On June 24, the Board of Trustees approved the college’s budget for the 2026-27 school year. This occurs in lieu of proposed program cuts occurring since last fall.
“… This fiscal year … will close with a net positive operating balance … At the same time, we continue to face significant financial pressures from state funding reductions, rising expenses and many other factors,” President David May said in a June 26 statement.
President May highlighted that the college is aiming for long-term financial stability.
There were many notable changes according to the special meeting packet on the Board of Trustees’ website. First, some budget highlights include a 3.3% state tuition increase and 2.5% Running Start tuition increase, as well as predicted decreases in international enrollment and Running Start enrollment.
In total, the annual budget sums up to be slightly over $191 million, with almost $154 million going towards funding operations, almost $19 million towards proprietary funds and around $18 million funding financial aid. Around $46 million are set aside in reserve funds.
In this year’s budget, full-time faculty salaries are budgeted to just under $27 million, with adjunct faculty’s salaries budgeted to a little under $22 million. Exempt and classified staff’s salaries are budgeted to around $21 million. Slightly over $2 million is saved for “Other Salaries” and $449,000 is saved for travel, which decreased by almost $30,000 compared to last year’s budget. Nothing was said about the college’s budgets for its programs.
The Services and Activities (S&A) budget was also approved after a rigorous process in reducing approximately $6 million in budget requests to $3 million to meet the budget’s target. The committee aimed to prioritize operations and areas that have campus-wide impact, campus events, academic and co-curricular success, food to support programming, funding that benefits the most amount of students and equitable funding across the board.
Moreover, the committee states that if additional funds are found at the end of the year, it will go into the ASGBC General Fund. If there is a deficit in funds found at the end of the year, however, the necessary funds will come out of the ASGBC General Fund.
The packet notes the immense effort the S&A committee put into finalizing this budget.
This year’s committee was comprised of members like ASG President Alarick Alfredo-Soto, ASG Director of Finance Merviel Kalala, Classified Staff Member Jiemyjoyce Reduque, Exempt Staff Member Rhymel Dacquel, Faculty member Ethan Anderson and four Student at Large members: Plamedi Tshilanda, Hae Sol Park, Yize Liu and Tyler Mak.
