Cal Grant cuts rejected by finance panel

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<p>"If Gov. Jerry Brown thought he could easily save a few hundred million dollars by withholding Cal Grants from 72,000 low-income, mainly black and brown students - and that lawmakers would bob their heads OK - he learned otherwise Wednesday.</p>

<p>Sending a signal that Brown needs to find a way to save $302 million besides barring poor kids from college, three Democrats and one Republican on the Assembly’s subcommittee on education finance rejected a range of Cal Grant proposals from the governor.</p>

<p>The cuts are part of Brown’s proposal to lawmakers, who must reduce the state’s 2012-13 budget by $9.2 billion. He isn’t planning to revise the recommendation despite the committee’s firm opposition, said H.D. Palmer, a finance department spokesman. The governor has argued that Cal Grants are fair game because the program has ballooned since 2004: The number of eligible students has soared 45 percent to a quarter million recipients, and costs are 133 percent higher, at $1.6 billion."</p>

<p>Read more: [Cal</a> Grant cuts rejected by finance panel](<a href=“http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/03/08/BABI1NHVNP.DTL#ixzz1odeiPCed]Cal”>http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/03/08/BABI1NHVNP.DTL#ixzz1odeiPCed)</p>

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<p>I’ve thought of another idea. What if they made the minimum GPA requirement for a Cal Grant a 2.3, and they scaled the Cal Grant by cumulative GPA? This would not penalize the good students, and give students with lower GPAs more incentive to try harder. The scaling would look somewhat like this:</p>

<p>Percent Tuition | GPA
100% | 3.7+
80% | 3.3-3.69
60% | 3.0-3.29
40% | 2.7-2.99
20% | 2.3-2.69</p>

<p>I think the University of the Pacific does something like this. Any thoughts?</p>

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<p>(To above post on gpa-aid ladder ) No no no. That is much too rational of an idea. It would never work in politics. :stuck_out_tongue: I agree with it- but would recommend a slightly less harsh curve. I’m in what is most probably the poorest high school in Monterey County, and also the lowest achieving. I’m pretty sure too that if you go down the Senior grade rank curve, need increases greatly as you go down (if you average it…) though yes a good majority of it can be put as general uncare, shortsightedness, and self stagnation. I would say it might be due to English learning issues…lack of sufficient teachers with the right skills to teach the demographic… but now I am heading to a total different argument. As for ALL of California, I would actually vote or support for a change like this, gives firsts to those who are more college ready… would add in way to redeem gpa by community college courses though. Many “failures” in high school I know ended up going to great schools after two years at CC.</p>