Without touching a single teacher’s job or cutting class
offerings, Gavilan College plans to slash nearly $1 million from
this year’s budget.
Without touching a single teacher’s job or cutting class offerings, Gavilan College plans to slash nearly $1 million from this year’s budget.
In preparation for another round of budget cuts, totaling $332 million statewide to community colleges, Gavilan College has convened an expenditure reduction task force to brainstorm ideas for shaving $800,000 off this year’s budget and as much in ongoing cuts.
The first order of business: cutting back on paper. College administrators expect to save $20,000 in printing and postage costs by reducing the number of course catalogues dispersed throughout the community. Each semester, the college mails a course catalogue to every home in Gavilan’s 2,700 square mile district that encompasses southern Santa Clara County and all of San Benito County. Starting this spring semester, instead of receiving the 140 page catalogue, families not enrolled at Gavilan will receive a two-page mailer with instructions for accessing the schedule of classes online, said Jan Bernstein Chargin, Gavilan spokeswoman.
Students already enrolled will still receive a hard copy of the catalogue, she said.
“We’ve asked every department to take a look and see what they can do differently,” she said.
School employees and task force members are working together to identify enough cuts to make up the difference, she said.
Jobs are not in jeopardy, said Gavilan President Steve Kinsella. Although the college may not fill vacant positions immediately, officials are abiding by the Gavilan College Board of Trustees’ no-layoff policy, he said.
“I see nothing coming our way that we cannot manage,” he wrote in an e-mail to all Gavilan employees. “The Board of Trustees has been clear that permanent full time or permanent part-time employees are to be protected at all costs. As I have stated in the meetings with departments no one needs to be concerned about their jobs.”
A silver lining accompanied the doom and gloom of reducing spending: Kinsella said he prefers to promote current employees to higher level position that are vacated before opening up the position to the outside.
“I do not want to bring new people into the college if we can offer a promotion to an existing employee,” he wrote.
The reductions were offset by a $3.7 million science, technology, engineering and math grant from the U.S. Department of Education that will help a greater number of students major in those areas, Bernstein Chargin said.
“The key thing now is to relax, take a few deep breaths and rest well knowing the Board of Trustees has done everything they could to prepare us to weather this latest financial downturn,” Kinsella said. “This is the time when their discipline in managing college resources pays off for all of us.”
