As your institution braces for the latest financial blow, now is as good a time
as ever to consider your options. What
resources can you depend on to navigate financial hardships? One lifeline
worth considering is your governing
board, particularly trustees.
To get a sense of how community
college board members are stepping up
in tough fiscal times, we polled three
trustees whose colleges have demonstrated the ability to weather economic
hardship. What follows is their advice.
In what creative ways has your board
addressed the double-digit increase
in student enrollments over the past
few years?
Robert Gallagher, board chair, Eastern
Iowa Community College District: It is
difficult to be creative when
you experience double-digit
increases in students and
almost an 18 percent cut in
funding over a four-year
period. One thing that we
have been successful at is
shrinking class sections and
cutting back on staffing. This
creates more productivity.
Every section is filled, so we no longer
run sections of 11 or 12 students at a
loss. Even some of the programs that
were being evaluated for cuts because
of low enrollment have been filled with
new students. We have been forced to
depend on the energy and commitment
of our faculty and staff to provide a
quality experience for our students.
Denise Chachere, board chair, St. Louis
Community College Board of Trustees:
Our approach
is what I would
call the good
business practice of evaluating the effectiveness and
efficiency of all
our programs on
a regular basis.
By identifying where we can make ef-
ficiency corrections, we free resources
to tackle the new effectiveness demands
of a larger enrollment. For example,
we eliminated several programs with
trending low enrollment that allowed
those resources—classrooms, faculty,
funding—to be used for more popular
programs currently in demand by our
students and our business community.
Roberto Uranga, vice president, Long
Beach City College Board of Trustees:
In May 2007,
the board
of trustees
realigned its
board goals
with those of
the president/
superintendent
to address
enrollment
challenges. Little did we know that
enrollment would be so monumental.
Student enrollments increased from
not only a desire of returning students
to retool, retrain, and redirect their careers, but also freshmen whose inability
to enroll in four-year universities and
colleges put a higher demand on us to
make room at our college. To accommodate this demand, the board established
a board goal to focus priorities on resources for core courses, which lead to
certificate and degree completion and
transfer readiness. So far, completion
and transfer rates are increasing.
How are you handling budget
shortfalls, and what lessons have
you learned along the way?
GALLAGHER: Because our funding
is cyclical and in Iowa the community
colleges never know what they will
receive from the state until the end of
May, well into the budgeting process,
we have always prepared for possible
shortfalls. Over the past four years, staff
has prepared a few contingency budgets
for the next year, including one that is
a worst-case scenario. We shrunk our
full-time staff by 28 full-time positions
by using an early-retirement incentive
plan. We have been very careful about
refilling those positions. Because of
the cut in full-time positions, we have
been able to absorb some of the fund-
ing cuts. We have not laid anyone off or
canceled any programs. We have used
the traditional ways of saving money,
such as travel freezes, hiring freezes,
eliminating food at meetings, cutting
our overall supply budgets. We have
kept our staff “lean and mean.” All
staff members have taken on additional
responsibilities. We have met openly
with our staff. I think one of the com-
mitments that the board made early on
was to do everything possible not to lay
off employees. I think that the board’s
commitment not to lay off employees
has enabled the staff to relax, and in
exchange, I believe the staff has stepped
forward and taken on additional
responsibilities, knowing that in doing
so, they are supporting the board’s
commitment, and neither their job nor
their fellow employees’ jobs will be in
jeopardy. We have been very open with
everyone about our financial challenges
as an organization, and we have been
openly appreciative of our faculty and
staff who have picked up so much of
the extra work.
URANGA: Long Beach City College has
had to reduce enrollments to manage
course scheduling. We’ve accomplished
this through negotiating with our bargaining units to implement furloughs
with staff, faculty, and administration,
and changes in benefits packages. We
have also eliminated and consolidated
