Colleagues,
Attached you will find a proposed plan for a process for "restructuring" the college in order to reduce
General Fund spending by about $2 million commencing with the 2016-17 academic year. This draft has
been edited and discussed at the College Planning Council at CPC's two most recent meetings. Many of
you have already received a copy from your dean, but this email is an attempt to make sure the entire
faculty has had a chance to see the proposal.
Please review this and share your thoughts and reactions with your Senate representatives and
colleagues . Faculty Senate will be discussing this at our April 7 meeting and it is scheduled to be
discussed/edited/approved at the CPC meeting of April 15.
Most of the rationale and description of the process is in the longer attachment. The composition of a
Think Tank (to encourage creative thinking about how the college can deliver services
differently...hopefully better) is the other document.
None of us want to see the college go down a road that leads to a downward spiral for the college....and
there are many of us urging the college to continue to explore ways to improve our enrollment
picture. My email of last Friday on "Equity" suggests that many of our current efforts on student success
and equity might have the added benefit of actually RETAINING more of the students that come to
Cabrillo to improve their lives. Others are already promoting useful ideas (Thanks, Dan) about how we
can promote enrollments and student success. Many of us are suffering from "Reduction Fatigue" as
the state's budget never seems to give us a chance to grow and serve our students better. However, I
agree that the appropriate and currently sustainable FTES (Full Time Equivalent Students) target should
be about 10,500, down from this year's 10,887. (It's also the fiscally conservative approach to take.) We
cannot continue to spend one-time money chasing FTES as we have for the last few years, and we
cannot borrow from our summer enrollments after we spend them all to meet our FTES target this year.
I cannot absolutely assure you that every program will emerge from this process unscathed. But I can
assure you (from the 57 committee meetings that I attend weekly - OK that's a high estimate) that
program elimination is not on the table at the present time. And we NEED to continue to maximize
enrollment in the instructional programs that earn the FTES which generates our income from the
state. We need to do contingency planning for the short-term decline in enrollment, and we need to
position ourselves for when the pendulum swings the other way and/or our programs attract and retain
more students than we presently serve.
I welcome these opportunities to think creatively about how we can leverage our resources to serve our
students better. I look forward to hearing your ideas on how we can move forward, and, in the short
term, whether you think this restructuring process can help us to address part of that
challenge. Faculty Senate will continue to serve as a forum through which faculty ideas can be brought
forward to administration, CPC, students, staff, and the community. Thanks.
Michael Mangin
Faculty Senate President