Canceled Classes Frustrate Students at Valley, Pierce

Freshman registration at Pierce College got off to a rough start Monday morning when the computers went down for an hour. For Victor Von Wright, an incoming cinema major, things didn’t get much better when the screens blinked on again.

Von Wright, 44, learned after waiting in line for 90 minutes that an introductory class required for his cinema major had been axed as part of a budgetary squeeze in the Los Angeles Community College District.

He replaced the class with a civil rights course that fit his schedule but not his interests. “We all get sucked up in the system and thrown out,” he said bitterly.

Von Wright’s fall-term class section was one of about 100 that Pierce canceled to save money, said William Norlund, the community college’s vice president of academic affairs. The school planned to offer roughly 2,000 class sections this semester, he said.

The Woodland Hills campus was ordered by the college district this month to cut its 1990-91 budget by about $1 million, after the district discovered it had overestimated the amount of money it would receive from state lottery revenues.

Valley College in Van Nuys, also ordered to trim its budget by $1 million, has canceled 130 of its 1,800 planned fall class sections because of the district reductions, college President Mary Lee said.

One of those classes, an intermediate-level speech course, would have included Garth Kline, an electronics major from Van Nuys who said he had hoped the class would help him overcome his minor speech impediment. “I wasn’t angry,” Kline said. “I was just puzzled. Out there in the real world I need it. I need to work on my speech.”

Jay Parrillo, a 19-year-old incoming Pierce business major, was angry that he had not been told before he arrived to register that his accounting class had been canceled. “I really wanted to get the harder classes out of the way at the beginning,” he said. “Now I’ve got to wait.”

Administrators said they cut those class sections with the lowest enrollments. At Pierce, the departments of agriculture, electronics, nursing and physical education have been hardest hit, Norlund said. At Valley, the speech, English, and mathematics departments are suffering the most significant cutbacks, Lee said.

Valley and Pierce administrators said they took pains to distribute the cutbacks throughout the curriculum, ensuring that although a particular course would be taught less frequently, neither the course itself nor an entire academic department would be eliminated. “We have reduced programs,” Lee said, “but we have not eliminated programs.”

Valley plans to cut an additional 120 class sections in the spring, Lee said. Pierce expects to reduce its number of spring course offerings by 300, Norlund said.

Critics of the cutbacks argued that by making it less convenient for community college students to take the courses they need to graduate, the colleges may discourage some of their students from continuing with their education.

“Here’s the student we’re trying to save in California--the at-risk student,” said Jack Sterk, president of Valley’s faculty and chairman of the school’s speech and broadcasting department, which lost 28% of its class sections as a result of the budget cuts. “It’s that level of student that gets hurt the most.”

Moreover, Sterk noted, the class cutbacks come as enrollment at community colleges is increasing.

In addition to students, part-time teachers will feel the effect of the district’s belt-tightening measures. Full-time teachers are salaried and tenured, so colleges save teaching money only by canceling those courses taught by part-time professors, administrators said. Full-time teachers who taught a class that was canceled simply will teach another course previously taught by a part-time professor, they said.

Mission College, with 530 class sections the smallest facility in the Valley, will cut from its budget the $332,000 mandated by the district without reducing its course offerings this fall, Business Manager Jim Austin said. The college will cut such non-instructional expenses as office supplies, maintenance and substitute clerical work, he said.

But Mission, now in the process of building a new campus in Sylmar, may have to cut its class offerings next semester if it does not raise additional state or federal money over the next several months, Austin said. “If we cannot generate funding for this campus,” he said, “we would have a drastic reduction in the spring.”

Area community colleges outside the San Fernando Valley reported that they had not reduced class offerings for the fall semester. The College of the Canyons, which is not part of the Los Angeles district, may have to cut its class schedule in the spring if new funding sources cannot be found, said Jim Walker, vice president for instruction.

Antelope Valley Community College, also separate from the Los Angeles Community College District, and thus not told to reduce its budget, is offering more courses this fall than it did last fall, spokesman Steve Standerfer said.