Mission College to Cut Sports, 200 Classes

Forced to cut $2 million from an already-strained budget, Mission College plans to eliminate almost 200 classes, cancel its athletic program, limit hours at its new library and cut its citizenship program when school resumes next month.

The wide-ranging and deep cuts are sparked by a funding crisis that has hit all but one of the nine campuses in the Los Angeles Community College District, the nation’s largest, which has been mired in financial problems for years because of enrollment drops and shrinking state subsidies.

Most of the eight campuses affected are facing what officials described as belt-tightening, with cuts representing about 10% of their budgets. But Mission College, one of the district’s smallest and youngest campuses, has been especially hard hit because its growth has consistently exceeded budget projections, forcing it to run at a deficit each year.

This year, the district’s Board of Trustees recently decided, that deficit must finally be made up. At Mission, it will mean scaling back operations by 21%.

“When a school is in a growth mode, as Mission has been, it’s at a severe disadvantage,” Mission College President William Norlund said Tuesday.

Under the district’s funding formula, he explained, each campus receives money based on its average spending over previous years--an inadequate sum during times of rapid expansion. So the district loaned Mission College and others in its system enough money from its reserve fund to meet their expenses.

“But that reduced the district’s reserves to an extremely dangerous level; consequently, we’re no longer able to do that, “ Norlund said.

In fact, last year, the district was warned by state officials to boost its financial reserves, which had been seriously depleted by the need to bail out struggling campuses. Mission must refund the district $800,000 this year.

A campus committee--including administrators, faculty members and support staff--met earlier this month to calculate what could be cut and found the choices few. The panel expects to make its final decision next week.

Of the $9 million the school will receive for 1997-98, approximately $7.2 million is already committed to salaries for tenured professors and union employees whose labor contracts require them to stay on through this year.

Subtract money required for such fixed expenses as utilities, supplies and maintenance, and that leaves precious little room for negotiation, said Norlund.

Axed will be about a fourth of its academic offerings and the school’s modest but competitive athletic program--which cost the school about $185,000 and included teams in baseball, men’s soccer and golf, and men’s and women’s cross-country.

Last year, the school spent $900,000 on part-time instructors. This year “we ended up with an ability to fund . . . about $600,000. That translates to a cut of about 150 classes.” Norlund said it is not yet clear how many professors may lose jobs.

Keeping an athletic program--even a scaled-back program--would cost the school at least $100,000, Norlund said, and require the elimination of another 50 classes, “which we couldn’t afford to do.”

But Athletic Director John Klitsner said the sports program cuts will probably cost the school its 100 student-athletes, who account for approximately $250,000 in tuition and funding revenue.

“Those are students who will enroll somewhere else. That is money we’ll lose,” Klitsner said. “From a business standpoint, it doesn’t make sense.”

Norlund said the school is also considering shutting down its Citizenship Center, which prepares immigrant students for citizenship, and reducing hours at its new library/learning resources center.

The cuts will undoubtedly affect the school’s profile in the northeast Valley, where residents long lobbied for its creation and expansion and heartily celebrated the opening of its $12 million high-tech library center earlier this year.

“The cuts amount to suicide,” said professor Chuck Dirks, the school’s faculty president.

The Citizenship Center costs $180,000 to run--equivalent to the cost of offering 90 other classes. But Dirks said it brings in almost $400,000 in revenue and attracts scores of new students to the campus.

The new library, he said, “is the dream of the community. Half of our students go to class at night, so for the library and the resource center to be open then is critical. There are 300 computers in that library, and many of these students don’t have the money to afford computers at home. This is the only thing that will allow them to compete in this high-tech age.”

Among other funding cuts on the table are the elimination of classes through Mission College outreach programs in Burbank and Chatsworth, special programs for veterans, and after-school classes to motivate high schoolers.

The matter of which classes will be sacrificed is under discussion now by the campus review panel and the heads of each academic department. The course cuts will probably be across-the-board in virtually every department, from art and language classes to history, English, engineering, science and math.

“We’re looking at classes that are traditionally small, barely making it and probably shouldn’t have been scheduled in the first place,” Norlund said. “That’s probably about a third of the cuts.

“Then we get into the bone and marrow, and look at classes that meet at odd times, subjects that are of narrow interest. It’s a very painful process.”

Other campuses also face the need to cut spending, but none expect to make cuts as deep and broad as Mission. Only East Los Angeles College, a large campus that did not exceed its budget, will remain unscathed.

Pierce College in Woodland Hills is in the same situation as Mission College, “but not as bad,” said Pierce President E. Bing Inocencio. The school has about 14,000 students--almost four times as many as Mission.

Pierce will have to cut about $2.5 million this year, but its budget exceeds $23 million, giving it more room to maneuver for reductions.

Pierce officials will meet this month to resolve the shortfall, and Inocencio anticipates a budget based on a combination of cost cuts and revenue increases.

“It’s clear we’re to have to do some cost cutting, but we’re going to try to maintain the same number of classes, maybe by increasing class size,” he said.

At Southwest College, Vice President of Academic Affairs Janice Hollis said the school is perpetually trimming its $9-million budget, so this year’s cuts will not be that painful.

The school--a small campus like Mission--plans to cut about 45 classes, trim faculty leave time and condense the academic schedule so students will spend less time on campus.

“It’s a routine thing for Southwest College,” Hollis said of the cuts. “We’ve been pretty lean.”

Times staff writer Nicholas Riccardi contributed to this story.