The state’s bite on the Renton Technical College’s budget is still deep, but the message to state officials apparently paid off that the college is a solution to the economy’s deep problems through its worker training.

Still the state’s budget crisis – an $8 billion budget deficit – has taken a toll on RTC’s students. Some staff layoffs are likely, too.

The numbers seem to worsen, along with their potential impact on RTC, with every new revenue forecast.

The deepening recession has forced more people out of work and looking for job retraining, including at RTC. According to college President Don Bressler, the college has enrolled about 300 more students than budgeted for the year.

In late fall, it became clear that the state would have to cut its support for higher education because of the recession. In early December, the state’s budget deficit was projected at about $5.3 billion, about $3 billion lower than today.

Bressler and other college presidents and trustees immediately went into a full-court

press to argue their case for continued support. Bressler’s point: RTC trains and retrains workers so they can keep their jobs or finds a new one.

“The thing that is so good is that our schools put people to work,” Bressler said.

The lobbying worked.

“She was really kind of good to us,” Bressler said of Gregoire. But he also pointed out that “we did some pretty good lobbying.”

But still the college may have to slash its budget by about $2.5 million in the next biennium, or about 6.4 percent. Bressler said that percentage still could go up even more.

That’s on top of the roughly $884,000 that RTC has cut in the current year’s budget. That figure could grow, based on the revenue forecast that’s coming out in mid-March.

Earlier, the reduction in RTC’s budget was projected at about $8 million.

For winter quarter, the college canceled about 20 sections of basic studies – English as a Second Language and adult basic education – affecting about 525 students.

At a Board of Trustees meeting earlier this month, a decision was made to close two programs with low enrollment, the civil Computer Aided Design program and the paraeducator program, which trains teachers aides.

Bressler said other programs proposed for closure include the medical lab technician program and a pre-apprenticeship carpentry program.

“We did them with a scalpel, rather than a hatchet,” Bressler said of the cuts.

Cuts considered but not made were to the school’s welding program and major appliance repair. “There are some areas that have a pretty strong market,” Bressler said.

Bressler was to return to Olympia on Thursday and Friday with other college officials to continue their lobbying efforts. They planned to meet with such lawmakers as Sen. Margarita Prentice, who chairs the Senate’s budget committee, and state Sen. Fred Jarrett.

What’s critical, Bressler said, is that the colleges receive “some sort of budget numbers that we can work off,” especially since the colleges are cutting staff and faculty.