Honors Director Mari Kosin’s job is no longer on the chopping block in SCC’s final budget reduction recommendation. The Ebbtide had previously reported that her position was slated to be eliminated.
In a presentation on the final recommendations at an April 22 Board of Trustees (BOT) meeting, Vice President for Student Learning Philip King announced that the school has scaled back reductions in an effort to impact less employees. In addition to Kosin’s position, the college is no longer eliminating an executive assistant to the Vice President for Business and Administrative Services.
A faculty member in the engineering department, originally slated to be laid off, resigned before their position was eliminated.
“Over the course of time since January we’ve had some internal conversations with few added considerations,” King said about the new net position change.
The final recommendation trims roughly $2.2 million from the college’s expenses, with about $1 million coming from reductions in the workforce.
The cuts to faculty and staff remove three currently filled positions each from classified and administrative staff. The college will also eliminate one vacant position from administrative staff and nine vacant positions from classified staff.
King said that all three affected members of the classified staff have been offered other positions at the college, as the new recommendation calls for 7.25 new jobs on classified staff.
The recommendation also adds 1.5 administrative staff members and three new faculty positions.
The college expresses position changes as full time equivalents, with part time jobs being represented as fractions of a position.
In sum, the college will employ 4.25 fewer positions under the new recommendation: three more in faculty, 2.5 fewer in administrative staff and 4.75 fewer in classified staff.
The remainder of the $2.2 million in cuts will come from extended days, goods and services, travel, utilities and stipends. The college also anticipates $295,257 in new revenue, which it has considered as a part of the new budgeting measure.
The college is now $2.9 million under revenue, according to the latest numbers presented by college President Cheryl Roberts at an April 22 BOT meeting. Previous reports had indicated the shortfall was $2.4 million.
Faculty and administration are at odds over how the deficit came to be. Administration argues that the revenue gap is a result of declining enrollment and tuition revenue at the college, while faculty points to an increase in administrative staff payroll over the past five years.
The college recently finished compiling financial reports for the fiscal years 2015-2018, which had not been completed or filed during those years. A state audit of those reports also finished this week.
The completion of the audit brings SCC back into compliance with college accreditation standards put forward by the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities (NWCCU), according to interim Chief Financial Officer Bill Saraceno. Colleges must maintain compliance with NWCCU standards in order to continue to offer degrees to students.
The lapse in financial reporting and lack of compliance with NWCCU standards was first reported by The Ebbtide last year.
