Budget 2004: Some schools suffer, others sigh in relief

Largely left out in the cold, however, was the California State University system, which will suffer a cut of 9 percent, or $240 million.

Chico State will have to cut 7.2 percent from its already-slashed budget, which amounts to about $8.6 million in cuts, said Interim President Scott McNall. “We’ll need some bold and creative suggestions,” McNall said. “Given that we’ve had pretty significant budget cuts already, that will be very tough.” The university plans a series of campuswide meetings to discuss potential cuts and their impact.

The cut, which comes on top of a $531 million cut in 2003-04, would result in higher fees, less financial aid and fewer students admitted at Chico State University and other CSU campuses. While McNall said it’s not yet clear whether the cuts will definitely mean a reduction in enrollment, the Chancellor’s Office is acting as if it will and saying that perhaps 20,000 students will be shut out of the colleges, including 4,200 freshmen who will be “redirected” to community colleges under the governor’s proposal.

But all is not rosy at schools such as Butte College, either, even as they are expected to take on students who can’t get into the CSUs and University of California campuses (the UCs are seeing a $372 million cut). Schwarzenegger is proposing $125 million to cover some of the enrollment growth, but fees will be going up 44 percent, from $18 per unit to $26 per unit. Students holding a bachelor’s degree would pay $50 per unit to attend community college.

Schwarzenegger ended fears that he would recommend suspending Proposition 98, which guarantees school funding levels, by reducing money going to K-14 districts to a lesser amount. Rather than holding back $4 billion, he’d redirect $2 billion of the new money. Part of the K-14 money will come on the backs of local governments, which will lose $1.3 billion in property tax revenue statewide.

The proposal would leave the Chico Unified School District in better shape than it had feared, as district leaders readied themselves for the heated discussions that would come with nearly $2 million in cuts.

Some of Schwarzenegger’s proposals, such as community college increases and floating bonds, were similar to those then-Gov. Gray Davis submitted last year.

The "May revise" will bring more details to the governor’s plan, followed by legislative action (including likely compromise) and the final budget adoption by July 1—although the state has traditionally missed that deadline.