L.A. Colleges, Reacting to Money Woes, Alter Course

It has not been the best of times lately for the Los Angeles community colleges.

Still reeling from a series of budget-slashing decisions--laying off teaching and clerical employees and cutting back or closing about 30 programs--the district is looking ahead to the fall term, hoping for better news.

But there are some who say that when school opens in September, good news will be hard to find.

“My big concern,” said Hal Fox, president of the teachers’ union, “is that the loss of students . . . will be so great that no reorganization can recapture them.”

To rebuild the badly depleted enrollment and ease the district’s financial woes, the Board of Trustees has made a series of traumatic decisions in recent months.

The board has taken a number of steps to reorganize its educational priorities, including interdepartmental transfers of 100 tenured instructors in the nine-campus system.

$5-Million Emergency Loan

Last year, the district exhausted its reserve funds and needed a $5-million emergency loan from the county to meet its payroll. It was short of money because funding by the state is tied to enrollment, and the district has been losing students by the thousands.

Since 1981, enrollment has fallen by more than one-third, from 139,000 to about 88,000. Critics, particularly former students, cited several reasons for the decline: The imposition two years ago of a $50-per-semester tuition fee, long delays in obtaining financial aid, and the decision--recently reversed--to start the fall term in August instead of September.

This year, the budget has been balanced with lottery money and special state funds that go to districts with shrinking enrollments. There is even a modest reserve. But officials say they cannot depend on having those extra dollars next year, and will have to continue to “downsize” district operations.

The belt-tightening began in earnest last September, when the college district board voted to dismiss 53 clerical employees. Then, in February, the trustees approved the chancellor’s request to lay off all part-time and 157 full-time tenured instructors who taught classes that district officials considered unnecessary.

Since then, the number of full-time teachers laid off has been whittled down to 39, primarily because most of the instructors were qualified to teach other subjects. According to state law, the district has to offer reassignment if an instructor has a credential to teach another discipline.

Staff Reduced

But the transfers and layoffs reduced the staff in 30 disciplines, particularly physical education and nursing. As a result, nursing at West Los Angeles and City colleges and several other vocational and technical programs will be phased out after next year, and a number of athletic programs are in jeopardy. Social sciences, notably history and anthropology, also were hard-hit by faculty losses.

According to longtime district employees, hostility toward the board and top administration reached an all-time high after the unprecedented faculty layoffs were announced. Students and employees staged protest rallies at several campuses and at the board’s plush downtown headquarters. One college broke with tradition by not inviting a trustee to commencement ceremonies in June, while the entire faculty at another campus literally turned their backs on a trustee who was delivering a graduation message.

Scare Away Students

Critics of the various reductions fear the worst in September--namely, that the cuts will scare away more students.

Teachers’ union President Fox said that since 1982, 612 instructors have either retired or quit and have not been replaced. Thus, the faculty has declined 25% through attrition, he noted. Because the enrollment has shrunk at about the same rate as the faculty, Fox said he fears that the recent cuts will only prolong the downward trend.

“The assumption of the district is that . . . students will bunch up in the remaining classes. But that is not our experience,” he said.

Linda Escajeda, an East Los Angeles College student who recently joined the board as a student trustee, said she knows of five students who left the district out of frustration last fall. One enrolled at Pasadena City College, she said, while the other four decided to attend Rio Hondo College in Whittier.

Teacher Morale Drops

“They transferred right after Christmas,” Escajeda said. “With the cutting of faculty and classes, students are going to take their $50 and go somewhere where those problems don’t exist.”

The students who have remained may encounter a demoralized teaching staff, others said.

“Our morale has been going down like an elevator, very fast,” said Bob Kort, who teaches psychology at Los Angeles City College. Not only are instructors disturbed by the plummeting enrollment and worried that more layoffs may be ordered, but he said they resent the general deterioration of their working conditions.

“We have our own broom and dust pan,” said Kort, complaining about a lack of janitorial services. “If we want any clerical assistance, we hire (secretarial help) ourselves. We pay for it out of our own pocket. We buy our own equipment. It’s like our own operation. We don’t expect too much from downtown.”

‘Going to Have an Impact’

Kort said that because of the interdepartmental transfers, about 100 instructors will be teaching subjects they are not experts in. “That is going to have an impact, too,” he said.

