EL CAMINO COLLEGE
Planning & Budgeting Committee
Minutes
March 17, 2005
MEMBERS PRESENT
David Vakil, Chair
Thomas Jackson, Academic Affairs
Dawn Reid, Mgmt/Supervisors
Cheryl Shenefield, Adm. Services
Susan Taylor, ECCFT
Harold Tyler, Student & Comm. Adv.
OTHERS ATTENDING
Carolee Casper – ECCE
Susan Dever – Alternate, ECCFT
Pam Fees – Staff Support
Donna Grogan – Alt., Academic Senate
Alex Kelley – Staff Support
Terry Newman - Alternate, ECCE
Arvid Spor – Staff Support
Handouts
1.
State Budget Update February 25, 2005
2.
Exhibit C, 2004-05 First Principal Apportionment
3.
2004-05 Equalization Allocation
4.
Memo of March 17 from President Fallo re “No District Left Behind”
David Vakil called the meeting to order at 1:04 p.m.
Note: David Vakil will ensure that all handouts are provided to committee members who may be absent. Information will be sent either electronically or via campus mail. It was further suggested that presenters provide an electronic version of material to the chair of PBC and the information can then be sent to committee members electronically.
Approval of Minutes
The Minutes of February 17, 2005, were approved with the following corrections:
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Page 1, last paragraph: About 2,700 students enrolled during the add period last Spring.
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Page 2, paragraph 7: … the name of the new division set up by Bo Morton is the Center for
International Education. Bo Morton will report directly to Pat Caldwell.
COGNOS Demonstration and Information on the El Camino College Portal
COGNOS is a software package that allows for “what if” statistical analysis for resource planning.
ITS updates the COGNOS files every day of the semester with information on FTE, FTES, enrollment information, and other attendance statistics. Information on each class for the last few semesters is available as well as how divisions are doing by these enrollment statistics. Six
COGNOS enrollment reports are available with the capability of drilling down to the detail of each section and section number. There is a license limit of two people per each vice president’s area to access COGNOS, due to financial limitations.
Public documents are available on Portal under the tabs that say “Stats and Reports” and “Budgets”.
Budget reports are loaded on a daily basis. All employees with security access to the portal have access to all other information except COGNOS on the “USEFUL LINKS” tab.
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There are links to the Chancellor’s Office, important reference documents and one for COGNOS.
The links to the Chancellor’s Office reports provide statistical information for any community college. Information is updated within 4 weeks after the end of the term on the Chancellor’s office reports web site. Alex said the committee members probably already have access; if not, ITS can provide access to Portal.
State Budget Update
The First Period Apportionment report was posted on the Chancellor’s web site at the end of
February. The information has been shared on campus and would have been available for the cancelled March 3 PBC meeting. This is sometimes called First Principal Apportionment or Exhibit
C, all the same document.
The Governor wants to have a special election. Employee groups around the area were invited to attend a rally to express their opinions to the Governor about his intention to move forward with a ballot initiative. A special election in November is expected to cost $70 million, compared to waiting for the next regular election in June 2006. There are four critical items he wants to see in his next year’s budget. He would like to have redistricting prior to the June election. He also feels it is urgent to remake rules currently in place for contributions from the State to STRS. That proposal and merit pay for teaching staff are two items causing the education community to come out in force along with his reneging on the promise of Prop 98 funding. Expect more changes to the
January proposal by the time the May Revise is announced around the middle of May.
State Budget Update #2 features the Legislative Analyst Office analysis of the State budget since
January. They say they think the State is going to be a little better off than what proposals were showing when the Governor made the first proposal in January, but the State is still not totally out of the woods. LAO suggests that enrollment growth should be funded but not quite as high, 1.9% instead of 3%. COLA should increase from 3.93% to 4.1%.
Students are now being told enrollment fees will increase next year. Fees have risen from $11 to
$18 to $26, and now the LAO says it should be $33. It brings more money to the State but not to community colleges. Across the State, colleges are not reaching their target enrollments. Is this due to the economy or are there other reasons for the decline in enrollments?
A work group of community college CBO’s met for a brief time last summer to address the current program-based funding model. The new proposal addresses equalization, disparities in the growth formula, property tax disparities, deficit financing, non-credit education, and program-based funding. The recommendation didn’t get a lot of coverage in the State as no funding numbers were tied to it. It was just a concept of changes that could be made. Between August and December, the recommendations were further reviewed to indicate the funding repercussions. Next, superintendents were asked to vote on accepting the funding model. Districts were categorized as small, middle, and large single college districts, 2-college districts, and multi-college districts.
