Dear LBCC Campus Community: Change is hard, we all know that.

But our present reality of scarce resources combined with growing expectations makes change all that much harder. and all that much more important. Being here to meet the future needs of our communities depends on our making some strategic changes and reductions in our present, and thats what I need to share with you now. While the mission for our community college has not changed we always have been and always will be about making our communities stronger, better places to live and to work the means by which we are now being directed to pursue this mission has become more precise, more strategic. At the National, State, and local level, the focus is on Completion. It is through the completion of a post-secondary degree or certificate that our students are best equipped to participate in, contribute to, and benefit from the cultural richness and economic vitality of our communities and it is by this measure that we have carefully considered each and every change and reduction we are now making. Over the past two months (and some before that), the administrative leadership of LBCC has been working diligently to address a projected FY14 budgetary shortfall of slightly less than $3 million, soliciting input and collecting and combining ideas from dozens of areas in order to BOTH find the best possible mix of cost reductions and revenue enhancements AND best position us for serving our Mission into the future. To say the least, none of this has been easy and many solutions have been proposed, tested, and subsequently discarded before arriving at the one I now have to share with you. It is NOT a perfect solution, but it does achieve two very important objectives: 1) it balances the FY14 Budget and 2) it preserves our capacity to serve our instructional purpose of student success in the core academic and career-technical areas. It is clear that, at least for the foreseeable future, there will be fewer of us to serve these purposes, and so the Plan is not just to be smaller but at the same time to position ourselves so we can successfully extend the educational reach of each one of us, making greater use of things like technology and other innovations in education so we can continue to serve our students and our communities. Before I get into the details of the Plan, I need to share with you some of the major assumptions on which it is based. Obviously, should any of these assumptions prove to be false, this Plans capacity to successfully address the anticipated fiscal challenges is weakened, and will need to be adjusted accordingly. Assumptions: Revenue Student Enrollment will remain constant, except as affected by reductions and additions in Plan. General Credit Tuition will increase by $3 (from $91 to $94), subject to Board approval. Differential Tuition will be incorporated to enhance revenues streams from/for CareerTechnical and other programs that incorporate laboratory/shop experiences in their curriculum.

The State Legislature will approve a Community College Support Fund amount of $410 million for this next biennium. Expenses Institutional costs for the Public Employees Retirement System (PERS) will increase by 31%. We will contain employee compensation increases for ALL employee groups to approximately 1.5% or less annually. An Additional Comment about Tuition Up until about 4 weeks ago, we continued to work on models that assumed the $1/credit increase in Tuition that we have discussed with the Board all the way back to last August. Try as we might, we could not put together what we considered to be a viable model that would balance our FY14 Budget within this revenue assumption. Certainly, should the Board approve a Tuition increase less than the $3/credit assumed in this Plan, we will need to make the necessary subsequent reductions beyond those detailed in this Plan, but I believe this Plan represents an appropriate balance of revenue enhancements and cost reductions, and I will be recommending to the Board that they approve the $3/credit Tuition increase on which this Plan is based. The Plan Financial Summary In general fiscal terms, this Plan (inclusive of reductions and adjustments already made for this year and continuing into next year) combines approximately $2.2 million in annual cost reductions with approximately $750,000 in new revenues, resulting in an annual net improvement of approximately $2.9 million equaling the annual shortfall anticipated for next year. In other words, when implemented, this Plan should put us on a pathway for balanced budgets for FY14 and FY15, maintaining but neither building nor diminishing the current years anticipated ending fund balance of $1.7 million. Program Summary Instructional Redesign. Overall, the divisional framework for the Instructional part of the college is being redesigned to enhance our capacity to meet the objectives of our Core Themes, particularly Educational Attainment and Economic Vitality. Where there used to be 4 divisions with a dean and associate dean each, there will now be 5 divisions, but without associate deans. Instead of being arranged around content areas, these new divisions are more closely associated with the stages of educational progression that our students go through. With the addition of a new focus area that we are currently calling Connections as part of a redesign of Student Affairs, we believe we will be better organized to support our students toward completion and do so with a net reduction of two instructional administrators. High School Partnerships Programs. In order to support growth and greater coordination of the various ways in which we create educational pathways between K12 and LBCC, we will be using this next year to redesign our management and delivery of these programmatic areas. And, while this will have no immediate personnel impact,

