SSU says faculty OK of furloughs avoids wider cuts

<p>Members of the California State University Faculty Association approved taking two unpaid furlough days a month as part of a plan for the 23-campus system to weather the state’s $26 billion budget crisis.</p><p>At Sonoma State University in Rohnert Park, Vice Provost Melinda Barnard said the outcome of the vote brought relief because a no vote would have decimated the ranks of lecturers next spring and caused a divide with staffers who had agreed to furloughs.</p><p>“The relief is palpable, you can just feel it on the campus because we are not divided now,” Barnard said. “Without this vote we would have lost virtually all lecturers on this campus this spring.”</p><p>Even with the yes vote, Barnard said SSU is developing a budget plan that will eliminate roughly half of the school’s lecturers in the spring semester.</p><p>Fifty-four percent of the 13,000 association members who voted agreed to the deal, which amounts to a 10 percent pay cut, while 46 percent voted no. Sixty-eight percent of eligible members cast a vote before polls closed Wednesday. Results were announced Friday. Campus-by-campus results were unavailable</p><p>“They voted to shoulder another sacrifice for the good of the university,” said Lillian Taiz, president of the CSU Faculty Association and professor of history at CSU Los Angeles.</p><p>“They wanted to save classes for the students and jobs for their colleagues,” Taiz said. </p><p>“I think for all of us, this was an agonizing set of choices because this was never just a choice between a furlough and a layoff,” she said. “Really, what we are are talking about is furlough and layoffs.”</p><p>In a separate question, 80 percent of respondents said they have no confidence in the leadership of CSU Chancellor Charles Reed, Taiz said. Four percent said they do have confidence in Reed’s leadership and the remaining 16 percent did not say.</p><p>“Clearly from the results of the no confidence vote, (members) think that the time may have arrived for fresh leadership in the CSU,” Taiz said. “The chancellor has been here for nine years. Maybe it’s a signal for a time for a change.”</p><p>Reed has called for nearly all of CSU’s 47,000 employees to take furloughs two days a month as part of a plan to address a $584 million budget shortfall caused by a 20 percent reduction in state funding.</p><p>Earlier this week, a union representing 16,000 nonacademic employees also approved the furloughs.</p><p>Officials from Reed’s office have said a no vote on the furlough plan would have resulted in the layoff of thousands of part-time instructors and the elimination of 22,000 courses.</p><p>It is unclear how many layoffs and course reductions will occur as a result of the yes vote.</p><p>Fall classes, which begin in late August, will be less affected because many already have been staffed and selected by students. Under-enrolled classes that in years past would have continued to be offered likely will be cut, Barnard said.</p><p>“We do not yet know what the furlough plan will look like because now the CFA needs to sit down and hammer that out (with the chancellor’s office). We don’t do that campus by campus,” Barnard said. “Obviously, we are not going be able to start them right away in August.”</p><p>SSU is expecting a $12.5 million cut to its $93 million general fund budget. The staff and faculty furloughs are expected to save the campus $6.3 million.</p><p>Systemwide, CSU plans to cut its 250,000 enrollment by 40,000 students over the next two years, including the equivalent of 450 full-time students at SSU. Cutting enrollment will save SSU about $4.7 million.</p><p>But Taiz expressed concern over moves she said are “dismantling the whole system.”</p><p>“A whole generation of Californians will not have opportunities that previous generations have had,” she said.</p><p><NO1><NO>Karen Reichardt, a graduate student in SSU’s anthropology department, said students, <NO1><NO>already feeling that the quality of education has declined with budget cuts, are frustrated at the prospect of further reductions.</p><p>“It’s just the fact that the professors will have less days to devote to students. There will be less access to office hours,” she said. “In the end the students suffer the most because we don’t have the resources to have a successful academic career.”</p><p>Barnard said SSU is committed to keeping in place all courses that students need to graduate, but those classes might appear in fewer time slots.</p><p>“There is absolutely a commitment by every department to offer the courses students need to graduate,” she said. “The flexibility of the number of sections of a course or when they are offered will be much more restricted. That is going to be a challenge for students.”</p><p>Last week, the University of California’s Board of Regents approved a furlough plan that will require most of its 180,000 employees to take 11 to 26 days of unpaid leave over the coming academic year.</p><p>Staff Writer Kerry Benefield writes an education blog at extracredit.blogs.pressdemocrat.com. She can be reached at 526-8671 or kerry.benefield@pressdemocrat.com</p>