eight additional with phase 2A as identified.

Yeah, 10 courses in the next section with 36 templates and then we'll get to 46 courses with 52 templates, in phase 2B.

42?

46 courses with 52 templates, some of these have included honor sections and other pieces too that have different templates.

So, it'll be like introduction to biology honors.

Yes.

That's how you get to 46, because 2B in our report does not identify 46. It's closer to probably 25 or something.

I heard you say, which maybe some folks, myself included, have come to learn. That even if you have the same named and numbered courses, there are instances I've come to learn and I think your testimony was trying to express this.

Where particularly, I believe this is the case with UC but it could be with CSU. That if you did not take the correct sequence or the correct courses if you're seeking to transfer into particular majors.

Even if you took the same number of courses may not apply towards that specific major or may not be helpful in your progress towards that major. Does that happen?

Yeah, I think one thing we're talking about is course level articulation and network, and then we're also talking about program level, which is a different I think a different conversation about how our ADTs operate across systems, for example.

If you imagine where we are right now, a course that you assume might transfer in common course numbering, may not.

Yeah. So, let's pick one because I think this one's probably one very, very common one where you run into this problem. You have Calculus 1, right?

Yeah.

And you've got two versions of that.

Let's just pick Calculus one, that's fine.

Let's just pick Calculus 1. If you take a Calculus 1 course at a community college and you then choose to enroll in a UC or CSU that is like, I don't know, an engineering program or any other STEM program, really. This calculus one course you took at a community college may not satisfy the requirements.

It may not in that local institution. That's correct.

Because they have different requirements at each.

They may do it differently.

Yeah.

They may have a different way of deploying it, may have different course outline that they have decided not to articulate our course to count as theirs.

And you end up retaking it.

Yeah.

Right.

And that is confusing for a student.

Right, it's frustrating because it's like, didn't I take calculus 1 or you could take calculus 1 and 2, and neither one of those two would count at a UC or CSU.

Yeah, so I think this should solve this. Coming back to the points that I made, we are not asking for our partner, intersegmental institutions, to change their courses, to change the numbers of their courses.

What we are asking for is, a system that will allow all of our colleges and those calculus courses to be granted articulation and to count when they show up, so they don't have to retake that class.

But that's not where we're at, at the moment.

That is not where we are at.

That's the not so hopeful part of it.

That is what this mechanism is. This is designed and so when I said that it would be one of the most coordinated and impactful practices across the country. We are talking about something very, very complex.

And trying to find a system where we can have faculty from all systems get together to design a template and say, if we meet this, we'll accept the course for our articulation.

Were you not able to reach a level of agreement, where all of the UC and CSU, I'm sticking to calculus just to try to keep this simple for us. Degrees that require a calculus intro or a calculus 1 or whatever they call it.

Did you attempt to reach an agreement but were unable to, among the three segments? Why do we have a calculus one common course? Why does that exist if it's not really transferable in that way?

I get that if you're not a STEM major probably, it is transferable for your math requirement in general Ed. but if you're not, were you not able to reach that agreement? Is that what happened?

I think we're in the process of trying to figure out what the mechanism would be and if we stay with where we are, it will be the 3,500 reviews that we are talking about, that get to inconsistency.

It's not that they we don't find ways for these to transfer, and we work very, very well with our math departments across all of our inner segmental partners and I would say they have absolutely leaned in as well.

The question is, what's the mechanism to get towards a full system level articulation model that will allow all of our classes, at the colleges, be able to align with something that we know will guarantee articulation for students.

Yeah.

That is a very, very big lift and a change in the way that we have worked on articulation across our systems for a long time.

It seems to me like, if you for some reason, do not reach that level of agreement with the segments, then to make sure a student, I had the experience of first generation, and I took a bunch of classes not really knowing, just hoping they were my general Ed, what it would lead to.

I did take up to calculus 2 and didn't really need it. The point being, there should probably be, for the student, the public facing, there should be, like a calculus if you want to meet a math requirement and a calculus if you're going to go into a STEM field.

Yes.

It should be very, very clear. Otherwise, I don't think we're reaching, and I don't want to speak for mister Berman who's been the champion on this issue, but I don't know that we're reaching the level of transparency that was intended and it's been an expensive endeavor.

It has, just because we're at a point where we need to work and partner on how to get to a system wide articulation mechanism, our colleges have done incredible amounts of work.

I cannot even emphasize, just to do one course and get 115 colleges across our districts, to all come together to say, we're going to align around this very particular delivery and transparency of what would be included in a course, and then also work across our partners is a very, very heavy lift.

So, the amount of progress that's been made in identifying the six highest enrolling courses and then we had a half a million plus enrollments in the fall, is incredible progress.

Even with those early phases, we still don't have the consistency that we need and so we're looking back at phase 1, phase 2A, and looking at phase 2B, looking at phase 3, which is starting to get in some of our more complex conversations.

For example, I know that you talked a little bit about ethnic studies and having Chicano studies in the phase 3. We need those to articulate; we need them to count in the same way.

We need some kind of system to say; this is our standard, this is our North Star for this course, and we're all going to agree it counts that, that meets these things.

Right.

When we look at our community colleges and we think about the students that are entering them to try to get to a baccalaureate, and so many of them also don't reach that, this is absolutely one of the barriers, In terms of transfer.

Because we do have high admission rates, for example, with some of our partners, including the CSU. I think it's 90% but the transfer velocity is not 90%.

Right.

Then students also find out that they don't have things that count in this, in the ways they thought they would.

Yeah.

This is a mechanism designed to get there.

I'll ask at another time, but I'd like to see if you have any data on how often that's not happening. In terms of they reach, they've taken now 60 plus units, and then it's like, okay, now I can transfer and it's like, well, no.

No, you can't because of these factors as it relates to the courses that you took, were not the right ones. When you mentioned Cal-GETC and UCT, are you referring to not having that, what did you call it? It wasn't authority, but they're not aligned. What was, how would I phrase this correctly?

We want them to be, well when we talk about Cal-GETC, for example, it's meeting the requirements for general education transfer for students. So, it will count as one of those elements.

Is what you're testifying here that we don't have certification or verification that all of these are Cal-GETC?

Yeah, or they meet UCTCA, which is the UC designation.

Who is in charge of making those decisions?

Right now, it is campus by campus in terms of articulation, but we also need all systems to lean in together to work on an issue like, system wide articulation for general education but I also don't want us to lose sight of, this is not merely about general education. This is about major prep.

