California Dems Scoff At Newsom Proposal To Give $20m To Sf Private Arts School

SACRAMENTO, California — Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposal to provide $20 million in funding for a small private arts college in San Francisco backed by a tech CEO ran into fierce pushback from Democratic state lawmakers on Tuesday.

All four Democrats on an education finance budget subcommittee voted against the governor’s request to fund the California College of the Arts, which has just 1,280 students and two weeks ago received $45 million in donations, half of which came from Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. In the same January budget proposal, Newsom — a former San Francisco mayor — called for 8 percent in cuts and over $200 million in deferrals for the public University of California and California State University systems.

“From an optics perspective, when we're talking about cutting 8 percent of funding for the University of California and the California State University — for us to be singling out one private college for $20 million in taxpayer support is not a good look,” said Assembly Education Chair Al Muratsuchi, a Democrat who is running for state superintendent next year.

But at least one key Democrat backed Newsom’s proposal. Scott Wiener, a state senator from San Francisco who chairs the Senate Budget Committee, told POLITICO he “fully” supports the funding for the private school along with public universities — citing President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s “efforts to take a wrecking ball to federal education and science funding.”

The committee’s recommendation goes to the full Assembly budget committee, which will negotiate priorities before state lawmakers pass a budget in June. Newsom will release a revised budget proposal in May.

Amanpreet Singh, a representative for Newsom’s Department of Finance, said at a hearing before Tuesday’s vote that the proposal was “unique.” She added the “administration has determined that supporting the California College of the Arts is a compelling interest to the state, specifically in Northern California, and believes that the benefit of supporting the institution and ensuring its financial stability would be a greater benefit than allowing the institution to essentially not survive.”

Singh said that the programs offered by the school are “distinct” from what UC and CSU provide. Newsom’s office referred to Singh’s statements at the hearing. Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas declined to comment.

The California College of the Arts, founded in 1907, offers 22 undergraduate and 10 graduate programs in subjects such as ceramics, photography, comics and game arts, with tuition at $60,000. Enrollment has declined by 42 percent in the last five years, leading to a deficit that the governor’s proposal would backfill.

David Howse, the school’s president, told lawmakers the funding would be used to hire staff and repair infrastructure. He called the college a “private institution with a clear public impact.”

“I know you are aware of the immense challenges facing higher ed: declining enrollment, rising cost and economic uncertainty, destabilizing once stable institutions — essentially putting higher ed institutions across the state at-risk,” Howse said. “These challenges do not spare our public partners, nor do they exempt private institutions like CCA.”

Assemblymember David Alvarez, the committee chair, said in an interview after the vote that the recommendation “signals the priorities of the Assembly, which is to public education.” The San Diego Democrat pointed to the school’s operating deficit of $4.2 million as much smaller than a $20 million structural deficit that school officials said included costs for deferred maintenance.

“I think we're reflective of Californians' expectations,” Alvarez said.

The California College of the Arts is not the only San Francisco arts school to face budget challenges. Last year, a nonprofit led by Laurene Powell Jobs bought the San Francisco Art Institute, which had declared bankruptcy after being saddled with $20 million in debt.

Private colleges in California rarely receive state funding.

Most recently, the state provided $50 million to Charles R. Drew University of Medicine in Los Angeles in 2021 for a new medical school, and $5 million to the California Indian Nations College in Palm Desert 2022 to pursue accreditation. Committee staff wrote in a report that “both of these appropriations were for specific purposes that have an obvious statewide interest” before recommending that state lawmakers reject the proposal.