After an hours-long public meeting, the Wright State University board of trustees Thursday voted to approve $30.8 million in cuts from the school’s budget next year.
The cuts include the elimination of 189 jobs, including 57 current employees and 119 vacant positions for a cost-savings of $14 million in salaries and benefits, officials say.
The budget proposal also originally called for eliminating Wright State’s swimming and diving teams, but after hearing emotional testimony from several audience members the board ultimately voted instead to delay action on the program cuts until the end of the month.
Danielle Schultz, whose son is a senior on the swim team, drove all the way from Chicago to attend the budget meeting. She says she's hoping Wright State will find a way to save the swimming programs.
Cutting the teams, she says, would be unfair to students and families who were counting on the programs. Most students will not be able to transfer to other swim programs this late in the academic calendar.
“We were very much caught off-guard. The students left for the spring semester, they all signed leases for next year. They're in a bad position to be negatively impacted by the decision [to cut the programs]. As a parent, I’ve been cheated out of watching my son culminating the final year of his swimming career because he will not have his senior year if they continue with these proposed cuts,” she says.
Officials called the 2018 budget a "good first step" toward better fiscal accountability for the financially struggling university. But they say more urgently needs to be done to increase student enrollment, and course and program completion.
In the meantime, university officials say Wright State will likely require state fiscal oversight sometime in the next two years.
