BIG BEAR – Big Bear was the spring break getaway site for a group of Cal State San Bernardino students, but rather than being “party central,” it was to help residents of the mountain communities.

About 25 students on Alternative Spring Break helped clean up the grounds, restock a food pantry and prepare food for a Thursday night dinner at the United Methodist Church in Big Bear, said Bryant Fairly, service learning coordinator for the CSUSB Community-University Partnerships.

The volunteer work supports the local community by helping the church expand its food storage capacity to assist the poor, Fairley said. This past Friday, the students planted trees in areas of the Holcomb Valley that was burned in the 2007 fires, Fairley said.

The program is sponsored by the university’s Associated Students Inc., Outdoor Recreational Sports, Student Leadership and Development, the Community-University Partnerships and the United States Department of Agriculture Hispanic Serving Institutions National Program.

The Community-University Partnerships is a campus-wide initiative to build and advance partnerships in San Bernardino and Riverside counties. The CUP provides facilitation and support of community partnership development, faculty fellowships to support service learning courses, and faculty mini-grants to support community-based participatory research.

For more information about CUP programs or for information on how to create community-university partnerships, contact Diane Podolske at dpodolsk@csusb.edu or Bryant Fairley at bfairley@csusb.edu.

Inland region’s lagging recovery highlights ‘tale of two economies’

By Chris Levister

William F. Baskerville knows that losing the opportunity to cultivate the “minds of California’s brightest students from every background” is like losing “a precious national resource.” That’s why despite the Inland Empire’s posted unemployment rate of 12.6 percent in March the education consultant is not giving up on finding a job.

“I refuse be relegated to the government’s ‘uncounted’ roles,” he said referring to the millions of unemployed Americans who have simply dropped out of the labor market. Some have retired, gone back to college or simply given up on finding work. Unemployed since March 2010, Baskerville spends hours each day at the computer in his Norco home in what seems like an endless search.

Baskerville has more than 20 years experience working with educators, universities, and businesses to ensure that young people have access to higher education and are prepared for tomorrow’s world. A substantial resume landed him temporary part-time jobs at an Orange County Internet marketing company and with the California Department of Education. In 2011 both positions were eliminated due to budget cuts.

"I scoured dozens of education sites," he says. "I checked Career Builders, Monster, Hot Jobs and Craig's List. I’m an e-mail junkie, Facebook fanatic and Twitter nuisance. It's my full time job, looking for a job."

That's been Baskerville’s daily routine since he, his wife and their three kids moved from the Orange County coastal enclave of Aliso Viejo in late 2010 to escape the soaring cost of living and what many economic experts call the ‘tale of two economies.” California employers are hiring again, swelling payrolls in March as the state’s start-and-stop recovery appears to have gotten back on track.

Orange County and communities all along the state’s coastline have largely bounced back from the recession, some even prospering with high-tech and export businesses growing and tourism coming back.

At the same time, communities from just an hour’s drive inland and stretching all the way to the Nevada and Arizona borders struggle with stubbornly high unemployment, a persistent housing crisis and a near standstill construction market.

Inland Empire analysts say despite encouraging signs of rising home prices in San Bernardino and Riverside counties, most see an economy straggling behind its coastal neighbors. In fact, in January, Forbes magazine named Riverside the hardest city in the country in which to find a job.

“This is really a tale of two economies,” said Stephen Levy, the director of the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy. “The coastal areas are either booming or at least doing well, and the areas that were devastated still have a long way to go. The places that existed just for housing are not going to come back anytime soon.” Baskerville and others driven out of coastal cities because of rising costs say they aren’t giving up on crafting their future in the Inland Empire.

"I see a diamond in the rough. Jobs in education transportation and, construction are coming back if but slowly. The housing stock is aging. People who can’t afford to live and work in places like Orange County are rethinking their options,” he said recalling the sobering job hunting experience that recently changed his job status.

"My former employer told me about a job opportunity at a large company that recruits college graduates to teach in low-income schools. He made me swear not to tell anyone else or take anyone. That lead me to believe the tip was an exclusive,” he said. Baskerville says when he arrived at the offices in Riverside he encountered around 20 to 30 people. After being told to line up in queue, the numbers quickly grew from 30 to 50, 50 to 100 and finally 100 to 200.

