IVC’s current budget reduced by $4 million due to state budget revisions

Officials at Imperial Valley College are looking for solutions to make their reduced budget work for the next couple of months left in the fiscal year.

Usually, the college receives additional revenue from the state depending on the size of the district, student success, and demographics.

However, Deedee Garcia, IVC’s Vice President of Administrative Services said a revision to the recent state budget for California community colleges made last month has left IVC with a loss of $4 million this school year.

“With all those things combined it resulted in not enough money to fund the full formula that was implemented. We’re one of the colleges that got a lot of additional money. 18 percent over the last fiscal year. And they have since capped that to 8.13 [percent]. So a bulk of our reduction came from that area,” said Garcia.

This has resulted in the school having to put a hold on future projects around the campus as well as a hiring freeze.

Garcia said, “The staff here understand because they’ve gone through this before. They know how to pick up the slack. They know how to help out when needed. And they know that this is going to turn around and get better.”

But thanks to a reserve in funds from the college, Garcia said staff members are not expected to lose their jobs.

Garcia added, “Because of that we’re not going to see any types of layoffs any affects to our staff or our students.”

School officials also said classes will not be affected and students will still get their degrees on time which IVC student, Daniela Torres, said is a relief for students.

“I think once students attend IVC they have a plan of when they want to graduate. So knowing that classes won’t be affected they’re still on track to be able to graduate or receive a certificate at the timely manner that they have scheduled,” said Torres.

School officials are now waiting on Governor Gavin Newsom’s new proposed state budget to see if further changes to community colleges will be made for the next fiscal year.