Renton Technical College students and staff will see the impacts of the multibillion-dollar state budget shortfall in the loss of some basic services and jobs.
And students will get hit in the pocketbook. Tuition will rise 7 percent in 2010 and again in 2011, for a roughly $380 increase for a typical full-time student during the two years of the budget biennium.
The college will eliminate 27 positions, including eight teaching jobs and a counselor, from a staff of about 320 full-time equivalent employees.
Renton Technical College had already begun the arduous process of cutting its budget last year, saving about $838,000 with such moves as deferring purchases of instructional equipment, reducing travel and closing the school’s swimming pool.
But when the state’s budget shortfall grew even deeper – to about $9 billion, the knife had to get sharper.
Based on the new $35 billion two-year budget state Gov. Chris Gregoire signed Tuesday, RTC has to cut its budget by 10.7 percent – about $2.2 million – in the 2009-2011 biennium. That would include the 838,000 made starting last July, before the current biennium begins in July.
The tuition hikes will help offset those costs, so the actual budget cut is about 7.6 percent for the biennium. The final figures also are close to what the school had used as a planning model, according to President Don Bressler.
Still, the cuts will hamper RTC’s ability to fulfill its mission, which is to educate and re-educate the state’s workforce.
“These cuts have forced us to cut some basic essential services,” said Bressler. The cuts, he added, are “so against my philosophy.”
The college will save about $587,000 by eliminating five programs that train bank tellers, medical lab technicians, construction traders workers, paraeducators and computer-aided designers.
The college’s Student Success Center will close and its job as a career and placement center will fall back to the college’s instructors. Students will have to wait longer to see counselors.
Despite the cuts, Bressler said the college’s open-door policy remains intact.
Early on, college officials notified the four unions representing college employees that layoffs were possible. The state community college board could act at its June meeting to declare a financial emergency, which would speed the time that layoffs can occur. However, Bressler said RTC won’t need to use that option to move forward with its layoffs.
Bressler and other community and technical college presidents argued their case during the recently concluded legislative session to protect funding for their schools because they are critical to keeping people employed during economic downturns.
“The solution is to have a trained workforce,” Bressler said.
Renton Technical and other schools also are important to fulfill the goals of a newly created Washington Council on Aerospace to make sure aerospace workers get the most current training available to work in the industry.
That goal comes as RTC’s and other college budgets were cut substantially and at a time when tuitions are rising. But Gregoire, in signing the executive order in Renton creating the council, said without the tuition hikes, program cuts at the colleges would have been deeper.
The $16 million that RTC will receive from the state in 2010 represents about half of the school’s $32 million in revenue. In the past, the school typically received about $18 million from the state.
