Yuba College slashing up to 56 jobs

Up to 56 jobs may be lost after Yuba Community College District trustees approved staffing reductions the district links to a state funding cutback.

"Nobody wants to see anybody go through this," college spokeswoman Miriam Root said Friday of layoffs of nonteaching staff, including secretaries, groundskeepers and custodians. The final number of eliminated jobs won't be known until December, Root said.

Donna Veal-Spenser, president of the local Classified School Employees Association, said the union had sought to avoid the cutbacks by working with the college district, which has three campuses serving eight counties.

"It's heartbreaking," Veal-Spenser said. "We're talking people out here 20 to 30 years."

The cutbacks will leave the new library at Woodland College with only the librarian to staff the facility after two classified positions are eliminated, she said.

The job cuts weren't unexpected: Nicki Harrington, chancellor of the college district, wrote in an Oct. 11 Appeal-Democrat op-ed that the reductions were in addition to faculty, classified, and management positions that are currently vacant, and more than a dozen planned for the 2009-2010 year that are on hold.

Lisa Jensen-Martin, president of the Yuba College Faculty Association, said the college district continues to make cuts that are counter to the best interests of students.

"It baffles me when they sit on a 7 percent reserve," Jensen-Martin said of the district's $3.1 million reserve.

Root said the reserve may be needed if the state makes additional cuts in the middle of the school year.

"We can fall back then to mitigate whatever future cuts we have to make," she said of the importance of the reserve fund.

Tom Page, labor relations representative for the California School Employees Association, called the job cuts by the college district "just unconscionable," and said the union would continue to fight them.

"It's not over," Page said Friday. "We're not done."

Trustees, meeting Wednesday at a Lake County location whose distance from the Yuba-Sutter area drew criticism, also approved a $45.5 million budget for the college district.

Jensen-Martin said many people had asked for the meeting about budget cuts to be held in the Yuba-Sutter area. The meeting location was determined in February, Root said.

Dozens of people had protested this month at Yuba College over the planned layoffs. The college district has said it faces $5 million in budget cutbacks because of reduced state funds. Eighty-four percent of the district's budget is personnel.

Contact Appeal-Democrat reporter Ryan McCarthy at 749-4707 or rmccarthy@appealdemocrat.com.