President's Update: November 16, 2022

To the Shasta College Community:

I trust your semester continues to progress well. I am hopeful that most of us will enjoy some time to catch up and relax next week over Thanksgiving break. I can hardly believe we are already at this point in the semester!

Success Story
The story I want to share this time is a message I received a few weeks back from California Competes (it follows my signature line below). I encourage you to look this over, as it explains how Shasta College is partnering with our good work in the ACE program to help spread some best practices on supporting adults coming back to college.  Well done ACE team!  This is a tangible evidence our vision being realized (our vision is that we are a nationally recognized model community college engaging our communities through innovation in student learning and growth).

Now for some business updates…
I had a good meeting earlier today with state level representatives from the College Corp program.  They mentioned how well our team has done implementing this program – good job team!  As I understand it, we have 93 students placed in various roles with partners in our communities in this first year of the program. We are funded for this year and for a second cohort next year, and the program gives significant resources to students who serve hundreds of hours in our community. For more information about the program, see  https://www.shastacollege.edu/cost-financial-aid/college-corps/ 

Enrollment & Budget: Enrollment continues to be a struggle for us.  We are ahead of last fall, but still remain around 20%+ down from pre-pandemic levels.  For a little more detailed information on how this relates to our budget, I am reproducing my report to the board from last week’s board meeting: 

Our enrollment remains significantly lower than the 2019-20 levels. With the various ways we have been held harmless in enrollment since the pandemic started, we are currently being funded at 7,072 total FTES under the Student Centered Funding Formula (SCFF). Since we applied for the Emergency Conditions Allowance for the current year, we continue to be funded at this level of FTES in the SCFF.  I expect this to be the final year that we have this protection available. 

As of the latest enrollment report, at this point in time, the Fall 2022 FTES is up about 2.7% compared to the final numbers from Fall 2021. If this trend continues in the spring, I expect us to reach around 4,700 FTES total for Fall 2022 and spring 2023. When you add in expected summer enrollment of approximately 435 FTES, I believe we will be around 5,133 FTES for this year, or around 27% below our current funding level of 7,072 FTES.  There are some technical ways in which we can count some summer FTES in either year that could mitigate a portion of this percentage (perhaps by up to 3-5% of the 27%). Again, we applied for and received the Emergency Conditions Allowance for this year, so we remain protected, but these numbers are what we think we will have to build upon for next year.

The way the funding formula works with much of our FTES being based on a three-year average, our key years to bring enrollment up are in 2023-24 and 2024-25.  The current law contains a provision that our new funding floor will be what we are funded in 2024-25, so once we get to that year, we can have more certainty in our funding floor. One more note - when a COLA is funded by the State in its budget development process, it is funding the rates in the SCFF formula. So with a drop in FTES over time, some of the drop can be covered by funded COLAs.  It could mean we receive higher per-FTES funding levels, but overall no increase (or even a loss year-over-year) to our total SCFF funding level. Funded COLAs are now funded to the formula for the system, and do not necessarily mean additional total funding to individual colleges. 

In short, we need to continue to focus on rebuilding enrollment to maximize our performance under the SCFF, yet plan to have potential lower funding levels by 2024-25. I hope this information is helpful. We are, for certain, in years where we simply cannot draw upon past experience to predict with any level of confidence where we will be in our funding levels. The Governor's January initial budget proposal for 2023-24 will be the next significant information we receive as to where the State proposes community college funding levels to be.

Overall, the general signs in the economy remain mixed, with State revenues missing monthly projections each of the last four months, yet unemployment remains low.  I believe the next few years will have challenges not seen since the last recession, but time will tell.  The next major information we will receive on how the next year’s budget may look will be when the Governor releases the initial 2023-24 State budget proposal in January.

Ok, that is all for this update.  Again, I wish you all some rest and rejuvenation over the next week.  Thanks for continuing to serve our students.

Joe Wyse
Superintendent/President
Shasta-Tehama-Trinity Joint Community College District
11555 Old Oregon Trail
Redding, CA 96049-6006
530-242-7510

From: California Competes  

Subject: [External] [Press Release] California Competes Announces New Collaborative Focused on Supporting California Adults Back to and Through College

External Email: Do not click any links or open attachments if you do not trust the sender and know the content is safe

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 

CONTACT: Carolyn Ho, cho@californiacompetes.org

October 13, 2022   

California Competes Announces New Collaborative Focused on Supporting California Adults Back to and Through College 

Four organizations join efforts to conduct research, identify evidence-based practices, and advance reforms that re-engage adult learners back into college and onto completion. 

California Competes: Higher Education for a Strong Economy, a research nonprofit focused on advancing equitable higher education and workforce policies, joins forces with ProjectAttain!, California State University, Sacramento, and the Shasta-Tehama-Trinity Joint Community College District (Shasta College) to form the statewide collaborative, CaliforniaAttain!. This partnership focuses on increasing educational attainment and economic mobility of California adults who have some college but no credential (SCNC). 

With support from the Kresge Foundation, CaliforniaAttain! will identify barriers to re-enrollment and college completion, pilot and evaluate institutional changes needed to remove those barriers, and advance policy reforms that optimize implementation of promising practices evaluated through the pilots. Efforts will center community voices, as the research design and evaluations will include SCNC students as co-designers and co-researchers.      

“To mitigate postsecondary enrollment declines and narrow the credential gap, we have to make systemic shifts in higher education to better serve the four million adults in this state who started their postsecondary programs but did not complete a degree,” says California Competes Executive Director Dr. Su Jin Jez. “Through the infrastructure of CaliforniaAttain!, we can leverage the diversity of strengths and expertise of the partner organizations, center student experiences, and expand on the great work that is happening on a local level.” 

CaliforniaAttain! draws from the guiding organizations’ leadership and innovation in adult engagement. California State University, Sacramento is a top performer on social mobility for economically disadvantaged students and adult re-engagement efforts within the largest university system in the US; ProjectAttain! has established a strong foothold as a regional collective action initiative focused on supporting Sacramento area residents needing nominal credits to complete their postsecondary credential; and Shasta College, a rural community college, is nationally recognized for its innovative work focused on serving adult learners, with initiatives such as the Accelerated College Education (ACE) that includes program modifications to degree program structures, case management, and expanded onramps to improve outcomes for adults balancing work and family obligations.

CaliforniaAttain! kicked off its efforts this past summer. The goal is to create a blueprint for increasing SCNC student success that has been thoroughly tested and evaluated, one that will be ready to scale up across California’s institutions and the nation. 

“We are excited to support this innovative work that combines high-quality, on-the-ground best practice, lived experience expertise, and research to determine how to best support adults re-enrolling and gaining credentials towards degree attainment. We know when there is a degree in the household, families have a stronger chance for increased wages and better economic sustainability,” says Kresge Education Program Officer Ashley Johnson-Varner, PhD.

About California Competes: Higher Education for a Strong Economy

California Competes: Higher Education for a Strong Economy is a nonpartisan policy and research organization focused on identifying solutions to California’s most critical higher education and workforce issues. Through its rigorous research, California Competes advises decision makers on implementing policies that bolster equity so every Californian can engage, contribute, and succeed. For additional information, please visit www.californiacompetes.org, and follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.

About The Kresge Foundation

The Kresge Education Program works to close race-based equity gaps for low-income and underrepresented students in the United States and South Africa.