GREENFIELD — Greenfield Community College faculty members are voicing frustration and concern over what they describe as insufficient transparency over proposed budget cuts, as well as a lack of willingness by the administration to consider alternatives.
Faculty members stood outside the college’s main entrance on Wednesday morning, holding signs advocating to “chop from the top” and “save GCC.” They say proposed reductions, including merging departments, increasing class size caps and layoffs of 12 staff members, would have detrimental impacts on their ability to educate students.
The layoffs are proposed as a means of reducing the $2.86 million budget deficit for fiscal year 2027 to below $1.6 million.
“The administration finally met with the union. I put in a request for the data they’re using to make decisions around layoffs. There’s an article in our contract that entitles us to copies of any data that they’re using, and I made that request at the beginning of March,” said Trevor Kearns, president of the GCC chapter of the Massachusetts Community College Council, the teachers union. “The administration didn’t get back to me for a whole month, and when I asked about it again, they were very evasive … so we still have no information about the data they’re using beyond the general budget numbers.
“They finally agreed to meet with us after we met with our local legislators and told them our perspective, and the next day I got an offer from the college to meet and get an update, and it was exactly the same thing that was presented publicly,” Kearns continued. “The exact same presentation that was presented to the board of trustees. No additional, new information.”
Earlier this month, Karen Phillips, GCC’s vice president of administration and finance, told the board of trustees that the actual student enrollment growth (5.9%) in the 2025-2026 school year did not meet their projected growth (12.5%). Paired with an increase in costs related to payroll, employee benefits, technology and other services, the college had a $1.8 million deficit for fiscal year 2026. If no structural changes were made, she said the deficit could grow to more than $3 million.
Cost-saving 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 payroll by approximately $1.15 million.
In a statement, GCC President Michelle Schutt said the college respects the rights of faculty members, and she hopes the college and staff can work together in the face of these financial challenges.
“We fully respect the right of our faculty to voice their concerns and recognize that any discussion regarding budget shortfalls is understandably difficult,” Schutt said. “However, GCC has been, and remains, deeply committed to a transparent and collaborative process. Over the past several months, we have shared detailed financial data and held several open forums to ensure all staff are informed about the causes of our current fiscal challenges.
“Our leadership team is working tirelessly to reduce non-essential spending and identify alternative savings with the explicit goal of avoiding layoffs,” she continued. “Every decision is aimed at protecting our academic mission, our students and the livelihoods of our dedicated workforce. We will continue to engage in open dialogue with faculty leadership as we navigate these institutional challenges together.”
Phyllis Keenan, an adjunct faculty member in the Math Department, described seeing how, semester after semester, students grow and discover themselves through community college. She said consolidating departments and increasing class sizes would decrease how much attention faculty could give each individual student to support their growth.
“The important thing for those of us who work with the students here is having the resources and the class sizes to support students,” Keenan said. “This is how we change communities.”
Kearns said the college is proposing cuts to non-unit professionals, which include supervisory administrators and professional staff who work directly to support students, as well as union faculty. As the end of the semester and the beginning of the new fiscal year inch closer, there is a growing sense of nervousness among staff members who do not know whether they will be impacted by layoffs.
“Our members have been stressed since the fall when this budget deficit was announced,” Kearns said. “People are scared, people are anxious.
“The end of the fiscal year is coming in mid-summer,” he continued. “It could be a situation where somebody gets two weeks’ notice. In a professional position, that is hard to come by because there is only so many positions of these types in the colleges in the area. I expect some of our unit members may be in that position in the summer, where suddenly they have to find another job in a matter of weeks.”
Kearns said the teachers union wants more details about the college’s finances and added he believes it is top-heavy. He argues that cutting the number of administrative positions and consultants would save money and allow more teaching positions to be preserved.
The college has six vice president roles and 52 non-unit professional positions. With a student enrollment of 1,770 as of the fall 2025 semester, Kearns said the college has a rate of just under 30 administrators per 1,000 students. For comparison, Holyoke Community College, which has 4,583 students and 113 administrators in total, has a rate of 24.7 administrators per 1,000 students.
“This president has just wasted money on various consultants that have made no impact whatsoever. … They’re proposing to bring in outside consultants to help us work on our strategic plan, which is something that we’ve done before without any outside help whatsoever. Having consultants who don’t know the college is going to add nothing to the process and just add to the budget,” Kearns said. “It’s an example of how this administration has mismanaged the college financially.”
Kearns added that, in addition to better management of the college’s finances, GCC needs more funding from the state to keep up with increasing costs. The House version of the budget, which was released on April 15, included a $16.4 million appropriation for GCC.
“This is not how you do public higher ed. You need state support,” Kearns said. “We need more positions, we need more funding from the state to make these programs work in the best possible way.”
He added that the college administration has agreed to meet with the union, and he hopes administrators will be open to hearing bargaining points and sharing more data.
