Bakersfield College students will find it harder to see a counselor next year and may see fewer classes offered because of budget cuts, according to campus officials.
“It’s sort of a bad budget year,” said Steve Eso, president of BC’s faculty union. “We will be having to make potential cuts.”
Due to a shortage in state funds, community colleges are required to make reductions in their budgets for the 2002-03 year. However, Eso said that there has never been such a dramatic cut that could affect students and staff.
“I’ve only been here five years,” he said. “And every year there seems to be some kind of budget anxiety. I don’t think the cuts have generally been this big as this year. It has just been a bad budget year for the state.”
The college is expected to cut in areas that provide services for students, such as counseling and EOP&S.
“This means fewer counseling appointments for students and longer waits to get in to see a counselor,” he said. “The district has proposed that 10 or 15 counselors’ hours and days be reduced. Most of the time, counselors are on contracts for 215 days. The district is proposing to cut 20 days from counselors. And number two, there is a possibility of a reduction of courses that is being offered. We’re already seeing that in the summer classes, but that could also mean the fall or spring.”
BC students may not only face some obstacles in making appointments with counselors, but in receiving the assistance that they need as well, according to Counseling Director Michael Gutierrez.
“Over 3,450 students will not have access to see our counselors and that is just for advising and counseling,” Gutierrez said. “But we also have students who come in during crises that we provide counseling for. And we have students who come in that need financial aid information, daycare referrals, money problems, needs for jobs and transferring services, which includes high schools.”
Gutierrez said he finds it troubling how cuts will affect students, especially during the summer.
“In the summertime, those are all counseling appointments we’re losing,” he said. “At that time, we have a lot of high school students coming into register and those students are typically full-time students. That can have quite an impact on our enrollment.”
Student orientations also will not be offered during the upcoming summer session.
“Our mission of our college is to empower students to achieve. But we have just done is wipe out a bunch of services.”
According to Gutierrez, cuts that target counseling, EOP&S, and CalWORKS are suppose to save more than $20,000.
“We’re talking about a $21,000 cut,” he said. “Yet we’re going to lose over 3,000 counseling appointments. We already have a problem with the number of staff we have for students coming in to see us. And we have just compounded that problem by reducing these days. It was recognized that we do not have enough counselors to begin with. I find it interesting that we are now cutting the days of counselors again. There’s got to be another way.”
CalWORKS, a program that offers work opportunities to recipients by focusing on employment, is being cut.
Don Turney, a counselor at BC and for CalWORKS, has worked since 1995, but will no longer maintain his position since the budget has eliminated the program.
“It will affect me, as one of the worst ones, becaue I got a cessation contract letter,” Turney said. “I’m done and I’m no longer here after June 30. “It’s life changing, it’s radical and now poof – it’s disappeared. And so now CalWORKS, as we know it, is history.”
Turney said he was shocked to received the letter in the mail.
“I was devastated,” he said. “Some jobs fit you and this is what I was made to do. All my professional life I have been a counselor,” he said. “But it seems that people don’t take counselors seriously or don’t give them their due. And in that sense I’m tired of my profession being diparaged and having to be cut first.”
Aside from his profession, Turney has had a history with BC.
“I love this school,” he said. “I played in the junior Rose Bowl at BC and we won. But if I thought that if me not being here would help the school, I would leave.”
M.E.Ch.A. has a petition to protest the cuts, according to Patrick McKendry, member of the club.
“(M.E.Ch.A. knows) the money needs to be cut somewhere but we’re trying to see if those cuts can be made somewhere else,” McKendry said. “Basically we’re trying to find answers for the problem. This cut is going to limit students to get an education with classes, and it also hinders the whole mission statement from BC.”