Curbing Enrollment Decline & Investing in California’s Community College Students

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted California students’ and families’ lives — affecting learning, upending social and emotional support systems, and creating a caregiving crisis. Students have also missed out on expanded learning opportunities, such as before and after school, summer, and intersession programs. Expanded learning programs offer academic enrichment for over 900,000 students throughout the year. These programs serve mostly students of color and low-income students as well as English language learners and students experiencing homelessness.¹ Many parents rely on these programs for safe and supportive learning environments for their children while they work.

While demand for quality expanded learning programs and the needs of the expanded learning workforce were rising even before the pandemic, state funding stalled. California’s expanded learning system is funded with state and federal dollars.² The After School Education and Safety (ASES) program provides state funds through grants that go directly to local educational agencies with priority for sites with higher percentages of students eligible for free and reduced-price meals.³ For a decade, starting in fiscal year 2006-07, annual state funding for ASES remained at $550 million. Policymakers increased funding to nearly $650 million in recent years, which allowed for an increase in the daily per student allocation, but that falls short of the level necessary to cover costs — largely due to the increasing minimum wage. Programs that receive ASES grants have struggled to keep their doors open with a per student daily rate that has increased by just 18% since 2006-07, from $7.50 to $8.88. During that same period, the minimum wage has increased by 93%, a much-needed and long-overdue increase that helps ensure that the expanded learning workforce is supported, but that significantly increases ASES program costs at the same time.

Growing demand for ASES grants exceeds available funds, and state and federal pandemic response funds for expanded learning are one-time dollars — leaving the workforce, students, and parents uncertain about their ability to return to school and work. Given the state’s strong fiscal condition, state lawmakers should provide a cost-of-living adjustment to support the expanded learning workforce and make long-term and sustainable investments in ASES funding that can support students’ academic and social-emotional development as well as families’ caregiving needs.

As California students of all ages cannot fully return to classrooms due to the COVID-19 pandemic, learning from home and the technology needed exposes the state’s digital divide. Distance learning requires computers, tablets, or other devices as well as a reliable, high-speed internet connection, but inequitable access to this technology creates a persistent digital divide that disproportionately affects low-income, Black, and Latinx students. This digital divide was affecting students’ academic achievement before the pandemic, and distance learning has likely exacerbated these existing disparities.

Prior to the pandemic more than 1 in 5 students in California — roughly 1.4 million — did not have access to either a computer or high-speed internet. Black and Latinx students were more likely to lack access, nearly 3 in 10 — more than double the share of white (13%) and Asian and Pacific Islander (12%) students. Of the students affected by the digital divide, 57% spoke a language other than English at home and 56% were eligible for free and reduced-price meals ­— indicators that point to even greater need for educational assistance.

State and local leaders have made efforts to help students connect with their teachers and engage in distance learning. The 2020-21 enacted budget provided $5.3 billion in state and federal dollars to local education agencies (LEAs) for learning and student supports, including computers and hotspots. Currently, it is unclear how much LEAs allocated specifically for computers and internet connectivity and whether those funds were distributed equitably.

The number of students with computing devices has improved with fall 2020 estimates showing a 12 percentage point increase for households with school-age children as compared to the spring.¹ But the disparities in access to a reliable internet connection for most student groups, including Latinx and low-income households, remain mostly unchanged.² A Legislative Analyst’s Office analysis highlights the same inequities in broadband adoption rates between low-income households (53%) and higher income households (86%) even before the pandemic.³

The need for greater investment to address the inequities in distance learning is clear. California policymakers must consider options to invest in distance learning and carefully target resources for students most affected by the pandemic. This includes more data collection to better identify gaps in access and to ensure Black, Latinx, English language learners, and low-income students have the resources they need to learn. A device and high-speed internet access are necessary to engage in distance learning, and without both, the digital divide and academic opportunity gap will only grow wider for California students of all ages.

Endnotes can be found in the publication PDF here.