SHORELINE COMMUNITY COLLEGE

INSTRUCTIONAL SERVICES COUNCIL

MEETING SUMMARY

MEETING DATE: June 28, 2005

2:00 – 4:00 pm

Room 2925

MEMBERS: John Backes Gillian Lewis* Don Schultz*

Cathy Chun Berta Lloyd Zakiya Stewart*

Norma Goldstein* Bruce McCutcheon Terry Taylor*

Phyllis Harris Chris Melton* Yvonne Terrell-Powell*

Carol Henderson* Darlene Miller* Donna Wilde

Carla Hogan Jeff Omalanz-Hood* Holly Woodmansee*

Susan Hoyne* Rebecca Rhodes Amar Yahiaoui*

Jim James* Andrea Rye* Robin Young*

Kristi Kallander* Thalia Saplad* Judy Yu*

(*Members Present)

GUESTS: Beverly Brandt, Ruth Hollingsworth, Lee Lambert, Nancy Lamus, Kim Thompson, Karen Toreson

PRESENTERS: Mary Alice Grobins, Director, Financial Services, SBCTC

Mike Scroggins, Director, Information and Technology, SBCTC

In order for the ISC to put together an enrollment plan, it is important members have a good understanding of budgeting and coding, and how it affects the institution. State Board staff members Mary Alice Grobins and Mike Scroggins presented information that explained the budgeting and coding process for the community and technical colleges in Washington State. The presentation was taped for the benefit of those who could not attend.

Operating Budget. Mary Alice Grobins explained the cycle of the Biennial Budget Process at the state level. Through this process, the Legislature makes a single appropriation to the State Board. In “off” years, there is an opportunity to ask for adjustments to the biennial budget. Currently, the State Board is now beginning to talk about a supplemental budget for 2006.

The financial area of the State Board prepares the budget requests and divides the appropriation among all the community and technical colleges.

The Legislature does not talk about money already appropriated to the colleges, but focuses on the new funding the SBCTC is asking for. This is the “Base Plus” approach. Typical new money up for discussion includes enrollment slots, compensation increases and new programs/specific funding. About 10% of the money from the state to the colleges is earmarked for specific purposes (e.g. Worker Retraining, restrictions on salary increases, disability funding, specific programs protected by the State Board, etc.)

Community and technical colleges received 4.5% of the general fund operating budget ($23.3 Billion for 2003-05 Biennium). Our share has shrunk over the last several years.

Capital Budget. Unlike the operating budget, the capital budget starts at the college level. Every two years colleges prepare requests for projects (similar to grant writing); then a single prioritized list is developed for the entire system. Unless colleges have a Strategic Plan with a Facilities Master Plan linked to it, they will not be competitive in this environment. The system strives to request only solid, well-justified projects. A scoring committee of college presidents, business officers and facility coordinators uses common criteria to score and rank each request into renovation, replacement and growth lists. A task force of presidents, State Board staff and trustees work to merge the lists and establish a benchmark for a fair share for the community colleges. The Capital Budget was just funded for $461 million for the biennium.

The Capital Budget funding process is set up in a way to attempt to balance the many needs with too few resources. Competition is stiff. There may be a whole host of reasons why a college is not as competitive as other colleges. Two out of three requests did not make it on the request list. Tom Henderson, Capital Budgets Director of the SBCTC is available to assist colleges in reviewing their requests.

Generally, the community college system fairs well in the Legislative process because the Legislators have a lot of confidence that well justified projects are submitted. The State Board does a statewide condition assessment and submits projects with the most need. The CTC’s receive about 15% of the State of Washington Capital Budget.

Distribution of New Funded FTEs. College’s base budgets are predictable. The State Board only allocates new dollars. Every time the Legislature appropriates new enrollments, they appropriate a new dollar amount. The funding per FTE is $4,510. Colleges will keep their FTES if they hit at least 98% of their enrollment target, based on a two-year rolling average. In other words, a college will have a year to recover if they don’t make their target within the first year of the biennium. If a college can’t use their FTEs they will be moved to someone who can use them. The theory is resources will be allocated where the need is.

Mary Alice Grobins distributed a graph showing permanent funding for FTEs at every college district (excluding Cascadia). Colleges below the regression line (average funding line) were allocated some additional funding by the State Board working with the College Presidents in an attempt to close the gap among lower funded colleges. This graph shows the remnants of the “small college adjustment factor.”

Mary Alice explained that budget cuts are allocated on a share of the budget. If a college has high faculty salaries and a high budget, then they get a bigger budget cut. Budget cuts are done on a percentage basis and allocated on the size of the college budget. The two biggest sources for the college budget are enrollment and compensation funds. This tells us that with high-level faculty salaries, when we get a salary increase we get more dollars, but when we have a budget cut, we have a larger budget cut and we can’t cut salaries, so the dollars have to come from somewhere else. Then over time, if we compensate faculty well, we will have a greater percentage of our budget spent on salary.

