BILL ANALYSIS �
Senate Appropriations Committee Fiscal Summary
Senator Christine Kehoe, Chair
SB 1456 (Lowenthal) - Seymour-Campbell Student Success Act of
2012.
Amended: April 26, 2012 Policy Vote: Education 9-0
Urgency: No Mandate: Yes
Hearing Date: May 14, 2012 Consultant: Jacqueline
Wong-Hernandez
This bill meets the criteria for referral to the Suspense File.
Bill Summary: SB 1456 establishes new requirements to be met in
order to receive a Board of Governors (BOG) fee waiver at the
California Community Colleges (CCC). This bill also recasts and
revises the Seymour-Campbell Matriculation Act of 1986 as the
Seymour-Campbell Student Success Act of 2012, and establishes
new requirements that CCCs must meet to receive matriculation
categorical funding.
Fiscal Impact:
BOG fee waiver mandate: Potentially significant costs to
expand CCC administrative duties under the BOG fee waiver
program. The BOG fee waiver program is an existing
reimbursable state mandate on CCCs, and this bill would
expand the administrative activities related to that $21
million mandate.
Matriculation / Student Success changes: Unlikely to result
in direct state costs. The imposition of additional
requirements for students to receive BOG waivers may result
in General Fund savings if the total number of BOG fee
waivers issued is reduced.
Background: Existing law requires that the CCCs make available a
variety of "matriculation services" to students in order to
ensure that students receive educational services necessary to
optimize their opportunities for success. Matriculation services
are funded through a categorical program, and the requirement to
provide them is only operative if funds are specifically
appropriated for these purposes.
SB 1143 (Liu) Chapter 409/2010 created the CCC Student Success
Task Force (SSTF); 20 individuals (community college chief
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executive officers, faculty, students researchers, staff and
external stake holders) who spent a year researching, studying
and debating the best methods to improve student outcomes at the
CCCs. According to the SSTF report, which was unanimously
adopted by the BOG in January 2012, it was their goal to
identify best practices for promoting student success and to
develop statewide strategies to take these approaches to scale.
The SSTF produced 22 specific recommendations and the report,
per the requirements of the legislation, was presented to the
Legislature at a joint informational hearing of the Assembly
Higher Education Committee and the Senate Education Committee in
February 2012. The BOG will implement SSTF recommendations
through regulatory and statutory changes, as well as system-wide
administrative policies.
Proposed Law: This bill contains statutory changes necessary for
implementation of some of the SSTF recommendations. It recasts
and revises the Seymour-Campbell Matriculation Act of 1986 as
the Seymour-Campbell Student Success Act of 2012, and
establishes new requirements that CCCs must meet to receive
matriculation categorical funding. Included in those
requirements, are increased eligibility requirements for
students seeking BOG fee waivers.
Staff Comments: This bill implements some of the recommendations
of the SSTF, in an effort to better and more efficiently serve
CCC students. Its provisions alter the current matriculation
program to focus on specified goals and outcomes, and to update
terminology. The changes to the matriculation program would stay
within that categorical program budget, and the bill provides
that it is only operative if funds are specifically appropriated
for it. The SSTF focus on these student services, and the
service goals prescribed in the bill, are likely to increase
cost pressure to increase funding for these activities. If
successful, these activities may increase student success and
efficiency moving through the CCCs and reducing overcrowding in
the long term.
This bill would add requirements for students to be eligible for
BOG fee waivers, beyond simply self-certifying their household
income and filling out the form. While those additional
requirements are yet to be determined, they will include
identifying a certificate, transfer, or career advancement goal,
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and meeting academic progress and unit standards. Enacting
additional requirements will likely increase the existing
reimbursable mandate paid to the CCCs for BOG waiver-related
activities. For example, if CCCs have to verify that a student
meets the academic progress standards (whatever they end up
being) in order to renew a BOG fee waiver, that process would be
a new mandated duty on CCCs. The current mandate costs the state
$21 million; thus, even a 1% increase caused by these new duties
would result in $200,000 in new costs.
The revenue loss caused by BOG fee waivers is backfilled by the
General Fund. To the extent that the new requirements to receive
a BOG fee waiver result in fewer of them, there will be direct
General Fund savings.