Trustees Urged to Increase Budget for Valley College : Education: About 200 students, faculty and administrators complain of crowded classes and other campus problems.

Complaining of falling ceiling tiles, leaky roofs, broken chairs and crowded classes, Valley College students, faculty and administrators joined forces this week to ask the Los Angeles Community College District to increase the school’s budget by at least $750,000.

Los Angeles Valley College President Mary Lee headed a contingent of about 200 who journeyed to the district Board of Trustees meeting on Tuesday at East Los Angeles College. They went to cheer and wave banners as various campus representatives spoke of the college’s inadequacies and complained that Valley College generates more money than it receives.

Jim Marteney, a speech professor who coordinated the presentation, told trustees that for the past 10 years Valley College has educated thousands of students for whom it has received no compensation because it has contributed more than its fair share to the district as a whole. Now with 20,000 students, the Van Nuys college has an annual budget of $22.1 million.

“It appears we are being penalized,” he said. “We have continually made sacrifices. . . . We have virtually no air-conditioned buildings. . . . We have had to close class after class after class.”

As with other schools, the college receives funding based on the daily average attendance of its students. But in the district’s proposed 1992-93 budget, Marteney said, Valley College is allocated $1.5 million less than it is projected to earn in such funds. In comparison, Pierce College will receive only about $100,000 less than it is projected to earn, he said.

“We hope you will allow Valley College to keep more of the money it earns equal to the other large colleges in the district,” Marteney said. “We don’t mind supporting the smaller schools to some extent.”

Speakers introduced by Marteney told trustees of dwindling teaching staffs, a lack of equipment, the cutting of more than 400 classes since last year, a library roof that leaked buckets in this week’s storms and other campus problems.

“It’s hard to grasp the meaning of education when you have to sit on the ground in history class because there are no chairs,” student Fabiola Torres said.

Erica Hauk, student body president, told of a ceiling tile falling on a student’s desk and of crumbling floors in the gym.

Tom Oliver, chairman of the physics, electronics and technology department, complained that in physics “they haven’t seen any new equipment in 15 to 20 years . . .”

“Give us the right tools to get a good education,” pleaded student Ben Padua, a political science major who said teachers in his department have dwindled from 30 to 13 during the past two years.

In support of Valley College, Ron Sterbenz, the student representative on the Board of Trustees, plunked a broken chair in front of the audience. “This is a typical chair I sit in in one of my classes,” said Sterbenz, a student at Harbor College. “I agree with all of you.”

After the nearly two-hour presentation, most trustees said they would examine Valley College’s plight.

“I know that for years Valley has been treated as a rich school with no problems,” board President Julia Wu said. “This is the first time you’ve brought a whole regimen to the board.”