By Ricky Talbot
Correction made regarding the Peninsula College Foundation’s involvement made June 20,2019 by Ricky Talbot
The second highest faculty and staff cuts since the 2008 Recession took place as a result of an $800,000 deficit.
Every year, the Peninsula College President Luke Robins, has to present a balanced budget to the board of trustees.
The budget planning for the 2019-20 fiscal year came with a burden to the song of an $800,000 deficit.
When the budget is 80 percent personnel costs, he explains that there isn’t much that can be cut.
To balance the budget, there were a total of 14 people impacted: layoffs, resignations and retirements, all of which go into affect by July.
Three people were layed off.
Seven people retired.
Three people resigned.
One contract expired and was not renewed.
The Community Education Program
was indefinitely suspended.
Personnel reduction, according to the
president, made up “one third to a half” of budget reductions.
Robins said, “A lot of folks were engaged in conversation about… ‘Where do we look to make some reductions so we can balance the budgets?’”
“A significant portion of the budget reduction, of erasing that $800,000 deficit (a third to a half) was through salary savings that happened because of these resignations, retirements, layoffs,” Robins said.
“We were as transparent with the process as we could be given there were personnel actions including the overall reductions.”
Enrollment
“Enrollment has been the driver of our budget issues,” Robins said.
Funding from state allocations are controlled by enrollment. The state legislature decides how much to allocate to PC depending on the number of students enrolled full time.
This number is called the FTE, or Full Time Equivalent.
In the 2017-18 school year, there were 1,395 FTE students.
The budget revenue comes from adding expenses, tuition, fees and state allocations.
When looking at the current enrollment trend, Robins and campus leader- ship decided to project a flat, no growth or decline, in enrollment for the 2019-20 school year.
As enrollment declined, administrative staff started to take actions to address the blow of student declines.
The National Center for Educational Statistics showed that out of 3.1 million high school graduates between the years 2000-2016, and average of 30 percent of students don’t automatically enroll in college.
Of those that did enroll, only 30 percent decided to attend a two-year college. Across the nation, there is a steady
decline in college attendance and enrollment.
PC is no exception to this trend.
The PC Foundation
“The reason that the foundation exist is to support the college as an institution, and also the students, programs, faculty, staff,” Foundation Director Getta Rogers Workman said.
Working within this purview, The Foundation took part in helping the college balance the budget.
The college provided an incentive to staff looking for retirement and tapped its fund held by The Foundation.
The money for this incentive was paid for in part through a fund that the college made The Foundation custodian of.
“The Foundation secured funds in 2016 through a complex historic tax credit process connected to the renovation of building 202 at Fort Worden (the Port Townsend Campus.)” Rogers Workman said.
“Earnings from this fund (not the fund itself) will be transferred to the College for this purpose,” she added.
“It’s really important for us to share with our donors, that 100 percent of their giving goes to students and programs.”
Deficit
At the beginning of the 2018-19 fiscal year, Peninsula College froze open staff positions and operation budgets where possible.
According to Interim Vice President of Finance and Administration, Carie Edmiston, many of those positions that were frozen, needed to be filled.
As a result, the college headed into the 2019-2020 budget meetings with a $400,000 deficit that had been taken care of the previous year by freezing positions.
One position that couldn’t stay on ice moving forward was the Vice President of Finance and Administration.
Sonja Silbert was hired to fill that position in the Fall 2019
Other factors in the deficit coming into the new fiscal year had to do with Legislature/State Board allocations, and tuition.
The legislature approved a cost of living adjustment increase and only funded 65 percent of the increase, Edmiston explained.
They then raised tuition by 2.4 percent and expected the college to be able to balance the increase through enrollment.
“Our enrollment didn’t come through,” Edmiston said.
So, without enough tuition from a decline in enrollment, the college had another $200,000 they had to add to the surmounting deficit.
Since enrollment was down, State allocations provided to the college by measuring the full time equivalent students was lost as well.
This added another $200,000 to the deficit.
All these factors combined made up the $800,000 deficit the college faced going into the 2019-20 fiscal school year.