Summer classes cut to save full-time jobs
By Don Clyde Staff Writer
The approval of the 2009–2010 City College annual budget at the Oct. 22 board of trustees meeting will eliminate almost all regular summer 2010 classes.
Only summer classes in programs set by certain accrediting bodies, mostly in the health industry, which require timely completion, will be offered, and there will only be a few, according to Peter Goldstein, City College vice chancellor of finance and administration.
Chancellor Dr. Don Q. Griffin said City College was trying to keep those courses to a minimum.
“The only other option to summer cuts would be a cut to our work force,” Goldstein said. “And we want to keep our full-timers.”
Only a small number of part-time faculty and staff have been let go, and no full-timers have been let go, Goldstein said.
City College plans to cut a total of 627 classes during fall and spring. The summer cuts will add to the burden on many students.
“It really affects me because I want to graduate on time,” 18-year-old City College student Anh Troung said. “I will have to go take classes at Skyline College.”
Troung, who wants to study finance, already experienced the impact of class cuts when she was denied entry into an impacted fall ESL course with a lengthy waiting list. She said cuts to classes were especially hard on international students who pay much more than California residents.
“A lot of my friends who want to go to UC will have to wait a year,” she said.
Class cuts are just part of City College’s attempt to fill its $18 to $20 million 2009-2010 budget shortfall. Slashing the summer 2010 term will save approximately $4 million according to Goldstein.
City College offered 915 summer classes in 2008 and 853 summer classes in 2009.
“We intend to have a summer school in 2011,” Chancellor Don Q. Griffin said at the Oct. 22 board meeting. “This is a one-year thing.”
Griffin said if the summer 2010 session wasn’t cut, City College would have a “decimated fall and spring for the future.”
Read the 2009-2010 budget at http://www.ccsf.edu/Offices/Budget_Office/FY0910%20FINAL%20Recommendation_V8.pdf.
