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Butte College campus bustles between classes on February 12, 2020. Photo by Anne Wernikoff for CalMatters
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Rarely are college bean-counters skeptical of receiving more money, but a plan to give California’s community college system hundreds of millions of dollars for faculty is dividing finance officials and professors.
For college financial officials, the new money would come at an inopportune time: Enrollment plunged across the 116-college system by 11% last fall as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. With fewer students to teach, financial officers worry that committing $170 million to hire 2,000 more full-time faculty now, per a budget blueprint approved by key legislative panels in late May, will lead to problems later.
The report accuses Calbright’s former leadership of laying the groundwork for a host of problems: inflated salaries, unethical hiring practices, too few supports for students. The report also flagged a lack of strategic planning by current leaders for approximately $175 million in state funding the college is slated to receive through June 2025.
“Because of these missteps, Calbright has struggled to adequately enroll the students it was intended to serve, took longer than it should have to develop a student support system, and did not adequately partner with employers in the development of its educational programs, thereby hindering its ability to assist its students in obtaining jobs,” Elaine Howle, the California state auditor, said in her report.
This story was updated at 5:30 p.m. May 12 to include new comments from former Calbright President Heather Hiles.
A long-awaited state audit of Calbright College, California’s exclusively online community college, criticized its previous leaders for overpaying some of its executives, lacking a strategy for spending state funds and failing to provide students with training and connections to employers.
In its two years of operation, Calbright has failed at its key mission of “enrolling adult students who cannot otherwise obtain postsecondary education,” concludes Elaine M. Howle, the California state auditor, in a report released Tuesday.
Larry Gordon/EdSource
Former Calbright College President Heather Hiles resigned after less than a year.
Some IPS High Schoolers Will Be Required To Ride IndyGo
Pixabay
Indianapolis Public Schools Board approved a change Thursday to require around 600 high schoolers to use IndyGo for their sole school transportation in the 2021-22 school year, instead of a traditional yellow bus.
The approval is part of a broader transportation reduction plan that includes enforcing decades-old walk zones at all schools. That means around 2,000 additional K-12 students will be required to walk to school rather than use district transportation.
The reduction in bus service is one of several transportation service changes and part of the district leaders’ plan to chip away at an $18 million budget shortfall, caused by a dip in enrollment this year. The total saving is expected to be $5 million.