Outreach programs to local high schools may be on the chopping block when UCLA’s Student Initiated Access Center meets this summer to decide how to reduce its nearly $80,000 deficit.
The center, a community service organization that funds outreach projects such as Xinachtli, will be facing an unknown deficit next year because of unexpected costs that cropped up this year, including university-mandated pay raises and transportation upgrades, D’Artagnan Scorza, access coordinator for the Afrikan Student Union, said.
The center may opt to cut some school sites from its high school outreach programs to help remedy the situation.
Scorza said the center is funded by the university and the state, as well as by grants from the community and student fees that come out of referenda. The Community And Retention Empowerment, or CARE, referendum, and the Promoting Understanding and Learning Through Service, or PULSE, referendum, passed in 1999 and 2005 respectively, provide funding for service organizations such as the Student Initiated Access Center and the Student Retention Center.
But Scorza said the funding was not enough to help cover unexpected costs, which he said were out of the center’s control.
Angelo Sandoval, vice chair of the center’s steering committee, said the center wants the university to match funding from the PULSE referendum. Several years ago, the university made an agreement with the center to match money from the CARE referendum, and it continues to match those funds today.
“After PULSE passed, (matching funds) became our top priority,” Sandoval said.
Sandoval said representatives of the center met on Wednesday with Bob Naples, assistant vice chancellor for student and campus life, and Janina Montero, vice chancellor for student affairs, to discuss the possibility of the university helping the center get out of its deficit.
Sandoval and other center representatives said they were also concerned the university used funding to create a program called Bruin Ambassadors, an outreach program where UCLA students visit high schools in the L.A. area. Sandoval said the university could have given the funding to the center, which he believes fulfills the same purpose as the ambassador program.
But Naples said the university is not taking money away from the center to sponsor the ambassador program. He added that UCLA will continue to fund the center and plans to explore other avenues to help the center get out of deficit.
Naples said that since the state was unable to pay its usual allotment for the center, the university stepped in and paid the $80,000 difference, in addition to the $105,000 UCLA gives annually to match money from the CARE referendum.
The university employs a full-time adviser who works exclusively with the center, and the chancellor endowed the center with $63,000 to relieve the costs of the mandated staff reclassification, Naples said.
He added that the university has asked the center to differentiate costs it needs covered from costs it simply wants covered so that UCLA can best satisfy the center’s needs.
Naples said that since the university is continually redoing its budget, it is difficult to know what role UCLA will have in helping the center climb out of its deficit.
CORRECTION: The story should have said that the Student Initiated Access Center will face a deficit of an unknown amount next year.