Student Worker Funds Fluctuate Mid-Semester

City College administrators clawed back funds used for paying student workers over a month into the semester causing layoffs and concern among students, faculty and department chairs.

Department chairs told The Guardsman that lab aide funds were suddenly taken from their accounts this week. The Environmental Horticulture and Floristry lab aide budget was reduced by 40% from last year; Computer Networking and Information Technology Department reported its $7,000 budget was deducted entirely, CNIT Department Chair Richard Taha said; Jim Skinner, department chair of the administration of justice and fire science technology departments, said that the administration of justice lab aide budget was reduced by $1,000, and the fire science was unchanged from last year.

The surprise cuts became a heated item at the Board of Trustees meeting on Thursday, with one official seeking to restore the fund and and thereby the student jobs.

Trustee Vick Chung requested an increase of $300,000 to the $879,000 adopted student worker funds.

Board President Aliya Chisti, Vice President Luis Zamora, trustees Ruth Ferguson and Heather McCarthy voted against the motion, with Chung, Anita Martinez and Susan Solomon in the affirmative.

Student Trustee Ian Wong gave his advisory vote in support of Chung's proposal.

Although it was only the lab aide funds under the spotlight during the meeting, it’s under the same budget umbrella as federal work study and summer interns.

Lydia Hernandez, student representative on the budget committee and president of the Associated Student Council Mission Center, wanted answers from the administration.

“The chancellor stated that no position, no student worker positions, would be lost this year,” Hernandez said.

Messina acknowledged that there was an administrative error and deficient communication about the budget changes.

Messina referred to the budgeting decision as "sound" but "the lack of communication was an administrative failure on our part."

The total amount revoked from lab aide funds to restore the student worker positions is unclear.

Vice Chancellor of Finance Shannon Carter said that $100,000 has been moved to Student Affairs so that Vice Chancellor for Academic and Institutional Affairs David Yee can respond rapidly to address problems.

Chung was not satisfied. “For any other employee class this would not be acceptable,” they said.

Late in the meeting, the board voted to add discussion of the lab aide situation as an emergency agenda item, an unusual parliamentary procedure that the college’s general counsel assured them was legal through an exception in the Brown Act.

“The money was there at the start of the fiscal year,” said a lab manager who requested anonymity. But a couple of weeks into this semester, the money was gone. They managed to get half the money back through a ‘budget requisition.’

“If a notification went out, I never received it,” the lab manager said. 

During the transition between vice chancellors of Finance, Carter said, her predecessor asked departments what they needed to move forward, and those budget increase requests were loaded by staff. Carter did not name her predecessor, former Vice Chancellor of Finance Yulian Ligioso.

“The only thing that happened from tentative to adopted [budgets] was the correction back to the original amount that it should have been without the increase,” said Carter at the budget committee meeting on Tuesday, Sept. 22.

Because the rationale for the increases was not clear to them, the administration changed the allocation back to the average of the funds actually used over the last three years, plus an adjustment for the increase in the minimum wage, Messina said.

The two most recent budget committee meetings did not have majority attendance to make a vote on recommending the adopted budget. The board of trustees voted to approve it anyway on Sept. 10 in order to meet the Sept. 15 requirement. 

During public comment, Evangela Brewster, Student Vice Chancellor, said that some students had been retaliated against for speaking out.

A meeting between Yee and department chairs is scheduled for Thursday, Oct. 1.

Correction: In a story published Sept. 25, The Guardsman incorrectly reported that the Horticulture department lost $40,000 in funding. The department experienced a 40% decrease in funding from the previous amount.