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February 19, 2024. Study Session.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Calling this study session to order.
We're going to move on to action item No. 3, the contract
amendment for Kelly Services, Incorporated, for educational staffing
services.
Do I have a motion?
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: I move we accept the item as presented.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: A second?
>> MR. GREG TAYLOR: Second.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: So we have folks that are going to present
to us, I believe, starting off with Dr. Bea. Thank you.
How are the kids?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: Healthy. (Laughter.)
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Yay, thank goodness.
>> DR. DAVID BEA: Good afternoon, Chairperson Riel, members of
the board, Chancellor Duran-Cerda, colleagues and guests.
As the board is aware, there was a conversation at the most
recent board meeting regarding a proposed increase to the Kelly
Services agreement.
During that meeting, the board had a number of questions and
concerns related to the agreement and concern related to how many
out-of-state employees the college employs, et cetera.
The board provided some questions. We have provided that
information to the board. Just to do sort of a real quick-and-dirty
where this came from, and then I will avail you to hear also from the
employee service center, the folks who actually manage payroll.
As a result of COVID and the growth of online instruction, the
number of colleges and universities are all facing a challenge of
having employees who reside in states other than their own. Really
got exacerbated with COVID, and as a result, there becomes a
compliance challenge for these colleges and universities, of which we
are one, to make sure that because we are responsible for managing
and maintaining, ensuring that all the withholdings, tax laws, and so
forth are followed for our employees, this is incredibly difficult
when you are talking about employees who might be temporary, they
might be your employees for a little while, and reside in any number
of states or localities, because it's not just that you have to
follow other state laws, it's also various localities also have laws
related to workers' compensation, what the withholding rates are,
sick-leave accumulation, some states and localities have retirement
expectations, et cetera.
There is a whole slew of requirements and regulatory things that
we have to ensure that we are complying with. That became something
that we identified the compliance concern and then looked for how do
we solve this problem, because we were confident -- and I will turn
it to Andrew in just a second -- confident that we don't have either
the personnel or the system resources to adequately ensure that
compliance.
That's where the recommendation came. We checked with other
colleges and universities, tried to find best practices, and that's
where we identified Kelly Services as a potential vendor that the
board approved that contract going back in time.
The agreement was set up so that we would have the ability to
hire adjunct faculty and temporary instructors as needed when we have
classes that need those instructors and we don't have anyone located
in-state. There is a procedure that the academic areas follow, and
I'll turn it over to the academic side to talk about that, but to
really identify who these individuals may be and then to provide
justification that, yes, indeed we need, in order to offer those
classes, we need to hire these out-of-state employees.
Again, in order to hire them and make sure that the college is
maintaining compliance, strong recommendation is to use a firm that
actually can turn on and off any state, they already have all of the
system resources available, so that they then become the employer of
record for those employees, and then we have the flexibility that if
in a given term or even in the eight weeks into the term, that if
there is a need to add a class and a faculty member is out-of-state,
that we then can address the student need.
With that, that's the big, general overview of the issue. Again,
the original estimate that we put together was based on the
individuals we knew of at the time. As we developed and got into the
policy, the procedure, in terms of implementing Kelly Services, we
were more sophisticated at identifying more accurately people who
were residing out-of-state, so the numbers grew significantly from
what our initial estimate was.
That's what we're coming to the board is for approval to increase
the contract amount to finish up this current year for the demand
that we have seen based on current terms.
So with that, I will turn it over. Andrew Plucker is the
executive director of the employee service center. Employee service
center is the unit that oversees payroll and benefits for the
college. It's an interesting unit. It reports up through the
finance side, so Andrew reports directly to me. Even though there
are crossover areas and the communication with HR is really heavy, it
is actually more on the finance side of the house than HR. But
again, they communicate really actively.
With that, I will ask Andrew if he wants to come up.
