Davis’ Budget Cuts Stun Community Colleges

Community colleges that are already lagging on building maintenance and falling behind with technology were blindsided by a $98-million cut in funding for those items in the state budget.

California’s 108 schools had asked for a $10-million increase in funding to cure a 10-year backlog in maintenance projects that include the repair of leaky roofs, crumbling sidewalks and cracked walls. The campuses also had asked for a $10-million increase for library and teaching equipment such as computers and test tubes.

Instead of the additional $20 million, Gov. Gray Davis cut the base funding the schools had been receiving in recent years. Last year, the campuses received $98 million for repairs, teaching and library equipment. The next state budget cut that allocation entirely.

In some years, the schools had received as much as $100 million in addition to the $98-million base.

Davis vetoed $160 million from the budget proposals of the community college, California State University and University of California systems--$126 million from community college requests alone.

“We were thwacked,” said Jonathan Lightman, executive director of the Faculty Assn. of California Community Colleges. “Nobody could have guessed they would cut ongoing funding.”

Hikes in other categories, however, increased higher education funding 5.5% overall and boosted community colleges by 3.2%.

Of that, the California Community College chancellor’s office will receive $57 million to pay part-time instructors higher salaries and $4.7 million to fund office hours for those instructors. In many of the state’s 72 two-year college districts, part-time instructors teach more than half the courses.

John McDowell, a board member of the Faculty Assn. of California Community Colleges, said, “We have reason to be happy. We have reason to be hurt.”

The budgets for Los Angeles County colleges will be reduced by more than $10 million.

Some Los Angeles campuses, such as Trade-Tech College downtown where McDowell works, are more than 50 years old. The Los Angeles Community College district just won an election to sell more than $1.2 billion in bonds to fund upgrades, but that money is earmarked only for new buildings and unavailable for repairs to existing facilities.

“The college buildings belong to the public,” McDowell said. “No member of the public would let their roof at home leak without repairing. We shouldn’t let these buildings go without repairs either.”

Officials at Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut had already prepared purchase orders for $1 million in computers and scanners for classrooms for the coming year and had begun talks with contractors on $2.4 million in electrical upgrades to conserve energy, administration Vice President Nancy Rice said.

“We stood in line years and years to get approved, and then the money’s wiped out,” Rice said. “We have to go to the state and make a forceful case that we need this money to repair our broken infrastructure. This is not the way to provide quality education.”

Others who had counted on the annual funding must now determine which projects still can be completed and which must wait.

To keep from falling behind, Darroch “Rocky” Young, president of Pierce College in Woodland Hills, said his campus will look for money in its general fund to “buy everything from computers to microscopes to maps.”

College financial planners anticipated some cuts this year because of a softening economy and rising energy costs, but almost no one expected a reduction in the funds for maintenance and school supplies. Dennis Chuning, vice president of administrative services at College of the Canyons in Santa Clarita, may be the exception.

Chuning drafted his budget assuming there would be no state money for repairs.

“I feel for my colleagues, even though now I look like the wise man,” Chuning said. “This is a time when being conservative paid off.”

State-level college officials plan to appeal to the Legislature to get at least half of the funding back. At a California Community College League meeting Wednesday, they will discuss proposals to the Legislature to restore the money for instructional equipment.

Lightman said the governor’s budget is counterintuitive.

“In a downturn economy, the community colleges are more important because they have the ability to retrain people fast and inexpensively,” he said.