Lincoln University's budget for next year still contains some uncertainty as to the extent of deficits, but what's clear is that cuts in place will affect employees and students.
Those cuts include a 2.5 percent across-the-board decrease in salary for Lincoln employees, 41 staff and faculty positions that have already been eliminated, and the elimination of the university's bowling team.
Lincoln's Board of Curators on Monday approved a budget for the 2021 fiscal year that assumes a 20 percent decline in state appropriations - based on information from Missouri Gov. Mike Parson's office, said Sandy Koetting, LU's vice president for administration and finance.
The income in LU's approved general fund budget - for things including academic programs, faculty pay and student services - is 43 percent dependent on core state appropriations.
The university currently expects those core appropriations to decline more than $3.4 million for next year, to a total of approximately $13.6 million, as the state also faces its own budget crises due to the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The pandemic is also threatening LU's other main source of income - collection of tuition and fees, which is expected to take a more than $4.4 million hit as enrollment is expected to decline. The budget approved Monday expects approximately $10.7 million to be brought in through tuition and fees - 33 percent of the budget.
LU also expects a more than $754,000 decline in state appropriations in the form of matching funds for its 1890 federal land grant funding. Those matching funds from the state are currently budgeted to bring in more than $3 million, 9 percent of the university's general fund income for next year.
Most of the rest of next year's budgeted general fund income - more than $3.38 million, 11 percent of budgeted income - is a transfer of federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act emergency funding.
Parson has not yet approved a budget for Missouri, and Koetting said LU expects to know more in the coming weeks, as Parson nears a June 30 deadline to approve the state's budget.
If a 20 percent cut in state appropriations is realized, Koetting said, that would not jeopardize any more faculty or staff positions than have already been eliminated.
Of 41 eliminated positions, 17 were filled and 24 were vacant, she said. Of the filled positions, five were faculty and the rest were staff.
"We cannot keep people on, not knowing what the budget is, and knowing that we have significant deficits," LU President Jerald Jones Woolfolk said.
Woolfolk said employees being laid off need weeks or months of notice, and therefore the university could not wait until Parson finalized a state budget.
Michael Scott, leader of Lincoln's faculty union, told the News Tribune in a statement after the meeting: "Lincoln University is charting the wrong course. It is impossible to maintain our high standards (as a university) if we continue to lay off faculty and staff."
Scott's statement also included that the union hopes to engage with administration in "problem-solving rather than additional lay-offs," and the union "looks forward to exploring options with the curators to ensure our students receive the education they deserve."
LU spokeswoman Misty Young said the 41 eliminated positions includes 14 non-teaching staff who were laid off in May.
One of the eliminated vacant positions was that of the coach for LU's women's bowling athletic program, Young said.
The 2019-20 roster for the team online showed five student athletes, at least one of whom graduated this year.
"There was one student bowler on a scholarship, and that scholarship will be honored for the year," Young said.
The elimination of the bowling program will not affect the bowling alley on campus in LU's Scruggs University Center, which will stay open, she said.
Any more revenue for the university would help its budget, Koetting said.
Parson has yet to decide how to spend $54.6 million in Governor's Emergency Education Relief funding made available to him through the CARES Act.
Federal guidance on the GEER funds - which can also be used for K-12 schools, in addition to higher education - states that the funds can be used to support higher education institutions that a governor determines either have been "most significantly impacted" by COVID-19 and need the aid to continue to provide their services and remain functional, or also institutions that a governor determines are "essential for carrying out emergency educational services to students" for activities authorized in federal law, "the provision of child care and early childhood education, social and emotional support, and the protection of education-related jobs."
LU Chief of Staff Carlos Graham said the university will not be a recipient of $120 million recently donated by the CEO of Netflix to historically Black colleges and universities including Morehouse College and Spelman College. Those two institutions are to receive $40 million each, and the other $40 million would be divided up among private HBCUs that are members of the United Negro College Fund - of which LU is not a member because it's a public institution, member instead of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, Graham said.
If LU's budget changes in the coming weeks, the Board of Curators can revise it.
"We've looked at every opportunity we could think of" to cut costs, Koetting said.
This article was edited at 8:45 a.m. June 23, 2020, with additional details.