2-Year Colleges Forced to Cut Supplies, Repairs

Santa Ana College might not replace the roofs of the men’s locker room and the planetarium. Glendale Community College might turn out fewer nurses than it had planned.

And at community colleges throughout the region and the rest of the state, students will have to content themselves with older computer equipment and fewer supplies for science labs.

All of this comes as a result of a surprise $98-million cut in state funds for community colleges in the next budget, a cut evenly divided between maintenance programs and instructional equipment.

Orange County community colleges will lose about $2 million per district, money they have received for years.

Bill Vega, chancellor of the Coast Community College District in Costa Mesa, worried that the cuts in the instructional budget would affect the quality of education for his students.

“My focus is primarily on the negative impact it will have in the classroom,” he said. “It’ll put us in a position where we’ll not be able to purchase technical support equipment needed to keep instruction current.”

Judy Iannaccone, spokeswoman for Rancho Santiago, said she has no doubt the cuts will affect students. “If they can’t find computers or software, it’ll slow down their ability to do course work, and in some instances they won’t have the same quality or exposure to products needed in the workplace,” she said.

The $98-million cut was part of a plan by the state Department of Finance and Gov. Gray Davis to create a budget reserve of $2.6 billion. “We were stunned,” said Patrick Lenz, executive vice chancellor of the California Community Colleges. “This has not been an issue . . . at any point in budget discussions.”

Under the Scheduled Maintenance Program, the state matched the community colleges’ spending on projects costing less than $400,000. The budget cuts do away with the program.

Community college officials across the state have rallied to lobby the Legislature to restore the funding.

Representatives of 24 community college districts from Chula Vista to Ventura met Friday in Los Angeles to discuss strategy. A similar meeting is planned in San Jose next week.

Los Angeles Community Colleges District lobbyist Patrick McCallum said the schools will ask Davis to pull funds from the state’s reserve.

“This hit is making the community colleges more financially vulnerable than we have been,” McCallum said. “We have to get this money back to provide more stability to community colleges.”

Some of the sharpest pangs are being felt at Glendale Community and Los Angeles Valley colleges, where nursing programs were being expanded in response to a shortage of new graduates in the profession, said Sharon Hall, Glendale’s associate dean of allied health.

Hall anticipated keeping the nursing lab open in the evenings so that working parents could complete assignments then, and buying software that allows nurses in training to learn how to assess children’s sickness before going into actual clinics.

“We fought hard for this money, and now we have to wonder how long it will take us to get it back and catch up,” Hall said.

But Sandy Harrison, a spokesman for the state Department of Finance, said the colleges are unlikely to get the money back before 2003, even with the Legislature’s help.

Community colleges receive less funding per student than the University of California and Cal State University systems and also less than kindergarten through 12th-graders. Neither the UC nor CSU system was subjected to similar budget cuts.

About 1.6 million students attend 108 community colleges statewide. Educators in the two-year system say the deep gashes were easier to inflict on them because their political machine is comparatively weak.

“We don’t have the cute kids who are not passing tests nor big research projects to uphold,” Hall said.

The Coast Community College District, which includes Orange Coast and Coastline Community colleges, will lose $1.1 million in maintenance funds and $1.3 million in instructional equipment, such as computer upgrades.

“That’s a big blow for us because we’re trying to produce a highly skilled work force,” district spokeswoman Erin Cohn said. “How can we do that without having the equipment?”

In addition to the computer-related equipment, colleges also would lose money for science labs, musical instruments, library books and athletic equipment.

Vega said the amount of pain from the cuts depends on how long the funds are lost. “If they’re not restored and not part of the budget for the following year, it puts us further behind teaching our students to be competitive in the business sector.”

In his Coast district, some air-conditioning and heating systems need to be replaced because the programs in the buildings have changed. Elsewhere, the clocks need to be replaced. “They’re just really, really old and they don’t work,” Cohn said. “We can’t find parts for them anymore.”