Columbia Basin College cutbacks detailed

PASCO -- Columbia Basin College will lose the equivalent of 55 full-time jobs and as many as 1,000 students eventually as $3.4 million is hacked from its budget in the next biennium.

President Rich Cummins described the cuts to public colleges and universities in the state's $31.4 billion operating budget as "the largest we've ever seen."

"These are unprecedented times," Cummins told CBC's Board of Trustees on Monday.

CBC's operating budget before the cuts would have been about $31 million, with just under $23 million coming from the state and the rest from tuition.

The budget adopted by the Legislature in late April reduced the college's allocation to about $20 million, Cummins said.

Plus he has to pay debts on building projects, bringing the total that had to be cut from the budget to just over $3.4 million.

About half of that, or $1.7 million, will come from college administration. An additional $313,500 will be from student services.

Instructional cuts total $1.4 million and include shuttering fire science day classes, human services, paralegal and autobody programs, for a loss of 90 full-time equivalent students.

Students finishing their first year in June will be allowed to continue for another year to complete the two-year programs, but no new students will be admitted, and tenured instructors will be shuffled to other positions within the college.

Non-tenured or part-time instructors in those programs will be laid off.

Several students and graduates of the autobody program came to the board meeting Monday to plead for the program, saying it's one of the best in the country and teaches good job skills.

Jeff Hendler of Pasco said he worries that if the program is canceled, the opportunities it provides will be gone forever.

Darrel Farnsworth, equipment supervisor for Franklin County, said his CBC autobody education has served him well, and the county often has taken vehicles to students in the autobody shop for repairs.

He said college administrators may be short-sighted in closing the program, which also has been used to fix CBC vehicles.

"I would suggest you make sure you're looking at the whole picture there," Farnsworth said.

Mike Young, owner of Atomic Auto Body in Richland, said he has hired many CBC autobody graduates and called them "smart guys" who know how to fix today's complex, computerized vehicles.

"You've got a good program," Young said. "I wish you guys would reconsider."

In other areas, courses will be scaled back and students may get shut out of classes they need, Cummins said.

As that happens, CBC could lose the equivalent of 400 full-time students in basic skills programs and 250 to 400 students in transfer programs.

Overall, the college has been asked to maintain roughly 4,900 full-time equivalent students -- the number the state currently funds.

But CBC had more than 6,000 full-time equivalents enrolled in 2008-09 -- and Cummins doesn't see how the college can continue enrolling more students than state money allows.

CBC doesn't have admissions requirements and historically has taken any student who wants an education. Cummins said there are no plans to create admissions requirements, but it will start taking students first-come, first-served.

"One-eighth of what we do is going by the wayside," Cummins said. "It's a big thing we're doing."

The college also stands to lose about $16.7 million for capital projects, including maintenance money for its newly renovated business building.

About $1 million was cut from the new Career and Technical Education center the college will start building in June.

And the planned Social Sciences and World Languages Center is off the books altogether -- a loss of $15.4 million, Cummins said.

"We're being downsized," he said.