In Christmas Valley, a windswept town about 100 miles southeast of Bend, Central Oregon Community College (COCC) hasn’t always had an easy relationship with local residents. Back in 1986 part of Lake County, where Christmas Valley is located, threatened to secede from the college district.

Residents felt they weren’t receiving enough in return for their property tax dollars, college officials recall.

Almost two decades later, Christmas Valley, like many of the outlying areas in the college’s 10,000-square-mile district, has lost services because of the state’s budget troubles.

The school cut the part-time college coordinator, who worked out of North Lake School a few miles from Christmas Valley, earlier this year. The coordinator cost the college about $25,000 in salary and benefits. COCC did not have to pay to use its office space there.

COCC continues to offer a handful of noncredit continuing education classes at the public kindergarten-through-12th-grade North Lake School, ranging from an Internet class to a course on first aid, but – as of yet – four of the five classes offered this fall have been canceled. Too few people have signed up for the classes to be held.

Some Christmas Valley residents say they’re not surprised.

”I really sincerely didn’t think it was going to fly,” said Barbara Remy, the Christmas Valley Library branch manager. She wonders whether a local college program can really survive without a local college representative.

It’s not that people aren’t interested, she said, but out here they need an extra push to get involved, Remy said. Adult basic skills classes, which students typically took to improve in subjects such as reading and math, are no longer being offered.

Without a local contact and with decreased services, one resident said she simply felt disappointed and disheartened.

”The reaction, of course, to be really blunt, is that people feel really left out,” said Lisa Nelson, the Christmas Valley Chamber of Commerce president who has taught art in a continuing education class through COCC.

But college officials explain that in a world of lean economic times, their priority is the college’s mission.

The district was founded to establish a college where the residents could attend the school and either get professional or technical training or transfer to one offering a higher degree. In a sense, the school has to make hard choices when times get tight.

”There’s not enough public dollars to fully support a core college program for the Central Oregon population,” said COCC President Bob Barber. ”So if we want to retain the core or primary mission, then there are other services that are going to get lost.”

College coordinators and centers were just one of many avenues the college looked to in order to reduce spending, he said.

”We’re supposed to be good stewards of the tax dollars,” he said. ”Ultimately, if our resources get stronger again in the future we will make an effort to reach back out to communities.”

Students in the Christmas Valley-area rural community can, and do, take advantage of the school’s college-level credit classes. As of last fall, seven graduates of North Lake School, some who had graduated years earlier, were enrolled in COCC credit classes.

College classes, particularly those on a college campus, are what residents in all of the communities in the COCC district originally paid for, said Carol Moorehead, the associate dean of continuing education.

As times improved, COCC began to offer services in communities outside the main Bend campus. Over time, community expectations changed as well, Moorehead said.

Residents in many outlying communities spoke out over the last year as they watched their COCC services shrink. The Madras, Prineville, La Pine and Sisters college centers were also cut for budget reasons.

Continuing education classes continue to be offered in all of those communities. However, enrollment is slightly down in part due to a lack of a full-time college presence, Moorehead said.

But the predicament for Christmas Valley area residents is somewhat different, residents said. Patty Effingham, another Christmas Valley resident who was slated to teach a COCC Internet class this fall, believes the future of the college is bleak in her remote community.

”I know all the communities are feeling this loss”