California is really the engine for the United States, and in some respects for the world. And the University of California is a big engine for the state. The demographics of California are changing … 45 percent of [UC] students are now first generation [immigrants]; 30 percent are from historically underrepresented groups; we have more people receiving financial aid at four of our campuses than the whole Ivy League combined.
In 2009, The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act increased Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits – commonly known as food stamps -- by 13.6 percent, as a way to bring relief to struggling Americans during the economic recession. But on November 1 of this year the increase expired, returning SNAP benefits to to pre-recession levels. The program cut will affect roughly 4 million Californians, many of them young people. We’Ced members discussed the importance of food assistance programs in their own lives, and how they foresee the change affecting their families.
Experts, community advocates, parents and students gathered at the Merced Senior Center on October 24th to discuss their preferences for how new funds are to be spent at local schools. The Fair School Funding Law, or Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF), determines that school districts with high percentages of low-income and English learning students can receive a share of an expected $18 billion increase in education spending in California over the next eight years.
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