Renton Technical College is facing what top administrators are calling “devastating” budget cuts from the state that could reduce the number of students it serves in its job training and retraining programs.

Proposed is a 20 percent cut in the college’s budget for the two-year period starting on July 1. That’s potentially about $8 million.

Top administrators with the state’s two-year and four-year colleges and universities are already making their case to Gov. Chris Gregoire and legislators.

That effort will continue through the legislative session that begins in January.

“There will be a full-court press,” said Don Bressler, president of Renton Technical College.

They argue that the colleges are part of the solution in tough economic times, providing job training that will help workers find a job or stay employed with new skills.

“This is not the time to start cutting back in those areas,” Bressler said.

Gregoire will release her proposed state budget in

mid-December.

Already, the state has asked the college to cut its budget by 4.1 percent or about $814,000 this fiscal year. About 10 percent of that savings will come from closing the school’s pool at year’s end, a move that has already drawn concern from swimmers who take water-aerobics classes there.

The deep cuts are the result of the state budget’s growing deficit. Bressler learned last week with other college presidents that the deficit has grown from about $5.2 billion to about $5.8 billion.

Bressler called the potential impact on the school “devastating. We are going to be training fewer students.”

Now, the college has state funding for about 3,800 full-time equivalent (FTE) students, or about 10,000 students, many who attend part-time.

A 20-percent budget cut would reduce that FTE number to about 3,040.

This year, Renton Technical has a budget of about $34 million, with about $18 million coming from the state. The college gets about $4.5 million from tuition and fees.

Bressler said the college can make up cuts in three ways: layoffs, cutting programs and classes and raising tuition.

Currently, there is a hiring freeze and top college administrators are looking at programs with low enrollments and high costs. One vice president position is going unfilled.

No specific programs have been identified for possible elimination, according to Carol Werner, the college’s executive vice president for administration and finance.

However, she said, “you can’t wait until June to make the decisions.”

The goal is to preserve as many of those occupational programs as possible, according to Bressler.

This year, the state Legislature will meet in long session, which typically ends in May or early June. It’s not unusual for agreement on a new budget to come near the end of the session.

The tuition for the average student is about $2,400 a year. In the 10-year period from 1996 to 2006, tuition increased 84 percent, according to Bressler.

The last tuition increase was 2 1/2 percent, although the state authorized up to 7 percent. Now, with the budget crisis, a 7 percent increase is possible – for each of the two years of the state budget biennium, according to Bressler.

“That’s a pretty stiff increase,” Bressler said.

For now, the college is preparing for what lies ahead.

The closure of the swimming pool will save about $80,000, according to Bressler. An analysis prior to the closure indicated the college would have to raise fees significantly to keep the pool open, he said. About 80 people are enrolled in the water-aerobics classes.

An option for those swimmers is a similar program at Valley Medical Center, according to Bressler.