Judy Chu is one of three psychology instructors at City who were cut from the department. She has accepted a math department assignment in the fall. but said she laments having to cast aside 12 years’ experience in teaching psychology.

“It’s a real affront to our expertise to have to teach classes in subjects we tried to get away from,” she said.

The district justified its faculty transfers on grounds that courses hurt by the moves had low enrollments. Faculty critics challenged that.

According to Kort, most psychology classes in the district are as large or larger than the district average of 26 students per class. Fox, of the teachers’ union, said the same was true of physical education, political science, history, anthropology and sociology.

Unscathed by Transfers

Meanwhile, programs that do have lower-than-average enrollments were unscathed by the transfers. The board did not trim back art, music, theater, biology, journalism or media communication, even though those six disciplines have more instructors than are needed, a recent grand jury report critical of district practices charges.

Critics also shake their heads in puzzlement over many of the reassignments, claiming that instructors have been transferred to departments that did not need extra teachers. In some instances, instructors have been bumped from one supposedly low-demand discipline to another.

For example, although psychology is one of the subjects that the district considers over-staffed, Kort’s department at City College will gain an instructor in the fall--a former dental assisting teacher whose department is being phased out. No money is being saved, and “educational priorities” are not being served, the critics said.

‘Concerned About the Turmoil’

“(District officials) sent out 157 notices in order to lay off 40,” Fox said. “They should have been concerned about the turmoil that would cause. . . . But they really don’t know what they’re doing.”

Chancellor Leslie Koltai said the major reason for the faculty layoffs and transfers is not to save money, but to permit restructuring of the curriculum. The idea is that thinning out the faculty in certain disciplines will save enough money to allow beefing up faculty in other areas.

“Right now, we have the curriculum of the ‘70s,” the chancellor said in an interview. “But the student demands and the university demands of the ‘80s are different.”

The community colleges offer too many “esoteric” courses, he said, and not enough math, English, business, English as a second language and electronics.

More Careful Counseling

For example, Koltai said the district offers 50 different history courses, from the History of Western Civilization to the History of Genocide. However, he said the University of California and California State University ask transfer students to take only one introductory course to fulfill general education requirements, and no more than two from a specific list of five or six courses as prerequisites for majoring in history.

Koltai said students will receive more careful counseling to help them select the courses they absolutely need. “So, slowly, we will force the faculty to offer more History 1,” he said, “instead of History 22.”

Koltai said this “redirection” of the curriculum will help more students transfer to four-year institutions. The number of Los Angeles Community College District students transferring to the UC system has declined 21%, while the number going on to California State Universities has dropped 5%, according to 1984 figures, the latest available.

Role Stressed in Report

The chancellor is paying more attention to these figures, partly because the role of community colleges in preparing their students to move on to the other systems is stressed in a recent report by the Commission for the Review of the Master Plan for Higher Education. To revitalize the two-year colleges, the commission has called for sweeping reforms in curriculum, faculty and governance. A legislative committee has produced a series of bills to implement these recommendations.

“I am looking at the Master Plan (report). It is my continuous reading,” Koltai said. “And they are moving to the direction of a more precise curriculum. In order to develop that, you have to put the people where actually they make a difference. . . . The bottom line is . . . to redirect enrollment in such a way that we can pay our bills.”

Koltai said he is hoping for a 4% rise in enrollment in September--about 4,000 students. To make sure the district can pay its bills, he said he also has begun to overhaul the colleges’ accounting methods, which, according to the grand jury report, make it almost impossible to analyze the financial status of each campus separately.

Budget Stabilization Sought

Thus, the chancellor said he has established a new committee to review expenditures, and ordered the presidents of the four colleges that have consistently lost money--Harbor, Southwest, West and Mission--to stabilize their budgets within three years.

Until then, the chancellor and the board will be busy finding answers to the difficult questions now being raised about the quality and purpose of the colleges, and trying to keep pace with rapid changes in the kinds of students attracted to the two-year system. More and more, it is women, older people and minorities--particularly immigrants with limited English skills--who are enrolling.

“To be in this job,” Koltai said, “you have to be optimistic. I am optimistic. I call the coming year the turning point. If my plans work, they will bring in more students. If they don’t work, that’s it.”