The Advisory Board is made up of a group of students, specialists, and faculty members that act as the liaison between the chancellor and the DSP. They also work to ensure that the 504 legislation is implemented correctly at Cal.

A large portion of the 1980-81 report was allocated to the issue of funding. The DSP was historically awarded money per student by the DR (which is part of the Dep. Of Education); $465 for every student, regardless of their needs. The problem was that the DSP could not allocate unused funds from one student to another. The report states that Cal would prefer an “actual cost-system”; this means that Cal and the DSP would prefer that a different amount of funds be allocated to programs, with the consideration that some programs require more funding than others. CAL entered a hearing with DR, but they were unable to adequately prove their point. Therefore, the per-capita funding system was used in the following year as well.

Another major funding issue DSP was faced with had to do with the fact that DR had announced that it would not pay for auxiliary services from July 1981. DR’s decision to defund the DSP was due to the fact that they chose to read section 504 of the Rehab act in a certain way that cited the ‘educational institution’ as responsible for providing such services.

This defunding that DSP has faced since the 80s has prevented it from providing “equal access to education” for all students.