Grim forecasts Follow Wilson’s Budget : Education: Despite plan to maintain funding level, public schools face higher costs. Community colleges may triple tuition.

Gov. Pete Wilson’s budget proposal would force public schools to cut education programs or scrounge for dollars from the county, its cities and special districts, Ventura County educators say.

Even worse, Ventura County’s three community colleges, faced with an 11% cut in state funding, would have to triple fees to $900 a year for a full load of courses, officials said.

County officials expressed concern about the potential impacts, but stressed that the governor’s plan means little right now because it faces six months of revision and debate in the Democrat-controlled Legislature.

“The budget as it is now proposed will be wrong on Monday,” said Ken Prosser, business manager for the county superintendent of schools’ office. “This is just a starting point for those guys up in Sacramento to start beating on each other.”

Jeff Marsee, vice chancellor of administrative services for the Ventura County Community College District, took a similar view.

“Nobody knows right now what’s going to happen,” Marsee said. “Hopefully, cooler heads will prevail, and we will not be facing these kinds of cuts.”

Wilson’s plan calls for maintaining the same level of funding for public education next year, in part by shifting $2.6 billion in property-tax revenues from counties, cities and special districts to schools.

The end result is a loss for schools because it would be the third consecutive year that school districts have not received cost-of-living increases, Prosser said.

Aside from coping with escalating costs for utilities, insurance and supplies, public schools and community colleges will pay more than $560,000 to the county to collect and distribute property taxes for the first time this year. The new fee was approved by the Legislature two years ago to help counties recoup some of the revenues lost to the state.

“All this means for school districts is more fees and no more money,” Prosser said.

Still, Ventura, Oxnard and Moorpark colleges would fare much worse under the budget proposal, which calls for an 11%--or $301-million--reduction in funding for the state’s 107 community colleges. The county college district’s budget this year is $62.4 million.

To help offset the cuts, student fees could be raised from $10 to $30 per unit, hiking the cost of a full load of courses from $300 to $900 a year for undergraduates. The cost of a full load of courses for students with bachelor’s degrees would more than double, to $3,150.

“This is going to have a devastating impact on higher education,” said state Sen. Gary Hart (D-Santa Barbara). “There will be tens of thousands of students who will not be attending college. That’s very distressing.”

Ventura College students said they were stunned at the proposed fee increase.

“The students don’t have that money,” said Aliceya Angeles, 30. “Most students are working. Higher tuition would be another burden.”

Yvonne Randolph, 18, said the state may be hurting itself if student fees increase.

“Instead of increasing the amount of money they receive, the raise in fees could lead to a loss because of the number of students who would drop out,” Randolph said.

The college district just this month raised its fees from $6 to $10 per unit for undergraduates and to $50 per unit for students with bachelor’s degrees.

It is still too early to know how the fees have affected enrollment at the 31,000-student district this semester, Marsee said.

The past year has been difficult for the district, which was forced to cut $1.2 million from its current budget because of incorrect projections and losses in state lottery revenue.

Until now, the district has managed to avoid layoffs, but that could change if funding for state colleges is cut by 10%, said Greg Cole, president of the Ventura County Community College District board of trustees.

“There would be fewer programs, and that would mean less staff.”

But Cole added that he hopes the cuts will not be so drastic when the state budget is finally adopted.

“Perhaps the economy will improve,” Cole said. “That’s my hope.”

Times correspondent Patrick McCartney contributed to this story.