Laney College is experiencing a budget crisis. The
Governor’s latest budget proposal projects $5 million less revenue got the
district, which will significantly impact our ability to provide services to
our students.
The state and district place the primary blame for this
budget crisis on decreasing student enrollment. This is partially true, given
that the state’s current funding apportionment ratio funds the college
according to the number of Full-time equivalent students (FETS), but the state’s
funding model shares some blame for the decreasing enrollment. By mandating
that Laney’s standard class size be 35 students, in contrast to the smaller
size classes at more expensive private and state colleges that our students are
competing with and preparing for, this model has lead to a policy in which
classrooms are considered more “productive,” and are rewarded, the more
overcrowded they are.
One direct result of the over-crowded classrooms is an
increased student dropout rate. A higher percentage of students drop out or
fail an overcrowded class than a smaller class. Yet the state’s funding model
fails to take this into account. Because the state determines funding based on
enrollment in the first place, yet, because of overcrowding, creates a climate
that increases attrition (decreases retention), its internal contradictions
have created what Bonnie Oviatt calls a “self-perpetuating spiral that can tear
a community college apart.”[1] This
is a warning I take very seriously, and we need to find a way to break the cycle.
Recognizing this self-defeating structural flaw, the
district set up a task force to examine and “fine-tune” the District’s budget
allocation model in October 2015 to help ensure that Laney receives its fair
share of funds from the district. In the meantime, funding will continue to
drop as enrollment does, so Former President, Elnora Webb, has “hired two
people on short-term contracts to do outreach to bring in more students.”
Outreach, and strengthening connections with K-12 schools to help provide alternatives
to the school-to-prison pipeline, is indeed crucial and could help contribute
to decreased drop-out rates for K-12 schools as well as increased enrollment
for Laney, and hopefully these outreach efforts can continue beyond the
short-term contract. Yet more can be done.
More recently, Laney’s interim President, Patricia Stanley,
has established an Enrollment Management Task Force to “get a feel for what’s
going on” and eventually from an Enrollment Management Committee to “put
together a 3-5 year plan to raise enrollment.” I sincerely hope they are
willing to listen to students and faculty who already have a feel for what’s
going on more than many an outside consultant. And, judging from my
interactions with students, increasing retention can do more to solve the
crisis than outreach. I devoutly hope any proposed Enrollment Management
Committee considers devoting as many resources as they do to recruitment
efforts to making student retention
(limiting attrition) a priority in any strategy for increasing enrollment. As
Laney Professor Alicia Cabellero-Christiansen puts it, “you can get people in
the doors, but if they don’t show up the next fall what good did it do?”
Since I began teaching at Laney in 2008, we have had very
high attrition rates, especially among African American students, which studies
have confirmed. Although many are resigned to the “inevitability” of this at
Laney, the school is receiving equity funding to study ways to address this
inequity crisis, which overlaps with the funding crisis in important ways. Overcrowded
classrooms, along with the underfunded support services, contribute to high
drop out rates, and lack of equity.
Many of our students need much more one-on-one attention to
help them compensate for the disadvantages their underfunded K-12 schools left
them at. Recognizing this, many of our professors put in longer hours
to meet one-on-one outside of classroom hours. But many students simply cannot
make themselves available to meet with teachers outside of class time---because
many work several jobs or have families to attend to, and increasingly longer
commutes. It’s a struggle enough for them to attend regularly scheduled
classes. Thus, teachers who recognize the students’ need for more one-on-one
time are virtually forced to take class time away from group work, and this can
negatively impact the class’ ability to fulfill the requirement of the course’s
SLO. It also can play a significant impact on decreasing retention (increasing
dropouts). Yet there’s a way that teachers could provide more one-on-one time
without sacrificing necessary group work.
Clearly, students would be better served if such classes
were capped at 25 students, as they often are at the more expensive private
schools, and not cancelled if they only have 15 students. Doing so will not only
increase student equity and success, but will help increase enrollment and, in
the long term, be more fiscally responsible than the current economic model based
on a short-term bottom line that defines overcrowded high-attrition classrooms
as “productive.”
In the short term, under the existing state model in which
funding is based on enrollment, reducing class sizes will certainly not save
the school or district any money. Yet, by providing better student-to-teacher
ratios and more one-on-one, it will decrease the drop-out rate which, in the
long term, will contribute to a robust, and more stable fiscal environment with
increased student equity.
It may seem to be counterintuitive, or go against
conventional wisdom, to take seriously a demand for less crowded classrooms even
during good times, let alone during a budget crisis. Yet the Enrollment
Management Task Force should consider a 3-5 year plan that would 1) recalibrate
the existing state funding ratio to immediately reduce class sizes and, if need
be, open more course sections to serve unmet student/consumer needs; 2) allocate
at least as many resources to the retention of existing students as on the
recruitment of new students; 3) guarantee no student tuition increases during
this restructuring period.
Certainly, fiscal solvency doesn’t have to be opposed to the
human aspects of education; teachers and students don’t have to be opposed to
Human Resources and essential administrators. But we need more innovative
thinking, and our students—even in basic skills classes---have some innovative
ideas that need to be put on the table about what a “productive” class and a “productive”
school is. The administration need to recognize and honor these ideas, which,
if we think long-term rather than short-term, could enhance Laney’s reputation
as a cosmopolitan world-class community college, and get us out of this budget
crisis on firmer footing than we were before it began.
Chris Stroffolino,
English Department
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