L.A. COMMUNITY COLLEGE DILEMMA : A Budget Plan That Just Might Kill Athletics

Ray May spent 10 years as a linebacker in the National Football League, living in a world of high-intensity levels. But when he had left Los Angeles High in 1963, he was only a socket wrench away from a life concerned only with octane levels.

He wanted to be an auto mechanic, and enrolled at a trade school. But just a month or so later, a few former football and baseball teammates at L.A. High enrolled at L.A. City College. They began singing the praises of the school’s sports program. May heard the music.

It led, in a route that may soon be closing, to a USC scholarship and an eight-year career in professional football.

“They were very persuasive, and so I enrolled at City College, too, because I wanted to keep playing football,” said May, 40. “As soon as I got there and got the feel of the place, found out about books and learning, the fire started. It burned inside me. I was turned on. I loved it.”

If the Los Angeles Community College District’s Board of Trustees has its way, few athletes will find their way to colleges and the pros through L.A. City, or any other school in the district after this semester. In February, the board decided largely to eliminate its intercollegiate athletics program. Six weeks from now, the massive layoffs and spending cuts are scheduled to take effect.

Critics of the plan say that dozens of Ray Mays will be stuck at the station.

The layoffs and spending cuts would only affect the district’s nine colleges--East Los Angeles, L.A. City, Southwest, Trade Tech, West Los Angeles, Harbor, Pierce, Valley and Mission.

Coincidentally, the plan follows the introduction earlier this year of much stiffer NCAA guidelines for freshman admission requirements at Division I schools. Students across the country who are being denied the chance to play sports on that level will be turning to Division II and III schools, and community colleges, to raise their grade-point averages. The proposal in the L.A. district could effectively kill the hopes of many of these borderline students.

Dr. Monroe Richman, district board president, said the plan to cut staff and athletic spending is the result of “an overdue change in educational direction” and was not mandated by a lack of money. To combat an enrollment decline of about 50,000 students since 1981, he said, the district must use its money in areas likely to attract more students.

District budget director Lawrence Serot said that money saved from layoffs of coaches, physical education teachers and instructors in 29 other disciplines, from nursing to auto mechanics, will be used to attract more students to growing academic areas, such as English as a second language, computer sciences, business and mathematics.

“We are going to start putting our money in higher-demand areas for students, but we can’t guarantee what will occur as a result,” Serot said.

The result of athletics in the past has been profit. A financial study conducted in 1985 by the district staff shows that athletics earned a $1.5-million profit for the district in the 1984-85 school year. According to the study, most of that surplus was generated by the estimated 2,000 students who attended the district’s schools mainly because of athletics.

The financing of athletic programs in the district is based on enrollment in physical education courses. Serot said that the effects of layoffs on athletic programs was unintentional.

“Athletics got caught up in the physical education issue,” Serot said. “It wasn’t an intended target. PE classes were.”

According to the district study, gate receipts of the sporting events held at the district’s nine colleges were insignificant. But a related study by the district’s faculty union conducted in 1985 indicated that each athlete attracts an average of three to four students--usually friends--through their enrollment at a particular school.

District administrators question both studies.

“The reports assume that if those athletes weren’t in the classroom, their spot wouldn’t be taken by another student,” Pierce President David Wolf said.

Pointing to sagging enrollment, Larry Rosenzweig, an attorney representing the faculty union, disputed Wolf’s argument.

“I wasn’t aware that the classrooms in this district were overcrowded,” Rosenzweig said.

Critics of the layoffs, such as faculty representatives and part-time coaches, also point to a 1985 district study indicating that while only 4% of the general community college student body goes on to four-year colleges or universities, 40% of community college athletes move on to four-year schools.

Despite the study showing sports as a moneymaker and the figures on transfers to four-year colleges, the district’s Board of Trustees voted, 6-1, on May 7 to issue final layoff notices to 13 physical education instructors. Layoff notices also went out to 35 full-time instructors in 29 other departments. The layoffs, determined by seniority, take effect June 30 unless district administrators and teachers can negotiate an agreement.

The proposed layoffs would eliminate coaching positions in 41 of the district’s 76 athletic programs. Five physical education instructors scheduled for layoffs coached teams this year. Thirteen others who originally received layoff notices have been reassigned to other disciplines and might not return to coaching next season. Under the state education code, the district’s 23 part-time coaches must be fired before any full-time faculty member is laid off.

“We are dealing a mortal blow to our interscholastic sports program,” wrote Harold Garvin, the lone member of the district board to vote against the layoffs, in an op-ed piece that appeared in The Times. “We have made an enormous, terrible mistake, and should reconsider the whole decision.”

Valley College football Coach Chuck Ferrero said the layoffs would dramatically disrupt the lives of the district’s athletes.