That is a really important mechanism, we need to also be working on for students because as we're talking about, for example, calculus. Oftentimes that's major prep for STEM.

We need that to count in this, in the same way for students like Elena that are looking to make sure their credit mobility isn't just gen Ed, but it's exactly what I thought I was taking at the community college.

That I can go to community college, make it affordable and I can, as a first-generation student or a working adult in California, get to my baccalaureate in a much more affordable and streamlined way.

Clearly, I know, our colleague, mister Berman, has been working very hard on this issue. Appreciate his efforts. I think, I'm learning more as we have these and I'm learning more that in fact, probably more work needs to be done.

At the minimum and I get your point, it's not just about general Ed, but we should absolutely get the general Ed figured out and we should eventually also figure out, what those specific requirements that are campus by campus, that it's too complicated.

For first generation students, it is not accessible and it's creating a barrier. So that'll be it for me. I'll turn it over to first doctor Patel.

Wanted to thank you for this robust conversation. As a new member of the legislature, I'm jumping in right in the middle of all these plans and conversations.

I can tell you the community members, the students on the ground are feeling an enormous sense of bait and switch, that they're doing the things they're supposed to do. They're reducing their own costs and obligations to attaining higher education.

They're doing the dual enrollment and hoping that that helps them get to their associate's degree when they get out, so that they can then be transfer ready to a UC or a CSU.

And they're finding that they might have been better off just taking that AP and getting that college credit and to imagine that high school instruction is at least minimally not equivalent to community college instruction is mind boggling for students.

That they could for example, to weigh in on the calculus example, they can take AP calculus in high school, pass the AP test and get college credit, but they can't take calculus in community college and have that be transferable, is baffling to people out in community.

I think the calculus example is just one because it's such a fact based, very straightforward piece of instruction but Assemblymember Fong was explaining to me the same thing happened with ethnic studies.

That students would be taking ethnic studies in their community colleges and those classes would not be transferable towards a degree, and we have students that are taking out loans to get these degrees.

They're using their Cal Grant and then to find that, that is not helping them achieve their goals is heartbreaking. So, I am fully supportive of us tackling this problem and getting to the bottom of it.

I think within our initiatives of cradle to career and Golden State Pathways, I think there was this commitment, that you could do this and be successful and cut down on your time to degree and the amount of money that you spend. So, thank you for elevating this.

Thank you, chair, for continuing to press on this very important issue for our future world of work. Our kids need to; our students need to have the skills that they need to pursue their dreams.

Thank you, doctor Patel. Mister Fung?

Thank you so much, chair and thank you so much to all the panelists, especially vice chancellor Todd. For the overview, for the insights, the process and the progress, but also the progress yet to be made.

When I first got here, I remember Pasadena City College professor reached out to my office and had noted that, of the 15 ethnic studies courses that were being offered at Pasadena City College, only one transferred to the CSU system.

Just hearing that number is just staggering and frustrating and something that we had convened, both systems had a lot of conversations around that. I was looking at legislation around that space.

But as we continue to look at common course numbering, whether it's a calculus, GE courses, we know that work has been done but there's still so much to be done going forward.

To mister Berman, who's really champion in this issue and a working effort that we need to kind of, you just said it there, is all systems need to lean in together. However, we can be helpful in that space to continue to push, really want to make sure we've seen a progress on that end.

I want to empathize with all the work that's being done. Obviously, you're working with all different segments that just come up the curriculum standards, to look at the transferability, to look at all the different things that go together in academic Senate, have to come to an agreement as well.

So, there's a lot of different moving parts and pieces but at the same time, the budget allocation and resources as well to really make sure that we're seeing this through.

The only question I would have is, you kind of touched upon it earlier, but what were some of the lessons that you learned from the phase 1 implementation and how can we use some of that going forward?

I think on the student facing side with phase 1, I think we're slowly learning how to best broadcast this for students and make sure that it's transparent for them, what they are getting in a commonly numbered course.

Part of that is the communication issue, I think with phase 1. I'll also say I've been in this job for a year. The first month or so, or two months, my staff is going to I mean, they're going to be up. I'm not sure I fully leaned into this.

I had questions about it but as they educated me through what was happening on the front end of receiving and working on and identifying where we had articulation gaps and what students were experiencing, I've quickly come to understand that this is absolutely a mechanism that we need.

We still don't have verification that every one of those phase 1 courses fully articulates at a system level for students. My lesson keeps coming back to how do we verify and know from the front end, when we're deploying courses, that students are going to have the same kind of, credit value in mobility.

Even being in the trenches and working along our system partners who have asked incredibly good questions, the faculty across all segments have all really had robust conversations about what needs to go into a course and work on individual ways that we apply that to particular disciplines.

So, I think we've learned a lot along the way about what counts and I think just now, I've come to this place where I understand that the mechanism is the thing that we're missing and a great journey for me too and I think you've gotten in thirty minutes, everything that I have experienced.

Thank you for that context. So, I think the chair, emphasized and Doctor Patel, emphasized a little bit. Anything we can do to continue to push on this issue, to really make sure we're helping our students along their educational journey, especially now even more so in these challenging times, It's critical.

So, thank you for your working efforts here. Thank you, mister chair.

Thank you. Just in reflection from my colleagues, this issue reminds me of many others in education, that I assume I was not here when the funding was made available for this expenditure. I assume that the approach at first was trying to force things to happen.

There was probably a lot of pushback. They said, just give us some money and we'll figure it out and here we are five years later, almost $10,000,000 in, and it sounds like we haven't really figured it out and those aren't always the right incentives.

Sometimes we have to have some very difficult conversations with our incredible partners, in the three segments to ask. to not ask, but to perhaps make them do things that they are uncomfortable with doing.

This may be where this leads at the end of the day, given clearly what shortfalls at the moment, with how CCN has been approved and not disregarding it. Thank you for acknowledging the work of many people, of faculty and staff that have put in time and effort.

But sometimes, unless you have other incentives or other reasons to get us to true and my new, I'm going to take a phrase from you. The new one should be credit mobility or mobility of students from one place to another, in a way that truly opens up those opportunities.

Then we may not be doing the right work. It's good work, important work and maybe leads to some improvement, but the type of change and improvement and access that we're looking for must be more aspirational and certainly much more significant.

