Newsom’s budget keeps promised funding bumps for UC and CSU
Even with California facing a $31 billion budget shortfall, the state’s public university systems would get another year of funding increases under Gov. Gavin Newsom’s revised budget.
Newsom proposed 5% base funding increases for the University of California and California State University, staying true to the agreements he made last year to give the systems that level of increase annually over the next five years.
“These are conveyor belts for talent,” Newsom said while presenting his budget. “This is what separates our game from the game played everywhere else in the world, not just in the United States — the quality of education, the UC, the CSU.”
To save costs in other areas, Newsom did propose shifting state funding for several projects, including student housing, to UC- and CSU-issued bonds. The state would cover the debt payment for those bonds.
Funding for the state’s 116 community colleges would also be less than Newsom had initially proposed five months ago. The community college system’s base funding is tied to Proposition 98, a formula that determines the portion of the state’s general fund that goes to education. The community colleges would get some one-time funding allocations, including $100 million on programs aimed at keeping current students and enrolling new ones.
The details of the budget are likely to change in the coming weeks, as Newsom and his staff will now enter a period of intense negotiations with state lawmakers until the budget is finalized in June. But higher education leaders in California mostly considered Newsom’s latest proposal a win, particularly given the shortfall the state is facing.
CSU’s interim systemwide chancellor, Jolene Koester, similarly said in a statement that the governor had “demonstrated its belief in the CSU’s mission and the transformative power of higher education for Californians from all backgrounds.”
Newsom last year proposed what he called multiyear compacts with UC and CSU. Under the five-year agreements, the systems would get annual bumps of 5% to their base funding and would simultaneously be expected to work on increasing graduation rates, growing the enrollment of California residents and narrowing equity gaps in student achievement, among other goals. The systems will be required this fall to report to lawmakers on their progress toward those goals.
—Michael Burke, Ashley A. Smith, EdSource
1 in 4 California child care centers has alarming levels of lead in water, research shows
New research reveals that nearly 1,700 licensed child care centers across the state, roughly 1 in 4, have exceeded the amount of allowable lead in drinking water given to preschool-age children and infants. This means that babies and toddlers may have been drinking high levels of water for decades, the report suggests.
The tests were conducted to comply with Assembly Bill 2370, authored by Assemblymember Chris Holden, D-Pasadena, and sponsored by the Environmental Working Group. This law requires licensed child care centers to test their tap water for lead contamination.
It has long been known that many American public schools don’t have safe water for students to drink. Despite a flurry of testing, policy changes and the movement to replace water infrastructure in recent years, many children are still exposed to lead at school, according to the report, “Get the Lead Out.”
Even a little lead exposure, such as from water fountains, can harm health, impacting the brain and nervous system. Studies connect elevated lead levels to lower IQ and decreased focus as well as violent crime and delinquency. This threat is affecting children just as they struggle to recover from the pandemic.
“Despite all the work we’ve done to try to protect kids from the debilitating impacts of lead exposure through their drinking water and elsewhere, test results released today show we have failed to prevent harm to the most vulnerable Californians,” said Susan Little, EWG’s senior advocate for California government affairs. “Parents and decisionmakers alike need to understand that the water our children drink in California can contain high levels of lead. Young people in our state are being put in dire risk.”
The highest levels of lead were detected at the La Petite Academy, in San Diego, according to the report. These levels are comparable to some of the highest amounts of lead detected in Flint, Michigan.
—Karen D’Souza, EdSource