>> ANDREW PLUCKER: Greetings, Chairperson Riel, board members,
chancellor, colleagues and guests. I'm Andrew Plucker, the executive
director of the employee service center. I'm here today with some
members of the Pima Community College payroll staff.
The unit consists of five payroll professionals who collectively
possess over 70 years of experience in public sector payroll
operations. We are here to encourage you to approve our request for
an amendment to the contract agreement with Kelly Services.
It is, in our opinion, the most efficient and cost-effective
solution to providing compliant payroll services to the college's
out-of-state temporary and adjunct faculty employees.
When I came onboard the ESC in July of 2022, the single largest
compliance risk that the unit faced was posed by the college's
employment of out-of-state personnel. This challenge is not unique
to Pima. As Dave mentioned, many of our peer institutions currently
face a similar challenge that was brought on by the proliferation and
reliance upon a remote workforce during the COVID pandemic.
In the fall of 2022, I worked with the payroll staff to explore
potential solutions to this issue. This included consulting with our
peers who run payroll in colleges and universities across the Western
United States. What we learned is that many of our colleagues were
turning to third-party providers as a solution to the formidable
issues and risks posed by multi-state payroll operations.
As we developed the Kelly Services contract proposal, those
approved by the board last spring, we estimated expenses based on
funding for approximately 30 out-of-state employees.
The estimate, as Dave mentioned, was arrived by taking into
consideration the employees we knew were working out-of-state, plus
some knowledge we had of prospective new hires and including some
room for possible growth.
As part of the implementation of the Kelly Services agreement, we
launched several efforts to positively identify all of the
out-of-state persons employed by the college. These efforts led to
the subsequent identification of the 50-plus temporary and adjunct
faculty employees who have been onboarded with Kelly Services.
While we consider those efforts to be a success in bringing the
college in compliance with our obligations in relation to
out-of-state employment, this number was considerably larger than
expected. It requires a larger spending authority than what we
requested and was approved last year by the board.
That is the purpose behind our request to amend the current year
Kelly Services agreement so we can continue to provide the payroll
services to the college's out-of-state adjunct faculty for the
remainder of the spring semester and into the beginning of the summer
term. Thank you.
>> DR. DAVID BEA: With that, I'll ask if the board has any
additional questions or clarification that they'd like related to the
item. Happy to answer anything we can.
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: Dr. Bea, one of the things that I notice is
that in the summer there's a lot of out-of-state instructors for the
summer program, and they are basic classes. So what I'm asking is
why is that? I mean, I don't want to get into trying to manage you
guys or whatever, but it's just, you know, I would assume that we
would be offering our instructors first dibs on giving classes. And
I know for a fact that we're not having classes in the summertime on
some of the campuses, or I don't even know if maybe the
(indiscernible) and the instructor are being offered to teach a
class.
So that's one of my concerns. And 50 seems like an awful lot. I
understand that PimaOnline has increased considerably because of the
pandemic, and I also realize that it takes a lot more time.
Then of course the next question is do we hold the people
out-of-state to the same standards as we do our own employees? So if
you could answer that, please?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: I can answer it, the ones I'm most versed
with. So the setup with the agreement with Kelly Services is that
while the employees are technically Kelly Services employees, they
follow our policies, procedures, and expectations in terms of
teaching. So that's a key component to how the structure works.
In terms of the selection of who teaches and whether we need to
have the out-of-state faculty members, that's an academic decision,
so it's based on deans and department chairs, I will have to defer to
the academic side, other than what we did is we worked up a procedure
for them to do basically a justification. So they have to go through
a set of questions to say, you know, we weren't able to find someone
to teach this class.
But with that, I will defer over to the academic side. I don't
know if Jeff Thies...
>> DR. DOLORES DURAN-CERDA: Jeff is coming down.
>> JEFF THIES: Yeah, so with respect to the hiring of the
summer, the summer has been significantly more online since the
pandemic, and we have not gone back to having as many in-person on
the West Campus, which is where the primary sets of courses are
offered.
