Cuts in state support have led administrators at Las Positas College to resort to a more-direct appeal for public dollars. The two-year institution in Livermore, Calif., announced on Thursday that it was soliciting private benefactors in the community to sponsor class sections at $5,500 each. A new effort, dubbed Foundation 55, is designed to raise the number of sections lost to budget cuts over the past four years. The two-institution Chabot-Las Positas Community College District has seen its allotment from Sacramento drop from $118-million in 2008-9 to $90-million in 2012-13. Las Positas was forced to lower the number of sections open to students from 894 in the fall of 2008 to 793 in the fall of 2011, and it lost 13 more sections to additional cuts this past spring. As a result, about 8,500 students at Las Positas, like students across the California Community College system, increasingly face long wait lists for core classes they may need to graduate or transfer. Foundation 55 won't make up for all the lost capacity overnight, but it will help replace the courses lost this spring, said the president of Las Positas, Kevin G. Walthers, "and we'll be able to build on that."
http://chronicle.com/article/California-College-Counters/133753/
