0
0
By Felix Pineda / Asst. News Editor
By Felix Pineda / Asst. News Editor
During a meeting on April 7, the Strategic Planning Council briefly spoke about the department downsizing taking place at Riverside City College in the near future.
The committee chairs acknowledged that the Academic Planning Council would be overseeing the process of department reductions.
The Academic Planning Council presented a plan in March on how to go about course cuts.
According to the plan, departments that did not make reductions last year should be the first to make cuts this year.
The plan also covers which types of courses should be exempt from cuts, such as; disciplines with no part-time staff, and courses that cannot be cut due to the nature of the course.
At the meeting on April 7 committee chairs shared concerns of rumors going about RCC as to which areas would be affected most by budget cuts.
RCC’s Riverside campus president Cynthia Azari spoke about the importance of communicating with the whole campus and making sure that the information faculty and students hear is accurate.
“I was in a similar situation at Fresno (City College) where we had to cut 400 sections,” Azari said. “It’s not an easy thing to do.”
She spoke of coming together with critical thinking and cost saving suggestions to try to minimize the impact on department cuts to help further students educations by having their curriculums available in order for them to transfer.
“Personally, I wouldn’t want to cut 1 section, but the bottom line is, we have regulations to comply with, and we need to make the cuts,” she said.
Azari spoke about how the budget situation in Sacramento has left school officials with an uncertain figure to work with.
“I honestly don’t know how far the cuts will go until a budget goes through,” she said.
