EL CAMINO COLLEGE
Planning & Budgeting Committee
Minutes
Date: December 17, 2009
MEMBERS PRESENT:
Jackson, Tom – Academic Affairs
Lopez, Jessica – ASO
Ott, Jonathan – Campus Police
Quinones-Perez, Margaret – ECCFT
Reid, Dawn – Student & Community Adv.
OTHERS ATTENDING:
Shenefield, Cheryl – Administrative Svcs.
Spor, Arvid – Chair (non-voting)
Turner, Gary – ECCE
Tyler, Harold – Management/Supervisors
Widman, Lance – Academic Senate
Francisco Arce, Jo Ann Higdon, Jeanette Magee, Emily Rader,
John Wagstaff
Handouts: Five-Year Budget Assumption & Projection Details – ECC (Unrestricted General Fund),
Clarus Corporation Examination of Class Scheduling September 2009
The meeting was called to order at 1:00 p.m.
Approval of December 3, 2009 Minutes
The minutes were approved with no changes.
5-Year Budget Assumption & Projection Update:
Both handouts will be presented to the Board next week and will be sent electronically to PBC and
College Council.
First handout:
1. Incorporated changes suggested at the last PBC meeting and in College Council.
2. #11 – added asterisk that shows back-fill of categoricals for 2009-10 from Fund 15 ($780,000
plus $200,000 held in contingency) and future year(s) subject to forth-coming policy discussions.
3. Notes indicate this document was reviewed by PBC on 12/3/09 and College Council on
12/14/09.
4. Phase 1 – in-house term used to track multiple documents.
Second handout:
5. #9 PERS Employer Rate – corrected calculations from PERS letter dated 11/19/09. PERS
corrections changed #19 through #26.
6. #25 shows ending balance as a percentage. 2013-14 shows reserves projected to be below state
guidelines.
7. #4 COLA is optimistic projection.
Clarus Recommendations:
1. Partial printout of complete PowerPoint Clarus presentation handed out. Electronic version of
complete document was sent to PBC members.
2. Concern reported at last PBC meeting about data and reporting. The initial data sets ECC sent to
Clarus were reviewed because some courses with enrollment showed zero enrollment.
3. Clarus conducted interviews and data analysis last May at both ECC and CEC. Data analysis
included patterns of cancellations, efficiency, room utilization, and curriculum. Clarus sent
appendices electronically to A. Spor (11 megabytes, over 1600 pages). Final report will be sent
on Monday, 12-21-09.
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4. Issues noted in interviews:
a. ‘One use’ rooms limit usage.
b. Ownership issues where groups believe rooms belong to them.
i. “Will block rooms with pending” refers to blocking rooms by scheduling with
‘pending’ classes that never fills or gets cancelled.
c. Perception that little data is used to develop schedules.
d. Student Services staff (mostly counselors) not actively involved in course offering
decisions.
e. Impression that curriculum works in isolation - divisions are not communicating with
each other about schedule times and dates.
f. Students unable to complete programs at reasonable time or cannot complete at all.
g. Overlapping scheduled classes – schedule grid for morning, but no pattern for afternoon
and evening.
h. Errors in process – errors are carried over when errors built into a previous semester’s
schedule are rolled into the next semester schedule.
5. Cancellation Analysis:
a. Examined rates for Fall 2005 to Spring 2009.
b. 100% cancelled courses from ABC series of classes.
c. 86 courses were cancelled at least 50% of the time.
d. Recommendations:
i. Stop rolling cancelled classes into the new schedule and use data to help make
decisions.
ii. Conduct scheduling conference with deans, department chairs and student
services personnel for input. Change in clock hours (mandated by Chancellor’s
office) should show improvement and have a slight impact on FTES.
iii. Review courses with high cancellation rates of 50% or higher. Class Tracks –
software used to review trend data and fill rates. Rooms were blocked during key
times because large percentage of cancelled classes was between 8am and noon.
iv. Rooms should be held only if reassigned for late start.
6. Efficiency Analysis:
a. Goal is to minimize number of sections while increasing enrollment in each section.
Efficiency is defined by fill rate (number of students divided by class cap). Use data and
discussions to improve efficiency.
b. PBC suggestions:
i. Because of anomalies, data should be reviewed by those familiar with classes, not
by outside group just looking at raw data and drawing conclusions.
ii. Disciplines should not be rewarded for increasing efficiency over 100% when cap
is diminishing in today’s economic environment.
c. Clarus suggested potential changes for classes with less than 70% fill rate to include
condensing the number of multiple sections to free up rooms and increase the fill rate.
7. Utilization:
a. Higher level of room use is between 8:00am-2:00pm and 6:00pm-9:00pm, Monday
through Thursday. Only 80 sections are on M-W-F schedule this semester.
b. Recommendations:
i. Have a campus scheduler responsible for room assignments. Disciplines that
typically use rooms would have seniority for rooms but not ownership. Comment
was made that room allocation to divisions works well, but three divisions are
involved in ‘turf war.’ This may be a good opportunity to experiment with
scheduling and work on efficiency while there is less demand. Need to be careful
not to over generalize specialized classroom availability.
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8. Curriculum issues:
a. Need to make certain needed degree and certificate courses are offered at reasonable
frequency. Some required courses in catalog have not been offered in four years.
b. Recommendations:
i. Schedule planning at least a year in advance if not two years.
ii. Develop accelerated program courses and alternative format classes (Internet,
hybrid, and Weekend College).
9. Forty-five percent or more of the curriculum are heavy load, 4-5 unit classes. Class starting and
ending times as well as the time between classes are important issues to address. ECC priorities
changed from growth to contraction mode. Difficult to generalize across curriculum because of
specialized needs.
10. When will discussions and recommendations addressing issues take place? What are priorities in
general? Follow-up? Everyone should review and get a sense of what this report means. Issues
fall primarily under Academic Affairs’ deans and faculty. Deans need to digest, discuss and
decide scheduling improvements needed for their departments. Updates in Enrollment
Management meetings will give committee better understanding how report information is being
used. Administrative Services should make sure certain rooms are accurately listed with number
of usable seats per room. Interface with counselors to discuss scheduling challenges students
face. Need to develop and follow a scheduling grid.
Facilities Steering Committee October 26, 2009 Minutes:
1. Discussed the ‘preferred option’ of the Facilities Master plan. With decreasing cost of
construction and potential state funding, may be able to refurbish or rebuild most buildings on
campus. To do so, will have to go out for 20-year extension of current bond.
2. Cost of the MBA building may be less than expected.
3. The Master Plan will be presented to the Board in February-March 2010.
PBC Ad-Hoc Group
1. A. Spor, E. Rader, G. Turner and H. Tyler formed a subcommittee to review and modify PBC’s
purpose statement and responsibilities to accurately reflect what PBC does. Modifications will
be brought to PBC for further discussions. From subcommittee meeting, realized Facilities
Steering Committee updates is a large part of planning and will be added to future PBC
meetings.
Plan Builder Update:
1. September – December timeframe for programs to work on their 2010-11 plans. Deadline to
submit plans are end of this month. Programs appear to be involving faculty and staff in planning
process.
2. Seventy 2010-11 ECC plans have been submitted so far: sixty program plans, nine unit plans and
one area plan.
3. Administrative Services has a slight problem rolling over plans to incorporate graphs and charts.
The next meeting is scheduled on January 7, 2010.
The meeting ended at 2:15 p.m.
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