Following the implementation of AB 2881, some student parents took advantage of priority registration for their final semester at California State University.

AB 2881, passed in September 2022, states student parents in the three California public postsecondary education systems must have priority registration by July 1, 2023, giving student parents the priority to start enrollment for the spring 2023 semester. This spring semester, student parents were now able to register into classes as soon as Oct. 23, while the rest of the CSU students had to wait until the earliest date of Oct. 25.  

Students are considered ‘student parents’ if they have a child or children in their care that is younger than 18 years of age.  

“This is the first time that I was able to use that for spring semester coming up and so I logged in the time that they gave me, and I was able to get into the three classes that I needed left,” said Roxanne Routh, fourth-year communications major at CSUB and mother of five children. “I was a little concerned thinking you know these are the last 3 I need am I going to have difficulty getting in them and so it was a relief that I was able to get into them.”  

Routh said she had a full-time job that required her to only be able to get certain classes due to time; if she couldn’t get into a class that would work with her schedule, she had to call time off from her job to be in the class. 

Larry Gonzales, a fourth-year communication and sociology major at CSUB and father of nine children, said that his biggest challenge as a student parent is time.  

“Time with them, time away from them. I’m here most of the time before they wake up, and I go home whenever there already in bed, so times the biggest challenge,” Gonzales said. 

As a parent with early registration, Gonzales said he feels relieved now that he has priority when choosing classes. He had been stressed about not being able to get his final courses needed to graduate.  Gonzales said that he has previously been waitlisted for some classes he needed, and this bill being approved helped alleviate that problem.  

“Balancing being a mom being a full-time employee, and a student at the same time is pretty challenging when trying to find balance between all of them,” Frankie Jenkins, second-year communications major and mother to three children, said. 

As a sophomore, Jenkins said she was not taking advantage of the priority registration, seeing as most of her classes are lower division, meaning there was more options and openings for the classes she needed, opposed to upper division classes that fill up fast and have limited times. Jenkins said if she did take advantage of the registration, it would be a great advantage.