So, I think this conversation will not end here but thank you to the panel today. We'll leave the issue open and appreciate all you being here. We will move on to the next item, which is Calbright. We will hear the proposal for ongoing Calbright College funding, the Department of Finance has brought forward.

The LAO will provide some feedback and the California Community College Chancellor's Office as well. We'll kick it off with Department of Finance.

The governor's budget proposes $38,000,000 additional ongoing funding to create a total ongoing amount of $53,100,000, prop 98 funds and, we have no concerns with the administration's proposal, and I am available to answer any questions you may have.

Lisa King with the LAO. So with this startup period for Calbright ending, the legislature faces a decision about how to fund the college moving forward. We do have a couple of concerns with the governor's proposed approach. First we don't think the administration has provided a clear rationale for the proposed funding level of 53,000,000 ongoing.

Which is notably higher than the amount Calvert is currently spending on its operations. Second and more fundamentally, this proposed funding level is not linked to any specific performance expectations for the college. This means that it would continue to receive this amount with the annual Cola moving forward, regardless of what happens with its enrollment or its outcomes. This approach to funding Calbright would provide significantly less accountability than the approach the state takes to funding all other community college districts under the student centered funding formula.

Given those concerns, we recommend an alternative to the governor's proposed approach that would instead involve transitioning Calbright to the student centered funding formula.

This alternative would link Calbright's funding to enrollment expectations, provide a known funding rate per student, and also just treat it more consistently with other districts. To allow time for implementation, legislature could begin funding Calbright under the formula in 2027/28, While providing some 1 time funding in 2026/27 to sustain its operations.

In the meantime. Now we do see 1 key limitation to funding Calibrate under the formula, and it goes back to an issue we talked about in the first issue of our agenda today. We discussed earlier that the students entered funding formula includes a performance based component, but that component only applies to credit programs and all of calibrates programs are non credit. In the future, the Legislature could consider revisiting this broader approach to non credit funding.

In order to create stronger incentives for all districts including Calbright to improve outcomes in these programs. Finally, we would encourage the legislature to continue monitoring Calbright's performance over the next few years as more information becomes available on its enrollment, program offerings, spending, and outcomes. And to that end, we would just note that there is a statutorily required independent evaluation that is forthcoming in the next few months here. Thank you, and happy to take questions.

Thank you very much. Community college office. Yeah.

Yeah. Chris Ferguson, executive vice chancellor of finance and strategic initiatives at the chancellor's office. So what we would say here is we support all 116 of our.

Colleges and investments in all 116 of our Calbright included. Calbright does present opportunities to serve additional students through their model. And I think from our perspective you know, having a number of entry points for our students you know, to meet them where they're at is important. It's important in our other 115 colleges as well. So certainly support investments in our system, and I would defer to the college for college specific items.

Okay. Thank you. Do you have a presentation from Calbright?

Yes.

You weren't on the agenda, but love to hear from you.

Thank you much. Appreciate it. Good morning Chair and honorable Committee Members, and thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today. I'm Ajita Menon, president and CEO of Calbright College and I'm joined by chief financial officer Ed Lee, our board president Hildegard Agmanaldo, board member Pamela Haines, and our academic Senate and labor representatives.

7 years ago, the legislature gave Calbright a clear charge, build an educational model and a college that works with and for adult learners and evaluate what works for working age adults.

So today, Calbright represents what California urgently needs agile institutions that are aligned with evolving economic and social and workforce realities. We equip students with the technical and the durable skills that employers demand across technology, health care, and business. While serving as a compliment, not a replacement to our community colleges. And we're delivering results. Over 6,800 students served, awarding more than 2,200 certificates, and driving employment gains with median hourly wage increases from $20 to $25 and have over $8,000 annually.

Recent gains in enrollment and completions reflect improvements in our student support model in our program design, and demand among working age adults for our model.

We expect that growth to continue. Today, Calbright serves learners in 57 out of 58 counties, 92% are above the age of 25, three quarters come to us from BIPOC communities, and over 25% are parents or caregivers. Now those are among the nearly 7,000,000 Californians, 20 Californians 25 without a college credential, but also those returning to higher ed after years out of the workforce looking to reskill or upskill.

We see that in students like Chris from Sacramento who came to us at came to Calbright after being laid off from retail and rescaled into his first IT job. Luana from Sunnyvale who's a parent that needed flexible online programs for raising her family.

Cynthia from Los Angeles who needed support rescaling after a decade in restaurant work who now is focused on a data focused career. Ahmed from San Diego who's a former bank officer facing downsizing who launched into a new IT career by completing our technology programs. And Richard from Redding, California who brings decades of work experience that needed to show employers he has the skills for today's workforce. Our students are a testament to the need for flexible, competency based education that Calbright is built to serve.

Calbright is more than online courses.

We remove barriers that often cause adult learners to assume that college is not for them. Students enroll 52 weeks out of the year. They complete programs at their own pace, and they take pauses without penalty or threat of losing their progress. This model has doubled 1 year completion rates while allowing learners to adjust for life's challenges, whether it's a sick child or an extra shift at work.

Our technology is made by our own engineers for adult learners specifically so it can connect students advisors, and data allowing for high touch supports and enabling early intervention.

This work honors Calbright's broader r and d role for the higher education system, continuously testing and evaluating new approaches that can scale to better serve learners, and we are seeing those results. Completion rates rose 36% from 2023 to 2024, and 83% of those students finished within a year. We don't do this work alone. We are collaborating with labor, with business, and with education to produce value for students.

In recognizing the impact of HR 1 on communities, we're working with Barstow College and LA TradeTech to test basic needs enrollment strategies across rural and rural and urban context.

Our partnerships with SCIU, UHW, and Allied Health launching a community health worker program combine a certificate with a health care staffing cooperative to show what's possible when opportunities are co designed. Our recent Western Governors Partnership allows students to accelerate certificates towards degree programs, broadening options for career advancement, and we're learning with the Rural County representatives of California what's needed to better connect rural communities to education workforce opportunities. We are very grateful for the governor's proposed 38,100,000 in ongoing investment.

This validates demand among working age adults and provides resources needed to scale enrollment, completions, and impact statewide. Thank you for the opportunity to share our progress, and I welcome your questions.

Thank you very much. I think we got all the presentations in on this, so we'll turn to committee members' questions and comments. I wanna ask about the LAO's recommendation and why the administration is not proposing the approach that has suggested utilizing SEFF in terms of the number of students being served, which would require about $28,000,000 in funding this year as opposed to the $38,000,000 that are proposed in the budget?

