Santa Rosa Junior College announced Friday plans to restore up to 500 classes eliminated by persistent budget cuts, enabling students to earn academic degrees and technical education certificates more quickly.

Patrick Maloney, a junior at Sonoma State University, woke up Wednesday morning to a pleasant surprise.
California voters had approved Proposition 30, the statewide tax measure backed by Gov. Jerry Brown to raise about $6 billion a year for education.
For thousands of state university students, it meant money in the bank: specifically a $249 refund of a tuition fee increase they paid this fall.
For Maloney, a 20-year-old political science major from Sacramento, it also was a payoff for a successful campaign to register more than 1,000 SSU students to vote in Tuesday’s election.

Santa Rosa Junior College trustees decided Tuesday against putting a parcel tax before voters in November after board members expressed unease with the pace of the discussion. The seven-member board voted unanimously to study the issue further but set aside a proposal to pay for a consultant and a voter poll that would have opened the way to placing the issue on the presidential race ballot in the fall.

The Santa Rosa Junior College board of trustees on Monday will consider taking a key step toward putting a parcel tax before Sonoma County’s voters to offset steep cuts from Sacramento. The seven member board called the special meeting to decide whether to hire a consultant and conduct a poll, said Board President Terry Lindley. He estimated the cost of a consultant could range from $25,000 to $40,000.

During a four-day period last month, 845 Santa Rosa Junior College students signed a petition requesting that the Sonoma County Superior Court review the Doyle Trust. We want to ensure it is being properly administered to protect our interests as SRJC students. We are, after all, the main beneficiaries of the trust.

Eight years after last leaving office, and 50 miles north of his home base, Willie Brown’s star still shines bright. More than 450 people packed Santa Rosa Junior College’s Bertolini Center on Wednesday to hear the former mayor of San Francisco and longest-serving Assembly speaker in state history speak as part of SRJC’s celebration of Black History Month.

Santa Rosa Junior College’s population is shrinking, and so is its patience for students who repeatedly take the same class. The school again is reducing its offerings next year, planning to eliminate 370 sections in a budget-cutting move that could reduce the student body and make it harder to enroll in the most popular subjects.

Frank Chong started work Wednesday at Santa Rosa Junior College, succeeding Robert Agrella to become the fifth president in the college’s 94-year history. For Chong, the occasion marked a return to campus life after two years as deputy assistant secretary for community colleges in the Obama administration.

Agencies across Sonoma County were scrambling Tuesday to determine the impact of the $1 billion in statewide cuts Gov. Jerry Brown announced as part of his latest bid to balance the state’s budget. The range of public services affected includes programs for the ailing and developmentally disabled, fees charged to the county for housing violent juvenile offenders and support for higher education.

Occupy Santa Rosa, which began with marches downtown and developed into a tent encampment outside City Hall, came to a quiet end. But SRJC students will attempt to re-launch the Occupy movement with a march Saturday on Exchange Bank.