Community colleges struggle to stay afloat

When the California legislature finally passed last summer’s 2009-2010 budget, funding to the state’s community colleges was cut by $812 million, said Dean Murakami of the California Federation of Teachers (CFT).

Additionally, over $1 billion in funding is being deferred until July so that it counts towards the next fiscal year.

“The funding from January to June in 2010 ($703 million) is deferred until July 2010…this will make it difficult for many districts to meet payroll and other institutional costs…many of us are concerned about these deferrals because 1) they create a $703 million deficit in the following year’s budget, 2) the legislature might cut the deferrals to balance the 2010-2011 budget, and 3) these deferrals may become a permanent feature of the community college budget,” Murakami wrote in the November issue of “Perspective,” the quarterly publication of the Community College Council of the CFT.

At the Contra Costa County Community College District (CCCCD), Board member (and Martinez resident) Sheila Grilli said this week that the District is “not hurting more than anyone else,” but the continuing onslaught of budget cuts will force the District to significantly curtail summer sessions, cancel some sections entirely, and enlarge class sizes. The District has an annual enrollment of 62,000 students.

“We’ve taken almost every step imaginable to make sure we don’t affect our students, but the current plan to cap the number of students funded through the District makes no sense, when our attendance figures are remarkable,” said Grilli. “It costs a lot more to incarcerate people than educate them, and when the Governor talked [in early Jan.] about cutting back on prison funding, well that’s a no brainer, but the prison unions are a lot stronger than student unions, people don’t seem to respond to students’ needs.”

During the 2007-2008 fiscal year, California’s community colleges received $4.1 billion in state funding; during the 2009-2010 fiscal year that amount was down 10.4 percent to $3.7 billion, a loss of $434 million, according to the CFT.

“We’re very proactive about saving and are prudent with our funding,” said Grilli. “But we can’t guess what the state will do [vis-a-vis the 2010-2011 state budget] and the feds may come through with funding, but I don’t know how [the federal government] can support the whole country.”

Next month, Grilli will head to Washington D.C. to attend the American Community College Association Legislative Summit, during which she and her District colleagues will lobby for more scholarship and student aid funding.

“Our district is powerful; because George Miller (D-Martinez) is the chairman [of the Committee on Education and Labor] we get fairly good entry,” Grilli said. “We plan to ask the feds if they can’t ease up money for educational opportunity programs.”

As the state’s economy continues to tank and funding for public education, both at the K-12 and collegiate levels, dries up, local community colleges are battling  to provide educational opportunities those who need it most.

“It’s grim, it’s grim,” said Grilli. “But we aren’t defeated.”