I would say that the 2 issues that would make transferring this from the ongoing funding to the SCFF would be 1 that the LAO brought up with the fact that their courses are noncredit. And the other thing being that their competency base. And so it becomes much more difficult to assign you look at the apportionment process you know, we assign these based on what's called an FTES, a full time equivalent student.

And in a competency based program, It's a completely different approach in the sense that it there aren't specific times for courses you know, and people take the complete course on their own timeline. So it becomes different to some of these people may take an entire year to take a certain course.

Some people are gonna be accelerating and taking it less.

Are you suggesting that a competency based model of education is more expensive than a traditional base model?

Not more expensive. It's just harder to measure metrics and what is the time in the classroom. Okay. You know?

And my question was it relates to serving the number of students that college. I don't know what assumptions you made in terms of how many students, but according to the LAO sustaining the current year spending level to serve the students, I assume the same number of students. Maybe there's some efficiencies they've found out of the college. Do you have a estimate for the number of students that you'd be serving next year?

Absolutely. I think we can talk about a few things. First, with the full and stable funding, what we are achieving what is known as economies of scale. So what it allows us to do is to right size our footprint coming out of the start up period into a steady state operational environment.

What that means is we can have planned growth over the next several years, and I'll bring in, our chief financial, officer, Ed Lee, to talk further about kind of the details Yeah.

How many students are you gonna be serving next year? Let's start with that.

our current yeah. Based on our current cadence, we can see with the operational improvements that we have put into place in with the growing efficiencies that we have over the next 2 to 3 years exceeding based on our pattern upwards of 10,000 learners. And I point to that number because it does reflect a consideration around full funding and our ability to do that work in line with planned growth through our next cycle of our strategic mission planning.

mission planning. I'm gonna ask you to be a little bit more clear, and this is not the first time we've exchanged this way. I'm trying to understand how many students are we serving with this funding in this year. I wanna know what that number is.

So it is my understanding that there's roughly 7,000 students that are being served today. And as we just heard, the projection would be roughly 10,000 that they're looking to serve.

But I heard over the course of a couple of years. So for 26/27, you anticipate 7,000 students?

Well, no. We'll anticipate growing over the next year.

So Okay. So what's the expectation for next year?

If I can tag in Ed Lee to talk about our pattern of growth.

Yeah. And I also Ed Lee here, Calbright College CFO. Yeah. On the enrollment front, as president Menon mentioned. I think 10,000 over the next couple of years, which currently we sit at around 7,000. So we anticipate probably in there around the 8 or 9,000 range.

I don't know how I'm not being as clear guys. How many students next year do you anticipate enrolling at this college? You keep saying 10,000 students over the next couple of years. That is not my question. How many students next year?

Yeah. Chair Alvarez, I did I guess I'll say that on the path to the 10,000 in 2 years, next year we do anticipate close to 8 to 9,000, serving student students serving next year. If I may as well, address the LAO's recommendation on the 28,100,000. We appreciate the analysis on it.

I also wanna add in a few more things that I think were not mentioned, which is that you know the in 24/25 year as we continue to grow, the budget size was about 45,700,000.

Moving forward with the 28.1 proposed would actually shrink our budget, even further which was not mentioned. In the current year, we have a proof budget of 43,200,000. Again, this is an intentionally constrained budget. I mean, it is the exception not the norm. When I actually reviewed some of the expenditure patterns over the the last couple of years for other community colleges, again, we are consistent with the growth pattern over 2 years from a $45,700,000 budget expenditure size moving into 26/27.

So is the governor's budget proposal forcing you to make cuts, layoffs, reduce number of car course offerings since it's less than your operational amount this year?

Just to clarify, the administration's proposal is fully funding. Right. What our Chief financial officer was highlighting was the reductions recommended by LAO for the next year.

I heard differently that the 45,000,000 is a reduction of that's your current spending for the year, and so 38 would reduce it. Can I get the LAO to comment on this?

Yes. If I may try to clarify, Calbright's current year spending level is estimated at 43,000,000. And to Calbright's point that is a slight reduction, I think about 5% over the prior year level. We calculate the 28% by taking the current year spending level of 43,000,000 and backing out the 15,000,000 ongoing that is already provided in the budget for Calbright. That difference is 28,000,000, and so that is the amount that would sustain the current year spending level into the budget here.

Now this is not a reflection of what its ongoing funding level would be under the student centered funding formula in order to calculate that we would need a more reliable account of its FTE students. As the Department of Finance noted, there is still some uncertainty around how established attendance accounting methods would be applied in order to create that count. The numbers we've been discussing the 7,000 students this year up to 10,000 moving forward, those counts are in headcount and not full time equivalent students.

So under the FTES mechanism of counting a cost per student, what would be the allocation for a college? And I get it that these are certificated only, not degrees. What would let's just assume there was degrees if we were just comparing apples to apples. What would be the allocation for a campus of 7, 8 to 10,000 students?

It would depend on how those 7, 8 to 10,000 students translate into full time equivalent students. And because we don't have that data we are unable to calculate an estimate.

Okay.

The reason that we suggest the legislature could consider transitioning Calbright to CFF by 2027/28 rather than making this change effective immediately is that it would allow time for Calbright and the chancellor's office to work on a way to apply established attendance accounting methods to Calbright in order to get more reliable count of its FDU students so that we can better answer exactly the question.

Okay. I think that information is absolutely necessary before we can make a decision. I'm gonna turn it over to mister Fong.

Thank you so much, Mister Chair, and thank you so much to all our panelists. On page 22, we have looked at some of the student headcount and award completions. And so following up on some of the comments that the Chair made and the work and efforts of you know, the Calbright's program, most of them are in IT and business. And what I read on the report on page 21, it says 8 weeks to 34 weeks.

Do we have can we explain the status of the remaining on 6,641 students in 2025?

Yes. So as you know, because we are flexibly paced models it means that students can complete at differential times and according to their own available time and resources. And so what it means that students continuously enroll, but they enroll and make progress based on kind of those flexible time frames.

So a student in your district starting today and completing in 6 months is roughly a strong successful outcome just as a student moving through in Dr. Patel's district starting today completing 18 months later also reflects a success that the entire design of the college was meant to allow for that flexibility in time frames to completion, which is a large part of the reason that the learners that we talked about you know, Luana and Chris and a number of others. Students that they represent you know, that this is the reason that college is possible for them.

