By Jessica Alvarez
With a five percent budget cut approaching, East Los Angeles College is contemplating a hiring freeze in order to spend money more wisely.
The possible hiring freeze means that any hiring requests must have a special request form signed by President Moreno before having it submitted to the district.
The California Community College systems’ full-time to part-time faculty ratio is supposed to be 75 percent to 25 percent.
If ELAC instates the hiring freeze, the school will save money that normally would toward a new professor’s salary, which can be invested into something else.
The difference between a part-time instructor and a full-time instructor is that a part-time instructor can teach their hour-and a-half class and be done for the day.
A full-time instructor is on campus throughout the day, has office hours and is available if a student needs to get in touch.
“Hiring a part-time instructor can cost us, let’s say, $20 thousand a semester as opposed to $40 thousand for a full-time instructor,” said ELAC Vice President Richard Moyer.
Although having more full-time instructors would be beneficial to the college, it could also lead to a deficit.
“There was not a consensus on whether hiring of faculty should ‘be suspended,” said Academic Senate Vice President, Jeffrey Hernandez.
Only in certain circumstances can faculty be hired.
The hiring freeze would allow the administration to consider how to spend discretionary money.
“Why hire one full-time instructor when we can hire 30 tutors instead?” said Moyer.
According to Moyer, providing jobs for students in the Mente Lab and Writing Center or the bookstore, gives students an opportunity to attend college and to succeed outside of school.
“At East LA, we want student success. We want to help students, but we also want to help students survive,” said Moyer
The proposed hiring freeze would not mean new faculty members would not be hired.
However, the smaller departments that face losing instructors to retirement would have a higher chance of getting a new instructor to keep the department alive.
“If we need to hire a full-time instructor for a department run by one faculty member, we will do that.
“If we need to hire a full-time instructor for accreditation purposes, we will also do that,” said Moyer.
Although the college may suffer a five percent cut, the district allows a small surplus of money that is available to the college
“It’s a small percentage. We get 25 percent or $2 million, whichever is smaller,” said Moyer.
If the school is allotted that amount, they can tap into the small surplus if it needs to.
“We worked hard. We earned it,” said Moyer about the extra money allotted to the school.
The hiring freeze will not affect the classes available for students to take in the upcoming semesters.
There will still be enough instructors for students to enroll in the classes they need to further their education.
jalvarez@elaccampusnews.com