Components of College Operating Budgets. In 2003-04 the General Fund provided 55% of the college’s budget; Student Tuition 20%, Contracts and Grants 16%, and Local Funds 9%. Five years ago the General Fund provided 59%, so it is no surprise tuition has gone up to 20% from 18% five years ago. The shift in student tuition going on is significant. It hurts colleges a lot if enrollment is flat or soft. Colleges may be enrolling at their target and may not lose enrollments, but may lose student tuition, which is a bigger part of the budget these days. This will assume a bigger importance when colleges try to figure their budget out.

Tuition. When tuition comes into the college, 3.5% of the total tuition fee payment comes off the top for financial aid and is retained in a separate account at the college. A 10% building fee required by statute comes off the top of tuition payments and goes to the State Treasurer to be held in a dedicated account for two-year capital construction. It is used in every capital budget to fund minor works and repairs. Then another 10% comes off the top for S&A. This is not money the college can use for operations. Colleges have local control of S&A fees, and some colleges do not charge the maximum S&A fee. Colleges end up with roughly less than 80% of what students pay in tuition. That 80% is used to support whatever the college’s priorities are. Tuition is set by the State Board. The Legislature grants authority to the State Board to set tuition increases within certain legislative maximums.

Colleges have flexibility on some tuition waivers. This will be addressed at a future ISC meeting. The Legislature has 30 different waiver programs in statute. Many waiver programs in the statutes say colleges may waive all or part of it. Colleges have to decide whether they will do a waiver. Colleges may not establish their own waivers.

It is not known what impact the WASL will have on community college enrollment. The State Board is working with OSPI but has not been able to quantify anything.

SBCTC Enrollment Plan. A copy of the 2005-07 Enacted Budget Enrollment Plan by the SBCTC was distributed. As the State Board prepares budget requests, they figure out how many enrollment slots to ask the Legislature for. They determine how to split them among the college districts. Their plan is based on demographics of where students live (by zip code), not just in the college’s service area. They assume when they do that, all college coding remains the same. They know that is not true, so that is why they distribute only half the amount. They got 4,185 from the Legislature, and the State Board pro rated it back to the original plan they came up with (10,000) in their budget request. Colleges have to make 98% of their target to get the growth FTEs. If Shoreline qualifies, they may choose to take up to 41 growth FTES. If Shoreline qualifies and takes the 41 growth FTEs, it would up the budget and up the college’s target.

If Shoreline does not make the 98% target there will be no growth FTEs, and in 2006 there won’t be anything taken away. Shoreline would have 2006 to achieve the target to qualify not to lose FTEs in 2007. The State Board tries to work it out with colleges. It may feel punitive, but the State Board attempts to reallocate resources where it might be needed.

Coding

Mike Scoggins distributed a document intended to answer frequently asked questions regarding enrollment reporting and coding. Reporting and coding is tied to the financial conversation in that almost all policy decision making is data based. Decisions are grounded in enrollment and financial reports from data provided by the colleges. Mr. Scroggin’s group at the State Board manages the Data Warehouse, which is the information given by colleges relative to their operational data bases on campus. The Data Warehouse is used by the State Board to conduct reporting activities, used to do research, and perform ad hoc requests for projects or policies. They support requests for information. The Legislature just wants the numbers. Information on Basic Skills report, college enrollment, employment data and other projects all flows back to the colleges for research purposes.

Mike Scroggins does short-term enrollment forecasting. Mary Alice Gobins does long-term forecasting. Questions about coding come to Mike or his staff. The Data Warehouse has 80 million records, available online back to 1986.

Data entry has diversified among different departments within colleges. The State Board discovered that many errors in coding are due to a lack of communication within colleges.

It is important to use the correct Student Intent Code because it affects funding. There are two separate fields for this. One is permanent, and the other is changeable. It is the institution’s responsibility to get the codes right to make sure the data is correct.

Exit codes are critical. If not coded correctly, the college does not get credit for performance reporting. This is critical in the Workforce area. Unlike enrollments, exit codes can be corrected. A lot of colleges do modularized certificates, which allows them to take credit for all completions and counts in the college’s favor.

The State Board website has describes in detail special enrollment codes. They include Apprenticeship, Tech Prep, Department of Corrections, Running Start, International Contract, WorkFirst and Worker Retraining. Worker Retraining codes is a complex business rule. The State Board will send clarifying information to re-verify Worker Retraining people once a year. They find that Worker Retraining students are returning and showing back up on reports, and they are not WR.

There are five valid codes for Course Coding. These are reported to the Legislature.

Employment Status Codes are not as important as they used to be in the funding formula, but the information is important to colleges.

Student Faculty Ratio. Information on Student/Faculty Ratio is calculated by CIP (Classification of Instructional Program) and CIP subject cluster. Release time for faculty distorts the ratio because the faculty member’s teaching load is split between two classes. It is a flaw in the system. Most colleges do S/F ratios by instructor.

Meeting adjourned 4:00 pm.

Minutes by Kerry Fondren

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