Some folks may know that the legislature is supposed to vote on the California State Budget by June 15th or today. Actually, they finished up yesterday a day ahead of time. That's kind of nice because this kind of performance was not always the norm. It seemed that not that many years ago, the Legislature was chronically late in moving on the final budget and that caused lots of problems for state funded programs. But no more, and let's give appropriate thanks to the Governor and the Legislature for making that process work!
Speaking of work, how are the folks in the education sector going to spend all the money that they got in one time and ongoing boosts to their budgets? You might like to know that this was a major "feature" of the budget and as Delaine Eastin was heard saying in her campaign for governor, "Budgets represent values" and so, I think the new California $200 billion budget does that with an infusion of money into education.
Lots goes to K-12 which seems right given our state's huge number of children, the fact that it has been lagging other states (notably New York) in primary school funding, and the economic disparities in California communities have gotten quite large. Education is still a key to economic development and even health status….. with communities at the upper end of economic status are ALSO the communities with the healthiest residents. This is not a coincidence (or or even "just correlation" for the statistically inclined). Money buys health.
Anyway, it looks like both CSU and UC got some big money. (See this article in the Sac Bee from today: http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article213218474.html)
The question of the day is: How are they going to use it?
And the second question of the day is: Will they appreciate this additional funding or are all we gonna hear is the same old refrain "The University is underfunded"?
Cheers!
John
Davisite 
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