It should come as no surprise that state funding for all agencies, including cities, counties, school districts, and the like, has been drastically cut—Santa Barbara City College no less so than any others. To put it simply, we have been cut 10 percent in the last two years, and as a result have had to make deep and painful cuts in almost all programs and functions. We have not played any favorites nor exempted any aspect of our operations from scrutiny and economies.

The Parent-Child Workshops are no exception, difficult as that may be. [News, “Workshops in Jeopardy?” 4/8/10]

In addition, the Office of the Chancellor of the Community College system in Sacramento recently alerted us to some legal problems in our present arrangements with the Workshops. Each Workshop is a separate nonprofit corporation, not legally a part of City College, each operated by a board elected by the attending parents.

(a) We are told that we cannot use public funds to support nonprofits, and (b) we cannot be funded for anything other than the Adult Education function, teaching parents. Adults, yes; pre-school children, no. Nonprofit funding, absolutely not.

We have tried to explain our predicament to the parents, past, present, and prospective. Nobody seems willing to listen or countenance our situation. We can pay the directors part-time for their teaching of parents, but the Workshops themselves, if they wish to continue to employ full-time directors, will have to find other funding sources to supplement what the college can legally pay.— Desmond O’Neill, SBCC Trustee

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