District Academic Senate Newsletter
December 28, 2008
President's Report
On Friday, Dec. 12, we had our graduation reception for this year's Project Match class. All 34 graduates were present, along with some 20 mentors, four Board members, Deputy Chancellor Adriana Barrera, and several more. This class was twice the size of the usual Project Match group, and would have been even larger, but several interns received jobs (some teaching in colleges) and so couldn't complete the program.
Project Match, as you know, has been a DAS/Office of Diversity jewel for a long time, and it was just great to see our expansion come to fruition. Robert Sambrano and Lisa Winter have made a great team over the past two years. The graduates were apprehensive about their job prospects, given the economic crisis, but we tried to be as hopeful in our comments as possible.
As to the budget....the situation is Sacramento remains at a standstill, though I would think the Governor and the Democrats will come to an agreement over the new revenue strategy (Patrick McCallum's "triple flip") fairly soon. Or they may not. If they do, then we'll be looking at cuts in the $150 million range for CCC's, but there will still be a state shortfall of some $15 billion for next year. At least, as best I can determine. It's all a bit murky, as the figures given sometimes refer to this year only and sometimes to this year and next. And there are outside factors that make it hard to assess where we’ll end up. For example, the economic situation is worsening dramatically in California (witness last week's unemployment figures), but the likelihood of an Obama stimulus for California seems greater.
The Chancellor's Emergency Response Group met last Wednesday, and we reviewed the plans drawn up by each college to reduce their budgets. These cuts total around $20m, with the expectation that around another $10m can be saved at the district level (either in the district office or in one-time centralized account adjustments). This would give us a total of $30m in savings for this year, which is our worst case scenario at this point. The possible deal McCallum describes in Sacramento would require quite a bit less than that.
Next year is where it really gets messy. It's hard to see how we can cut as much as may be necessary without dramatically reducing our section numbers.
Let's see what the New Year brings.
Best of holiday wishes to you all,
David