BOT was told performance funds would cover student losses, but Mangum now calling for $10.5M cut

Back at a FAMU Board of Trustees (BOT) committee meeting on June 9, Chairman Kelvin Lawson said the BOT had been told that performance funds would be used to cover the projected $10M loss in tuition and fees due to an expected decline in enrollment for 2016-2017.

“$10M of the $11M [in performance funding] was applied to what we called an enrollment gap,” Lawson said.

On June 22, the Florida Board of Governors officially announced that FAMU would receive $11,509,132 in performance funds. But now FAMU President Elmira Mangum has told her staff to prepare for a $10.5M cut due to the enrollment decline.

The Tallahassee Democrat published a memorandum that Mangum sent to the “Provost, Vice Presidents, and Athletic Director” on July 26.

“This memorandum outlines the process for the development of the University’s plan to reduce E&G spending by $10.5 million,” Mangum wrote. “The plan is necessitated by the drop in student enrollment and by the fact that the Performance Funding allocation we received from the state needs to be targeted towards expenditures that enhance student success.”

The memo by Mangum didn’t mention whether the administration had received pressure from outside the university discouraging the use of performance funds to cover the enrollment decline. Florida’s performance funding law doesn’t bar universities from spending performance funds to replace money lost from a drop in students.

Mangum asked the university officials who she named in the memo to submit their plans for budget cuts by August 12. The BOT will hold its next meeting on August 23 in Tallahassee.

At the June 9 BOT committee meeting, Lawson  said he saw some problems in the 2016-2017 budget prepared by the administration. He said the administration hadn’t gone far enough to make the adjustments that were necessary.

“The revenue stream is dropping quickly and the expense line is relatively flat,” he said.

FAMU’s enrollment in Fall 2015 dropped to 9,920 (down from 10,233 in Fall 2014) under Mangum. The decline cost FAMU $9M+ from tuition and fee losses. The $10.5M FAMU expects to lose in 2016-2017 is based on a projected loss of 920 students.

Enrollment went up last year at North Carolina A&T University, Delaware State University, Southern University Baton Rouge, Grambling State University, Southern University Shreveport, and Southern University New Orleans.