Community Colleges Put in Tighter Budget Bind : Education: Pierce and Valley college administrators are told to cut $1 million each, and Mission is told to pare $300,000. Some classes will be canceled.

Students and staff at three San Fernando Valley community colleges are facing leaner times as administrators pare back operations to match skimpier than expected state budget allocations.

In letters that were to be sent out to the colleges Tuesday, officials with Pierce and Valley colleges were told to cut about $1 million each, while the smaller but rapidly growing Mission College stands to lose more than $300,000. Even before the new cutbacks, the district’s 1990-91 budget was lower than the previous year.

The reductions hit the Los Angeles Community College District particularly hard, because they come on the heels of $1 million taken back from the district’s nine colleges in the spring. Those adjustments occurred when the district discovered that its spending for the 1989-90 fiscal year exceeded the amount budgeted.

Overall, the district will receive $363 million from the state for 1990-91, about $8 million less than expected, said Lila Aurich, acting budget director. The district overestimated the amount it would receive from state lottery revenues and an annual cost-of-living increase, Aurich said.

“What we’ll have to spend has gone up while our income has gone down,” she said.

College administrators across the Valley still are determining exactly where the latest round of cuts will come, but all said there would be fewer classes offered in the fall. Canceling classes is self-destructive for state-supported colleges, they acknowledged, because state funding is based on enrollment in the previous year.

The presidents of Valley and Pierce colleges said that although no full-time faculty members will be laid off, instructors probably will be asked to teach some of the more popular night and weekend classes. Those classes usually are taught by part-timers.

After a lengthy meeting of department heads Tuesday, Pierce College administrators decided to cut classes with the lowest attendance and to lay off some part-time instructors at the Woodland Hills campus, said college President Dan Means. Hardest hit will be the departments of agriculture, electronics, nursing and physical education.

Means said that the college recently canceled programs in dairying and forensics to help prevent a deficit in the 1989-90 budget. He said he was surprised to learn last week that further reductions will be required.

“That was a shocker,” he said. “It would be nice if you could have a budget and just rely on it and live with it.”

Valley College President Mary Lee had a similar reaction.

“We are already tight” in areas such as maintenance, supplies and staffing at the Van Nuys campus, Lee said. “It’s kind of rough.”

At Mission College in San Fernando, administrators seemed to be approaching despair.

“We’re trying to figure it out now . . . but we don’t have anywhere to pare it away,” said Andy Mazor, vice president for academic affairs. “I don’t have enough money to make the year even without the cut.”

Mission College--at 6,000 students the smallest of the Valley colleges--is building a permanent campus in Sylmar to replace the storefronts and bungalows it has used for years. Mazor said the new campus is already too small to serve the current number of students and if budget cuts cause enrollment declines it will be difficult to convince the state that further expansion is necessary.

“It would put us in a down spiral,” he said.

When the Legislature passed the final budget at the end of July, the district learned the cost-of-living increase for community colleges was only 4.7%. Based on recent history and preliminary statewide estimates, the district had counted on a 5.2% cost-of-living increase.

The district had also hoped to receive about $10.5 million from the state lottery, but instead the district is to get $9.4 million. An increase of $2.5 million in employee benefits costs also was unanticipated.