ECC is the largest of the medium, single-college districts. The proposed model was compared to past revenue allocation. The model takes into consideration whether or not a District has additional campus centers. The Inglewood Center does not qualify as one of these.
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Compared to the current rate of funding, there would be an increase of funds to ECC but, analyzed in relation to others, not as much of an increase as other colleges receive. ECC comes in at 72 out of 72 districts, making ECC’s funding the lowest per student ratio. It has now been approved in concept by the Board of Governors but they are willing to listen to new ideas.
Pam Fees shared a letter prepared by Tom Fallo on this topic where he uses the term “No District
Left Behind”. It addresses concerns ECC has about the equity of the proposal.
Information Items From Prior Meetings

David Vakil received an e-mail from Ann Garten stating that her budget is $200,000. She gave
David four of the recent community newsletters, the most current being from the past winter session. They are available for any of the committee who would like to review them.
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Creating a PACE Program
There is no news about a meeting with Pat Caldwell to discuss how it might work.
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Arvid Spor presented a brochure from Cypress College, comparing the cost of Cypress College to a four-year university. He felt the marketing for ECC with a similar brochure would be effective.
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No new information about the possibility of creating an orientation session.
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Health Center
More information is needed to make a decision about extending the service hours of the Health
Center. How much money would it cost and would student fees be able to cover it? BOGG students do not pay for Health Center fees. In the past, BOGG payments were replaced, but this no longer happens. Questions raised by representatives who have issues regarding health fees will be discussed. One thing being proposed is that EOPS students who are BOGG students are asking for EOPS to pay their fees.
The legal maximum charge to students for the health center fee is $13 for Fall and Spring semesters and $7 for Winter and Summer. It was stated that $7 would not cover the intersession cost. Would the District consider it if ASO does not support it? Still need to know hours and staffing. The situation is not good without BOGG reimbursements.
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Recommendation Made for Task Force for Persistence and Retention
It is understood that there are a lot of concerns about this. Pat Caldwell previously stated that most, if not all concerns, were being met by other sources. Regarding research on what are causes for losing people, research has been done in the past and answers were the same from previous surveys. A lot of activity with Student and Community Advancement as well as
Academic Affairs is going on.
There are a number of individuals who handle different components of the topic. Nothing is centralized.
Donna Grogan took a personal survey of students in her class who were no-shows. One of the main reasons was parking.
Julie Stewart mentioned students retake classes. If a student takes a class a fourth time,
ECC must absorb the cost.
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There was discussion that David Vakil contact Pat Caldwell and ask about having research done regarding drops and retention.
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ECC was not successful in finding a candidate for Research Director. The search is now going on for research analyst.
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The Dean of Enrollment Services needs to develop a tracking system for students. If there is no research analyst, then look at alternatives of what ITS may provide for services and interpretations of surveys.
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Has anyone put into Q-Builder the cost or need for more police or cadets for security in the parking area? This needs to be included. The Police Department has requested staffing increases specifically for the new parking structure. David Vakil said this will be an issue for a later date.
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Portal
Everyone has access to useful links tabs. There is a tab for the Chancellor’s Office and one for
COGNOS. Click on Chancellor’s Office and reports give status for any community college.
Information on COGNOS is updated within 4 weeks after the end of the term. Alex said the committee members probably have access already but, if not, ITS can give it. Six reports are available.
Alex Kelley would like to have Satish Warrier give PBC a special session to work through what information is available on line. He will contact Satish to do it in the ITS area. The committee can work out the most convenient time.
Agenda Development
Arvid Spor said the committee as a group needs to start thinking about Q-Builder. All managers have been told that, by the end of this month, any plans have to be in the system for new funds.
David Vakil sent an e-mail to Pat Caldwell with an idea that perhaps could save time. In the past recommendations made by the vice presidents were almost a “done deal”. He asked Pat if the vice president would meet with PBC to go over Q-Builder at the same time. To go through all of it and make up the list is extremely time consuming. The larger the group, the longer the process will take. Anticipate that the vice presidents would only bring in the top 10-20 positions. Bottom line,
David Vakil will talk to Pat Caldwell, Alex Kelley, and Jim Schwartz to see what the process entails and get something together for the next meeting. Consider what Arvid Spor said, that vice presidents bring in top 20 positions, need to understand what is prioritization. Have more discussion on this at the next meeting.
If the vice presidents bring the top 10-20, allow others not in the top numbers to come for an appeal process with justification. Discuss at next meeting.
Approval of Minutes – March 17, 2005 – All PBC Participants
Adjournment
The meeting adjourned at 2:30 p.m.
Recorder: Delores Buerger
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