Young Memorial keeps focus in midst of budget cut talks

South Central Louisiana Technical College’s Young Memorial Campus in Morgan City is preparing for potential cuts to its budget while keeping its commitment this spring to providing the classes students need, said Earl Meador, the college’s regional director.
The biggest thing Young Memorial leaders are focused on for the spring semester is keeping the commitment they made to students and faculty, Meador said.
“We took the tuition money, and we’re going to keep this semester intact,” Meador said.
Meador said there are lots of things that could happen this spring beyond Young Memorial’s control. However, Meador is staying focused on providing the classes students need to get retrained to be able go back to work, he said.
“We’re going to find some way to get this semester done,” Meador said. “I don’t know how we’re going to do it, but we’re going to keep this semester going. We have to for our community.”
Last week, Gov. John Bel Edwards’ Commissioner of Administration Jay Dardenne, asked all state higher education leaders to submit budget cut proposals to fill the state budget gap in case the legislature and governor fail to agree on ways to raise revenue, The Associated Press reported.
Louisiana Community and Technical College System Spokesman Quintin Taylor said, of the $131 million in proposed budget cuts to higher education statewide through June 30, the state’s community and technical college system would have to absorb about 15 percent of those cuts.
Therefore, System President Monty Sullivan submitted a system-wide budget cut proposal of $20.2 million as part of the solution to try to close the state’s budget shortfall.
Across the state community and technical college system, $20 million in cuts would cause 1,200 layoffs, Taylor said. South Central Louisiana Technical College is one of 13 schools in the state community and technical college system. The college also has campuses in Reserve, Thibodaux and Cut Off.
Sullivan hasn’t yet listed how much the potential cuts could be to each college, Meador said.
Community and technical college system leaders have not gone through the process of digging deeper to determine the burden of the cuts each college, including Young Memorial, would have to bear, Taylor said.
“Right now our best intent is not to impact the classroom or instruction,” Taylor said. “But the reality is we have cut, over the years, every other place you can cut. And so now we’re down to personnel.”
There’s likely to be some impact on instruction if the system is forced to make the $20 million in cuts, Taylor said.
Edwards is expected to call a special legislative session in February to address the projected budget shortfall for the remainder of the 2016 fiscal year and the 2017 fiscal year. Taylor said community and technical college system leaders are optimistic there will be a long-term solution that would prevent the system from having to make the proposed budget cuts.