Oregon state legislators need to be urged now, by students and parents and all friends of higher education, to protect and enhance funds for the Oregon Opportunity Grant program.

As they convene for their short February session in Salem, our legislators have an opportunity to repair some of the significant shortfalls in Oregon's principal student aid program -- the Oregon Opportunity Grant (OOG).

In 2007 the Legislature devised a new "shared responsibility model" formula for distributing OOG funds to low- and middle-income Oregon college students.

To fully fund the new program in its first year, 2008-09, would have required about $100 million.  The legislature was only able to appropriate $68 million that year and as a consequence the new formula had to be altered to reduce grant size and an award cut-off date of November 30 was imposed.

38,500 students received the reduced grants, while 8,400 eligible students applied after the money ran out and were denied help.

In 2009 the legislature revisited the budget for the OOG program and in the midst of the growing national recession and severe strain on the State's two-year budget, further reduced the OOG budget to $56 million for the 2009-10 school year and to $41 million for the 2010-11 school year.

Even with advancing the cut-off date for 2009-10 money to August 15, the $56 million budget was over-spent. As a result, spring term grants have been reduced by $120 for full-time awards and by $60 for part-time awards and $5 million has been raided from the 2010-11 OOG budget.

With applications running 60 percent ahead of last year, cut-off dates for awards now being made for the 2010-11 school year will be much earlier this year -- perhaps as early as mid-spring. Thousands of eligible low- and middle-income students will be turned away from these necessary student aid funds.

As demand for higher education swells during the recession, tens of thousands of eligible Oregonian college students are receiving OOG awards far less than were envisioned when the program was designed and enacted in 2007 and thousands of additional Oregonian college students are receiving no OOG awards at all after the money runs out.

Oregon's state student aid program is funded at less than half the level of the average state; less than a third as well as Washington state.

Please tell your Oregon state legislators why student aid grants matter to you and ask them to do what they can to restore this vital program. You may do so by going to our convenient e-mail tool.