Sinclair Community College will not be raising tuition for fall quarter, according to President Steven Johnson.
With the help of what Johnson called a “rainy day fund” worth $10 million, the school will weather the expected drops in state and levy funding and keep tuition at its current rate.
Johnson said the fund is one-time money, but they are using it to maintain accessibility of services for students and to pay salaries.
“The board has a strategic priority of accessibility,” Johnson said. “Every chance we get, we keep tuition low.”
Johnson said a tuition increase for winter quarter is a possibility.
Sinclair is expecting, in what Johnson called a best case scenario, to see a 10 percent drop in both state funding and levy funding. Johnson called those cuts “very serious drops” and Sinclair can make up for that by cutting students and services or by raising tuition.
“State funding and levy funding are going down,” Johnson said. “The question is, how much?”
Johnson said he is “very uncomfortable” with the idea of lower quality at Sinclair.
“Either more money or less quality,” Johnson said. “And I think less quality is unacceptable.”
Johnson said the college expects to know for sure later into the summer.
As a result, Johnson said he expects a tuiton increase at some point in the future.
However, the increase won’t change that Sinclair will have among the lowest or the lowest tuition in Ohio, according to Johnson.
He estimated that the rainy day fund money could last–in a best case scenario–for two years.
Details on the levy decrease
Johnson said the drop in levy funding is unprecedented in Sinclair’s history with levies.
“Never has a Sinclair levy gone down by so much,” Johnson said.
The levy is a real estate tax on Montgomery County residents. The drop, according to Johnson, is a result of tax reforms by the Ohio government, real estate values dropping in the county and a rise in foreclosures, which means less tax dollars being collected.