What is the rush?

What is the rush? Merge with care!

Summary

The proposed Laney Merritt merger would happen by next year: that is too short a time to do all the work necessary. The district’s own budget acknowledges a minimum annual loss of at least $3 million a year in funding due to the merger.

History

Last Fall the Chancellor proposed a transformation plan for Peralta. Point 6 was a surprise: Laney and Merritt College were to merge into one College (with two campuses). The rational was that it would save us money. Well, ok, many of us thought, we need to save money, so we’ll do what we can to support this difficult change. However, in December of that year, the District itself published a budget that showed that the merger would cost us a minimum LOSS of $3 million of State funding every year, in perpetuity. This led to two fundamental questions.

Why merge when it will cost us millions in lost state revenue every year, in perpetuity?

Why are we rushing to merge by next year?

A group of faculty and staff proceeded to attend numerous shared governance meetings to ask these questions in good faith and even sought out direct conversations with leadership about these issues. A full semester later we’ve found no solid answers, just an unfortunate certainty that we will lose more than $3 million a year by merging.

$3 million less in annual funding, forever.

Thanks to the way State funding works, we are in a distinctly advantageous financial loophole. Each College within a district receives “base funding” from the State, just for existing. The current base funding gives Peralta $6.5 million a year for each of our 4 Colleges. That means we now have $13 million a year from Laney and Merritt, as separate Colleges. If we merge, we would lose $6.5 million a year. What?! Well, actually we’d lose “only” $3 million a year, in the best case scenario, due to attenuations from the State and if we have significantly higher enrollments. Note: our entire budget is ~ $164 million.

Currently: $6.5 + $6.5= $13 million a year.

Merger: $6.5= $6.5 million. Annual loss of $6.5 million, guaranteed.

Merger plus hope: $8 (from big growth in enrollment) + $2 (from State promise)= $10 million. Annual loss of $3 million. This is our best case scenario.

Other sources of lost funding.

We have many grants and special programs (known as categorical funding) including Health Services, Learning Center, Street Scholars, Mesa, Basic Needs, Umoja, SAS, etc. Most of the funding is per College, so we likely stand to lose an additional ~ $9 million in vital funding by merging. It is possible, but not yet certain, that the State may make exceptions for some programs. Or we could lose a total of $15 million a year (base funding plus categoricals).

Merritt and Laney are well known names: the loss of branding hasn’t been calculated.

It is likely that students will stay away from a merger and take classes at more stable appearing Colleges. To counteract this, we need a major marketing campaign which has not been included in any published budgets.

To merge the two Colleges requires a lot of work: this too often free labor could instead be put into the success of points 1-5 of the transformation plan.

Why do people even want to do this?

A lot of us are perplexed, to be honest. The strongest reasons we’ve heard are: a. reduce administration; b. align programs and classes across the district. These changes are important but can be done without merging.

The rush to merge

The current plan is to open as OCC in Fall 2027, with students enrolling in Spring 2027. There is a lot of labor involved to align courses, academic programs, student services, staffing, shared governance, athletics, administration, cultures, branding, etc. Most of it is not figured out yet, let alone implemented. The approach seems to be to first commit to this profound, irrevocable merger, then figure out how to make it work. It often feels like jumping off a cliff with large, visible rocks below.

And the students?

They haven’t been an integral part of the planning. Many only found out about the merger through a recent survey. In response to this, about 45 students attended the Board of Trustees Meeting on 5/12/26 to protest the merger. Listen to their riveting testimony (minutes 17 to 48): https://www.youtube.com/live/SPBxhts9dkY?si=Y9J8a2042NJdZZ3x

Is it a done deal?

No, the Board of Trustees hasn’t voted on it yet. However, it is possible they will do so at the June 9thmeeting, 6 pm.