Colleges Try to Cope With Shortfall of $4.6 Million : Finances: The possibility has arisen of imposing hiring freezes, layoffs and severely reducing class offerings beginning this summer.

Ventura County’s three community colleges are facing their biggest economic crisis since the passage of Proposition 13 in 1978, officials say.

College administrators are looking at severely reduced class offerings, hiring freezes, possible layoffs and other cost-saving measures to offset an expected $4.6-million shortfall in state funding beginning this summer.

In announcing the anticipated shortfall, which amounts to about 7.5% of the district’s $64-million budget, Chancellor Barbara Derryberry directed each college and the Ventura County Community College District’s central operation to come up with cost-cutting plans by the end of the month. The district must adopt a tentative budget by June 30.

“This is really a reversal of our experience the last few years,” said Tom Kimberling, vice chancellor of administrative services. “We’ve been in relatively good times. But now we’re being thrust into an environment where we are looking at severe reductions in the budget that will impact all aspects of the operation.”

District officials have come up with 34 ways in which college and district administrators can make cuts. They have assigned the cuts this way: Moorpark College, $1.6 million; Oxnard College, $850,000; Ventura College, $1.8 million, and the district operation, $380,000.

The most likely scenario for reducing costs is to reduce the number of classes offered, Kimberling said. It’s an option that administrators and educators cringe at because it means cutting back on part-time faculty.

“But we just can’t handle $4.6 million without having to go into the classroom,” he said. It’s too early to talk about how many classes might be cut or how many people might lose jobs, he said.

Other options include offering retirement incentives, cutting intercollegiate athletic programs, shutting down student health centers, reducing off-campus classes, adopting a four-day workweek during the summer, keeping maintenance and equipment costs down, and reducing employee travel and conferences.

Any loss of faculty, class offerings and students would be a bitter pill for the district, coming on the heels of more prosperous times. By the mid-1980s, the district had recovered from an unpopular student fee increase as well as the financial woes of Proposition 13, the property-tax reduction passed by voters in 1978 that curtailed government spending.

Enrollment went up steadily. In the last five years, the student population climbed from 25,629 in 1985 to more than 32,000 this school year. Just in the last year, the district gained 2,000 students. Some had to be turned away.

Faculty numbers swelled, thanks in part to reform legislation passed two years ago that funds the hiring of more full-time professors. Last year, 25 faculty members were added locally through that funding. The district plans to hire another 19 this fall, despite the budget crisis.

The three campuses have expanded during the recent good times too. Day-care centers are in the works at the Ventura and Oxnard campuses. Oxnard has a new vocational-education complex and a new gym is planned. Moorpark has a new communications complex, and a performing arts structure is in the works.

“We’ve had some good times and we were able to do a lot of good things,” said Tim Hirschberg, district board president. “Now we’re definitely on a fiscal tightrope.”

He said the district is not alone in its financial straits. Other schools and government agencies that depend on state funding are suffering as well and gearing up for Gov. Pete Wilson’s prediction of a $7-billion to $10-billion shortfall in state funds for the next fiscal year.

The $4.6-million shortfall could be worse. The district received a $430,000 bill from county officials this week for property tax collection. If the new law allowing the billing is not successfully challenged, the district’s shortfall could be more than $5 million.

Should it all come true, Hirschberg has some ideas about where the cuts should come.

“I’d like the cuts to begin away from the classroom,” he said. Reducing faculty, he said, should be a last-ditch effort. “I would hope to reduce administrative spending before considering layoffs. But that’s a reality we have to keep in the back of our minds. However, if we turn valued employees away, we may never recover from it.”

College presidents echoed Hirschberg’s sentiments.

“You can’t cut at that magnitude without curtailing services and classes,” said Ventura College President Robert Long, who said the district’s financial crisis was the worst he has seen in his 34 years in education.

“It’s far worse than Proposition 13,” he said.

Moorpark College President Stan Bowers said he hopes that an influx of money from the state will reduce the cuts by half. If not, he said $4.6 million in reductions means fewer employees.

“It almost certainly means fewer classes and dirtier classrooms,” he said.

Faculty members are worried that the pending cuts could affect them.

“I don’t have a lot of hope of coming out of this unscathed,” said Larry Miller, Faculty Senate president at Moorpark College and chief negotiator for the Ventura County Federation of College Teachers, which represents 1,100 teachers.

“The faculty is more than willing to take their share of the pain and cuts if they are convinced the administration is doing the same,” Miller said.

He said faculty members hope that attrition will ease the budget problems and make layoffs unnecessary. Some also believe that the state budget predictions are overly pessimistic.

“This has happened so many times, but not this bad,” Miller said. “That’s the scary difference.”