Rogue Community College Budget Planning

How the community college decides what will be budgeted for.

Newswatch 12's brian morton spoke to the president of rogue community college -- ahead of their budget meetings this week.

The board of education of rogue community college is meeting this week to discuss the budget for next year.

Rcc president cathy kemper-pelle joins us now.

Thanks very much for being with us.

Hi, thanks for having me.

So tell us a little bit about some of the unusual circumstances surrounding this budget for you folks.

Well, the rcc budget is, um, kind of in three pieces, a third of our budget.

Um, is supported by student tuition about a third is supported by state revenue.

And the rest is, um, either, uh, taxes or, uh, other revenue sources like carry over from previous year.

And, um, two of those three pieces are questionable right now.

Our tuition.

Uh, revenue is down because our enrollment was down and we don't know what our tuition revenue is going to look like for fall.

So for two thirds of your budget, sort of up in the air, what numbers did you actually put on the old balance sheet?

So, what we did was we had already created, uh, the budget pre covid by the time the governor's order came, uh, to work from home, our budget was essentially done.

So we had, uh, we talked with our board and we decided that we would go ahead and, um, talk about what parts of the budget might have to change when we get more information.

Uh, but at this point in time, we don't know what our state support will actually be.

And we don't know what our tuition revenue will actually be.

So, uh, at our june board meeting, the board passed a pre coven budget.

Uh, with the understanding that in the fall we would reconvene and, uh, submit a what's called a supplemental budget that would reflect the necessary changes in order for us to meet our legal requirement, to have a balanced budget.

So when you have all these numbers in flux, what will students see when they go back to class in the fall?

Well, we are staying online for the summer as a, i think most folks know we had decided early on that it was the transition to reopening was going to take some time.

So, uh, we just got our guidelines from, uh, the state and from, uh, oha last friday.

Uh, for us to be able to start developing our plans for reopening.

Um, but we know that we will have more than the average number of classes online in the fall.

And our class capacities that meet onsite will be smaller in order to meet social distancing.

So if you don't know what your revenue is going to be at, when will students start feeling the impact of whatever changes you have to make?

Um, i don't think that there's going to be any visible impact probably until, uh, winter or possibly spring term of next year.

Um, we, we certainly have, uh, enough funding, uh, and we, we are getting some projections from the state and we're planning for worst case scenario.

And if it turns out better than that, great.

Uh, but we, we are planning for a possible 17% cut in, uh, the next academic year state funding.

And, uh, we're, we're, we're ready.

We, we know what we need to do.

Um, but our intention is to be very strategic and not have it impact the number of courses or programs that we're offering.

Cathy kemper-pelle from rcc.