The roughly 200 students already in the program — one of only 20 in the country accredited by the Professional Golfers Association — will be allowed to finish out their degrees. But incoming students were told in late April that the program would no longer exist when they arrived on campus. Given the specialized nature of the degree they were seeking, most of those students will likely have to transfer elsewhere. “Kids came to ASU for the PGM program,” says Curt Hudek, the golf program’s former director. “They didn’t come to ASU and then decide to do PGM.”
Bus stop blues
Attempts to save money on school busing will mean that more students will have to do more walking to get to school this year. In Elgin, Illinois, busing isn’t going away — state law requires the district to provide the service for all students who live more than 1.5 miles from school. But high schoolers now will have to get themselves to the nearest elementary or middle school to catch the bus. According to the school district’s spokesman, Tony Sanders, the new policy will reduce the number of stops buses have to make from about 1,800 to 300. He says this will save $750,000 this year on gas, maintenance and other costs. By next year, Sanders says, the district anticipates reducing its staff of drivers, mostly through attrition.
Some 17 drivers have already been eliminated in Colorado’s Falcon School District, which includes parts of Colorado Springs. But the loss of familiar faces isn’t the biggest change on board the bus. This year, students are being charged $1 for each ride, with their trips tracked by a swipe card they use to get on the bus.
District spokeswoman Stephanie Meredith says the new fee is intended to shield students from feeling the brunt of budget cuts in the classroom. Over the past few years, the central office staff has been cut in half and the district has outsourced the majority of its information technology work. This year, the district’s $92 million budget was reduced by more than 10 percent, the third straight year of cuts. Meredith says she tries to explain this context to parents who have complained about the transportation changes. “If we had to cut teachers or this service, it was a no-brainer,” she says. “When you explain that to parents, they understand it.”
Tallying up tuition
For years, cutbacks in state funding for higher ed have been driving up tuition at public universities. But this year will be exceptional. As Stateline has reported, students at Pennsylvania’s 14 state-owned universities are in for a 7.5 percent tuition hike this fall. Students in Louisiana, Tennessee and Nevada are in for double-digit increases; in Washington State, tuition will go up by 20 percent.
In California, where big tuition hikes have been the norm for a few years, students can thank their non-resident classmates for staving off even larger increases. State support for the University of Californian system is now $1 billion less than it was four years ago. Part of that gap is being filled by out-of-state and international students — who pay nearly $23,000 more than their in-state peers.
In the past two years, the number of out-of-state and international undergraduate students committing to UC schools has doubled. The increase has been particularly dramatic at the system’s flagship Berkeley campus, where non-resident students will account for nearly 30 percent of the incoming freshman class, according to preliminary figures. That’s three times the percentage of non-California residents who entered in 2009. While flagship schools in states such as Michigan and Virginia have regularly admitted many non-resident students, the change at Berkeley represents a major shift for California. That shift has occurred without dramatic increases to the overall size of Berkeley’s freshman classes, so the number of incoming in-state students has declined by more than 1,000 in the past two years. “If the funding were there,” says UC spokesman Ricardo Vazquez, “we would take more California residents.”
Woolly thinking
In Carlisle, Pennsylvania, students at two local schools will be greeted this fall by something unusual on the grounds: sheep. Rather than spend money on cutting grass, the Carlisle School District has brought in 7 Romney sheep to tend the fields. “They’ve done a good job so far,” says Superintendent John Friend.
The sheep come free of charge, since they belong to the principal of the middle school. Friend estimates that they will save the district about $15,000 this year in mowing costs. That makes up for only a small amount of the district’s $2 million reduction in state support following what has been described as Pennsylvania’s deepest education budget cuts in a generation.
The 6.2-acre field in which Carlisle’s sheep do their work is unusual for another reason: It is home to solar panels that churn out one megawatt of energy. Bringing in solar panels last year required an investment of $5 million — half of which was paid for with state and federal grants. Friend thinks that investment will soon pay for itself between savings on energy costs and solar renewable energy credits earned from use of the panels that can be resold to utility companies.
Response to both moves has been mostly positive so far among parents. Friend thinks they send a message to the community that the district cares about sustainability and is doing everything possible to reduce its costs. But the superintendent admits that there was some confusion when the sheep first appeared. “There were some people who called the principals,” Friend says. “They thought that someone was playing a prank.”
— Contact Ben Wieder at bwieder@pewtrusts.org
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