“My heart sank. The line stretched around the building. The time in the line took an hour and finally we went upstairs to the main quarters, where we had to answer around 10 questions on paper and if passed go through to a role playing exercise. I got there at 10:00 a.m. and came home at 9:30p.m., feeling blessed and elated that after all the searching and waiting (not the endless wait in the queue but the 2 year wait) I was finally a BMW – ‘Black Man Working’. Baskerville says he’s thankful to find work, but when he glances at his own bottom line, the reality is grim. His salary is one-third that of his previous job. “I’m working longer hours for less pay.” Still Baskerville insists there’s a lesson buried in the murky, frustrating world of job hunting.

“Please keep trying. Never give up,” he says. “There are jobs in the Inland Empire,” he said. “Speaking of the depression and the prospect of turning the U.S. economy around, Franklin D Roosevelt said in his first inaugural speech "The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself!" I guess those words ring as true today as they did then,” said Baskerville.

By Chris Levister

Proposition 209, the 1996 voter initiative that banned consideration of race in the University of California admissions decisions doesn't violate the Constitution, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled Monday. The ruling is the latest to uphold the ban in a long list of legal challenges seeking to overturn the controversial measure. The ruling upholds a previous decision by the same court in 1997.

The suit alleged that banning racial consideration in admissions to public higher education institutions resulted in the unfair exclusion of minority students and thus violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. "Proposition 209 has created a racial caste system in which the state's most prestigious schools train mostly white students and students from some Asian backgrounds," said the suit, brought by the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action and other rights groups.

The suit also criticized the university system for relying too heavily on high school grades and test scores in admissions, saying that discriminates against students from schools without strong honors programs. The suit argued that the court should reconsider the ruling in light of more recent decisions elsewhere in the nation that reinstated affirmative action in college admissions.

The group cited a 2003 U.S. Supreme Court ruling allowing universities to consider applicants' race as a factor in promoting campus diversity and a 50 percent drop in admissions of Latinos, African Americans and American Indians at UC in the first year after Prop. 209 passed.

The group also argued the legislation created unfair barriers by outlawing preferences for minorities and women, while allowing other groups - military veterans, athletes and children of alumni - to seek preferential admissions. But in a terse 3-0 ruling, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said similar arguments had been addressed and rejected in 1997, when another panel of the court upheld Prop. 209.

The 2003 Supreme Court decision allowed race-based affirmative action in some circumstances, but "it did not hold that such programs are constitutionally required," Judge Barry Silverman said in the appeals court's decision. He noted that the high court has granted review of a Texas case that could lead to a nationwide ban on preferential treatment of minorities.

In Fisher v. University of Texas Abigail Fisher, a white student who was rejected from the University of Texas in 2008 has argued that the university denied her admission because of her race, according to her complaint filed in a lower court. The 209 measure was defended in court by its sponsors, an organization led by former UC Regent Ward Connerly. Their lawyer, Ralph Kasarda of the Pacific Legal Foundation, said Monday's ruling was "good news for everyone who values fairness and equal opportunity." The plaintiffs' organization said it would ask the full appeals court for a rehearing. Connerly, who is African American, led the anti-affirmative action campaign, he says to "purge the nation of its legacy that Blacks are not as smart as other people and require lower standards to be included."

He defended the measure again on its 10-year anniversary saying, "You have to understand that 209 was a departure from a well entrenched race-based method of dealing with our society. By that measurement, the jury is going to be out for a long time." Minority enrollment has risen somewhat since the adoption of UC policies that admit the top 4 percent from each California high school, and to give less weight to applicants' scores on standardized tests.

Still sixteen years after the passage of 209, the dissension has not eased. Proposition 209 has led to a "cascading effect," and increasingly segregated system of higher education in California where less competitive UC eligible students have access to the less selective UC campuses, argues Frances Contreras an Associate Professor at the University of Washington in the College of Education in Leadership and Policy Studies.

"Admission rates for UC Berkeley from 1994-2009 compared to UC Riverside illustrate the

"cascading" that has occurred across the UC system with historically underrepresented students more likely to gain admission to less selective institutions like UC Riverside than flagship institutions like UC Berkeley,” said Contreras. Contreras says that in a time when California's kindergarten through twelfth grade (K-12) population and high school graduating classes have become increasingly multicultural, the UC system continues to fall short of ensuring that their student bodies represent the state population.

According to recent California Department of Education data, in fall 2011, over 51.4 percent of the K-12 population is Latino, yet Chicano/Latino students constituted approximately 16.6 percent of the entire UC system.

