Faculty, staff students past and present, filled Thursday night’s Brookdale Community College Board of Trustees meeting to object to the college’s plan to eliminate nearly 50 jobs. –John Burton
By John Burton
Photo caption: Faculty, staff students past and present, filled Thursday night’s Brookdale Community College Board of Trustees meeting to object to the college’s plan to eliminate nearly 50 jobs.
MIDDLETOWN – The Brookdale Community College’s Board of Trustees is moving forward with the contentious plan to eliminate 47 positions next year to address continuing budgetary woes.
At Thursday night’s Board of Trustees meeting, after hours of a lengthy queue made up of faculty and staff, former and current students and members of the public imploring and admonishing the board for its proposed steps to address the budget deficit – and even with NBC News’s Brian Williams sending an email message detailing the school’s important role – the board voted overwhelmingly to eliminate the jobs. The board, though, stopped there for now, and offered alternatives to the other cuts it was considering. The Lincroft campus’s fitness center would continue to stay open and operate as it had, meaning free to registered students and staff, charging Monmouth County residents to use the facility. The board was contemplating shuttering the facility as it loses $250,000 annually.
College officials said the school has been operating with a $5.5 million annual budget shortfall.
As for the campus’s children’s learning center, which also had been on the possible chopping block, College President Maureen Murphy told the standing room only crowd at the college’s Donald D. Warner Student Life Center Thursday, that school officials will be pursuing privatizing the facility or looking for other opportunities to allow it to continue beyond the July 1, 2015 deadline.
The center currently has 22 fulltime children in its care and 66 part-time and loses $350,000 a year, according to Carl Guzzo Jr., board of trustees chairman.
The college television station will continue due to in large part on a pending partnership with the Monmouth County Board of Chosen Freeholders, Guzzo added. The station, to retain its Federal CommunicationsCommission (FCC) license will have to upgrade its equipment from analogue to digital. “And we just can’t afford it,” Guzzo said.
The plan to reduce the workforce will do away with learning assistance, administrative and student development specialists. Those cuts are effective July 1, 2015.
“In the final analysis our fundamental responsibility is to the financial integrity of the school,” Guzzo said afterwards.
“We regret it is necessary but it is necessary,” the chairman added. “We simply have to do something about the deficit.”
“These aren’t simply numbers on a balance sheet,” countered Jonathan Moschberger, a political science professor. “These are real people.”
“You forgot what college is all about,” history professor Jess LeVine said, scalding the board. “And that’s awful.”
Brian Williams, anchor and managing editor for NBC Evening News with Brian Williams and former Brookdale student, offered a few comments via email on the importance of the community college. Williams’ comments were in response to a request from Moschberger. Williams noted it wouldn’t be appropriate for him to “take a position on matters involving Government and funding,” “But in a very special way, I have carried my Brookdale education with me throughout my life and career. I had the pleasure of being taught by some superb professors,” he wrote, going on to detail the importance the facility and its culture has had for the community.
