Despite strong opposition from the teachers union, the Lane Community College Board of Education voted Jan. 7 to approve college-led budget cuts. The latest controversy comes amid a dramatic year for Oregon community colleges, with long and heated board meetings and ongoing battles among administrators and faculty over deadlocked labor negotiations and course cuts.
University administrators believe the approved proposal, which would cut spending by $8 million over the next three years, is a financial necessity. They said the college regularly fell short of the board’s requirement to maintain a 10% reserve. Managers also issued a new multi-year forecast predicting spending will grow.
“If we continue the trends we’ve had over the past two or three years, the college is going to be in the red every year,” said Kara Flath, Lane College’s vice president of finance and operations. The plan also recommends using some of the freed-up funds for deferred maintenance and other projects.
But faculty union leaders disagree with the administration’s view of the college’s financial status and future. Adrienne Mitchell, president of the Lane Community College Education Association’s faculty union, said leadership’s forecasts were pessimistic and that cutting about 8% from the $104 million operating budget was excessive.
“We don’t believe any cuts are necessary,” Mitchell said. “Right now, all of our funding sources — state funds, property tax and student tuition revenue — are up.”
The union released an independent report last week indicating that the college is in good financial shape and should increase, not decrease, investments in faculty and the campus overall. But faculty and administrators are fundamentally divided over how much spending will increase and what funds will be at the college’s disposal.
Fras said the union believed the college could reduce spending “to make the numbers look better.” “But as financial people, we have decades of financial experience” and such a cost estimate “is not financially feasible.”
Mitchell also argued that Oregon local budget law requires boards to follow legal procedures before formally passing a budget, including forming a committee of board and non-board members, submitting the budget and holding public hearings. The union issued a legal memorandum on the matter in September.
But administrators say their overall plan is not a final budget — it doesn’t specify the scope of specific cuts — so it doesn’t need to go through such a process yet. They said they plan to review the plan, solicit community feedback and develop a list of recommended cuts in the spring.
Board members initially expressed skepticism about the plan’s lack of concreteness, and discussions took place during multiple ad hoc budget committee meetings last week leading up to Wednesday’s meeting, which lasted nearly five hours.
Board member Zach Mulholland said at Wednesday’s meeting that he still sees “red flags and concerns about the lack of concrete cuts,” but concluded that “right now, it appears to be a balanced proposal.” Mulholland and other board members on the ad hoc committee recommended the board move forward with the plan as long as it includes annual updates and regular progress reports from administrators.
“Now maybe as a university we can work together,” Fras said.
strained faculty relationships
But the academy has been mired in other controversies. The faculty union, which represents about 525 full- and part-time professors, has been without a contract since June as administrators and faculty clashed over details.
Discussions have soured over disagreements over workload, class size limits, cost-of-living adjustments, the timing of layoff notices and the college’s efforts to agree on certain terms, which Mitchell said amounted to a “net disinvestment” of more than $1 million in faculty spending. The administration argued that some of the issues in the proposed contract were not directly related to faculty benefits, including proposals to add immigration status to the college’s nondiscrimination policy and strengthen campus security measures.
Grant Matthews, vice president for academic affairs, said significant progress has been made since this summer, but “really, we’re still stuck in economics.”
“We are trying to build an agency that is truly fiscally sustainable, and the proposals we have at the table are not fiscally responsible,” he said. He estimated the current contract proposal could cost the college as much as $61 million.
Professors are not happy with how the process is going. In a December survey of 271 faculty members, 87% reported low morale, 90% said they did not trust college deans, and 69% said they feared retaliation for expressing their views. The union also expressed concern about teachers of color leaving the academy. About 75 union members and supporters protested outside ahead of the board meeting on Wednesday.
Two more negotiations are planned for this month, with mediation scheduled to follow.
Recent course cuts have also caused tensions between faculty and university leaders. After introducing a new system that allowed students to register for full-year courses in the fall, Lane cut about 100 course sections during the winter and spring semesters.
Administrators said that, as in past years, this is a typical number of course cuts for the college to optimize its academic offerings, and advisors are making sure students still get the courses they need. But Mitchell called the move a blow to part-time faculty, who lose classes that may have been filled later this year. The union filed an unfair labor practice complaint with the Oregon Employment Relations Commission, arguing the canceled classes should have been part of the bargain. Mitchell also expressed concern that the cuts are a barrier for students who need to take certain courses, noting that a popular biology class — a prerequisite for many health professions courses — has a waitlist of 168 students.
Leadership tension
Meanwhile, there has been some drama on the board over the past year.
The faculty union accused administrators of encroaching on the board’s duties and criticized the board for failing to exercise its authority.
“There’s a lot of controversy surrounding the government essentially taking over the role of the Board of Education,” Mitchell said.
Meanwhile, in August, a third-party report concluded that former board chair Mulholland and other board members discriminated against President Stephanie Bulger, a black woman, on the basis of race and gender. The report said Mulholland and some other board members behaved in a dismissive or hostile manner toward Bulger, interrupting her conversations and deferring questions to male employees. The report also found Mulholland Drive intimidated a student. In September, the board reprimanded the former board chair, who apologized, and the entire board later issued a joint apology.
“We are deeply sorry for the negative impact our actions had on you and the entire university community,” said current board chair Austin Fölnagy, who has also been accused of taking a dismissive tone toward the president. “President Bulger, please accept the board’s apology for treating you poorly.”
Mitchell said the union is “very concerned about any type of discrimination and we think it’s important that everyone on campus feels safe.”
The college’s accrediting agency, the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities, also found the college in “substantial compliance” with accreditation standards in a notice last March but “requires improvement.” Among other recommendations, the accrediting body recommended that the college evaluate its internal communications and ensure that decision-making processes are “inclusive of all constituents.”
