Counselor positions affected due to budget cuts

Jonathan Cabrera, Staff Reporter

The Student Services Planning and Budget team will amend their recommendation to eliminate the Dean of Counseling and Associate Vice President of Student Services, said the Co-Chair Vice President of Student Services, Rob Mieso.

“To reach their desired target, the leading amount of eliminated positions would be 10 faculty, 11.5 classified and two manager positions,” Mieso said.

Doing this will save the manager position in exchange for two counseling positions and an Administrations and Records position.

“The original recommendation set was to 12 faculty, 12.5 classified with no manager positions,” said Mieso.

The Student Services Planning and Budget team has a required deficit target of $3.2 million in budget cuts. The cuts in these funds aren’t categorical but general.

This means the funds cannot come from grant funded programs such as EOPS, DSPS, Financial Aid, CalWorks and SEAP (former SSP).

The counseling and student development heavily influence the students’ education.

Regarding counseling, the already small amount of counselors have been declining with their programs being separated as well.