By
SNEHA DEY/The Texas Tribune
Texas community college leaders are bracing for cuts because they’re missing out on millions that the schools earned but the state can’t afford to pay. The administrators spoke publicly for the first time about the stress that the state funding shortfall puts on their budgets during a Texas Senate committee hearing Tuesday. They said it will be hard to sustain the investments that state officials asked the colleges to make to improve students’ success. “When I put that (shortfall) into our budget, it turns into faculty salaries. … It’ll definitely affect advising,” said Brenda Hellyer, president of San Jacinto College. “For us, it’s going to be a hard budget year.”Schools surpassed state projections on student outcomes, which is primarily how community colleges are funded. In response, Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board officials prorated the dollars each college will get to stay within the budget. That contributes to a more than 15% drop in state funding for nearly a dozen colleges.
Colleges don’t have a lot of options to make up for the shortfall, especially since state schools have kept tuition and fees flat in recent years, Hellyer said. She expects to recommend to her board spending more money than the school takes in this year. Legislators could fund the dollars colleges are owed during the next legislative session. They did that last year when the gap between earnings and payouts for that biennium was nearly $90 million. THECB hasn’t put a price tag on how much the gap is this biennium.
