ShareThisA packed board meeting inside the Sierra College theater last week offered a glimpse of the many kinds of students California's community colleges serve:
There were golf, tennis and water-polo players; 4H high-school students who participate in the college's agriculture program; part-time college students prepping for jobs in construction and auto repair; and older adults taking classes for retirees.
"We're asked to do so many things," Leo Chavez, president of Sierra College, observed later. "All our programs enroll a large number of people for a wide variety of reasons. We've been able to offer our community some luxuries that I'm not sure we can afford anymore."
All those "luxuries" are now under scrutiny.
As community colleges deal with the state's ongoing budget crisis and consider cuts to classes, programs and staffing, they are examining which kinds of students they should continue to serve. And even though state leaders have told colleges to prioritize three course areas -- vocational education, remedial education and classes that prepare students to transfer to a four-year university -- local districts are not always heeding the direction.
State law says the primary mission of community colleges is to "offer academic and vocational instruction at the lower-division level."
But over time the colleges have taken on many other roles in their communities, and laws were written to allow them to do a lot more things. In addition to preparing students for jobs or to transfer to a four-year university, community colleges can provide remedial education for high-school dropouts, teach English to immigrants, train workers with new skills and offer recreational courses for adults. Some also collaborate with high schools, allowing students to earn college credit while still in high school.
"When there was a lot more funding in the system, maybe it was easier to continue to pursue multiple missions," said Steve Boilard, director of higher education for the state Legislative Analyst's Office.
"But as the funding is contracting, the districts are facing the dilemma: Where do we retrench? ... Who is going to lose their courses?"
The answer at Sierra College still isn't known, but it looks like students in the construction, automotive and agriculture programs will probably lose their courses.
At the board meeting that drew 500 people last week, trustees voted to send preliminary layoff notices to all instructors in those programs. They asked college administrators to come back with alternative cuts to close the school's $11.2 million deficit so they might be able to save the vocational classes.
But no matter what they cut in the end, board members acknowledged the school won't be able to serve everyone it always has.
"This ... stinks because if you're going to cut the budget of a community college by $10 million, you are going to be impacting the mission," said trustee Scott Leslie.
Automotive student Daniel Lee said he feels like Sierra College is compromising its mission to teach vocational skills.
"They have another plan for this college," he said, adding that more emphasis seems to be placed on preparing students to transfer than sending them into the work force.
Chavez says that's not the case. In recent years, Sierra College has developed new vocational programs to train people for jobs in solar electricity, engineering technology, pharmacy work, banking, insurance and finance.
"We have to change along with the economy," he said.
At San Joaquin Delta College in Stockton, trustees grappling with budget cuts last fall decided to chop their basic-skills courses -- the ones that taught first-grade math and second-grade reading, according to President Raul Rodriguez.
"That isn't really our mission," he said. "If the average citizen were looking at community colleges and saying, 'What should they be doing?,' I think they wouldn't say they should be correcting deficiencies of the elementary schools."
Students protested the cuts, saying the course work allowed them to work toward a high-school degree and turn their lives around. Rodriguez said the cuts simply brought "common sense" back to the community-college curriculum.
(E-mail Lauren Rosenhall at lrosenhall(at)sacbee.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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