When students arrived back on campus in January, perhaps many still felt some uncertainty about the ongoing class cancellations. Sign after sign appeared posted next to classroom doors where the classes were supposed to meet announcing that the class was not going to meet.

This is when student enrollment begins to diminish in the Los Rios district. Low enrollment, however, bothered the campus other ways.   Classes were not filling up to their minimum enrollment capacity -- a number the dean of each department establishes, says Robin Neal, Dean of Enrollment, causing many cancellations. According to Stephen Peithman, public information officer, classes have a different number of minimum students required before it will be cancelled. An English class could have a lower minimum required because of all the essay writing involved, while a math class can have up to 30 or more.

This situation seems like it would decrease spring's enrollment, but the Los Rios Community College District's daily enrollment report shows that since the fall of 2005, there had been a steady increase in the American River College population. There is a certain proportion of full-time professors set each year by the state based on the

following years budget. With the college's many available courses, adjunct professors can be hired at an out of pocket cost to the college. Peithman says this can help the college. "More students, more money to hire more professors," he said.

Neal says funding is based on the following year, which may throw enrollment off. When this happens to the school's population, the down side shows that the cancelled courses may affect some students over a period of time. When a course gets cancelled, it is up to the dean of that department when to bring that course back, she said.

Different deans try in different ways to keep a course running, like changing the time it is scheduled or even making the class shorter. When there is a reasonable class size, this situation seldom occurs, but it happens and that's when the deans of our school try to keep the schedules together.

"The schedule is set to run and not to cancel," Neal said.

Vice President of Instruction Colleen Owings says counselors and administrators will help students with efforts of calling or Imailing a student to notify of cancellations before the semester. This gives the student a

chance to find a different time or course to take. In an Auto Drop (being dropped a week before the semester due to unpaid fees) this gives a particular course a chance to fill up without being cancelled. Those dropped can still be a part of the class by going through enrollment again. These cancellations end in either students leaving to other schools or the reduction of numbers of classes. In the spring 2006 semester, American River College had a total of 215 cancelled classes and a look at this spring's cancelled classes has totaled to 161.

"We want students to persist," said Owings.

Each semester, the college administrators are figuring out the schedules for next semester. The college is funded by the number of students enrolled and when the ratio changes dramatically, the college can be penalized. This is a community college with open admissions, says Peithman.   Who is going stay after their classes get cancelled? Who isn't going to worry because they are here on a Board of Governor's Waiver?   This is a community college after all and it has an open enrollment where a class can either be cancelled or moved to another section.

"It's almost a guess to fulfill student's needs," said Peithman.