In that process, I would say that the online staffing in the
summer is relatively proportional to what you see in the fall, so I
don't think that the Kelly Service that's used in the summer is
disproportionately towards Kelly Services faculty.
One of the challenges is that we have had faculty that were Pima
employees as full-time people, some in staff positions, some in
faculty, we have had some adjunct faculty that have lived here in
Pima County and have since moved, and so they may have already been
on the schedule because we schedule so far in advance.
So I don't see that there is a disproportionate use of Kelly
Services for summer other than to say there is a disproportionate use
of online in the summer, and because Kelly Services is used for that
modality, that same proportionality exists.
I'll just reiterate what Dave Bea said about the hiring process.
They have to meet the same standards to be hired. As a matter of
fact, they have to also have the Teach 125 certification to teach
online, which is above what an in-person person would have to have if
they were teaching for us. And then they're evaluated and their
courses are reviewed as they were any online instructor, whether they
are Kelly Services or not.
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: Thank you.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: I have a couple questions. I just want my
fellow board members to realize that these aren't necessarily Pima
College employees anymore. They are Kelly Services employees. So
there will be, I would assume, it will take longer to get things done
considering it's going to have to go through more than just the
normal Pima College routes of anything, right, whether it be
discipline, whether it be telling them that we need them to increase
their credentialing, or whatever it is, right? So I think that that
is significant.
I am hoping that the college is actually reaching out to the
department chairs in all the departments before we just straightaway
hire somebody online to teach something, because I know it's
anecdotal, it might not mean anything, but I have a lot of adjunct
math friends because I taught there for so long, and I hear them
saying, oh, I only got one class this semester, or oh, I only got two
classes this semester, when normally they teach three or whatever it
is, right?
I'm just wondering, are we really doing the best for our college
and the best for our students, since now they're going to have
teachers that aren't actually Pima College employees? They're going
to be employees of Kelly Services.
One other question, I received an e-mail from a department head
last, maybe in the spring last year, and she was wondering why she
was having a hard time getting an online instructor, and then she was
mentioning something like a 30% payback. And so there is all of
those things that I don't understand.
I did have somebody come up to me after the last board meeting to
try to explain it, that it was a 20% payback, I think he said it was,
for overhead, so each employee, besides their salary and then their
benefits I guess for adjunct faculty, it's like 14%, 15%, because
they are not full-time, we're not doing all of the full-time
expenses, and I get that, but then he said there was also a 20%, I
think he called it a payback for overhead.
That just, to me -- I see Dr. Bea's eyes, like, what the heck is
she talking about? That's exactly what I was feeling when I was
hearing him explain it to me.
So that's my next question. I guess that's it. Thank you.
>> DR. DAVID BEA: Yeah, so generally understand what the
question is. So if we're employing the faculty ourselves, you're
paying the adjunct load rate for the faculty times the number of
units that the load that they're teaching.
In addition to that, the college budgets and has expenses for the
different benefits-related costs for that adjunct faculty, so for us,
we budget for about a 19% fringe rate for adjunct faculty. So that
covers Social Security, covers workers' compensation, because there
is the various things that you need to do.
So with Kelly Services, when they say that the contract, if you
look at the contract, the contract is the load-hour charges for the
adjunct faculty plus 35%. Within that 35%, about roughly 20% of that
is what we would be paying for that adjunct faculty for their
benefits costs.
The rest of it would be Kelly Services administrative overhead
for them to manage and to make money. I mean, let's be honest, they
are a for-profit company, it's in their interests, they are doing
this to make money.
If you look at the estimate that's in your board pack, the costs
that we are estimating would be their overhead, how much they make to
cover their own expenses in-house because they have staffing expenses
to manage this, they have system expenses to manage this, et cetera.
The college would be paying about $130,000 roughly more than we would
if they were our own employees. So we are paying more money for
these employees.
