East L.A. College’s Football Program Tackled by Budget

There’s a dispute at East Los Angeles College in which there are only losers and no winners. It’s over the college president’s decision to abolish the football program as part of a painful, $1-million budget reduction.

Understandably, head football coach Al Padilla, his staff and the 90 players are hurt and troubled by the cutback. They see it as a betrayal of a minority community, where many students can’t afford to go to a four-year school, let alone play big-time college sports. They blame campus administrators and misplaced priorities. Football was abolished before, in 1986, because of a money shortage. But it made a comeback two years later when things improved.

Another comeback may not be in the cards this time.

ELAC President Omero Suarez, for his part, resents being put into the position of having to make any cuts. But facts are facts: Suarez and the other presidents of the nine-campus L.A. community college system are under orders to make budget reductions ranging from 5.1% to 11.6% because of dwindling state dollars.

Suarez has tried to be evenhanded--cutting back on travel, getting by with minimal janitorial services, not filling faculty vacancies and the like. But his aim is to preserve the college’s academic program, as much as possible.

“I don’t like it, but we’ve been reduced to choosing between instructional programs and football,” he said.

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I say it’s a no-win dispute because community colleges like East L.A. are at the end of the fiscal food chain, victims of the state’s bad economy and its shrinking tax dollars. Even if football makes it through this budget, a similar choice probably will be faced next year.

What makes the situation at East L.A. particularly disheartening is that the dispute pits minorities against one another on a campus where most students are poor and unable to afford an education at a four-year university. Statewide, more than 75% of all minorities enrolled in higher education are in community colleges.

Los Angeles’ community colleges have had to live with shrinking budgets since the 1970s, even while the system expanded and established Southwest College and Mission College.

Back then, trustees pleaded with Sacramento for more dollars, but their pleas were ignored.

The passage of Proposition 13 in 1978 marked the beginning of substantial cutbacks for community colleges, which relied heavily on property tax revenue.

In the last three years alone, ELAC has sustained cuts that undermine its mission to its 14,000 students. For example, administrators and students were shocked last year when the Bush Administration killed the highly rated “Upward Bound” program--aimed at helping low-income students prepare for college--by cutting off $500,000 in aid.

Thirty sorely needed faculty positions have gone unfilled. Although some funds were saved by the move, some coveted classes disappeared from the curriculum because there aren’t enough instructors to teach them. Fewer and fewer janitors and counselors have been kept on.

Now, the college must deal with another $1 million in cuts from its $19.4-million budget.

There’s talk in Sacramento of increasing tuition from $10 a unit to $30 to help offset dwindling state support for colleges such asELAC. That doesn’t sit well with the folks at East L.A., who say the proposed hike is too much for poor students.

“This community can’t take raises in tuitions and decreases in state dollars,” Suarez said. “We’ve cut past the muscle and the bone. We’re now cutting into the marrow of the bone.”

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All this explaining makes little difference to those involved with Husky football. All they know is that the football team’s budget of $110,000, including coaches’ salaries, equipment, insurance and other costs, is gone. The players wanted to prove that they are winners despite last season’s dismal 0-10 record.

Padilla won’t lose his teaching job, but he worries about players such as linebacker Robert Darling, who otherwise would not have considered college after graduating from El Sereno’s Wilson High School.

“Football at East L.A. gave me hope that, yeah, maybe I could go to a four-year college,” said Darling, 18.

Now, the hope is gone.

“I don’t have the transportation to go to another school,” he said. “No more football for me. Just maybe work.”