we anticipate that over the course of this next year we will increase a part time manager position to full time and leave open one faculty position that will be vacated through retirement. Intercollegiate Athletics Program. I am a huge fan of our sports programs, I love going to our Roadrunner games, and I know that the players on all our teams have an overwhelmingly positive experience with their coaches and at the college in general. This really does matter but, when I measure these programs in terms of student Completion, it is not possible to justify the added investment we make in this relatively small number of students (averaging 70 per year), given our limited resources. But, by reducing the number of sports from four to two, retaining Womens Volleyball and Mens Basketball because they both have significantly higher retention and graduation rates than our general student population (45% and 31%, respectively), and then being more intentional about making these sports the pinnacle of a commitment to physical activity and health that involves us all, we can continue. While the elimination of the other two sports (Baseball and Womens Basketball) does not result in the involuntary reduction of any full-time faculty, it will take advantage of one faculty retirement, reduce part-time faculty, and result in considerable reductions in personnel and program costs. On Ramp Programs. This is my own term, referring to a collection of pre-collegiate programs designed to provide a guided and supported entryway an on ramp for successful enrollment in and completion of a post-secondary education program. We have a number of these programs and, while each of them has successfully provided many of their students with very positive learning opportunities, very few of these students have gone on to be successful in college level programs. There is no question that the people served by these various programs are important to our community and need support in order to be successful, but we will need to find less costly and more effective means of doing so. a. English Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) program will be eliminated. Of the 2,156 students who have been a part of this program since 2005, only 7.5% (161) have gone on to attempt at least one college credit course and only of 1% have gone on to complete a college program. This program will be eliminated, affecting three contracted faculty and all part time faculty line, and we will be working to broaden our partnership with the ELCI program (English Language and Culture Institute) already on our campus to ensure the needs of these people continue to be met. b. Turning Point Transitions (TPT) program will be eliminated. Of the 76 annual average number of TPT students, only around 12% subsequently enroll in at least one college credit course at LBCC (less than 10% for this most recent year), and even fewer ever graduate. One faculty position will be reduced. c. Our Adult Basic Education / General Education Diploma (ABE/GED) program will be significantly redesigned. Of the 590 annual average number of ABE/GED students, less than 12% subsequently enroll in at least one college credit course within 4 years, and fewer than 2% go on to complete a college program

regardless of time given to do so. We will not be eliminating this program but instead will be working with remaining staff and community partners (including K-12) to offer these services within our community in a manner will be more cost effective. The financial investment in this program will be significantly reduced, including the reduction of two faculty positions through retirement and reassignment. The Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence will be eliminated. Again, this program provides some very valuable services, primarily to our internal teaching community, but our current fiscal circumstances dictate that we do without this for at least the foreseeable future. To some extent, our recent and current investments in Foundations of Excellence, Achieving the Dream, and all of the redesign described above will provide us with plenty of direction and encouragement for teaching and learning innovation and improvement for a good number of years to come, but at some point we will need to revisit this. One faculty position and one support staff position will be eliminated. The Visual Communications AAS degree and Graphic Design certificate will be suspended. While a redesign of this program may be pursued and supported in the future, this program suspension is taking advantage of a faculty retirement. Reallocations and Reductions in Special Funds. We have a number of positions that have been supported through what I refer to as special funds Perkins Grants, Strategic Investments, and external sponsors and both internal and external changes in these funds and their allocation are impacting a number of these positions. a. Faculty in the Nursing program will be reduced by one, taking advantage of a retirement. b. Faculty in Math will be reduced by one. c. The already mentioned Turning Point Transitions position will be eliminated, at least in part, due to these changes. d. One Classified position in Student Affairs will be eliminated due to these changes. e. One Faculty position in the Learning Center will have changes in duties due to these funding changes. The Dental Assisting program will be expanded by one faculty, refilling a position that had previously been left vacant. The Art program will be reduced by one faculty, taking advantage of a retirement. In addition to those listed above, three support positions will be eliminated (this is in addition to the support positions eliminated in January). a. One support position (Confidential Classified) will be eliminated in our Administrative Offices. b. Two support positions in Business, Healthcare, and Workforce will be eliminated A management position in our JOBS program will be reclassified as Faculty, more accurately reflecting the teaching/counseling responsibilities of that position. A management position in the business and operations area of the college is being eliminated, taking advantage of a retirement.

Personnel Summary Inclusive of reductions already made in this current year (the savings of which are incorporated in this Plan), the total number of reductions is as follows: Classified 9 reductions (4.7% net reduction for this group) o 1 retirement o 8 involuntary reductions Management/Confidential 5 net reductions (10.6% net reduction for this group) o 3 retirements o 2 involuntary reductions o 1 reclassification from management to faculty o 1 new position Faculty 9 net reductions (6.4% net reduction for this group) o 5 retirements o 6 involuntary reductions o 1 reclassification from management to faculty o 1 refilling of a position previously held open Summary Since taking on the lead administrative functions of community colleges some 15 years ago, I have been involved in no less than 6 major budgetary and personnel reductions. All were profoundly difficult and painful, but none so much as this one. Not just because of its scale but, because we are attempting to be so much more strategic with this reduction, each component of the Plan has been considered and analyzed on the basis of both financial and educational goals, utilizing multiple individual perspectives to try and maximize the attainment of our objectives while minimizing the possibility of adverse and unintended consequences. And, while I believe we have done a very good job of that, ultimately, we cannot avoid nor ignore the fact that these reductions are felt personally, both by those directly affected and also by those left behind to carry on the work. Because of this, I am especially grateful to have talented and dedicated staff who have literally suffered over their recommendations to me because, even and perhaps especially when these recommendations have involved the reductions of favored programs and dear friends, I know that they have done so with our Mission and our students in mind. Nothing about this has been or will be easy, but I believe this Plan is the best possible strategy for moving forward and, in the end, it is this belief that will enable us to do the hard work and important work ahead. With my sincere thanks to all,

Greg Hamann