3 Colleges Get Breakdown on 43 Teaching Posts to Be Cut

The three San Fernando Valley branches of the Los Angeles Community College District received the word Friday as to which departments will have to lay off faculty members and how many.

Valley College in Van Nuys will have to trim 21 faculty positions, Pierce College in Woodland Hills 15 and Mission College in San Fernando 7.

Earlier this week, the Community College District trustees voted to lay off 142 full-time instructors to save about $5 million and help offset an estimated deficit in the 1986-87 budget of $2 million to $6 million.

When trustees voted 6 to 1 for the first dismissal of tenured teachers in the district’s history, there was only speculation on who would be affected. But the mail on Friday brought the official breakdown of how many teaching positions each college must cut.

The departments receiving cuts were chosen on the basis of student enrollment in courses, according to district spokesman Norman Schneider.

No Instructors Named

“We don’t have names of the instructors who will receive layoff notices,” a spokesman for Pierce College said. “It’s just a guessing game right now, with everyone trying to figure out who was the last one to be hired.”

Pierce’s physical education department will be hardest hit by the dismissals, with nine positions being eliminated.

Pierce’s agriculture department, the only one of its kind in the community college district, will lose one of 11 instructors. Pierce will also lose one industrial arts instructor, one welding teacher, two physical therapy instructors and one history teacher.

Liberal arts departments will be the hardest hit at Valley College when layoff notices are passed out before the March 15 deadline. The school will lose one German instructor, one psychology teacher, one sociology teacher, two anthropology teachers, four history teachers and three political science instructors.

Nursing Program Cuts

Valley College’s nursing program will lose three instructors. And the physical education department will lose six.

Mission College, the smallest school in the nine-campus system, fared best in the cutbacks. The school, which until it obtains a permanent home will continue to operate from storefronts and high school campuses, will lose five physical education teachers and two history instructors.

Although liberal arts, physical education and occupational courses account for most of the faculty layoffs, the college trustees voted to spend an extra $4.6 million next year to add courses in high-demand subjects such as English, mathematics, business and computer sciences.