At Wednesday night's Board of Trustees, the Board adopted a tentative budget for FY 2020-2021. You can see the budget at this link (click on the "agenda" tile on the bottom of the page; then select "Regular Board Meeting"; scroll to the bottom where you'll see an icon labeled "View the Agenda" that looks like a bulleted list; then, on the left-hand side, scroll down the agenda to L.5. when that opens, you can click the "2020-2021 Tentative Budget" link to view).
The Board is required to pass a budget prior to the beginning of a fiscal year in order to grant the District administration the authority to continue to function through payment of invoices, processing of payroll, etc. This process repeats itself every year.
This year, however, the operative word truly is "tentative." Because of the vagaries of the budget, as I've discussed in detail in previous posts, we won't actually know our real budget until possibly as late as mid-August or even early September due to the postponement to July 15 for the collection of tax revenues. Even though there was a strong presence at the Board meeting from faculty who are advocating for smaller class sizes--especially in light of the issues of racial equity that have been laid bare before all of us--no commitment can be made to that type of expense, as I see it, because the budget is...tentative.
Therefore, we still proceed with the campus process I outlined via a campus email: Our local budget committee is recommending to College Council a series of budget priorities to guide the discussion and to ultimately form the foundation for a recommendation from the Council to me. In the meantime, Council meetings will occur during the summer to engage the campus and to prepare for a quick response in late summer/early fall when we have a true budget picture.