The California State University Board of Trustees met Sept. 24 and 25 to adopt proposals on the budget for the 2013-2014 fiscal year.

A current obstacle standing in the the way of recovery for the CSU budget is California’s need for funds in other areas.

Gov. Jerry Brown said in order to address prison overcrowding funds will have to be allocated to avoid violating constitutional standards for prison conditions.

All CSU campuses have been down approximately $1 billion in combined funds between 2007 and 2012. But the 2012-2013 state budget increased CSU funding by $125 million, coming from the passage of Proposition 30.

The sales tax increase became a gateway for budget increments and investments in several unaddressed issues, especially bottleneck courses.

Allocation of funds will be provided to bottleneck courses with high entry rates but low success rates. The idea is to create more of these general education courses to take in a larger flow of students.

“Until we build an infrastructure for concurrent enrollment, we will have difficulty enrolling large numbers of students,” said CSU Trustee Ephraim Smith.

As of now, 33 fully-online courses are available in 11 of the 23 campuses including Sacramento State. Students requiring a course that is bottlenecked on one campus, have another option with the online system.

“If students cannot find a class on one campus, they can enroll (online) in another (CSU), maximizing class sizes,” Smith said.

One of the intended objectives discussed was the creation of an E-Academy, accompanied with E-Advising. Beginning next fall, the online programs would show students which classes they need, ensuring they do not enroll in classes that are not required.

CSU Chancellor Timothy White said he strongly supports the concept of trying something new if it means being more efficient with educational resources.

“If we don’t stub our toes and don’t make mistakes, then we’re not pushing the envelope of innovation strongly enough,” White said at the meeting.

Informational graphs provided at the meeting showed how some online classes were faring against real-time classes. For college algebra, 72 percent of students received a C or higher online while 64 percent received a C or higher in real-time classes.

Computer programming reflected the results online with 70 percent receiving a C or better, while real-time class participants on average received 67 percent.

These pieces of the Student Success Initiative are planned to bring down costs and provide students with classes they need.

An estimated 30,000 students in fall 2014 are expected to be rejected from the CSU campuses because of lack of space and funding, White said.

Despite the high amount of rejections, the CSU intends to enroll 20,000 more students than usual to receive additional funds from tuition fees, even if they are flat fees. It plans to use the money to add more courses and hire more faculty.

Smith said the backlog of maintenance issues and repairs for buildings need to be managed before addressing enrollment growth.