California Community Colleges Chancellor Eloy Oakley hosted a Zoom conference on March 23 to discuss the state and future of community colleges across the state.
Oakley said how important it is that the system starts preparing for the upcoming summer and fall semesters now.
“We want to get the word out to your fellow classmates to enroll now for summer and fall classes so that they have the best chance to secure their classes and reach their educational goals,” Oakley said.
Oakley noted the system has seen a significant decline in enrollment among students for future semesters, particularly due to “the economic fallout from the pandemic.”
Congress passed the American Recovery Act which allocated about $2.3 billion to help students and colleges dealing with the fallout from the pandemic.
Half the funds will be used for emergency student grants, while the other half will be put forth to better service students during the remaining pandemic.
There will also be some much-needed assistance for the students and colleges at the state legislature level, with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s budget packet being approved late February. This provides $100 million to the local community colleges for emergency student financial assistance and grants. Another $20 million was also awarded to the chancellor’s office to students who may have left college due to the pandemic struggles, or to new students out of high school.
Oakley also discussed Assembly Bill 1456 during the hour-long call with student media representatives. Assembly Bill 1456 aims to modernize Cal Grant-systems.
This will provide “a greater chance of eligibility for future students,” Oakley said.
Before diving into the future plans to reopen colleges, Oakley made it clear there would be no toleration for any anti-Asian Amercian behavior or violence within the 116-campus California Community College system.
“There is no connection between our brothers and sisters at the AAPI community and the causes of COVID-19, or a connection to China. We all need to come together and make sure we are doing everything we can to protect the Asian American community on our campus,” Oakley said.
As for the potential of schools across the state opening the campus up for classes in the fall, the top priority remains the health and safety of the faculty and students.
“As we begin to think about reopening, we’re going to do it in a way that maintains CDC guidelines,” said Oakley.
Social distancing and mask protocols will be enforced on campus.
Hands-on lab courses will be the first classes to start meeting in person, followed by hybrid approaches to other lecture classes to keep class size down and to continue to maintain physical distancing guidelines.
“Each college in different regions is working with local county or city health officials for opening guidelines, all colleges across the state will not look the same,” he said.
Oakley said to expect to see talks start ramping up for a possible return to our campuses, followed by a return of inter-collegiate sports to our communities.
As of right now colleges aren’t going to require faculty and students to be vaccinated when they come back to campus, but Oakley would like to see everyone get vaccinated.
“We have volunteered all campuses to be vaccination sites for our students, it will all depend on local county health officials,“ he said.