And thank you for that information. So during their coursework is there any checking with the students in terms of their progress, and how do you continue to make sure that they're moving towards their certificates?

Absolutely. We measure a tremendous amount about every learner, and it allows us to understand in any given moment where a learner is in the process, what more they have to do if they're showing signals of distress or need for intervention.

If I could bring up Binh do our Vice President of research and development, she can walk through exactly the data that's collected about our learners and how it reflects differences in the changing patterns of enrollment, and progression that we're seeing for our learners and also how we ensure that those learners are indeed progressing.

Thank you, President Menon. Good morning, Assembly Member Fong and other members of the committee. My name is Binh Do. I'm the vice president of research and development, and I'm very excited to be here to share some more insights about how we capture our students' data and understand their progress and success as they are moving through our college.

As president Menon mentioned, our model is really built to serve a vital bridge between workforce and transition in the economy that is really increasingly just agile, requires tech forward talent.

And to that end our programs focuses on industry aligned certifications that ensure that Californians can rapidly upskill and pivot. We mentioned our student really come from different career and life stages. They're individuals like entering into the workforce, early career professionals. They are career transitioners and caregivers and parents.

The context. Sorry. The question I had is more like how do we continue to make sure that they move towards completion and I think the president give an overview of the

No. I Thank you. Some of the context here is because we really try to measure based on our students' individual performance and their behaviors. And so understanding who we serve, why we serve them is important. We have built a data collection system that gathers insights, throughout the end to end student journey.

So everywhere from when the students start to indicate interest at the college to enrollment going into intake. We understand why they are here, what they you know, what kind of hours they could commit to. We also because we are an assessment for competency based education, we measure time and velocity to mastering competencies or moving through their coursework.

So each of our courses have a serious number of modules and assessments that are aligned to it and we really try to understand from multiple perspectives if they are making progress towards mastery and demonstrating those mastery there as they move forward.

All of that again could happen anywhere within the term. 6 month term, and as long as they are making active progress engaging with our faculty and staff engaging with other programs, that we could indicate progress and advance them to the the ongoing the next term if they are continuing to move forward here.

If you'll permit me, member Fung, I'll just add 1 more thing, which is part of how we have built the technology is to empower also our faculty and our staff to be able to understand with what's happening to the learner. They can see it in the data. So we track the aggregate outcomes. We measure the progression, but also the folks who are on the front lines of that human connection and engaging with students through the technology have access to that data information.

They can see where a student is.

The other thing we've also introduced, which is empowering to our learners is actually dynamic journey maps. And what that means is when a student logs in, they can see what that structured schedule can look like if they have 5 hours a week to complete, if they have 20 hours a week to complete.

So they also have visibility into where they are in any given moment, the milestones they've completed, the competencies they've completed, and our learners are giving us incredible feedback about how powerful that is. In self navigating that learning journey in addition to the incredible human centered support and connection that we have with our students.

Thank you. And I know Trevor I brought this up earlier, but I we had a conversation with the LAO on the Calbright's funding based on the student centered funding formula. What are your thoughts in terms of why shouldn't Calbright's funding application be consistent with all of our other community colleges?

Yeah. I think it's important to also highlight. Calbright doesn't receive a lot of the traditional funding that sister community colleges receive, not just related to SHIFT. And I'll have Ed talk more about that. But 1 of the most important things is you know I think the principle of shift is well understood by us and something that I personally deeply appreciate it.

I have devoted my career to looking at accountability for public funds in higher education. What we know is that the funding you know, incentivizing funding based on both enrollments and outcomes as an underpinning of what grows an institution is a powerful incentive structure. What we need is to be sure that, our work our funding, if it's tied to enrollments and accountabilities, has a structure that is measured for our model. Our FTES model is based on seat time.

Our work is based on progression of actual competencies, actual skills acquired by their learners.

We also our student is all in. We don't have different programs that are like categorical programs funded in different corners of an institution. We are in a position where our services, our supports are integrated into the experience that a student has alongside their learner journey. It's structurally just a fundamentally different model.

And I'll take a minute to talk a little bit more specifically about the breakdown of shift and why it presents a challenge for the model that we've built. So just wanna lean into appreciating the need for accountability and also recognizing that accountability needs to reflect the way our learners actually progress.

Thank you, President Menon. Yeah. Just highlighting the fact that you know we're a skills based program, so the seat time model doesn't really translate well as they're pretty much apples to oranges there. Secondly, I just wanna say as well that the student centered funding formula, according to state law does allow for it. However, it does not require it.

Right? So I would say it's an option that again, we've been talking closely with the chancellor's office around what you know the best you know, kind of formula might look like moving forward for Calbright. And lastly, really Calbright supports accountability. And we are explore open to exploring what that might look like in terms of what the right formula would be moving forward.

So, you know, understand this takes time to do it correctly, and we are committed to doing that.

Thank you for that context. So I think.

This is really I will just say frontiering territory. Nobody is doing what California is doing. California is very much leading the country in this space with the college and with the work that we've done over the several years.

I have the privilege and the vantage point of serving on a number of national boards, the competency based Education Board, which is really focused on high quality skills based outcomes, as well as the institution for higher education policy, which is really about researching communities that are underserved communities that are left behind and how we ensure our educational offerings, are more responsive to what the needs are for learners today, particularly our adult learners. Particularly our learners who don't have other options or other on ramps, and find themselves disconnected from access to educational opportunities and good jobs.

Thank you for that context. And I know Richard talked about it earlier, but this is to the LAO now. Their conversation with Calbright's funding tied to the SCIF. We know that all our other community colleges are tied to the student center funding formula, and we had a conversation about the anticipated funding levels.

So I just would love to continue the conversation there and have that conversation between the different institutions here to see what that anticipation of that potential funding level would be if it was to be tied to the student center funding formula.

So I just wanted to put that for the record. Alright. Thank you. Alright. Thank you.

Thank you. I do have a couple of questions. Based on the amount of funding you've been given, and it's great that your CFO is here so we can get some numbers. Roughly, with your ongoing operating budget, I understand that it takes money to set a system like this up. So the investment was a good experiment at the time.

