Things at Long Beach City College are looking better. That’s the good news.
The passage of Proposition 30 has helped, LBCC Superintendent-President Eloy Oakley said.
“We’re able to get additional funding for student support services,” he said.
“This is all good news. In addition, because the changes we made the last several years in reaction to the budget difficulties, we’re now able to put those cuts behind us and allocate money to the greatest needs of our students. But it will take us quite a while to climb out of that hole.”
At the end of last school year, there was not good news. The LBCC Board of Trustees voted to cut 11 instructional programs from the curriculum. This caused then-student trustee Jason Troia to lead a recall effort that has not come to full fruition — although his group recently announced it was pressing forward.
“Those programs were discontinued after the board took the action at the end of the spring semester,” Oakley said. “We are now taking those funds allocated and putting them into new programs.”
For example, he added, there will be a new cyber security program of study, which should filter into a new and burgeoning workforce — particularly at the Port of Long Beach.
“You’ll see those changes this fall and particularly over the next year, and you’ll see us talking more and more,” Oakley said. “I don’t foresee any major bad news this year in terms of budget outlook. There is still risk in our budget, but that is much smaller than previous years.”
A point of emphasis moving into the 2013/2014 academic year for LBCC officials will be the Promise Pathways initiative. The program concentrates on placing incoming students into the right math and English classes — using their high school achievement and transcripts more, rather than the standard assessment test.
“Many did not know they had to take it, weren’t prepared to take it, or it didn’t capture the experience they had (from high school),” Oakley said.
For the LBCC as a whole, officials said they wanted this to be a year of celebration — with education initiatives and infrastructure progress.
“We’re going to be doing a lot of celebrating at the college and talking about what the staff has accomplished,” Oakley said.
There will be major landscaping and signage changes at both campuses, along with a new Culinary Arts and Math facility at the Liberal Arts Campus. Taking a cue from the governor’s request of higher education, Oakley said online education and technology development would be a must. An example: degree audit software will be launched to track classes and work toward degrees.
“We’re gong to make greater use of technology going into the future,” he added. “We want to help our students learn wherever they are.”
In the next two to three years, about 30-35 new faculty could be hired, which he said would add fresh ideas onto the campuses. Overall, the outlook must be better.
“It was certainly a difficult year as a culmination of four difficult years,” Oakley said. “The board had to make many difficult decisions. They were very hard decisions, certainly for me personally and for the board. We care deeply about all of our students.
“I think sometimes in Long Beach we do lose sight of how much work we have done, though, through our partnerships — we are an envy in the nation.”
For more information about Long Beach City College, visit www.lbcc.edu.
Jonathan Van Dyke can be reached at jvandyke@gazettes.com.
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