“For a lot of kids in a lot of programs, their whole athletic future has been turned upside-down,” Ferrero said. “Can you see the chaos for an 18- or 19-year-old kid? He plays his freshman season and then all of a sudden, the carpet is being pulled out from under him.

“It is no pipe dream to make it out of a JC. Community colleges in Southern California are so heavily recruited that every starter in our program the last five years has been signed. Not all to Division I schools, but they have been placed and their education has been paid for.”

Many have gone on to make enough money to buy their own college. Some athletes who used L.A. community colleges as a springboard to professional sports are Doug DeCinces of the Angels, Enos Cabell of the Dodgers, Rollie Fingers, Joe Morgan, Dock Ellis and ex-Dodgers Dusty Baker and Lee Lacy.

Los Angeles community colleges also produced University of Louisville basketball Coach Denny Crum, whose team won the NCAA championship this year.

L.A. City College, the oldest school in the district, was founded in 1929. Athletics there go back as far.

“To visualize the city of Los Angeles without community college athletics is staggering,” said Courtney Borio, athletic director at Trade Tech.

Neighboring community college districts, such as Santa Clarita Valley and Coast in Orange County, would benefit from Los Angeles’ losses, Borio said.

Because athletes must maintain a C average, or a 2.0 GPA, to retain their eligibility, many others used the motivation provided by athletics to conquer academics. The roll of former JC athletes who are now attorneys, doctors and successful businessmen is long. Many attribute their success to the opportunity provided by sports at community colleges.

“Community college athletics are extremely viable programs, but we might be the only football program in the entire San Fernando Valley,” Ferrero said, noting that Pierce will not name a successor to former football Coach Jim Fenwick, who resigned in February, until the financing situation is resolved. “There are more than 60 high schools in that area, and that’s not right.”

Other sports face similar dilemmas.

Coaching positions in six of eight men’s basketball programs would be lost. In women’s sports, all four coaching jobs in basketball would be eliminated. Women’s volleyball would lose all four of its coaches.

Deidra Stark, women’s athletic director at Valley, would have to reconstruct her five-sport program. Three coaches have been reassigned to another subject area and the other two will lose their jobs as part-time coaches.

Physical education classes are popular at community colleges. They average 27 students per class; the district average for all classes is 26 students. Health education classes, which make up about 30% of physical education courses, average about 31 students.

And the courses appear to make money. District vice-chancellor Kenneth Washington headed a committee that produced a report showing that athletics and PE classes generated a $1.5-million profit in the 1984-85 school year. The state gives the district $2,699 for each full-time student.

It is not known exactly how many of the student-athletes attend the schools mainly for sports, but some students have testified in public hearings that they attend community college entirely for athletics.

Teachers and coaches say the number of students who come only for athletics is substantial.

“So many of these kids are headed nowhere, absolutely nowhere, after high school,” said longtime East L.A. College coach and teacher Tom Jones. “They see sports as their ticket, and once they’re enrolled they utilize the community colleges to better their lives. It’s the motivation provided by athletics that does it.”

The district maintains, however, that the physical education department is over-staffed and that a change in educational direction is warranted.

“It is our belief that the cuts, however painful, will ultimately improve the fiscal health and overall environment on campus,” board member Lindsay Conner said.

Faculty leaders contend that the layoffs and firing of part-time coaches will only hasten the district’s enrollment decline. A union report concluded that fewer teachers will eventually mean fewer students, and the report projects losses in state financing at $9 million to $15 million in 1986-87.

“Obviously, we dispute the figures the faculty union has produced,” Conner said.

About the only thing in which the district and its faculty agree upon is that the layoffs are not financially motivated.

“This issue is not strictly budgetary,” said Richman, the board president. “The board is taking a change in educational direction.”

Ray May said that without JC athletics, he would never have figured out the system.

“When I look back, I see how close I came to missing the whole thing,” May said. “When I left high school, I thought I knew everything. But really, I didn’t know anything.

“I wasn’t prepared for the rigors of a four-year college. Junior college prepared me for that. It gave me the key to the world and showed me what was really out there. Sports was that key for me. It was the motivation to get me into junior college. It wasn’t until I got there that I felt the fire burning and got turned on.”

Conner denies that he is biased against athletes.

“There are those on the board who are less favorable to athletic programs, but I don’t think these cuts are the result of any animosity on the part of the board,” Conner said. “In fact, I credit my colleagues with approaching these cuts fairly and with the best interests of the district at heart.”

Richman said the matter is not an athletic issue.

“This is not a punishment, it is a reality,” he said. “Some people do not want to allow themselves to see other points of view, but the fact remains that we have experienced a tremendous decrease in enrollment.