But looking at our ongoing expenses with our ratio to enrolled students, what as a new legislator, I'm thinking about best ROI and and impacts and outcomes, all of it altogether especially with tight budgets coming up ahead of us in years ahead. About how much are we spending per pupil? And I know that calculation is not really a fair 1 to ask you for because they're part time students. It's a certificate program. It's not classroom based.

But in rough calculations, about what are we spending per pupil or per student? Enrollee?

Great. Now I appreciate the question. And when we looked at the data for the latest fiscal year, which is 2025, we determined that the cost per student was roughly 6,000 again, per enrolled head count as we clarified earlier. I wanna note that this actually falls below the average as well as the median for the rest of the system, and that might be new news for folks. Again, I did take a look at the enrollment headcount again for all the districts across the system.

And again, I wanna emphasize that again Calbright is the cost per student, is below the median and the average. What the LAO brought up in the report, which we appreciate I mean and actually before I get there, I'll say that the cost per student has actually, you know, dropped 70%, really, since 2020. And what and I understand when you have a start up right, start up costs are gonna be high in the beginning. Right? I think we all know that.

And they if they are successful, they will go down over time. Right? So I just wanna note that to look beyond a moment in time and to look at the trend patterns there. You know, secondly, the cost per student outcome, which I know the yellow report had you know, program completion. And we also track that as well, and that's really important for us.

You know, that the student program cost the program completion cost per student has dropped 85% since 2020. Effectively doubled in the more recent years. And we actually do anticipate that number, being below the system average quoted in the LEO report within the next couple of years, if not if not sooner. So I hope that's helpful. I think that the trend patterns over time is gonna be especially important, I think, for just Calvary being a startup institution.

Yeah. And then a follow-up question is what is again, as I'm trying to just think about the value add that this system brings to attainment of degrees of credentials of certificate certifications. What is your budgeting ratio of administrative cost to people spending?

Yeah. It's something we certainly take a look at as well. I don't have all that specific information with me right now, and it's something that you continually look at. I will say, that when we did review I would say student facing expenditures, from the prior fiscal year, we determined that to be approximately 72% of our expenditure line items.

And something that we feel really proud about is we you know, we're really focused on serving our adult learners across the state of California. And that's a unique proposition different from any California community college here is how do we do more with less?

How do we reach more students with you know, budget frankly that is, you know, the proposed budget out there I wanna be clear is, the average community college expenditure district, again, budget is close to $200,000,000. You know, Calibrate is one of the smallest districts in the state of California. And even with the proposed budget amount to reach that 53,000,000, it is roughly 1 quarter the size of a the average district expenditure size across the state. And yet, we serve the entire state.

So I just wanna highlight that as Right.

And we are continuing to grow. Right? We've we've grown 10 x since 2020. Right? I think the enrollment scaling and reaching more, you know, adult learners throughout the state of California.

Again, there's there's a lot of momentum right now. We're seeing that velocity just continue to grow the more we serve, and I think the students are responding. And I think you're seeing that in the numbers.

And to our community colleges, feel free to address those 2 questions. But also, are these programs post COVID we've seen a lot of transformation in the way our community colleges can flex and be more available and accessible to diverse student populations. Is any of this something that you could this level of attention and care for our individual learners, is this something that you could accommodate or incorporate within your own systems and reduce administrative cost?

Yeah. I don't know that I could say it would reduce administrative cost. There are efforts underway to use competency based education approaches, to use credit for prior learning approaches. What I would say though is oftentimes in our system, they're still tied back to that traditional seat based, time based model. But no doubt to your point, no doubt that the proposed funding level per student is higher than most in our system.

But I would take it back to us you know, that system level that we've long argued on a per student basis that the community college system receives less per FTES than our, sister 4 year institutions, our colleagues at the UC and CSU. So we would argue you know, more globally that you know, to the extent the legislature could help raise all boats. You know, we'd certainly appreciate that too.

And this could serve as a high touch model that we could say, can we fund every college with this type of resource? I know the realities of the situation are that we can't, but certainly would be an excellent aspirational goal for our system as well.

Yeah. Thank you for that. I think it's important that we continue these conversations and are able to make sure that all of our Californians can unlock their potential. Certainly this is an interesting model with Calbright. I am concerned with the nearly doubling of the budget without a doubling of student population.

So that that does concern me, and I am interested and intrigued to see how we can apply some sort of SCFF model. I don't know what that would look like because clearly it couldn't be you know, students in seats kind of instruction, because these are virtual programs. So it would have to look slightly different what that attenuated or changed modified model would look like. We would absolutely welcome that conversation. Yeah.

Absolutely. And with that, we will leave this item open for further discussion, and we will now move on to the panel

Common cloud.

Issue 4, common cloud platform. And we will have, once again, Philip Osborne from the Department of Finance, if you would like to go first.

Yep. The let me grab my notes here.

Yeah. Let me see. Let's see. Yeah.

So the Governor's budget proposal proposes $36,000,000 in one time funding and an additional $5,000,000 ongoing funding for a total of 41 in the budget here and then $5,000,000 ongoing.

For the common cloud proposal, we support this proposal, and I would welcome any questions you may have.

Thank you. Lisa from the LAO.

Thank you. So as you may recall, the Common Cloud Data Platform was launched by the Chancellor's Office a few years ago as a demonstration project initially involving a cohort of six district. Last year, the state provided $12,000,000 and one time to begin scaling this project across all districts.

At this stage, we think it would be premature to provide an additional round of funding in '26-'27. And that's because the activities that were funded in last year's budget are expected to last three years.

So through '27-'28. And at this early stage, there is still some uncertainty around how those activities will go. Both in terms of their technical viability and importantly, in terms of the number of districts that will agree to participate. This is the type of project where the benefits will only be fully realized with full district participation.

At this stage, there is also some uncertainty around the specific cost and scope of any activities that would need to be funded on top of those support in last year's budget. And so given these considerations, we would recommend rejecting the proposed funding for '26-'27 and strengthening the reporting requirements on last year's funding to extend through the three year expenditure period for those funds.

At that stage, after last year's funding is spent, we think the legislature will have better information to evaluate a future funding request for this project. Thank you.

Yeah. Chris Ferguson, Executive Vice Chancellor of Finance and Strategic Initiatives at the Chancellor's Office, strong supporters of this proposed investment. What this will allow our system to do is to inevitably have every college on this common approach that allows for real time data flow and really in in many respects, predictive analytics to be used to understand, you know, what's happening with our students as it's happening to be able to better advise them.

