McHenry County College is the latest Chicago-area community college to be hit with layoffs, which officials said was caused in part by the long-running state budget stalemate.
The college’s board of trustee voted late Thursday to lay off 19 employees, including seven unionized support staff members, three administrators and four counselors. No faculty members were let go.
At a standing-room-only meeting of the board of trustees on campus, officials pointed to the state’s two-year budget impasse as the partial cause of their financial woes, also citing the lack of growth in tuition and tax income along with declining enrollment.
“This is a most difficult decision to make,” Trustee Molly Walsh said. “We have been backed into a corner and have not received state funding for two years.”
The Crystal Lake school is the latest of many area community colleges that have laid off employees and eliminated jobs in recent months.
But McHenry County College officials drew criticism from the crowd Thursday over their handling of the layoffs of four counselors Tuesday. Speakers said the counselors were told of the loss of their jobs and then given five minutes’ notice before being escorted out by administrators and campus police.
Responding to comments from students and faculty, trustees said they had no choice but to begin cutting employees.
Colin Worden, the board’s student trustee, said he understood the need for the cuts but disagreed with the decision to eliminate the four counselors, apologizing to them for their abrupt dismissal.
“We are in a tough situation and there are no good answers,” Worden said. “But I do not support laying off the counselors.”
He and trustee Ronald Parrish voted against the resolution to eliminate the counseling staff but voted in favor of the other layoffs.
“That’s the whole counseling staff,” Parrish said. “I find that debilitating.”
College spokeswoman Donna Bieschke said the college has tried to be fiscally responsible during the budget crisis.
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“We’re one of the colleges that has held out the longest fiscally,” she said. “That’s the reason we have been able to operate the longest without cutting staff or programs, compared to other colleges.”
Steve Young, a professor of philosophy, also said the college has been fiscally responsible but the current budget situation is beginning to have an effect.
“MCC has been frugal considering the state of the state, but we saw (layoffs) coming,” Young said.
One of the counselors who lost her job, Luisa Lauf, attended the meeting and afterward said the she was shocked when the administrators and police showed up unexpectedly Tuesday.
“They just came into a counselor staff meeting and said we were terminated,” Lauf said. “I asked why they were treating us as criminals.”
Lauf said they were given five minutes to gather their belongings and leave. She said she did not have enough time to gather all of her possessions.
She said she’d been a student counselor at the college for 21 years and began crying as students and staff hugged her in the hallway.
“She’s a hero around here,” Young said of Lauf.
The college had an enrollment of about 6,700 students last spring and serves Crystal Lake, McHenry, Woodstock and other communities in the far northwest suburbs.
George Houde is a freelance reporter.