Teachers View Layoffs as Bitter Budget Cure

As an anthropology professor at Pierce College in Woodland Hills, Samuel Sandt earns about $37,000 a year, part of which goes to pay the $13,150-a-year cost of sending his stepdaughter to USC. But his career is in jeopardy. Sandt has received a layoff notice from the Los Angeles Community College District after 15 years of teaching in the district, three of those years at Pierce.

John Kamuk has been teaching auto mechanics since 1947 and joined the Pierce faculty four years ago. He too has received a layoff notice.

Charles Mull is luckier. Instead of facing a layoff, the Pierce cabinetry and woodworking instructor has been reassigned to the math department.

“I taught math many years ago, and I guess I can teach it again,” Mull said with a sigh. “But my heart is really in woodworking. That’s what I want to teach.”

The three Pierce instructors are among the 157 full-time community college faculty members who were officially notified earlier this month that their jobs were being eliminated. The district has until May to decide the fate of instructors who received the notices. If tenured faculty members are dismissed, it would be the first such action in the district’s 16-year history.

So far, 100 layoff notices have been rescinded, said Norman Schneider, a spokesman for the district. He said those faculty members have received offers of teaching positions in other disciplines.

Schneider said 57 of the 1,700 full-time faculty members--about 3% of the tenured staff--still face dismissal.

In addition, approximately 100 part-time instructors will also lose their jobs. All dismissals were based on seniority.

The notices come at a time when the nine-campus community college system is continuing to grapple with financial problems. Last year, the district was forced to cut $8.2 million in order to balance its budget.

Most of the district’s financial problems stem from a dramatic decrease in enrollment. In 1982, the district had about 139,000 students. By January of this year the number was down to 80,176.

The decline has been attributed to a drop in the birth rate, a $50-per-semester fee imposed in 1984 and competition for students among the community colleges, the University of California and California State University systems.

With fewer students, the trustees concluded that staff reductions were warranted in some of the academic departments. The trustees set out to reduce the number of instructors in low-demand areas, such as Afro-American studies, while increasing the number of teachers in high-demand areas, such as math and English as a second language.

Though only a handful of teachers are being dismissed, faculty members are still angry over the way the trustees handled the budget-cutting program.

“I’m very bitter, but I’ve been bitter since Proposition 13 was passed,” said Sandt, referring to the 1978 initiative that reduced property taxes and curtailed the powers of local agencies, such as community colleges, to raise money by taxation.

“It is very difficult to do a good job in the classroom now when you know that your services are no longer wanted,” Sandt said.

One complaint voiced by faculty members is that staff reductions were made on a district-wide basis instead of by individual campus. While figures might show low enrollment in a discipline throughout the district, the same subject may be more popular at certain colleges, they claim.

The anthropology department at Pierce is in just such a predicament, said Bruce Rowe, who has been an anthropology instructor for 16 1/2 years.

At Pierce, anthropology is popular, with more students seeking to take the courses than can be accommodated. Throughout the district, however, anthropology enrollment has declined. The district has decided to reduce the number of instructors in that subject, so Pierce will lose three of its five anthropology teachers.

“I think they’re killing a very good program,” said Rowe, who is being transferred to the sociology department. “I’m disappointed about being forced to make a change, but I’m even more disappointed that no one in the administration evaluated the quality of the program and the local demand for that program before they instituted their cuts.”

Sandt, who says he has begun looking for a new job, is credited with originating the nation’s first community college courses in medical and urban anthropology. But because he is still a dissertation away from earning a Ph.D., Sandt is unsure whether his past accomplishments will help him in the search for a new job.

“I’m very worried about my economic survival,” said Sandt, who may have two more children enrolling in college next year.

“What really angers me is that the faculty was never consulted in making these cuts,” he said. “Real collegial community is one where the faculty has some role in governing themselves.”

The employment options for Kamuk also appear to be limited. He will be 65 next year and has been teaching automotive repair for 39 years.

“I don’t want to retire,” Kamuk said. “I want to work another five years.”

Mull, the woodworking instructor, has already been told that his new teaching duties at Pierce will be math and architecture. But knowing that he will have a job next year has not kept him from working to save the school’s woodworking program.

Along with his students, Mull has contacted dozens of cabinet-making businesses in the San Fernando Valley, asking the owners to pressure district trustees into saving the program.

Many of those contacted are Mull’s former students.

“I’ve had some of my former students ask me to join their business,” Mull said, “but it is kind of hard for me to turn my back on teaching when I know that what I really want to do is teach.

“It’s kind of hard to put into words the way I feel. Being a teacher meant good security,” he said. “But this whole situation has changed my attitude about the profession. Right now, it’s kind of hard for me to believe that I can continue teaching with the same dedication that I once had.”