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| Public Education, Advocacy and Alliance Building
Community colleges in California face many policy issues and challenges, both internally and externally, that need to be addressed if they are to successfully serve the state’s increasingly diverse students and communities. As part of our Community College Access & Equity Initiative, California Tomorrow engages in public education and advocacy to call attention to these issues and to inspire leadership and action toward solutions that will help address them at the campus, college system and state levels.
Issues and challenges facing California’s community colleges
The California Community Colleges (CCC) have become the main gateways to higher education and workforce training for a majority of our state’s students of color, immigrants, and working adults. Although community colleges have weathered challenging budget processes in the past, state support in California remains far behind levels of support community colleges receive in all but five states in the country. Meanwhile, community college leaders, particularly in urban settings, and in the central and southern regions of the state, continue to face unprecedented growth in students, with limited prospects for substantially increased state revenue. Across all regions of the state, community college leaders are struggling to align their instructional and support services around the needs of their rapidly changing student bodies.
As a result, the students in our higher education system that need the most are actually receiving the least. On campuses throughout the state – particularly in urban settings and other regions experiencing tremendous growth – student to counselor ratios are as high as 1900 to 1, and access to ESL, basic skills classes and support services (tutoring, child care, book vouchers, etc.) have been severely limited as a result of budget constraints or because their availability is far outstripped by the growth in the number of students who need them. Campus leaders we interviewed during our research phase indicated that the best student support programs can only accommodate between 10-15% of the students who actually need them. And increasing numbers of students are coming to community colleges in need of extra academic support if they are to succeed in their goals of transferring to a four year college or gaining the workforce training they need to secure a good job.
Predictably, system and campus leaders are struggling to respond effectively to these dramatic changes and daunting challenges. In the course of the next 25 years these demographic shifts will only deepen. This scenario affects us all – it hurts our economy because we are not educating the necessary numbers of workers needed for the jobs in the 21 century, and it undermines the well being of California’s diverse communities and civic culture. To account for this systemic crisis, we believe that leadership to improve access and success for students of color, immigrant, and low income students is urgently needed at the state, system and campus levels.
We believe the governor and legislature need to find ways to increase the financial support provided to community colleges. We believe the CCC’s Chancellor and other system leaders should move access and equity issues to an even higher priority on their policy reform agendas, and that the Chancellor’s office can work with system and campus access and equity advocates to facilitate systemwide access to new models and resources for aligning campus practices to the realities of 21st century California. On a local level, college presidents and faculty can take the lead in efforts to mobilize more of their colleagues in helping to create comprehensive strategies and plans to improve outcomes for their ever more diverse student bodies.
California Tomorrow’s Public Education and Advocacy
Toward these objectives, California Tomorrow’s Pubic Education and Advocacy is designed to increase attention and leadership (at the campus, system, and community levels) for policy reforms to address the access and equity barriers that most impact the success of students of color, immigrants, and low-income students.
More specifically, California Tomorrow:- Develops and disseminates Access & Equity Policy Briefs that highlight the critical issues facing our state’s most vulnerable students and provide recommendations for strengthening the capacity of community colleges to serve an ever more diverse student body.
- Provides briefings, presentations and workshops to share our research and policy recommendations with a wide range of state policymakers, community and civic leaders, and community college system and campus leaders.
- Has developed guiding policy imperatives and principles for change to support public investment to strengthen the community college system and to build the leadership and capacity of campus leaders to create the necessary reforms to meet the needs of California’s diverse student body.
Alliance Building
As part of our public education and advocacy work, California Tomorrow helps build connections and alliances to help ensure the strongest possible voice in support of community colleges, and to honor the fundamental interdependence of community college, K-12, and other equity issues.
In particular, given the intense competition for scarce state resources and the reality that the economic fates of community colleges and K-12 schools are currently tied together through Prop 98, we believe it will be difficult to improve the financial position of community colleges without new alliances among equity advocates that are committed to strengthening both systems. Working with allies in the community college access and equity arena, California Tomorrow organizes activities to connect and support community college advocates, K-12 educational equity groups, civil rights groups, and immigrant rights groups. Along with building stronger support for community colleges, we believe that fostering such alliances is an important step in helping to ensure stronger and more unified advocacy for all the educational needs – at both K-12 and community college levels – of our state’s low-income communities.
If you would like to get involved in our public education and advocacy or alliance building efforts, please contact Ruben Lizardo to receive information and updates via e-mail. |
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