$600,000 budget windfall for Sonoma State University

<p>Sonoma State University will get a $600,000 boost in federal stimulus funds, money that will help restore classes the were dropped as a result of state budget cuts, officials said Friday.</p><p>The money will be used to offer additional classes and sections to students who need credits to graduate, SSU spokeswoman Susan Kashack said.</p><p>“It comes in time for us to make use of it for our spring classes, which start at the end of January,” she said.</p><p>“It’s exciting, it’ll be less stressful,” said Judi Arce, a senior and criminology major who said she’s been worried she won’t graduate this spring if she can’t get into classes she needs to get required credits.</p><p>Kashack said it’s not clear how many new classes or sections the money will bring back at the university, which has raised fees, slashed classes, increased class sizes and instituted faculty, staff and administration furlough days in reaction to $5.1 million in campus budget cuts.</p><p>Regardless, Kashack said, the money will go a long way to restoring — if only temporarily — the menu of educational offerings available to students affected by the reductions.</p><p>“There’s not enough classes available,” Arce said. “If you walk around campus during reg(istration) period, you can just see people are frustrated, angry, stressed out.”</p><p>The money SSU will get, from the $787 billion federal stimulus package passed in February, comes from $25 million to be divided among the 23 California State University campuses. That money is part of a total of $717.5 million received by the state for education, said Clara Potes-Fellow, California State University spokeswoman.</p><p>She said that the CSU system got $77.5 million more than it expected, which made possible the extra disbursement of $25 million announced Friday.</p><p>The remainder of the unexpected windfall — $52.5 million — will be held in “short term reserve” by the university system, Potes-Fellow said, “because we are in a period of major uncertainty in the CSU budget.”</p><p>The money is not ongoing, so it can’t be used for “creating new programs that have to be maintained.”</p><p>Accounting major Patricia Himes, 20, a junior, welcomed the news, saying her goal of graduating in four years has been imperiled by the class cuts.</p><p>“It really depends on whether I can complete my classes — and you have to get into the classes in the first place,” she said.</p><p>This semester, she said, she wasn’t able to take more than 15 credits, even though she wanted to.</p><p>“I didn’t get in because the classes are so full,” she said. “The first week of classes you’re lucky to get a seat because the classes are so full.”</p><p>Not graduating on time would have a range of practical consequences, she said, from school costs to employment.</p><p>The firms she wants to work for, for example, do most of their hiring at certain times of the year, Himes said.</p><p>“If I don’t time it right and don’t graduate on time, I wont be able to get the job I want,” she said.</p><p>You can reach Staff Writer Jeremy Hay at 521-5212 or jeremy.hay@pressdemocrat.com.</p>