“We cannot continue business as usual. Educational restructuring is long overdue.”

Faculty members had hoped that the district could resolve its PE over-staffing problem by offering early retirement incentives to veteran instructors. The district’s offer, however, fell short of faculty demands.

Borio, athletic director at Trade Tech, said that even without special incentives, the district could accomplish its staff reduction goal through voluntary retirement.

“We are losing an average of seven instructors a year, and they are not being replaced,” Borio said.

According to faculty figures, the PE staff has been reduced by 54% since 1981, a loss of 102 teaching positions.

Rosenzweig, the Santa Monica attorney representing the faculty union, has worked in layoff cases for more than 10 years. He said the situation in Los Angeles is a strange one.

“I’ve done other community college layoff cases, and I could always understand why they were doing it, although I never agreed,” he said. “Here, I still haven’t figured it out.

“The district’s own money people concede that they don’t have to do it for financial reasons. If they are doing it for political reasons, if they think they will make themselves look like good managers by causing so much disruption, I don’t see it.”

Rosenzweig, who provided counsel for instructors in their appeal before Administrative Law Judge Milford Maron in April, said he will petition for a writ of mandate in Los Angeles Superior Court by next month, asking that the layoffs be overturned based on evidence from the faculty hearings.

The appeal process could take up to a year. If successful, instructors would be awarded back pay and their jobs, Rosenzweig said.

Athletic programs in the rest of the state’s community college districts are in better shape, said Stu Van Horn, associate athletic commissioner for the California Assn. of Community Colleges.

Sixteen athletic teams will be added statewide in 1986-87, Van Horn said. “We are witnessing a period of growth,” he said. “This is a positive time for California community colleges.

“In 1978, when Proposition 13 hit, athletic problems were just one of a number of programs that suffered,” Van Horn added. “But, as colleges are getting healthier, we are finding a lot of interest in restarting programs that had been dropped.”

Except in Los Angeles.

Already, L.A. community colleges include fewer athletic programs than others in the state, according to a survey conducted by Van Horn’s commission. Pierce, for example, has the most team sports in the L.A. district, yet has fewer teams than the five out-of-district schools--from Bakersfield to Long Beach--in the Metropolitan Conference.

“If this were happening up and down the state, maybe I could understand it,” Valley Athletic Director George Goff said. “But that isn’t the case.”

In theory, all the district board’s actions could be repealed. That is the only hope among physical education officials who are negotiating with the district to rescind the layoffs.

Time, however, is running out. Four months before the start of the school year, no physical education or athletics classes have been scheduled for fall registration.

“Nobody knows what they are going to be doing next year,” Borio said. “But we have already told the state we will give them the status of our athletic programs by June 1.”

Current negotiations focus on coaching assignments. The district is opposed to the use of part-time coaches in many programs.

“Physical education instructors were originally hired to coach,” Vice Chancellor Virginia Mulrooney, former president of the faculty union, said. “We cannot continue to carry such a large number of instructors who do not coach.”

Athletic leaders say part-time coaches are often more qualified than full-time instructors to head sports teams.

“Obviously, not everyone is a candidate to coach a football team,” Borio said. “With this layoff list, we will lose a number of people with expertise in certain areas.”

Mulrooney has said publicly that additional layoffs were ordered in physical education because of the unwillingness of instructors to assume coaching positions.

“If the PE people are prepared to make coaching part of the teaching load, we will rescind six of the layoffs,” Mulrooney said.

Under the agreement, teachers would receive no coaching stipend for coaching. Instead, their class load would be reduced.

Faculty negotiators hope that by luring enough instructors back to coaching, the need for replacements in the classrooms would eliminate the remaining seven layoffs. That would allow them to continue to use part-time coaches.

Above all else, the faculty is committed to one thing, Borio said.

“No matter what changes occur, our intention is to run whatever form of athletic program that we can,” Borio said. “It may be somewhat of a skeleton program, but it will be an athletic program.

“In no way are the athletics and physical education people advocating that we stop athletics in the district. If athletics are finished in the district, it will be because of action by the district board, and no one else.” Enrollment and Athletics: 1981-1985

Students Students Sports Coaches College City Fall 1981 Fall 1985 Teams Cut Pierce Woodland Hills 23,770 17,393 15 3 Valley Van Nuys 22,671 16,284 13 8 L.A. City Los Angeles 20,492 13,743 5 4 East L.A. Monterey Park 17,772 11,709 7 4 Trade Tech Los Angeles 17,130 11,330 8 4 Harbor Wilmington 12,541 7,763 11 4 West L.A. Culver City 11,085 6,436 5 4 Mission San Fernando 4,023 3,419 5 4 Southwest Los Angeles 8,049 3,064 7 6 Totals 137,533 91,141 76 41