Budget Processes and the Faculty Role. Adopted Fall 2019

Few things can impact the success of students at community colleges more than budget and planning. Faculty must therefore have a basic comprehension of budget processes and of faculty roles in them. This paper aims to serve various purposes. It provides a primer on how the system-wide budgeting process works prior to colleges receiving monies from the state and assists faculty leaders in understanding these processes. It details some of the changes occurring at the state level around the Student Centered Funding Formula, changes to categorical programs, and other elements, all of which have implications for local faculty leaders. Finally, it describes local processes from several different perspectives -- those of a single college district, a small multi-college district, and a large multi-college district -- to provide practices that may be helpful for faculty leaders tackling budget considerations at their own colleges. This paper addresses different aspects of the campus budget and proposes processes to consider, and it is intended as a reference, especially for faculty who are not inherently comfortable with budget language and processes.