College students displaced by Hurricane Katrina will be able to
attend a California Community College for the price of a resident if
the Assembly and the governor approve a bill written by Assemblywoman
Carol Liu.
The bill, which passed with a vote of 39-0 in the Senate
Wednesday, will waive nonresident tuition for this school year for
students from Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama whose colleges
closed because of hurricane damage.
It will also allow students to apply for a waiver of in-state
fees, to allow low-income students from the effected states to attend
college tuition free.
Thousands of students who were enrolled in higher education
institutions in those states were displaced by of Hurricane Katrina.
In New Orleans alone, eight public institutions and five private
institutions, which had 75,000 students enrolled, will not be able to
open this fall. The bill would ease enrollment in local colleges and
universities that would normally charge high out-of-state tuition and
fees.
"This bill will complement and strengthen local community efforts
to relocate students, provide them with food and housing and help
them with other college costs by removing the burden of expensive
out-of-state tuition," Liu said in a statement. "It will take months
and maybe years for many of these schools to rebuild. Allowing
affected students to attend California Community Colleges will help
them get on with their lives."
Scott's foster care bill goes to governor
A bill to make foster care more appealing for families trying to
work with the system is making its way to the governor's desk, after
it was approved in the state Legislature late Wednesday.
The bill, written by State Sen. Jack Scott, will simplify
regulations for hiring baby-sitters to allow foster parents to use
their best judgment in who may baby-sit foster children for short
periods of time. The legislation is aimed at helping normalize the
lives of foster families, while at the same time maintaining
safeguards for the more than 90,000 children in the foster care
system.
"There are big problems in recruiting and keeping foster parents,"
Scott said in a statement. "Because of bureaucratic red tape, friends
and family members -- even police officers -- are not allowed to
baby-sit foster kids unless they've undergone a criminal background
check and health check. Having a short-term baby-sitter without
requiring him or her to jump through a lot of bureaucratic red tape
will improve the lives of caregivers and their foster children."
