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FMCC – Fulton Montgomery Community College President Greg Truckenmiller is warning that staff cuts at the college are inevitable for its 2023-24 budget, as student enrollment continues to be near its lowest level in the history of the school and federal pandemic stimulus funding has run out.
Truckenmiller said that although the number of “Full Time Equivalent” (FTE) students at FMCC grew slightly this year from last year, that number is somewhat misleading because many of the college’s FTE students are part-time high school students who only pay one third of regular tuition for three-credit courses taught at their respective high schools.
“We’ve had some modest enrollment gains, but, if you consider on-campus, full-pay students, we’re at a level we have not seen since 1965,” Truckenmiller told the board. “That’s not where we want to be, and we hope that we can begin to crawl out of the abyss we’ve been sliding into the last three or four years.”
New York state uses a headcount of FTE students, which includes combinations of part-time students that add up to the equivalent of a full time student, to calculate how much state aide to provide to the 64 schools operating as part of the State University at New York system.
FMCC enrollment figures posted to www.suny.edu show the headcount of FTE students at FMCC ticked up to about 1,812 FTE students for fall 2022, an increase of 4.3% from fall 2021, but is still well below the 2,286 FTE students attending FMCC before the pandemic in the fall 2019.
For comparison, FMCC’s peak headcount for FTE students over the past 12 years was in fall 2011 when there were 2,842 FTEs, and has declined 36.2% since then.
Truckenmiller said of the 1,812 FTE students at FMCC about half of them, 913 are actually attending classes at the college and only about 620 of those are actually “full-pay” students.
“We have been below 1,000 (full-pay) students in a long, long time, and that’s a scary place to go when you dip below 1,000,” Truckenmiller said. “We’ve been bouncing along the bottom, but our (FTE) headcount numbers have masked the effect of what our full-pay students have really been contributing to our revenue.”
Truckenmiller told the FMCC Board of Trustees that Gov. Kathy Hochul’s proposed state budget currently offers a 4% increase of state aid to the SUNY system, bringing total state aid to approximately the level it was in 2010.
“They’re paying state aid out at 2010 levels, back when our enrollment was (almost) 50% more,” he said.
Truckenmiller also warned the board to look out for a provision in Hochul’s proposed budget that would “holdback 20%” of state aid from SUNY schools “pending the receipt of an alternative plan from SUNY.” He said FMCC received about $5 million in state aid for its $17.3 million 2022-23 budget.
“There’s some language buried in there (in the governor’s proposed executive budget) about developing a plan with the state division of budget, but 20% of our state aid is about $1 million, so that’s not an inconsequential number for us to look at,” he said.
FMCC’s $17.3 million 2022-23 budget for the current school year included over $3 million in federal funding that won’t be available for the 2023-24 budget cycle, including:
• $2.2 million in federal Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act FY2020-2021
• $897,542 in federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and. Economic Security Act (CARES) FY2019-2020 funding.
The 2022-23 FMCC budget also included $1.7 million worth of spending cuts, $536,155 from salaries, $363,500 from equipment expenses and $260,503 in maintenance and general operating expense cuts.
He said the public can expect additional cuts this year.
“We’re doing what we’ve done for the last five or six years, we’re looking at where we can cut expenses, which is challenging,” Truckenmiller said. “Our budget has decreased each year for the last three to four years, and it will decrease again this year, and that requires us to do things like cut staff, because 80% of our budget is salaries and benefits.”
Truckenmiller said one bright spot that could help increase FTE enrollment at FMCC for the fall of 2023 is the fact that the Fulmont College Association (FCA) has completed its sale of FMCC’s three dormitory halls for $1.8 million to Amsterdam-based Tryon Enterprises LLC, owned by David P. Huckans.
He told the college board of trustees that the nonprofit FCA has turned over the proceeds from the sale of the dorm halls to the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, which had loaned the nonprofit $11.3 million in 2010 for the purpose of purchasing and renovating the 1980s-vintage Fulton Hall and Montgomery Hall dorm buildings for $4 million and then in 2012 building the 144-bed, co-ed Raider Hall dorm for $7.1 million.
Truckenmiller said the USDA had to sign-off on the sale of the dorm halls, but has not yet finalized the rest of the debt forgiveness for the FCA, although he expects that to happen soon. He said the FCA has been able to resume its role as the entity that contracts with a company to provide on-campus food for students, which it has done through a contract with Town of Caroga resident Kim Walker, who is now operating the college’s “X-Kitchen” facility.
He said he’s hopeful the combination of housing and food will help attract more students to FMCC.
