SOUNDING OFF:

As president of OCC student government, I was puzzled by Joseph Serna’s article (“Funds could be taken from four-year universities to lower community college fees,” Dec. 9) suggesting students at OCC are “wary” about Proposition 92 — the community college funding initiative.

My daily experience with the student body is overwhelmingly opposite.

The enrollment at OCC is more than 24,000, yet the article relied on three student voices — all speaking personally rather than as representatives.

Noticeably missing were three important facts, including that the Coast Community College District Board of Trustees — the body publicly elected to protect and serve the community and the colleges — voted unanimously to support Prop. 92, as did the elected district council (representing nearly 50,000 students) and the OCC student senate.

No question, with tight state budgets and huge social needs, considerate voters have to weigh tough questions before making their own determinations. But here are some of the facts that sway support toward Prop. 92.

Prop. 92 is about much more than a $5-per-unit fee reduction; though as the article points out fees do matter because in 2004, when community college tuition was raised $8 a unit, we lost more than 300,000 of our neediest students statewide. We support the poorest among us, of course, but at OCC and throughout the state the most important feature of Prop. 92 is stability in funding.

Under present law, community colleges are supposed to receive about 11% of the annual kindergarten through grade 14 state funding, yet get so substantially short-changed by legislative politics each year that during the past 10 years we’ve lost $4 billion from what was promised. Administrators cannot effectively hire faculty and schedule classes when the rug is pulled from them — and us — at the last minute, every year.

And let’s talk about the economics of community college education. Making community college more affordable, and the funding stable, is “no free lunch.” Community college students aren’t getting a hand out. According to the California Federation of Teachers and others, because our vocational, certificate and transfer students earn higher incomes, for every dollar spent on community college students the state recovers back $3 because we pay higher taxes on our increased incomes.

And finally, what about other educational needs in California? OCC students are not immune from concern for them, too. As for K-12, Prop. 92 takes nothing from them; it only protects and guarantees what the colleges have been promised — their fair share.

As to UC and Cal State concerns they may get less — that’s speculation, yet we at OCC leave it for you to determine while remembering this. Seventy percent of all California-supported college students attend community colleges (about $2.55 million, compared to 159,000 at UC and 332,000 at the Cal States), and higher education at the community colleges is the tax-payers best bang for the buck.

Each year, the state spends about $18,000 for each UC student, $12,000 for each CSU student and less than $5,500 for each community college student.

You, the taxpayers, get the first two years of OCC (and other community college) students’ education at 1/3 the cost of sending a California student to UC and half the cost of a CSU education.

At OCC we may not (yet) be rocket scientists, but we are taxpayers and we can do the math. Prop. 92 is one of the best investments we and our fellow Californians can make in a better future for all of us.

Thank you for your fair consideration of Prop. 92.

LYNNE RIDDLE is president of the student government at Orange Coast College.