Pierce Drops Its Summer School to Save Money : Education: Declining state funds would have cut the session’s 120 classes to 40. The college hopes to avoid trimming fall and spring courses.

For the first time, Pierce College officials have canceled summer school to save money rather than risk having to cut classes during the regular school year.

Because of declining state funding, the Pierce summer school session would have been reduced to 40 classes from the 120 or so usually offered.

The school’s Faculty Senate and academic department administrators agreed this week to use the anticipated $120,000 savings to pay for regular classes rather than spend the money on a slimmed-down summer school.

“During the fall and spring semesters we offer about 4,000 classes, so the summer session makes up only about 3% of our total offerings,” said William Norlund, the school’s vice president of academic affairs.

The cutbacks come in anticipation of an estimated 11% reduction in state money to community colleges for the 1993-94 school year. The current $24.5-million budget for Pierce College is expected to drop to about $21.5 million in the coming school year.

Harbor College last year became the first school in the nine-campus Los Angeles Community College District to cancel summer school, district officials said. Other schools are also considering cancellation of summer school, officials said.

Valley and Mission colleges, however, plan to continue offering summer school, officials said.

Tyree Wieder, Valley College vice president of academic affairs, said her campus had taken large budget cuts in past years, but has cut expenses enough to allow continuation of the school’s 130-class, six-week summer program.

“Unfortunately, we will probably have more students than we have space for,” she said.

Pierce student Julie Preciado will become one of those forced to find classes at another community college this summer. She had planned on taking chemistry and math.

The 19-year-old Sylmar resident was counting on taking those courses at Pierce before transferring to a private college in the fall, where she will be required to pay $400 to $500 a unit, compared to the $50 charge for community college courses.

“This is really going to affect my pocketbook if I can’t take those classes in summer school,” Preciado said.

But most students, such as Pierce sophomore Mike White of Canyon Country, have other plans.

“I work in the summer,” White said.