"This confirms what many had initially feared when Proposition 209 passed," said Contreras,

The UC looks for tools other than affirmative action to increase diversity, said Steve Montiel, a spokesman for the UC Office of the President. In September 2007, the Board of Regents adopted the University of California Diversity Statement, which broadly redefined diversity to include socioeconomic class, sexual orientation, religious affiliation and abilities or disabilities, among other factors. The statement also acknowledged the need for inclusion of populations that are traditionally underrepresented.

The university also implemented programs designed to reflect the diversity of California, such as the Blue and Gold Opportunity Plan, Montiel said. Although the 1960 California Master Plan for Higher Education and its subsequent revisions stipulate that the top 12.5 percent are eligible for admission to a UC campus, the policy does not stipulate automatic admission to any UC campus. The plan attempts to give access to low-income students and covers all tuition and fees for in-state students whose family earns less than $80,000 a year, Montiel said.

By Chris Levister

California Governor Jerry Brown will push for universal health care in the Golden State, even if the U.S. Supreme Court declares Obamacare to be unconstitutional.

If the Supreme Court strikes down the individual insurance mandate in the Affordable Care Act, (ACA) the California government wants to make ‘Jerrycare’ a requirement statewide. One day after the Supreme Court wrapped up arguments on constitutionality questions, California Health and Human Services Agency Secretary Diana Dooley weighed in telling a Sacramento radio station, "I believe that the law will be upheld. But I'm also working very hard to assure that we have as much benefit for California as possible, even if we don't have the full promise of the Act." She said, "I think that we should be committed to making this system more rational than it is today, and improving the health of the people of California," adding, "If we ask the insurance plans to take everybody and insure everybody with no screens for pre-existing conditions, then we have to have everybody buying some level of health insurance to meet their responsibility to the system." The Supreme Court case centers on whether the federal government can require residents to purchase insurance and whether federal lawmakers have the power to pressure states to expand insurance coverage through Medicaid.

California was the first state in America with legislation to create a public health insurance market to accommodate the federal Affordable Care Act. Health care and state leaders discussed the changes still to come and believe the state can get there, putting California at the forefront. "Millions of Californians who have been uninsured will be able to have the security of knowing when they get ill or injured, they will have somewhere to go and they will not go to bankruptcy as a result of it," Dooley said.

The Kaiser Family Foundation has estimated that California could receive an additional $45 billion to $55 billion in federal funds between 2014 and 2019 if the health reform law is upheld. As called for under the health reform law, California is using federal funding to build a health insurance exchange.

Dooley said, "My agenda is to use as much of that funding as possible, as quickly as possible, to be sure California has a marketplace even if we don't have the full promise of the ACA" "We're all on pins and needles on the Supreme Court stuff," said Robert Ross, CEO of the California Endowment. "We still have 7 million uninsured in the state, and we still have out-of-control health care costs."

Dooley said that without financial support from the federal government, "it will be very hard for us to move forward to expand health coverage." She said the state would have to balance its budget "and get California on a strong footing to do any of this work." Assembly member Tim Donnelly, R-Twin Peaks, who introduced a bill to nullify the federal healthcare reform, says state leaders should wait until the court rules on the Constitutionality. "They're a little Pinto driving in front of the snow plow; they're on dangerous road, and they have no business being there," Donnelly said.

Dooley said, "The Supreme Court will define how California will move forward and how quickly California will move forward" with health reform. She added, "If we have to do it without our federal partners, we will find a way to do it. But it will be a much better transition to better health if we can do it with the benefits of the Affordable Care Act"

While most of the federal changes don't begin until 2014, California has been at the forefront, doing as much as it can now and gearing up for full implementation, despite the legal challenge. According to estimates a Supreme Court decision striking down President Obama's entire health care law would have a major impact on African Americans. An estimated seven million of the 30 million who would eventually get health insurance under the law are black.

While much attention has been focused on the law's requirement that people purchase insurance, its expansions of Medicaid (the insurance program for low-income Americans), is perhaps just as important, according to the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a Washington think-tank. This provision is critical because about half of working-age blacks don't get health insurance through jobs. Under the law, because of expansions of federal funding for Medicaid, an estimated 16 million low-income Americans, many of them black, would get coverage. (Under the new law, Medicaid would cover most families whose income is below $29,000 per year.)

Gutting the law would also affect another provision that disproportionately helps African-Americans. The Affordable Care Act, requires insurance companies to cover and offer reasonable prices to people who don't get insurance through their employers, even if they have chronic illnesses. The court is expected to make a decision by the end of June.