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SACRAMENTO – California Community Colleges Chancellor Brice W. Harris praised Gov. Jerry Brown for including in his proposed 2013-14 budget additional funding for community colleges and for his leadership of an initiative to help more students achieve their academic and career goals through improved online education.
“Gov. Brown’s leadership in passing Proposition 30 means California community colleges can begin to make room for some of the hundreds of thousands of students who have been shut out of our system due to recent funding cuts,” Harris said. “This budget represents a good start toward financial recovery for our system. The governor and voters deserve credit for beginning this overdue reinvestment.”
The governor’s budget would provide $197 million more to the college system in 2013-14 and directs the California Community Colleges Board of Governors to determine the best way to allocate the money to districts.
The funding increase would allow colleges statewide to add back thousands of classes to serve some of the nearly 500,000 students turned away over the past four years during the state’s financial crisis and at the same time continue the system’s work to improve student success.
The additional funds, as well as $179 million to make good on funding commitments that were deferred during the recession, will leave colleges with less debt and better positioned to meet the needs of an economy that increasingly is demanding college-educated workers.
Harris said that the California community college system has already laid the groundwork for the governor’s desire to improve online education.
Twenty-seven percent of community college students take at least one course online each year, nearly 17 percent of all courses offered are through distance education, and almost half of all classes currently offered involve some online components.
The California Community College Online Initiative would improve students’ access to courses and increase rates of transfer and degree attainment in the following ways:
- Creation of a centralized “virtual campus” that brings together several existing distance education services into a single hosting system with a 24/7 support center for students. Leveraging the purchasing power of the 112-college system would save money and help students find and take the courses they need through a common on-line course management portal.
- Expanded options for students to obtain college credit by exam. Working with the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges, the Chancellor’s Office will create challenge exams for core courses for Associate Degree for Transfer majors as well as remedial courses. Students would have the option of acquiring the skills and knowledge necessary to pass these exams through Massive Open Online Course (MOOCS) and credits awarded would be transportable California State University and the University of California.
The governor’s budget proposal also recognizes the significant role California’s community colleges play in workforce development, with significantly expanded resources for clean energy job training.
The proposal also calls for shifting additional apprenticeship responsibilities to community colleges and shifting adult education responsibilities performed by K-12 to the community colleges.
Over decades, uneven approaches to adult education have developed, with K-12 educating some students and community colleges educating others.
Recent funding cuts have limited access to these classes, which help adults become economically self-sufficient.
“We view this budget proposal as a vote of confidence in our ability to provide workforce training and basic skills instruction to adult learners, and we look forward to conversations on ways to better serve these populations,” Harris said.
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LAKEPORT, Calif. – The Lake County Office of Education and the Lake County Literacy Task Force are excited to announce a new literacy program that will benefit babies born in Lake County.
Thanks to a partnership with Sutter Lakeside Hospital, the first 100 babies born at the Sutter Lakeside Hospital’s Family Birth Center will receive a scholarship for a one-year enrollment in Imagination Library.
Imagination Library was developed in 1995 by Dolly Parton to support literacy in her Tennessee hometown.
Since that time, the program has spread nationwide and was recently adopted as a primary initiative of the Lake County Literacy Task Force.
The goal of Imagination Library is to ensure that literacy begins at the earliest age possible with the child’s first teacher: the parent.
Children enrolled in the program between the ages of 0-4 will receive a book each month through the mail to read, enjoy and keep in their home.
Learning to read is a process that begins at birth. Research shows that students who are successful readers by the age of eight are more successful citizens in their communities.
Sutter Lakeside Hospital, the Lake County Office of Education and the Lake County Literacy Task Force are working to ensure that all children born in Lake County have a strong foundation in literacy.
“We’re honored that the Lake County Office of Education approached us with this opportunity. Sutter Health strongly believes in helping the communities that they serve and Imagination Library is a great way that we can positively affect the future of Lake County kids,” said Chief Administrative Officer, Siri Nelson.
You can support Lake County’s Imagination Library by sending a donation of $25 to the Lake County Office of Education c/o Literacy Task Force, 1152 S. Main Street, Lakeport, CA, Attention: Imagination Library.
If you have any questions, or if you need further information about this program, please contact Stephanie Wayment at Lake County Office of Education, 707-262-4163 or
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UKIAH, Calif. – Mendocino College third semester nursing student Corinne Chaulk is the proud mother of three kids ages 11, 12 and 14, who are so excited about their mother becoming a nurse that “the youngest even wears her stethoscope around the house.”
Scheduled to graduate in May 2013, Chaulk wants to work for Howard Hospital in Willits.
In fact, she will complete her preceptorship, a required training component of the nursing program at Howard Hospital in the spring.
Chaulk maintains a 3.6 grade point average at Mendocino College and recently expressed her gratitude to all of the generous donors who provide funding for student scholarships.
“I wouldn’t be where I am without the financial support from the college and foundation,” she said.
For more information about the Mendocino College Foundation or to donate towards the Nursing Shoe or State Board Exam Fee fundraising programs, call 707-467-1018 or visit http://foundation.mendocino.edu/site/ .
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Toddlers with more developed language skills are better able to manage frustration and less likely to express anger by the time they’re in preschool.
That’s the conclusion of a new longitudinal study from researchers at the Pennsylvania State University that appears in the journal Child Development.
“This is the first longitudinal evidence of early language abilities predicting later aspects of anger regulation,” according to Pamela M. Cole, liberal arts research professor of psychology and human development and family studies at Pennsylvania State University, who was the principal investigator of the study.
Angry outbursts like temper tantrums are common among toddlers, but by the time children enter school, they’re expected to have more self-control.
To help them acquire this skill, they’re taught to use language skills like “using your words.”
This study sought to determine whether developing language skills relates to developing anger control. Does developing language ability reduce anger between ages 2 and 4?
Researchers looked at 120 predominantly White children from families above poverty but below middle income from the time they were 18 months to 48 months.
Through home and lab visits, they measured children’s language and their ability to cope with tasks that might elicit frustration.
In one lab-based task, children were asked to wait eight minutes before opening a gift while their moms finished “work” (a series of questions about how the child usually coped with waiting).
Children’s anger and regulatory strategies were observed during the eight-minute wait. Among the strategies the children used were seeking support (”Mom, are you done yet?” or “I wonder what it is?”) and distracting themselves from the gift (making up a story or counting aloud).
Children who had better language skills as toddlers and whose language developed more quickly expressed less anger at age 4 than their peers whose toddler language skills weren’t as good.
Children whose language developed more quickly were more likely to calmly seek their mother’s support while waiting when they were 3, which in turn predicted less anger at 4.
Children whose language developed more quickly also were better able to occupy themselves when they were 4, which in turn helped them tolerate the wait.
“Better language skills may help children verbalize rather than use emotions to convey needs and use their imaginations to occupy themselves while enduring a frustrating wait,” according to Cole.