A two-year college in Tacoma that declared a financial emergency and laid off full-time teachers two years ago is being circumspect about whether it will wield that rarely used authority again this year.
Last month’s action by the State Board for Community and Technical Colleges allows individual colleges to declare financial emergencies and then lay off faculty without having to adhere to some contracted job protections.
The last time the state board took this step was in June 2009 for the 2009-11 biennium. Only one of the state’s more than 30 community and technical colleges — Bates Technical College — took advantage of the rule.
This time around, Bates President Lyle Quasim said he expects to wait to make any decision until after the state’s November revenue forecast is released, and perhaps after the Legislature convenes for a special session in late November to address a budget shortfall expected to be as high as $2 billion.
Quasim said Bates used the declaration in 2009 to facilitate layoffs of half a dozen full-time instructors. The economy necessitated the closing or shrinking of career training for bookkeeping and accounting, cosmetology and land survey, he said.
“When you have significant reductions to take, there are basically only a few places you can take them,” he said.
Unlike other community and technical colleges, where about 50 percent of the faculty are part-time and therefore easier to lay off, 90 percent of the Bates faculty are full-time.
Last month’s decision by the state board is drawing concern from the union that represents faculty at the two-year schools. Under the emergency rule, full-time tenured instructors and those on the tenure-track could be laid off as easily as part-time, non-tenured teachers.
“Individual colleges can invoke the law,” said Sandra Schroeder, president of the Washington chapter of the American Federation of Teachers. “Then there’s no longer any reasonable protections we can give to the people who have been targeted. Seniority becomes fairly meaningless in this process.”
Schroeder’s worries may be just an exercise if no one decides to invoke the rule. To date, no colleges have exercised the authority or announced an intention to do so, Deb Merle, deputy executive director, government relations, for the college board, said Tuesday.
Schroeder said colleges and their faculty have done a good job finding solutions together, including furlough days, salary cuts, early retirement and not filling job openings.
The state board approved the financial emergency after tabling the idea to give members more time to monitor the economy and see if conditions might improve.
“These are extraordinarily challenging times, requiring us to make many difficult decisions, including this one,” said board chairwoman Sharon Fairchild, in a statement.
The 2011 Legislature cut state dollars going to community colleges by $76.8 million for the current fiscal year and by 12.6 percent or $84.3 million for fiscal 2013. State funding has dropped from $669 million last year to $592 million in fiscal 2012 and to $585 million in fiscal 2013. Faculty and staff salaries make up about 80 percent of those totals.
Most, but not all, of the cuts will be made up with legislative-approved tuition increases.
Schroeder said state law is harder on community college instructors than it is on instructors and professors at Washington’s four-year colleges.
No similar law allowing such a financial emergency exists for the four-year colleges.
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