Background provided by Dr. Tim Cook on 9/14/2015 to all faculty:

As you are aware, enrollment has been decreasing over the last few years. This steady decrease has led to college-wide budget impacts.

The following data illustrate just how much college enrollment has declined in the last 5 years:

• The number of class sections offered in fall 2010 was 2,268. The number of class sections offered in fall 2015 was 1,546, a decrease of 32%.
• The college’s annual FTES for state-support classes in 2010-11 was 10,988. In 2014-15, the college had 8,887 FTES – a reduction of 19.1%.

Over the past several years, the campus has shared relatively equally in budget reductions. This year, larger cuts were taken in areas other than Instruction to give the campus time to think thoughtfully about how to approach budget reductions. In addition to the permanent reductions, several cutbacks were taken on a one-time basis, and these funds will need to be restored. For example, the college delayed any classroom technology and computer hardware replacements for a year. As your efforts to create learner-centered experiences in the classroom likely indicate, the college needs to restore these funds.

The instruction budget makes up roughly 60% of the total college budget at $38 million during 2014-15. In comparison, the next largest budget, Administrative Services, is $8.4 million, with Student Affairs following at $8.1 million. Instructional Council has been tasked with developing a proposal to reduce 2 million dollars from the permanent Instruction budget. Instructional Council has already made $600,000 worth of permanent cuts by reducing sections and adjunct medical benefits. Over the past seven years as enrollment peaked, Instruction was one of the areas that grew the fastest. It is time now to rebalance the budget with a clear eye toward the goal of Academic Excellence.

PROCESS:

During winter quarter 2015, Instructional Council developed two draft rubrics (one for transfer and one for Career and Technical Education [CTE] programs) to facilitate the process of determining potential areas of efficiencies, savings, or reductions.

During spring quarter 2015, open forums were held to discuss the process and gather further feedback to add to the rubrics. Based on the feedback, Instructional Council revised the CTE rubric to include retention plan engagement data.

In early June 2015, I shared the Transfer and  CTE rubric data.

Instructional Council held four budget retreats during summer quarter 2015 to develop a proposal that identifies specific programs and departments that according to the data could be eliminated or reduced. Rubric data from the Virtual Notebook, alignment with the 2015-2020 Strategic Plan, as well as student and community needs, were all considerations in the decision-making process. Program and department reductions were allocated equitably across Transfer and CTE areas wherever possible.