The core of the district is being threatened, according to the classified workers of the Ventura County Community College District.
“They’re chipping away at the bone, and worse than that,” said Joaquin Flores, the representative for the classified workers of the VCCCD. “It’s going to hurt the district’s brand and their image. That cuts were made to the disabled and the least able to benefit themselves, and it may take a while for the community and for voters to get over that.”
The district has cut as many as 40 classified workers since June 2009, according to the VCCCD vice chancellor of human resources, Patricia Parham. The classified workers are separate from faculty and management on all three district campuses. A group of classified workers came together to speak out against the district and the Board of Trustees at the board meeting on Sept. 8.
The members of the VCCCD faculty support the classified workers, and also believe that cuts made to the classified workers are not the most efficient way of balancing the budget.
“There were other ways to do this,” said Kathleen Sage, the Executive Director of American Federation Teachers Local 1828, the representative for the faculty of the VCCCD. “These cuts cut into the quality of education for students; the class sizes going up, the district is serving 3,000 more than it did last year with no raise in faculty. We have 200 less faculty plus 30 less classified employees.”
At the Board of Trustees meeting, members of the classified workers continued to argue that cuts should also come from the top and not just the bottom. They felt that the group should be included in negotiation.
The idea of furlough days, or unpaid days, was also mentioned by the classified workers but the district did not feel it represented a sufficient solution for the issue at hand, according to Sue Johnson, the vice chancellor of business and administrative services for the VCCCD.
Johnson continued to say that furlough days would, however, be discussed with the union for the next fiscal year. A furlough day would be preferred by the classified workers.
“A furlough is different than a salary rollback because it’s only for the time of the agreement,” Johnson said. “A temporary means. Because our funding cuts were targeted from the state, the percent is much greater in the categorical programs; we did not believe that furloughs were a good solution to the current problem.”
The classified workers were also curious as to whether or not the management positions in the district have taken any cuts, which according to Parham, they have.
“A Vice President position at Oxnard College and a Dean position at Moorpark College were eliminated, and a Vice Chancellor position for the District has been frozen,” Parham said in an email with the Student Voice. “There will be some additional management position changes in the near future related to grant funding and categorical cuts imposed by the state of California.”
But at the end of the day, Flores and the rest of the classified workers feel as though the cuts have been made a little too loosely.
“The cuts have been far too liberal and painted with broad brushes,” said Flores. “You can’t just say your arriving at new efficiency… unless there’s some new invention or some new machine that’s come out that’s going to arrive at that efficiency without cutting at services. I’d like to see that.
“So, our question is: show us the machine, show us the technology, the labor saving devices that are going to arrive at these efficiencies, then we can talk, until then we think that they’re selling the public on efficiency when really they’re trying to cut services,” Flores said.
