Chancellor's Communication-November 14, 2000

TO:         All CSU Employees
 
FROM:     CSU Chancellor Charles B. Reed
 
DATE:     November 14, 2000
 
RE:         CSU Update
 
Greetings to all CSU faculty and staff members. I hope that you continue to find these e-mail updates informative and helpful, and I thank you for your ongoing feedback.
 
Last month, our Board of Trustees approved a 2001/2002 budget request for the CSU. We have requested a $380.9 million increase in our state appropriation, an 11.7 percent increase over the current year. This increase, along with the revenue projected from enrollment growth, would bring the total CSU base budget to nearly $3.65 billion.
 
The budget request focuses on four key priority areas: ensuring access for students; maintaining high educational quality, in part through recruiting and retaining the best faculty and staff; improving student academic preparation through K-12 collaborations; and helping to build California's economy by investing in key academic programs.
 
Of particular interest to faculty and staff is our request for a total compensation increase of six percent. Four percent of that increase would come from ongoing money as agreed to in our partnership with the governor; an additional two percent would come from funding above the partnership agreement. Our projections indicate that this increase would further reduce the CSU faculty salary gap. (Due to the wide variety of staff positions, we are unable to make similar institutional comparisons of staff salaries.)
 
The CSU budget request has now been forwarded to the state Department of Finance for inclusion in the state budget. In January, Governor Davis will submit his version of the state budget to the legislature. From March through June, the legislature will hold hearings and make its revisions to the budget. The governor typically approves a final version of the budget in July. For more budget information, and for the text of the 2001/2002 CSU budget request, please see http://www.calstate.edu/budget/.
 
I invite you to respond to this e-mail with your comments or questions about the new budget or any other systemwide issue. Due to the large volume of e-mails, I will not be able to respond to your messages individually. However, if you send in your questions by November 20, I will post responses to the most frequently asked questions at http://www.calstate.edu/Executive/ by December 4. I will send campus-specific questions to the appropriate campus president.
 
One brief "housekeeping" note: Our technology staff has asked me to remind you that these e-mails are distributed through the all-employee list for each campus. Though we are unable to remove the names of current employees, we are continuing to remove outdated addresses and add correct addresses for new employees. We appreciate your patience as we continue to update these lists.
 
Thank you again for all you do to make the California State University an outstanding institution.

last updated 14 November 2000