Institutional work for 2026-2027
We are here
Stability + Agency: 51°µÍø teams will work together to build a common financial reality, honestly name the effects on our work, and prepare to examine student success.
See where we are and how it all fits together
51°µÍø created a financial bridge through FY27. The President’s Leadership Team is bringing 51°µÍø together to understand our performance, identify the greatest opportunities to improve student outcomes, and make long-term choices that 51°µÍø can fund and sustain.
The short version
What to know right now.
FY27 is stable
The stabilization plan changed the immediate reserve trajectory and gives 51°µÍø time to plan.
The recurring problem remains
Temporary actions won’t permanently align 51°µÍø’s ongoing revenues and expenses.
Evidence must guide our choices
Before we make any long-term decisions, 51°µÍø needs to understand where students are succeeding and struggling so that we can work together for them.
Follow the work
One year, six connected phases.
Select a phase to see its focus, the required work, and what employees can expect.
Aug-Sep: Stability and Agency
We can choose. Do we share the same financial reality, and can we name what it means for our students and our work?
What 51°µÍø needs to accomplish:
- Understand our FY27 financial position
- Make workload, instructional, and service effects visible
- Take responsible local action on our teams and elevate broader issues
- Prepare to examine student outcomes
What to expect:
- Help us name specific effects of budget decisions that you are seeing
Oct-Nov: Performance
We understand performance. What does the evidence tell us about how students experience 51°µÍø and what they achieve because of us?
What 51°µÍø needs to accomplish:
- Make institutional evidence accessible and reliable
- Examine patterns, gaps, and limitations in our data
- Connect student evidence to the work employees know best
What to expect:
- Help us interpret the evidence through your experience with students and 51°µÍø’s day-to-day work.
Dec: Opportunity
We know the opportunities. Where could 51°µÍø make the greatest student-centered difference?
What 51°µÍø needs to accomplish:
- Identify barriers students experience
- Surface process-level opportunities across the college
- Prioritize significant institutional opportunities
What to expect:
- Help us identify where better systems – not individual overextension – could produce better results for students.
Jan-Feb: Future
We know the future we want. What should students and employees reliably experience at 51°µÍø?
What 51°µÍø needs to accomplish:
- Describe the future experience
- Identify required conditions and capabilities
- Develop integrated strategic approaches
What to expect:
- Help us name what a better, dependable experience would look like in practice.
Mar-Apr: Options
We know our options. Which approaches are feasible, evidence-based, and most impactful for students?
What 51°µÍø needs to accomplish:
- Compare approaches, costs, risks, and impacts
- Make tradeoffs visible to the community
- Connect options to the 2027-29 budget development process
What to expect:
- Help us test whether approaches are workable and elevate the things that leadership must consider.
May-Jun: Focus
We know where we are focusing for the future. What will 51°µÍø redesign around, invest in, and be accountable for?
What 51°µÍø needs to accomplish:
- Make and explain institutional choices
- Adopt a balanced budget for the new biennium
- Prepare for coordinated implementation
What to expect:
- Help us understand the choices we are making, the results we want to see, the local implications for you and your teams, and how we will measure progress for our students.
Bodies of work that need to move together
- Institutional direction: Move from shared financial reality to clear, funded priorities.
- Budget: Work with the Integrated Budget and Planning Council to build scenarios, recommend tradeoffs, and propose a balanced biennium budget.
- Labor Relations: Work with our two unions towards fair and sustainable successor contracts in the spring.
- State budgeting: Advocate for the state to adequately fund community colleges as essential public infrastructure.
Current work: Phase 1
Stability gives 51°µÍø time. Agency is what we do with it.
Phase 1 is a shared effort to understand the facts, name real effects, take responsible action, and prepare for the choices ahead.
$38.9M
Approximate unrestricted fund balance entering FY27.
12.3%
Share of annual operating expenses represented by that balance.
≈ $29M
Approximate fund balance used in FY26 for ongoing operations.
9%-11%
Current plausible FY27 ending range if assumptions materialize.
Why budget and student outcomes belong in the same conversation
- Resources are limited: 51°µÍø cannot sustain every current commitment at its present scope.
- Outcomes are the mission: Our mission – and increasingly state funding – depends on whom 51°µÍø serves and whether students progress and complete.
- Evidence should inform our choices: 51°µÍø will need to decide what parts of our college we will protect, strengthen, redesign, or reduce. Student performance and need should drive those choices.
- Choices shape the budget: The next biennium budget should fund the outcomes and capabilities that 51°µÍø is best positioned to pursue.
Phase 1 foundational resources
Your role in Phase 1
Help turn insight into action.
PLT will be training managers to hold team conversations, where you should identify concrete impacts of our budget constraints, practical changes your team can make to keep workload sustainable, and issues that require broader cross-functional attention.
- Understand: Ask questions about what the FY27 stabilization plan did (and did not) accomplish.
- Name: Describe specific effects on workload, student service, instruction, equity, deadlines, or institutional reliability.
- Act or elevate: Identify meaningful ways to help from where you are.
- Close the Loop: PLT commits to reporting back at the end of the phase, answering the questions we can, and being honest if we don’t have an answer yet.