Cal Poly has shelved a plan to offer a limited summer school program through its Continuing Education program.

A month ago, the shrinking state budget prompted university officials to eliminate most summer classes to minimize cuts for the 2004-05 school year.

Cal Poly officials had announced they would not require colleges to offer summer school courses, in response to a 5-percent, across-the-board enrollment cut ordered by the Chancellor's Office for each of the 23 CSU campuses.

Cal Poly's plan would help minimize the cuts the university would have to make during the regular school year, but it could briefly defer some students' graduation plans that depended on taking courses this summer. About 3,300 students -- nearly one in five at Cal Poly -- took summer school courses last year.

Now even the limited summer schedule won't take place.

The university had intended to offer more than 50 classes this summer through Continuing Education, but was caught between competing missions of the program and the CSU Chancellor's Office, said W. David Conn, Cal Poly's Vice Provost for Academic Programs and Undergraduate Education.

Conn said the Chancellor's Office required the university to collect the same fees this summer for Continuing Education classes that students pay for courses during the regular school year. These fees don't begin to cover the actual cost, but during the regular school year the university receives state funding to make up the difference.

Continuing Education Dean Dennis Parks said that since his program is supported only by the fees students pay to take the classes, it could not pay the same salaries instructors and professors make during the regular school year. That scale would have paid faculty roughly 60 percent of what they are paid for teaching courses during fall, winter and spring quarters.

"The union took exception to that," Conn said.

California Faculty Association President Manzar Foroohar said the union only negotiates with state-funded programs.

"We don't bargain over extended studies," she said, adding that the union encouraged faculty not to take the teaching assignments for less pay.

She said the union also told administrators it would consider filing a grievance against the university if it hired teachers for the lower salaries.

Although Foorohar said she has received a couple nasty telephone messages from faculty blaming the union for costing them their summer jobs, she denied that the union was to blame.

"It was only one of the reasons. It was not the main reason," she said. "We didn't have any voice in the decision."

Vice Provost Conn said Cal Poly is working with officials at Cuesta College in San Luis Obispo and Allan Hancock College in Santa Maria, in order to create some additional summer courses Cal Poly students could take.

Continuing Education will continue its usual summer program, which serves about 2,000 students, most of whom are not enrolled full-time in the university.

Conn said only the colleges of Agriculture and Business would offer any summer school courses this year.