The San Matean

Issue date: 3/3/08 Section: News

Media Credit: Christopher Cahi

With the college president approving the Lottery distribution funding, CSM is now eligible to spend $40,000 on classroom-needed material.

College Council approved the process for the allocation of the Lottery money at their meeting on Feb. 20. Following the College Council's approval, Vice President of Instruction Susan Estes presented the allotment figures to CSM President Mike Claire, who approved the distribution of the funds for spending to the different receiving divisions later that same week.

Business and Technology Division along with the Creative Arts and Social Science Division will receive $4,000 each; Language Arts $3,000; the Library $11,800; Math and Science $11,500; and Physical Education and Athletics $5,700.

Jeremy Ball, academic senate president, said that about 42 percent of the combined enrollment at all three district colleges is at CSM. Thus, CSM got about 42 percent of the Lottery funding money. Though there are strict requirements on how the money can be spent, "we'll try to make the best choice for students possible," said ball.

Lottery funds are different from other statewide funds. Lottery funds are required to be spent on instructional material. "Instructional materials are things that are available to students in the classroom. Things such as books, dvd's, films…things that can be used in classrooms of instruction," said Estes. Such materials also include lab material.

The colleges every year receive a Lottery allotment. The state money goes to the district and then is allotted to the three colleges. "This $40,000 is not this years allotment," said Estes. "This is the carryover funding that we had from last year. This went through the shared governance process. It begins with each instructional department drawing up a list of instructional materials. In this case, (materials) that they need and are requesting, and then that goes through the division. And the division dean brings all of those requests to the instructional administrators. The instructional administrators are the deans and plus the director of the library."

Though CSM has yet to receive it's second round of allotment funding, Estes is anticipating that it's more than $40,000. "I would hope maybe around $100,000 at least to come from the next allotment," said Estes.

The funding requests for instructional material that came in was totaled to $111,700. Coastside Division volunteered to postpone $10,000 until the second round of this years funding, which is anticipated soon, said Estes. "The other divisions and the library reduced their initial requests to meet the 40,000 target. We agreed that we recognized the great need to augment the Library's allotment significantly during the second round of allotment. So when we receive this years funds we have already said that we know a significant portion of that needs to go the library," she said.

Along with funding postponement, some of the money will also be reshuffled. Last fall, PE and Athletics was allocated a substantial amount in equipment money. "Out of that amount, $5,700 could not be spent because it didn't meet the definition of what instructional equipment actually is," said Estes. "So they're going to take that $5,700 and send $3,200 of it to the library.

"$2,500 is going to be transferred to the math science division for some equipment that they need to purchase. And then a new $5,700 will be allocated to the PE/ Athletics division in order to buy their instructional material. We're spending all of the money, we're reorganize a little bit of it as we go along," said Estes.

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