GREENFIELD — While Greenfield Community College is facing a $2.86 million budget deficit for fiscal year 2027, faculty members argue that proposed reductions, including merging departments, increasing class size caps and potential layoffs, will have a detrimental impact on their ability to educate students.
Trevor Kearns, a member of the English Department and president of the GCC Professional Association, was joined by other faculty members in holding signs protesting the proposed cuts outside the GCC board of trustees meeting on Wednesday evening.
“We feel that the administration has given confusing reasons for this sudden budget deficit and we’d like the board to look more closely at the decisions that were made that put us here,” Kearns said. Referencing state programs that have expanded access to free community college, the union president continued, “Lots of students are coming here, we have more revenue here, and yet we have a $1.8 million budget deficit this year and it’s projected to be a $2.8 million deficit next year.”
During the trustees’ meeting, Karen Phillips, GCC vice president of administration and finance, said that enrollment growth in fiscal year 2026 did not meet projections, contributing to the deficit.
In an email Thursday afternoon, GCC’s Director of Communications Marketing and Public Relations Jill Buchanan said enrollment had been projected to increase by 12.5% this school year, but in actuality, it increased by 5.9%. She added that other contributing factors to the deficit were an increase in costs related to payroll, employee benefits, technology and other college services.
“We closed out FY26 needing to borrow $1.8 million from our reserves,” Phillips said. “We were anticipating a $3 million budget deficit for FY27 and then in future years that gets compounded out, so it’s a larger deficit if we don’t start making structural change with our budget.”
In an effort to reduce the deficit, the college announced an early retirement incentive program and workweek reduction options earlier this year. On Wednesday, GCC President Michelle Schutt shared with the trustees that the college received four applications from faculty for the early retirement incentive and six applications for a reduced workweek. These incentives are expected to save the college $410,826 in FY27.
Phillips said that heading into FY27, she instructed all department heads to cut any non-mandatory spending by 15%. Other proposed measures include freezing all out-of-state travel ($60,000 in savings), transferring payroll for the workforce program to be paid for through grants ($51,000 in savings), increasing class size capacity to the full contractually allowed amounts ($246,000 in savings), consolidating departments ($168,000 in savings) and reducing the number of course releases.
Harry Akoh, vice president of academic affairs, explained that course releases are contractual breaks given to eligible faculty, which “release” them from some of their teaching obligations to complete other duties. For example, he said department chairs are given course releases so they can manage their departments. He added that the administration looked at the class capacity and course loads at other community colleges across the state, and they use 32 students as the class capacity cap in most cases. Courses at GCC have rarely reached this cap.
“We noticed that in many cases, the number of students who registered for those classes at the beginning of the semester never got to the full cap,” Akoh said. “For spring 2026, out of 52 sections that were capped at 30 students, only one section had 30 students. … What we’re doing here is simply bringing us to where many of the other community colleges are.”
However, Kearns argued that the deficit “is leading the administration to propose changes that [faculty members] feel are going to damage the quality of education at GCC,” citing, in particular, the consolidation of departments and the increase in enrollment caps.
Kearns said these changes would result in faculty having less time to meet individual student needs.
“It affects our ability to spend the time we need to help students who have more and more diverse needs and more intense needs than ever before,” Kearns said. “It’s that personal relationship that GCC’s really known for.”
Phillips added that the college is looking to reduce payroll by $1.15 million in FY27, which would result in approximately 15 positions being cut. The layoffs would result in further cost saving in benefits and reduce the deficit to $1.6 million.
She said that number could change, depending on how the state budget process shakes out. The House version of the budget, which was released on Wednesday, included a $16.4 million appropriation for GCC. However, this is not enough to cover the college’s payroll, which is budgeted at $17.1 million for FY27.
Kearns said faculty members agree that increased state funding is necessary for the continued success of the college, but with its current level, he believes the solution to the deficit is not cutting teaching positions.
“State appropriations have to go up for community colleges so that we can hire more faculty and hire more support staff,” Kearns said. “This is something that we have agreed with the administration on. President Schutt has even been an advocate for us, but administrative bloat is a real thing in higher education. It’s a real thing at Greenfield Community College, and we think that administrative positions need to be cut rather than faculty positions and rather than student support positions.”
In a statement, Schutt said the college’s administration is working to preserve as many positions as possible while seeking cost savings.
“We recognize the deep concerns our faculty and staff have regarding these financial challenges. We are working openly and responsibly to navigate this shortfall while protecting as many roles as possible,” Schutt said. “GCC remains fully committed to its mission of providing a stable, supportive environment for our students, and we will continue to assess all cost-saving measures with their success as our primary goal.”
