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April, 2002, volume 12, Issue 4 - Governor Davis' 2002-2003 Budget Proposal: A Virtual Decimation of Student Support Services |
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By Esau Tovar & Laurie Frederic
As many of us have heard, the initial 2002-2003 State budget introduced by Governor Davis proposes a significant reduction in Matriculation funds and a near elimination of CalWORKS funds. The loss of these funds would result in the virtual elimination of the CalWORKS program and a significant reduction in Matriculation services at SMC.
The Matriculation Program at Santa Monica College provides a variety of specialized services for all students to help them define and work toward realistic and achievable goals. These direct-contact services include admissions, assessment, orientation, counseling and advisement, and important follow-up services. If the proposed Matriculation cuts take place, funding levels will return to those in effect in 1995-1996. During that time, 20,627 students were enrolled at Santa Monica College. However, over the past few years our enrollment has soared to an all-time high of 33,568 students! The reduction in matriculation funding might result in a devastating decrease of counseling services given the potential for reduced counseling contact hours. To be concrete about how this would affect SMC students seeking counseling, these funding reductions would result in approximately 11,000 less available counseling appointments for the 2002—2003. The Transfer/Counseling Center alone provided well over 54,000 counseling individual student contacts in 2000-01. With these cuts, our already high full-time counselor to student ratio of 1:1,773 will be significantly increased. In practical terms, this means that a great number of students will need to wait for extended periods of time before receiving counseling/advisement assistance, or will sadly give up entirely! Additionally, hours of operation at various student-counseling programs may have to be reduced. Presently, several of our counseling programs maintain hours between 8 AM to 8 PM to accommodate our working adult population. Severe reductions in funding may translate into marked reductions in hours of availability to students.
The CalWORKS program currently provides one-on-one personal and academic counseling to students on public assistance. CalWORKS counselors and staff also provide the necessary mediation and advocacy between CalWORKS SMC students and social services agencies. The overriding goal of the CalWORKS program is to assist qualifying students by providing them with critical one-on-one support, to enable them to navigate through the educational system in order to achieve a career certificate, earn an AA degree, or find employment. The elimination of this valuable program, would force these students to rely again upon the very social services system, that had often led to so much frustration and discouragement in the first place.
In response to the proposed cuts, many individuals and groups have been actively involved in a statewide letter writing campaign and lobbying. The SMC Counseling Department and CalWORKS program are both actively involved in this effort as well. We urge you to partake in this endeavor by writing letters to Governor Davis, the State Assembly, and State Senate requesting full restoration of funds. Over the next week, the Counseling Department will make available letters to all faculty wishing to join us. Working together we will ensure that our students do not suffer the consequences of our governor’s shortsightedness! We encourage faculty and staff to send letters to the following: Governor Gray Davis, Senator Sheila Kuehl, Assemblywoman Fran Pavley, Speaker Herb Wesson; Assemblyman Joe Simitian, Chair, Higher Education Budget Subcommittee; and Assemblymen George Nakano, Paul Koretz, and Robert Pacheco. All letters (no emails) should be addressed to the State Capitol Building, Sacramento, CA 95814.
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