Bracing for a second year of statewide budget woes, Sonoma State University leaders anticipate a 500-student drop in enrollment this fall while about 250 temporary employees could lose their jobs.

For the 2004-2005 academic year, "I see a significant reduction in the number of temporary employees, both faculty and nonfaculty, that the university has hired in the past," SSU President Ruben Armiñana said, preparing for a campuswide budget summit Tuesday. "This will be the worst financial year for Sonoma State University in the 12 years that I have been here."

Collectively, SSU and the California State University system's 22 other campuses face $240 million in cuts under Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's latest budget proposal. The funding losses would follow $304 million in net cuts to the CSU budget this year -- a two-year trim that accounts for $9.2 million in expected losses to SSU's $65 million general fund budget, Armiñana said.

He said the proposed cuts would force SSU to accept about 500 fewer students in the fall.

The proposed cuts are the focus of Tuesday's budget summit from 1 to 5 p.m. at the Evert B. Person Theater, where Armiñana will join faculty, staff and student leaders in forecasting the impact on the Rohnert Park campus.

"The university is in a big mess right now," said Catherine Nelson, chairwoman of the 600-member SSU faculty. "We need to pull together to try to get out of it."

With potentially hundreds of fewer part-time faculty members to teach 8,000 students, Nelson said she expects student-instructor ratios to increase from 20 to 22 students for each instructor to 25 or 26 next year.

"It's a tremendous hit," agreed Victor Garlin, SSU chapter president of the California Faculty Association. "We're being asked to teach more students with less money, and many of our most valuable teachers -- who happen to be (temporary) lecturers -- are not going to be rehired."

Jason Spencer, president of SSU's Associated Students, said he objects to protecting some permanent, nonteaching employees' jobs at the expense of veteran faculty members.

"You have faculty on this campus who've been teaching here 20 years but they're part time, so they're considered expendable," Spencer said. "That's a huge loss of talent."

But union contracts partially limit the hiring preferences SSU administrators can exercise, Armiñana said.

"You have to go through your temporary employees before you can go to those employees who have achieved permanent status," he said.

Garlin suggested an alternative model, in which noninstructional employees would absorb the brunt of layoffs and hiring freezes.

"We recommend they furlough the managers and give them time off without pay," Garlin said Sunday. "The people who are engaged in the core functions of the university -- instruction and the library -- should be the last to go."

The governor's budget proposes a 10 percent fee increase for undergraduates, which would raise CSU fees from $2,046 to $2,251 annually. A 40 percent fee increase would raise graduate students' fees from $2,256 to $3,158 a year, while a 20 percent increase for nonresident students would result in a jump from $8,460 to $10,152.

But "the fee increases the governor is proposing will not be sufficient to equalize the losses," Armiñana said.

Financial losses, and resulting personnel cuts, mean fewer courses can be offered. That trend is jeopardizing undergraduates' ability to earn their degrees in the traditional four years, Nelson said, forcing many into a fifth year at SSU.

To maintain the needed number of classes and to keep classes small, some parents have expressed their willingness to pay a premium in fees above the $2,250 figure, Armiñana said.

With families already investing $8,000 or more in housing, tuition and other annual SSU costs, "parents have said, 'Why don't you charge me $500 more a year but guarantee that my son or daughter would have the appropriate number of classes or smaller classes?'" he said.

"It's a very logical answer," he said, but not allowable under state regulations. "That's not a card I can play."

Henry Amaral, an office administrative assistant who will speak at Tuesday's forum, said custodial staff also are feeling the budget pinch.

"We're going to have more work put on us and less time to do it in," said Amaral, whose duties include events setup and other facilities maintenance. "I still have the same demand in responsibilities, but I do not have the same manpower."

Pulling from $1.4 million in reserves, SSU was able to offset this year's budget cuts.

Without that cushion, "next year the cuts will be more apparent," predicted Saied Rahimi, dean of SSU's School of Science and Technology.

Meanwhile, SSU officials and students await the unveiling of the governor's revised budget in May and legislative deliberations they expect to stretch into summer.

"We're dealing with a moving target," Rahimi said. "The task ahead will be to minimize the destructive nature of this budget cut."