(As recommended by the Planning and Budget Committee on May 15, 2025)
The purpose of the District’s budget is to provide:
- Students with a high-quality, learning-centered education.
- The resources and support needed to deliver effective instruction.
- The resources and support to facilitate the teaching-learning process.
- The means to manage the District in an efficient and cost-effective way.
The criteria listed below will be used in developing the budget:
- Institutional Goals and Objectives
- Institutional Achievement Standards
- Priorities identified through the Institutional Program Planning and Review process
- Mandates from External Agencies
- Long-term Obligations
- Learning Outcomes (student, institutional, administrative)
- Guiding Principles for Budget Reductions due to Budget Shortfalls
- Legal, Financial, and Statutory Requirements
- Procedural Guidelines
1. Institutional Goals and Objectives & Institutional Achievement Standards
The District provides direct links between resource allocations and planning:
- The Institutional Program Planning and Review process includes the requirement
that units address how they contribute to the achievement of Institutional Goals
and/or Institutional Objectives and Institutional Achievement Standards. - Requests for funding are prioritized by the Planning and Budget Committee
using a rubric that gives higher scores to proposals that will contribute to the
achievement of the Institutional Goals and Institutional Objectives. - The District has established an Institutional Objectives Account. These funds
are allocated based on the extent to which the funding will contribute to the
achievement of an Institutional Objective.
2. Priorities identified through the Institutional Program Planning
and Review process
The Planning and Budget Committee uses the Resource Allocation Rubric to
develop a recommendation of institutional priorities. The rubric weighs
each request based on what extent the request is justified by:
- The contribution the proposed item will make toward the achievement of
Institutional Goals and/or Institutional Objectives. - An outcome based on the measurement of learning outcomes (student, institutional, administrative).
- Data in the Institutional Program Planning and Review.
- Health or safety concerns.
3. Mandates from External Agencies
The District will develop a budget that covers mandates from external agencies.
4. Long-term Obligations
The District will develop a budget that covers long-term debt obligations.
5. Learning Outcomes (student, institutional, administrative)
6. Guiding Principles when addressing Budget Reductions due to Budget Shortfalls (as adopted by Planning and Budget)
• Protect as much as possible of the core curriculum, programs and services
needed to fulfill the mission for the District and California Community Colleges.
• Maintain as much as possible student access and service throughout the District.
• Reduce, combine, suspend, or eliminate services, programs, positions, or other costs
farthest from students, instruction, and the support needed for student success.
• Stay flexible, plan for contingencies, and recognize that decisions at the state
level may not be made in a timely manner, acknowledging that all units must
work together as a college.
• Communicate civilly; gather facts, weigh options, listen, and deliberate together
when difficult choices have to be made.
• Any plan would go through the governance process.
7. Legal, Financial, and Statutory Requirements
The District will develop a budget that:
• Achieves and maintains a reserve of at least six percent (6%) of unrestricted
general fund expenditures.
• Meets the fifty percent (50%) law, (i.e., at least 50% of the current expense of
education is allocated to instructional salary and benefits).
• Provides for staffing levels required by the Board of Governors in relation to Title
5,
Chapter 4, Subchapter 3, Articles 1, 2, and 3 that maintain compliance with the
Full-Time Faculty Hiring Obligation Number.
• Includes reasonable provisions to cover all known or projected liabilities to the
District (e.g., accumulated vacation, sick leave, etc.).
• Meets all statutory and legally mandated income/expenditure requirements.
8. Procedural Guidelines
The District will develop a budget that:
• Is balanced.
• Is based on planning that reflects both current and long-term District needs.
• Makes steady progress toward correcting actual or anticipated structural budget
issues (e.g., declining revenue, rising costs, lack of ongoing dollars to cover
ongoing
expenses, etc.).
• Has had campus community involvement and consideration during preparation.
• Includes all contractually negotiated costs and expenses.
• Reflects the state’s economy.
• Includes all known and projected increases in fixed costs; identifies significant
but
unfunded items not included in the budget.
• Highlights new and/or unusual items and/or provides information on substantive
changes from previous budgets.
• Eliminates the structural deficit annually by projecting the trends of the increases
to
the 3000 account on a three-year basis, minimally, and including this projection
as a budget assumption in the development of each year’s annual budget.
The rate of increase of the 3000s and the subsequent projected costs should be
budgeted into each year’s annual budget accordingly.
• Considers restructuring any long-term debt to minimize annual fiscal impact.