Ventura County Community College District to expect more budget cuts

Despite three years of trimming class offerings and reducing services, the Ventura County Community College District is now considering cutting whole programs in an effort to find another $11 million to bridge the budget gap.

Over the past three years, the budget for the district has decreased substantially. Originally starting at $57 million in 2009, it had then been cut to $42 million for 2011, and the coming year, our budget is estimated to be at $31 million for our district, according to Dr. Pam Eddinger, president of Moorpark College.

Eddinger has been treating the budget crisis with extreme care, making sure that the college is still keeping education as the most important thing.

"Everyone cares about education. No one will say it at the polls, but they do," said Eddinger. "We have been trying to save money for a rainy day, because we knew this was coming."

For the 2011-2012 present year, to meet the cuts, the district emphasized trimming around the edges using criteria such as low enrollment and unneeded part-time staff. Now they are faced with eliminating entire programs.

The Criminal Justice and Interior Design programs face cancelation at MC according to an email sent to faculty. With Ventura College having an established Criminal Justice program, the district is considering a complete consolidation, where students who are in that major would go to VC instead MC.

At Oxnard College, the auto technician program is being reviewed for possible cancelation as well as VC's business program. It is still not made clear whether these programs will face complete cancelation or consolidation.

With so many established programs having to be reviewed, it has many people worried about what is the future for the coming year.

Ramiro Sanchez, Executive Vice President at Ventura College, said that once these proposed decisions are made permanent it is important for students to know how these changes will affect them.

"We have given faculty a list of what we had reviewed for this year," said Sanchez. "We want students to know that as soon as it goes into effect, they know what the game plan is."

Most recently, our state legislature postponed a bill that planned the increase of the price of units for our community colleges from the current $36 per unit to $46 per unit. That being said, under the bill, if a mid-year adjustment to the budget was necessary as expected, the increase to the tuition would not be put into action until summer 2012.

The programs being reviewed are not final decision and are still in the process of being examined for the coming budget cuts.