PENDLETON — Going into 2020, Cesar Ortiz thought Blue Mountain Community College was the right fit for him.

A basketball standout at Hermiston High School, Ortiz, 19, had spent a year across the river at Columbia Basin College in Pasco, Washington, before deciding that going to school closer to home was the best step for him and his family.

And then everything shut down.

The Northwest Athletic Conference canceled the basketball season, depriving Ortiz of the chance to display his skills in front of coaches for four-year schools. When Ortiz would log into class in Zoom, some classes would only feature a handful of students.

2020 proved to be a challenging year for all local governments, but BMCC seemed to run into an especially bad spate of bad news.

“We shut down right at spring break last year,” BMCC President Dennis Bailey-Fougnier said in an interview. “It hasn’t been the same since.”

Enrollment fell as most classes transferred to an online format. The college was forced to make budget cuts that led to significant layoffs. The threat of more layoffs became real when the Oregon Department of Corrections announced it was ending its contract with BMCC to provide adult education services to inmates. FARM II, a planned rodeo arena and classroom building, was shelved as its source of revenue, Oregon lottery bonds, dried up.

According to Bailey-Fougnier, the outlook is a little brighter than some of the early months of the pandemic.

The budget outlook for state funding has improved, and although the proposed budget for community colleges is considered too low, Bailey-Fougnier considers it a good starting point in negotiations. After lobbying legislators, BMCC was able to restore its contract with the DOC, albeit at a number that could still lead to a smaller number of layoffs if not negotiated upward. FARM II is back in the governor’s budget.

Still, Bailey-Fougnier said some students are struggling with the online format, and while the pandemic continues to rage on, BMCC will have to try to restore its enrollment under the threat of a virus.

Laurie Post, the program director for BMCC’s nursing program, said her department was able to work around many of the challenges of the pandemic.

Nursing was one of the few programs that wasn’t completely exempted from holding in-person activities, although many classes moved to Zoom regardless. And despite the limitations of the pandemic, Post said BMCC was able to work with its medical partners on getting students their requisite number of field hours.

Keeping the program functional was important during a year when health care workers are in high demand.

“It’s an interesting time in health care,” Post said.

Stan Beach, a math and computer science instructor, said some challenges, like how to administer tests digitally, are still being troubleshooted.

But he also found a silver lining in a new tutoring service they offered to students. Beach said hours with the tutor went way up during the pandemic and it’s a program they expect to keep post-pandemic.

While some of BMCC’s financial prospects are looking up, the college will have to determine how it will affect student tuition.

It is a decision that will be made by the BMCC Board of Education later this year, and a move the board has tried to resist in the past.

Board chair Jane Hill, who praised students and staff for adapting to the rigors of the pandemic, said COVID-19 has revealed the flaws in the state’s community college funding system, which has increasingly relied on tuition and fees from students to balance budgets as other sources of revenue have flattened or decreased.

“This is an entity that has for years been asked to do more with less,” she said. “There comes a point where that expectation becomes unreasonable.”

As a student and a college athlete, Ortiz said 2020 has required more self-discipline.

Not just in attending classes online, but keeping himself in shape for a possible basketball season in 2021.

“You have to do everything from home,” he said. “It’s still difficult.”

Not only could Ortiz not access BMCC’s facilities for workouts, the state’s various shutdowns meant gyms weren’t open either.

Ortiz said he’s gotten creative in doing workouts at home, and he’s still hopeful that he can suit up for the Timberwolves this year.

For a student whose athletic ambitions and educational pursuits are intertwined, Ortiz doesn’t want to defer on his dreams.

[EDITOR’S NOTE: This story has been changed to reflect a correction. The story misstated the BMCC’s students name. His name is Cesar Ortiz.]