Cuesta OKs furloughs for nonteachers

Plan will save the district about $215,000 and prevent layoffs during the budget shortfall

By Sona Patel | spatel@thetribunenews.com

Comments (0) |

E-Mail

Text Size:

tool goes here

The Cuesta College Board of Trustees has approved furloughs for nonteaching employees as a way to stave off layoffs and reinstate positions and assignment reductions made in the past couple of months.

The move comes after heated board meetings and staff combing budgets to determine how to save jobs amid a nearly $6 million budget shortfall.

Under the furlough plan approved Wednesday � which will save the district about $215,000 � full-time non-teaching employees will lose five hours of pay each month between now and June 30 � a total of 40 hours � spokeswoman Jill Ivie said. Part-timers will have their pay cut proportionally.

The school has about 214 classified employees. Of those, 155 are full time.

Full-time employees will be given the option to take five days off between now and June 30, the end of the fiscal year.

The college will now have enough money to bring back one of two positions cut in September and to reinstate all but one of 41 posts across campus that had been reduced over the past two months, Ivie said.

The 40 who had their assignments restored does not include employees from the Disabled Student Programs and Services office, which was facing cuts last month.

At its October meeting, the board decided to hold off on eliminating positions and reducing staff assignments to deal with a loss of about $261,000, or a nearly 52 percent cut in funding to the program.

The program receives separate funds for state-mandated programs, as do others such as Extended Opportunity Programs and Services. That money is referred to as categorical funds, which have been cut at levels from kindergarten through community college because of the state budget shortfall.

The board told staff Wednesday to craft a new proposal to deal with the shortfall. That plan is to be presented at the December board meeting and could include layoffs and other staff reductions.

About comments

Reader comments on SanLuisObispo.com are the opinions of the writer, not The Tribune. If you see an objectionable comment, click the "report abuse" button below it. We will delete comments containing inappropriate links, obscenities, hate speech, and personal attacks. Flagrant or repeat violators will be banned. See more about comments here.

What you should know about comments on SanLuisObispo.com

SanLuisObispo.com is happy to provide a forum for reader interaction, discussion, feedback and reaction to our stories. However, we reserve the right to delete inappropriate comments or ban users who can't play nice. See our full terms of service here.

Here are some rules of the road:

Keep your comments civil. Don't insult one another or the subjects of our articles. If you think a comment violates our guidelines click the "report abuse" button. Responding to the comment will only encourage bad behavior.
Don't use profanities, vulgarities or hate speech. This is a general interest news site. Sometimes, there are children present. Don't say anything in a way you wouldn't want your own child to hear.
Do not attack other users; focus your comments on issues, not individuals.
Stay on topic. Only post comments relevant to the article at hand. If you want to discuss an issue with a specific user, click on his profile name and leave him a public message.
Do not copy and paste outside material into the comment box.
Don't repeat the same comment over and over. We heard you the first time.
Do not use the commenting system for advertising. That's spam and it isn't allowed.
Don't use all capital letters. That's akin to yelling and not appreciated by the audience.

You should also know that The Tribune does not screen comments before they are posted. You are more likely to see inappropriate comments before our staff does, so we ask that you click the "report abuse" button to submit those comments for moderator review. You also may notify us via email at webmaster@sanluisobispo.com. Note the headline on which the comment is made and tell us the profile name of the user who made the comment. Remember, comment moderation is subjective. You may find some material objectionable that we won't and vice versa.

If you submit a comment, the username of your account will appear along with it. Users cannot remove their own comments once they have submitted them, but you may ask our staff to retract one of your comments by sending an email to webmaster@sanluisobispo.com. Again, make sure you note the headline on which the comment is made and tell us your profile name.