It was a disappointing legislative session for Florida A&M University. The school lost out on its top building priorities, but lawmakers did give it a few million more in operational funds.
FAMU President Larry Robinson says the school is disappointed it didn’t get funding for the second phase of a planned Student Success Center. The building is under construction and will be the new home for offices such as like financial aid, counseling and tutoring services. Lawmakers also didn’t fund much-needed upgrades to the school’s chiller plant, which provides heating and air services to the university.
“It’s hard to read this morning’s headline stories…how frail the yieldings were for the university here on the south end of the community, contrasted to the yielding of public dollars for the university at the North side of the railroad tracks," Proctor said while speaking at an event at the FAMU Credit Union promoting loans for minority businesses.
While neither school got everything it wanted, FSU was able to walk away with $32 million in building funds. FAMU got nothing.
But the university did get an additional $6 million in operational funds, in addition to its base budget allocation. Robinson said in a statement the school would "use them to support key initiatives contained in our strategic plan, 'FAMU Rising,' most notably performance-based funding metrics."
Universities that make the most improvements on those metrics stand to receive additional dollars, but state Representative Ramon Alexander has criticized the system—saying it’s unfair to measure schools like New College and FAMU against others like Florida State and the University of Florida, which have gotten hundreds of millions in recent years to get to the top 10 percent of schools nationally.
