Protracted and contentious contract negotiations aren't all that's going on at Palomar College.

Yes, it's the community college's first experience with a faculty union. And yes, the faculty and the union, which is about two years old, and Sherrill Amador, president of Palomar for less than two years, are at loggerheads.

But this is more than the battle of personalities, questionable employee surveys and management styles that faculty critics claim. However much Amador may (or may not) need to improve her "people skills," she's the conveyor of a message that Palomar has managed to avoid for decades: The budget must move from tight to tighter, and achieving that entails what more than one observer has called "a culture change."

Palomar's board of directors knows that, but its faculty and support staff, or at least a vocal portion of it, strongly resist the imperative that academic world and business world meld. That's a necessity when the state is no longer flush with funds – and rather important, for accountability's sake, even when the state is flush.

Not everything comes down to money, but most of what doesn't in this contract negotiation seems to have been settled. And what remains is not just what faculty and staff are paid but what they must do to earn it. From the board's perspective – and from the taxpayers' – faculty and staff will have to do more.

Eighty-seven percent of the college's budget goes to wages. If cuts of the magnitude expected aren't to result in faculty layoffs, then the funds and the work done to earn them will have to be stretched. The ideal – ever more classes offered with ever fewer students, ever more support staff and ever higher pay and benefits – must give way to the real.

Some class sizes will grow, more classes will be taught by part-time instructors, and support staff will probably be cut. Raises, too, are up for negotiation, and the starting points are these: Palomar's 800-plus part-time teachers are paid from $37.01 to $48.11 per hour in the classroom; its 300 full-timers, most commonly in the classroom 15 hours per week, are salaried, ranging from $38,399 to $77,904 annually, plus benefits.

That's not peanuts, particularly to thousands of community-college students who are working a 40-hour week and going to school as well. Yet faculty members argue that it's the students who will suffer if faculty workloads increase – and students (and taxpayers) whose costs will soar if they do not.

The alternative, then, is what? At the board's request, Amador has developed a structure of "planning councils" through which faculty and staff can channel alternatives and suggestions. Failing that, the board may request a state mediator to oversee the negotiations. It's a last resort, but some board members are ready to do just that – and understandably so.