Hello, all Here at San Francisco State we are just waiting... We got a message from the University President (we are part of the California State University System) that he is lobbying as hard as he can to maintain the traditional fiscal independence of the system - in other words, the ability to ignore the Governator's mandates and do whatever cutting needs to be done according to the Universities priorities. The Dean of the College of Creative Arts - CCA (of which the School of Music and Dance, SMD - where most of the pianos are - and the Creative Arts Technical Services, CATS - which is the unit for which I work - are constituent entities) has been holding brainstorming meetings with faculty and staff to figure out some ways to save money. The Director of SMD showed the numbers, and SMD (along with Theater Arts) is actually in good shape. They could absob up to a 15% budget cut without any problem. That is because the Director has been hustling like mad the past year to bring in donations and rentals of the facilities plus admissions income from performances - so there is a cushion. This is a school with a great tradition behind it, lots of support in the community - and people are shelling out contributions for scholarship funds and in general, so they will be able to enroll all the students they need. More than a 15% cut - and they will have to start letting go adjunct faculty, which will impact their ability to offer classes - and therefore to enroll students. Other units of CCA are hurting badly - so the Director is afraid that the Dean might want to raid the SMD budget to help the other units, and is fighting like hell to prevent this. As long as the Music programs remain healthy, I think I have nothing to fear - since they really can't afford to eliminate my job and use contractors. The pianos are mostly old and need constant attention. So even though I work for CATS - not SMD - I think the technicians who service the other units are more likely to be affected, if those programs have to curtail enrollment and classes... Of course, it's all up to the Dean. The Dean is a stage director and his wife is an opera singer who is on the School of Music and Dance faculty - hmm, I wonder where he will cut first... Israel Stein -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20090609/c8467e4c/attachment.htm>
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