State Is Auditing Campus

State officials are investigating whether Los Angeles Mission College inflated its reported enrollment to improperly receive more than $1 million in state funds.

State Controller Steve Westly is auditing the Sylmar community college to determine whether the school wrongly reported student enrollment in a non-credit computer class.

Garin Casaleggio, a spokesman for Westly, said the audit was expected to be completed next week. But he declined to discuss any other details.

Los Angeles Mission College President Adriana Barrera said the college believed that it had complied with enrollment rules. But in a recent memo to campus leaders, she said she expected that the course’s enrollment would be excluded from funding by the state. Los Angeles Mission College receives its state funding through the Los Angeles Community College District.

Even if the audit finds that the school has overstated its enrollment, the campus did not receive more state money than it should have, Barrera said Thursday. According to Barrera and other officials, state funding formulas limit the money available to community colleges, and 9,000-student Mission College is over-enrolled, meaning that additional state money for enrollment growth is unavailable.

Los Angeles Community College District Chancellor Peter J. Landsberger agreed with Barrera that the college could not have received money for the allegedly misstated enrollment. Even if it is determined that “some of the enrollment is not legitimate, we did not collect any money,” Landsberger said.

In a December request to Westly for an audit, state Sen. Jackie Speier (D-Hillsborough) alleged that the school may have improperly received more than $1 million from the state for that course’s enrollment. Speier alleges that an informant at the college said that students who used campus computers to check e-mail were falsely shown as enrolling in the computer class. In her letter, Speier asked for “prompt attention to this serious matter.”

Although Barrera said she understood that the enrollment was legitimate, she said that the college would halt its practice of having students automatically enrolled in the non-credit course when they log onto computers at the campus Learning Resource Center.

Staff and tutors teach about 250 students word-processing and Internet skills each semester, she said.

Barrera said the computer center was set up in 1996 to provide a “skill-building” program.