Communications major Francesca Bacaltos plans on attending the University of Cal Berkeley, however due to the recent budget cuts, getting there and getting the classes required to attend is going to be harder than she had originally expected.
“Unfortunately, Cerritos College doesn’t offer a media studies class or a class similar to it so I had to look to take it at another school,” she said.
Bacaltos, is one on many students who may face this dilemma as Cerritos College make even more cuts to classes because of the decreasing budget.
The budget for the 2010 summer session was unveiled at the Faculty Senate meeting Tuesday.
The new budget shows that there will be yet another cut to the summer session, which was already cut in half last summer when administration was forced to cut the entire first session.
This is a direct result of the state giving the college 3.7 percent less funding for the entire school year then they did last year.
The current plan calls for deans to follow the enrollment comparisons that were used during the 2008 school year.
Some members of faculty, while understanding the need to cut classes are still concerned with the method being used by the deans to cut the classes.
“We think the priority should be the classes students need to transfer or gain a certificate, it really comes down to what is the priority of the college during this budget crisis” said Diane Keenan instructor of Economics.
While there is still widespread concern, President Linda Lacy said, “we are letting each division make the decision on what they want to offer, hopefully all of the course are part of a comprehensive education plan. “
Being the dean’s decision of what classes to offer they are taking advice from their department chairs. ” Deans are consulting with their department chairs, they are trying to really make sure we offer the core classes that students need the most,” said Vice President of Academic Affairs, Bill Farmer.
Even though there are planned cuts from last summer session to this summer session, when looking at the past five summers, the upcoming summer session will still serve more students then were served in three of the past five years.
Another thing that Farmer has been working on is to introduce the first summer session back to Cerritos College, which as of now, is set to come back the summer of 2011.
“If we served 1,600 students, as we did last summer, this summer we wouldn’t be able to offer two summer sessions next summer, added Farmer.
The news of Cerritos getting their first summer session back is great news to students like Ben Baguni who has been hit hard by the cuts.
“This semester I was trying to get all the classes I need and because of the small amount of classes offered I had to take one at 6 a.m, said president of the business club, Phi Beta Lambda, Ben Basuni”
“I usually bike to school so its not easy to always get here especially when it rains, he added.
In an attempt to make progress on this budget crisis Linda Lacy along with other representatives from other colleges planned a trip to Washington to support The Student and Physical responsibility Act, which promises 9 Billion dollars to community colleges.
However, due to weather conditions the conference was cancelled. “We are going to be beating down the doors supporting this, said Lacy”
“I would hope to see some recovery to the budget by the 2011 or 2012 year,” she added.
While the plan for next year’s summer session address a lot of the problems students are currently encountering, students like Bacaltos and Basuni don’t have an extra year to wait they have to make a decision now.