We have taken a very systemic approach to building out the Common Cloud Data Platform. So it builds on top of our existing student information systems and data systems at the local level.

It does not change any of those systems. Effectively, it is interfacing with them. It's an API that pulls together, uses data lakes, you allows that information to be available across campuses. And our approach and I think this is probably, the most critical aspect for us. Our approach has always been to mitigate risk in building this out.

So we have started as a demonstration project. We've continued with two additional cohorts. This would allow us to get to all colleges in the system. But we intentionally take that approach because we're trying to mitigate risk. So at a very low cost, we can see okay, with one, two, three districts, is this working?

Does it work the way we expect? And if it is, then we can expand. And that's been our overall approach. We have provided the Department of Technology with a plethora of information showing the planning that went into the development of this proposal and the development of the Common Cloud Data Platform Approach. We think there's a lot of benefit to our counselors, our students, and our colleges as a result.

And with that, would be happy to answer any questions.

Thank you. Is that all the presentations on this item? Great. I'll turn it over. Questions to Doctor Patel.

Yeah. I do have a few questions on the Common Cloud System. How has that pilot been going for those that have started work with that? There were 13 districts that were part of that pilot. And has there been robust communication with those that might be participating in phase two as to what the next steps will look like?

Yeah. My understanding is that it has gone quite well that we have a number of districts not only in that initial cohort, but in subsequent cohorts that have expressed significant interest in moving quickly in this work. I think part of what we see in our system and, you know, what drives this is there are some efficiencies at the local level. So, you know, we've learned from the pilot that it does lead to a reduction of about one FTEs position.

But really, what that means at the local level is they're able to focus on some of those other priorities in their district that they just weren't able to get to. And we know that it means that there could be upwards of a 50% reduction for some of our A&R staff in terms of being able to advise students. But taking it back to that student, we know I believe it's roughly 40% of our students take courses at more than one campus.

This enables that, counselor to know in real time that student is at multiple campuses and provide better advice today. And if that student doesn't say that to your counselor on a campus or it hasn't transferred over yet, your counselor won't know that you're taking a course or how it fits into your sequence.

So always, we'll take it back to the student focus. And we believe that, you know, this type of approach, this type of statewide analytics, local analytics, we can better serve our students and better equip our counselors, our faculty, our campuses to serve serve our students well.

Certainly with common course numbering, that would also be helpful to make sure that we're able to counsel our students in the appropriate ways. And it's certainly with our dual enrollment as well. Those students may, be dual enrolled at different campuses looking at how that can integrate seamlessly is important. What I will ask is and this may be a really fundamental question.

Does the Common Cloud System require sites to use the same exact vendors for their programs or is there flexibility in who they're working with for their IT?

So it does not change any of the campus vendors or campus programs that they're using today. This layer's on top of. It's an interface. So if you're using you know, let's say it's company x. If you're using company x today, you can use company x tomorrow.

We are vendor agnostic in the approach. Our design is take what the campuses are using and feed it into that central platform, enable the development of data dashboards. And this is one of the really nice things on those data dashboards, irrespective of who creates it, which campus. Any other campus would then be able to say, hey, I want that dashboard too and simply lift and take that and use it too. And it's irrespective of their vendors.

Very very specific to your question. What we've heard in the background is there's confusion between what was our proposal last year for Common ERP and Common Cloud Data System. They're two separate. They're not the same.

Thank you for that clarification.

Has is not linked to Common ERP.

Thank you. Those are my questions.

Thank you. And came in a little bit after the LAO's comments, but there are recommendations that the LAO has, particularly the strengthening reporting requirements. What is the response from the Chancellor's Office on this issue?

Yeah. I think we view this approach as low risk at this point. That said, you know, if there's a need for an independent oversight entity or there's additional reporting requested, you know, we'll do what is asked of us, because we believe in this project.

We believe in the outcomes for our campuses and our students. So if that is the will of the legislature, you know, we'd certainly look at it.

That said, that is workload to our office and we just ask that that be considered in the totality of workload, you know, that our office is asked to complete each year.

And I know the LAO probably already made some comments on this, but yours recommendation is that there is, a couple more years worth of reporting requirements on a periodic basis?

That's correct. So in last year's budget, the legislature enacted two reporting requirements report due January 15 of this past year from Chancellor's Office. Paired with the report due March 31 of this year from the Department of Technology. Our recommendation is to extend those two reporting requirements for two additional years while the Chancellor's Office continues to spend down the funds that were provided in last year's budget.

I think it's important to note that unlike most state agencies, the Chancellor's Office is not subject to the direct authority of the California Department of Technology, and these reporting requirements are intended to allow the state to nonetheless benefit from the expertise of CDT in overseeing the project.

Yeah. How has been the experience with CDT? Because I know this is something the subcommittee focused on the last couple years. How has that experience been for the department in terms of ease of being able to work and get feedback and all of the things that you've interacted with the department as it relates to this initiative?

Yeah. They've requested, you know, a lot of information, sent over a number of questions we've addressed and responded to all of them, as timely as possible. I would say, you know, from a workload perspective, we were probably a week or two later, in responding than CBT would have preferred. But nonetheless, they've received all of the information requested. I do not have their specific feedback in house.

I don't know if the Department of Finance has received that, but it is my understanding based on our conversations with CDT that they are supportive of moving forward. They do think that we've done our due diligence.

I was gonna ask that. CDT is not here, but maybe Finance can help us.

Yeah. So, Phil Osborn, Finance again. I've reviewed the draft and trying to hunt down a copy. I think it may be a little late and obviously, it's past March 31. But the report is due to the JLBC and you should be receiving a copy. If you haven't if it hasn't been submitted already, it should be shortly.

Okay. I have not seen it. Anything preliminarily that you've seen that we should be paying attention to?

I've only reviewed the draft, so I don't have much to say. But I would say that the tone and tenor of the of the report were pretty positive.

Okay.

Which is a good thing, obviously.

Okay. We'll wait for the actual letter then to understand their assessment.

We'll hold the issue open. Thank you to this panel. And we will go on to the title nine update that is required of all of our segments. And so I think for this, we're gonna have the Community College Chancellor's Office talk about, their updates on implementation and success of Title IX, which has been a priority for the legislature in the last couple of years.

Welcome.

Thank you very much, Chair Alvarez and subcommittee members. My name is David O'Brien, and I'm the Vice Chancellor for External Relations for the California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office. Pleased to present this brief update to you here today.

