Oakland Tribune
12/21/03

Governor may cut UC, CSU outreach
Educators bemoan proposed budget reduction

By Michelle Maitre, STAFF WRITER

Sunday, December 21, 2003 - Elizabeth Halimah is nervous.

The director of University of California, Berkeley's Early Academic Outreach Program, Halimah has reservations from 250 high school students who've signed up for an SAT preparation class that will start in January.

Halimah isn't sure, however, if she'll still be able to offer the class next month, or a concurrent enrollment program that lets high school students take community college courses, because state budget cuts have put funding for outreach programs like hers at risk.

University officials are waiting until Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger releases his proposed budget for next year on Jan. 10 to act on the cuts, but Halimah is concerned about what might lie ahead.

"I don't know what's going to happen," she said Friday. "It's pretty scary. I think we're just going to go ahead with our plans until somebody tells us we'd have to turn away all those students.

"I hope we don't have to," she added. "I hope something will work out."

Schwarzenegger has called for the elimination of all state funds for outreach programs run by University of California and California State University.

Schwarzenegger's staff said the cuts are necessary as the governor works to pull the state out of an enormous fiscal crisis.

H.D. Palmer, deputy director of external affairs for the state Department of Finance, said the governor is trying to spare cutting programs that feed UC and CSU's core educational mission.

"Our goal in looking at higher education has been to focus on how (we) can achieve savings, yet at the same time preserve core instructional programs," Palmer said.

But education officials say the blow would be devastating, wiping out in one fell swoop dozens of programs across the state that help youngsters from disadvantaged backgrounds get into and succeed in college.

Schwarzenegger has already acted on some of the cuts, but others are still pending. The governor on Thursday invoked emergency powers and ordered a series of mid-year cuts without legislative approval.

Outreach safe for year

For CSU, Schwarzenegger's action strips $23.7 million from its $2.5 billion budget for the remainder of the fiscal year, which ends in June. CSU Chancellor Charles Reed has said outreach programs -- targeted for a $12.5 million cut -- will be spared for the remainder of the year. Instead, Reed has directed campuses to begin planning for enrollment reductions that would lock some 4,000 prospective students out of CSU.

Next fiscal year, however, Schwarzenegger has called for a further reduction to CSU outreach of $52 million.

At UC, the governor has called for an immediate mid-year reduction of $12.2 million in K-12 outreach funds. Next fiscal year, the governor has proposed wiping out the entire $33 million budget for UC outreach programs.

"Under any scenario, if the state completely removes this funding, much of what we are currently doing we will not be in a position to continue into the future," said Winston Doby, UC's vice president for educational outreach.

UC's outreach budget was already reduced by 50 percent at the beginning of the current fiscal year, Doby said.

The cuts would gut targeted outreach programs that operate in schools and colleges across the state. Those programs offer mentoring and intense academic preparation to individual students, most of whom are from minority groups that are underrepresented on college campuses, including blacks, Latinos and American Indians.

"There's a tremendous need for these programs and the resource we are providing for students," said Mack Lovett, assistant vice president for instructional services at Cal State Hayward. "If these programs are cut, it's going to mean a lot of these students simply won't be able to come to college. That will be a tragedy."

38,000 in programs

Statewide, CSU officials estimate 38,000 students participate in outreach programs.

Lovett estimated that close to 5,000 students from throughout the Bay Area participate in programs run by Cal State Hayward. Programs are as varied as a summer program that gives college-bound high school graduates additional help in math and English to a Foster Care Tutorial Program, where students in Alameda County's foster homes are tutored and mentored by Hayward students.

UC outreach programs serve about 160,000 students throughout the state, from kindergarten through community college, Doby said. Two of UC's largest programs, MESA -- Mathematics, Engineering and Science Achievement -- and Puente, are national models for helping academically underserved students.

Former MESA participant Rian Whittle, now a freshman majoring in electrical engineering and computer science at UC Berkeley, said it would be a shame if the program disappears.

"Considering what it offers students, I really hope that it wouldn't be cut," he said. "You can never get too much help, and it's always nice to have an outreach program there to help you out."

Doby said outreach programs have been successful in sending students to college. He said 47 percent of program participants attend four-year universities, and more than 20 percent attend community colleges.

Halimah said the Early Academic Outreach Program is UC's largest outreach program statewide, serving about 85,000 students. It offers college advising, SAT test preparation and rigorous academic preparation, including summer sessions at Berkeley and other campuses, among other programs.

"We work in communities where going to college is not a given, it's not something that everyone is expected to do or knows how to do," she said. "The big fear (if these programs are eliminated) is there's not going to be anyone telling kids in these communities that they can go to college, that they should go and we're here to help."

Skyline High School senior Irene Phakeovilay has participated in Berkeley's EAOP since eighth grade. She said the program taught her what classes to take so she could be eligible to attend UC and CSU, and also helped build her confidence and improve her skills in math and English.

Through EAOP, she's taken a class at Laney College in Oakland and participated in intensive summer classes offered at UC Berkeley.

"Without this program, I don't think I would be the person I am today," Phakeovilay said. "I'm concerned about this program. It offers so much to students who are not sure about what they should be doing to be prepared for college."

Berkeley also offers a variety of other outreach programs at risk of being cut, including the DUSTY program, an after-school outreach program in Oakland, and Stiles Hall's Berkeley Scholars to Cal program, which pairs at-risk fifth-graders with Berkeley undergraduates. The young students are tutored and mentored for eight years.

Overlap in system

Steve Boilard, director of the higher education unit of the state Legislative Analyst's Office, said he is leery about the governor's proposal to eliminate outreach funding altogether. Still, he said his office has been critical of the programs in the past, because many of the programs overlap and there is no reliable data showing how well they work.

"It seems to me that a better approach than just saying we're going to stop supporting outreach would be instead to look at a particular program and be more selective in which ones you think are being successful and which ones aren't," he said.

Meanwhile, college officials and some legislators have said they will work to try to minimize the cut on outreach programs.

"We're all very surprised that (the governor) would arbitrarily do this without asking the Legislature, and I don't know if he understands what those outreach programs did," said Assemblywoman Carol Liu, who heads the Assembly's Committee on Higher Education. "We're going to try to do everything we can to undo what he's done, because he needs to be more thoughtful about how we do all this."

Contact Michelle Maitre at mmaitre@angnewspapers.com .