Tanya Schevitz, Chronicle Staff Writer

Tuesday, March 16, 2004

Sacramento -- At 48, Joseph Macedo brought a different kind of education with him as he mounted the steps of the state Capitol and addressed thousands of community college students and supporters who swarmed into Sacramento on Monday to demand an increase in state funding.

Macedo is an ex-con who in his younger days did seven years in prison for armed robbery, followed by years of drug abuse and homelessness. He told the cheering crowd that enrolling at San Jose City College four years ago has been his salvation.

"I thought the knowledge I got in the streets would get me somewhere but it never gave me anything but misery and pain,'' he said. "Education changed my life."

The budget proposed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, he said, will make it nearly impossible for people like him to get a second chance through education.

"We need to speak to the politicians and tell them they represent us or we will vote them out," said Macedo, who is president of his campus' student government.

He was one of the more than 8,000 people who converged on Sacramento in bus caravans to take part in a student-sponsored protest of the governor's proposal to raise student fees by 44 percent while only offering a small increase in the state's financial contribution to community colleges.

They marched from Raley Field in West Sacramento across the Tower Bridge and down to the end of the Capitol Mall, where they held a noisy but peaceful rally.

As they marched, the students chanted and waved signs saying everything from "Hey Arnold, don't terminate our education" to "Thanks Arnold 4 ensuring a stupid future."

The students also brought floats with dozens of creatively painted statues representing students who have already been pushed out of colleges this year by fee increases and course cuts.

H.D. Palmer, the governor's Department of Finance spokesman, said Schwarzenegger was not in town but said he values community colleges.

"At a time when the state is facing probably the worst budget crisis anyone can remember, where very dramatic cuts in state services were called for, this is one area the governor actually wants to grow," Palmer said.

Among those taking part in the protest was Dmitri Lucas, a 31-year-old single father who is juggling a full-time academic load at Solano Community College in Vacaville while working 20 hours a week and caring for his 7-year- old daughter.

The fee increases will put more stress on him, he said. "Without the community college, I'd be in a low wage job forever and I don't know if we could make it. The future would look very dim."

About the same number of students marched on the Capitol last year, making Mother Jones magazine's Top 10 list of the most significant student activism efforts around the world in 2003.

The community colleges fared better than expected in Schwarzenegger's January budge proposal, receiving a 3 percent increase for enrollment growth and a small per student increase in funding.

But community college advocates said the governor's budget would require the state's community colleges to turn away 39,600 students -- in part to make room for students who will be redirected from the University of California and California State University because of budget cuts in those systems.

In his January proposal, Schwarzenegger told CSU and UC officials to send 10 percent of their incoming freshmen -- about 4,200 students at CSU and 3, 200 at UC -- to community colleges.

The state's 109 community colleges, which serve the equivalent of 1.1 million full-time students, are already without funding for the equivalent of 15,000 students, said Scott Lay, budget director for the Community College League of California. The 3 percent funding increase for enrollment barely covers the students already expected in the system, he said.

"This rally is also about the decisions that will be made in the coming months about the $4 billion that (still) needs to be cut" from the state's budget, Lay said. He was referring to cuts necessary to make up for a $4 billion loss in revenue when Schwarzenegger reversed last year's auto license fee increase. "We are very concerned about where the $4 billion is going to come from."

In addition, community college students, faculty and administrators at the march said that past budget cuts have not been restored, leaving programs and services thin. And they are concerned with the proposed fee increase to $26 a unit, up from $18 this year and $11 in 2002. Under the governor's proposal, fees would rise from $540 to $780 a year for full time students.

That means that Napa Community College student Elbrick Pasayes, 21, who already works about 30 hours at a restaurant, may have to take on a second job on top of his 20 units at school.

"School is very important," said Pasayes, who is the first in his family to go to college. "I have to work very hard to afford the fees now. It is going to be harder."