I won't reiterate what is in the excellent background in your staff agenda here, but do wanna give a special shout out to Assemblymember Fong, and his committee staff of the higher education committee who put together an excellent sort of baseline assessment of Title IX across all three systems of public higher education in 2024 that was called a call to action.

In response to that report, Assemblymember Fong authored legislation that asked the Chancellor's Office to convene a group of stakeholders from across our system, and basically look at a representative sample of our colleges and districts to kinda determine what's working in Title IX, what some of the challenges are, and what the major policy considerations are that we are putting before the legislature for your consideration.

So I had the honor of, serving as Chair of that work group, asked to do so by Chancellor Christian, was happy to do so. Our work group had several meetings over the course of a year, including representatives of faculty, college presidents, trustees, other administrators, Title IX coordinators, and very importantly, students.

And so long story short, our gender equity report was released December 1, and found that, there is quite a bit of variance across the colleges in terms of how they're implementing Title IX, how they're dealing with often overlapping or conflicting state and federal requirements. Especially given the situation at the federal level where it's become a little bit of a kind of a political back and forth every time partisan control of the White House changes.

It seems that the entire national framework for Title IX changes with it. And so, but, you know, among many other key findings of our report were that many of our Title IX coordinators in the community colleges serve in multiple roles, find themselves, feeling under resourced, isolated on campus, not having clear guidance from the state level, from our office, about which policies need to follow, policies being out of date.

And so among a number of other recommendations that were contained in our report for the legislature's consideration, and we know that there is ongoing legislation on this right now, was some additional funding for one thing to ensure that all, colleges have a dedicated Title IX Coordinator as well as some, state operations funding so that the chancellor's office can have something that the other two system offices do, but that we do not, which is a a statewide office of civil rights to provide technical assistance, best practices, and other supports to our colleges.

And this was something that was very much, very popular among our Title IX coordinators when they floated this proposal. The other proposal, which is a little bit broader in scope, but we wanted to provide the legislature with a sort of suite of options was creating sort of an external authority.

It's called the External Resolution Authority in our report to take on some of the the sort of case resolution case load and work from the Title IX offices so that they can focus more on prevention, campus climate, some of the things that were identified, and that our consultants, our Title IX administrator consultants, noted can lead to significant improvements on campus.

And so this proposal has made it into legislation, that Assembly member Fong is carrying as well as a budget request that he's leading. We are happy to continue working with this subcommittee as well as the Assembly member's Office and the Higher Ed Committee on that proposal because, you know, this is a priority for the Chancellor's Office. It's critical that we create a campus environment that is safe, inclusive, and welcoming for not just all students but all of our faculty and staff as well.

And so we believe that the recommendations in our work group and the findings can go a long way towards doing that with some support from the legislature.

Thank you very much. Appreciate the update. I wanted to ask a few questions which are consistent with the other Title IX presentations from the other two segments. And I know that it's a little bit different, and you may wanna actually provide more context to this. But does every campus now have a Title IX coordinator, someone who is identified as the lead?

What is the status of that with the community college system?

Yes. As I understand that every campus has somebody who is designated as a Title IX coordinator. What we do not have is every campus has a full time Title IX coordinator, meaning that's their only job. So it is something that does seem to be often added to somebody else's duties.

Okay. What was the feedback during the committee as it relates to that? Is people feeling that they there aren't the caseload does not exist for a full time? What's the reasoning with why some choose not to have a either at a district level or campus level, a Title IX coordinator or director?

Yeah. It seemed to be a couple of things. One of which was insufficient caseload. And it's important to note here that as counterintuitive as it seems, when it comes to Title IX, you know, incidents of sexual harassment in a campus environment, low reporting is not necessarily an indication of low caseload. Right?

Most often, campuses that have low numbers of reported incidents, are an indication of a campus climate or culture that is not conducive to students feeling safe reporting or to an infrastructure that's clear about where they can go to the information not being there.

And so and I say this, I'm channeling our consultants here. We worked with the Association of Title IX Administrators, which is a national group that is sort of consulted on Title IX at colleges and universities around the country.

And they were very, very clear and unambiguous from day one that you want higher numbers of reporting. You wanna see those from campuses because that means that there is a feeling that those things that there's an infrastructure in place to do that reporting and that those, that there's a feeling that those incidents can be reported safely.

So that was one thing that we heard that we needed to sort of process with that caveat was that some campuses were saying, well, the reporting numbers aren't there

Which caused us to go a little deeper and wanna look at, okay, why aren't you getting large numbers of incidents reported? Because based on, you know, the size of some of these colleges, the demographics we were looking at, they should have had higher numbers of reporting. So that was one of them. Another one was just resources.

Some of the smaller, more rural campuses saying, "Hey. We don't have a lot of resources to do hiring" Some campuses cited, as often comes up in these conversations, the state 50% law because the Title IX coordinator is somebody who's considered, you know, non faculty, non instructional staff, so they would count in the denominator of the 50% law in terms of hiring at small campuses. That was a a concern that we heard.

So those were a few of the things that we often heard.

Okay. I think you make a good point that, you know, that there's some indicators that would, point to reporting happening at rates that we are not seeing in some circumstances. And I'd like to ask, just as a follow-up. Sometimes it's maybe the person exists at a campus or has the maybe the title or the responsibility. They may not even have the title. There may be no office with the name on it.

And so Link, as a follow-up, if you could help us identify how is it that a student or a faculty or staff at a campus, how are we facilitating them knowing that this resource exists? Even if there isn't a single person given, you know, very real limitations that exist in places like rural areas. I get that. But I think it should be somehow very, very clear that this is something that is available as a resource.

And just wanting to better understand in the instances in which there isn't a coordinator, what is the effort that is being made to do that.

That is a very good point, and we're hoping that improves significantly in the coming years here because we have recently implemented legislation. I believe it was AB 2683, but my brain tends to refresh the numbers every two year cycle.

So from a couple of years ago, there was legislation that the legislature passed and the Governor signed, that requires information on sexual harassment prevention and Title IX services and so forth to be incorporated into student orientation.

Now one of the challenges that we tend to see in the community colleges is that because our students are a little bit more sort of transient, not as much of the on campus culture, things like orientation. Anecdotally, I only say this.

I don't have data on this. But anecdotally, we always hear that things like orientation can have lower participation rates.

Sure.