California is boasting a historic budget surplus, in addition to a proposed spending plan of $286 billon.

Gov. Gavin Newsom plans to spend $119 billion in education funding, including money for the University of California and California State University systems.

In this week’s “In Focus SoCal,” host Tanya McRae sits down with Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis to discuss some of the reforms to higher education in California. At the center is streamlining the process for community college students to transfer to four-year institutions.

“Every dollar we invest in the state of California in public higher education, really is proven to yield great returns economically for our state. So more than anything, this is an investment, investment in our people and investment in our future,” said Kounalakis.

McRae visits Mt. San Antonio College, a community college in Walnut that has a high transfer rate of students to CSU and UC schools​​.

“We work with students from the moment they enroll at Mt. Sac to think about their goals,” said Dr. Audrey Yamagata-Noji, the school’s VP of student services. “And if it includes transfer, it’s helping them select the courses in which they should enroll, follow an established educational plan, so they make progress.”

Sen. Anthony Portantino also joins the conversation to talk about his proposal to tie supplemental K-12 funding to annual enrollment, instead of daily attendance.

“Let’s say you’re budgeting for one-thousand students, that’s how you set your budget. But if, all of a sudden, you have absences throughout the year, and the state then takes money away from you, the cost of running that classroom is the same whether there’s 18 kids in the classroom or 20 kids in the classroom,” said Portantino.

McRae also catches up with Zahra Nealy, who recently had all of her student loans forgive through the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program. McRae met her last October when the Department of Education announces a temporary change to the PSLF program, allowing some borrowers to receive credit for past periods of repayment that would otherwise not qualify for it.