I will add that the way that we are structuring Kelly Services is
that that gets charged back to the unit, so there is a disincentive
to the unit, because they are budgeted to fund at a certain number of
adjunct faculty, that this would be a more costly version of adjunct
faculty, so they have to absorb that increased cost.
So it creates a disincentive for this that over time you will
find I think the units will go, oh, this is making it harder for us
to offer classes at, instead of 23 students per class, I now have to
get down to 21 students per class -- sorry 25, I need to go the other
way, 25 students per class, because I need to cover these
out-of-state costs that we are incurring.
So there is a built-in disincentive to doing this. It's going to
take a little bit of time before that works out. I think it's been
made clear by the board that the board would like to have this as
little as possible, and I think that the academic side, I won't speak
for Jeff, but I think the academic side will pass that down and I
think work to make this the absolute minimum amount of employees, of
adjunct faculty as possible, while still ensuring that we are going
to be able to provide students with the education that they want.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Thank you. And then just the last thing I
wanted to mention is when I seemed a little frustrated at the board
meeting last week, it was because in February and March I asked three
different times for a list of these people, and each time I was given
a completely different list, which of course, you know me, I went
online and I searched in the directory, were they employees of the
college, the first time a lot of them weren't even teaching.
The second list I got was something different. The third list,
it wasn't via e-mail, but Lee Lambert passed it to me, so each time I
saw huge discrepancies in the list I was given, meaning I think it
was bologna.
I do appreciate whoever wrote me this list this time, because
once again, I did check all of them, and thank you. This list seemed
like it was actually, there is only a few little question marks I
have about two employees. Everybody else was on there. You know, I
went to the schedule of classes, and I did that those last three
times, too, so the first three lists. And imagine how much time that
took, right? I know it's taking time for you guys to answer our
questions, but that is the main reason I don't feel comfortable with
this, because I think I was given information last time that used a
lot of my time and had me running around in circles. So thank you
for this very detailed and appropriate list.
Now, having said that, I would like to vote for this, but I won't
be able to ever vote for this again unless I'm assured that we are
reaching out to all the department chairs to make sure that people in
Tucson can cover these jobs if at all appropriate.
And I recognize for math you have to have a certain level of math
ability to teach a Calc I class, right? And maybe we don't have
enough adjunct faculty to do that. But I want to be assured that we
are using local people to teach our classes in the future instead of
just doing this, it sort of seems willy-nilly, and I know that it
might not be, but considering there are math folks out there that
aren't teaching the full amount they can, and we are hiring a bunch
of math people online, I'm just concerned about that.
Okay, thank you. Any other comments?
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: Madam Chair, this whole topic has morphed
into something that didn't start this way. We started this way
working on a payroll dilemma and outsourcing the payroll because we
didn't have people in-house that could manage the functions that
needed to be done.
Now we are talking about how we should hire people. I think, you
know, if the board really wants to get into this, then we ought to
sit down and talk to some department heads about why they are doing
these kinds of things, not the finance people.
Let's move on with this topic, and if you want to put something
on the agenda or a study session in the future about what the hiring
process is for faculty at Pima College, then I think that's what we
ought to talk about.
>> DR. DOLORES DURAN-CERDA: If I could make a comment, this is
specifically for adjunct faculty, not for full-time faculty, correct?
Yeah.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Although there are quite a few people on
this list that are teaching way more than the 10.5 hours. I can just
pass this to you if you want to look at it.
There are quite a few people. So that wouldn't be our normal way
of doing adjunct faculty. So I do know that there are four people or
five people that on our directory are listed as instructional
faculty, full-time faculty. So there are at least four people on
this list that are instructional faculty, not adjunct.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: Madam Chair, one last comment or question.
In my experience in the field that when you are outsourcing for
educational services, usually the only way that you're going to break
even on the cost is if you reduce the salary of the employee. And
the employee pays the difference in what expenses we incur to hire an
outside service to do this.
I think that needs to be part of this conversation too. If you
want it to be a break-even point, you have to pay them less.
>> DR. DAVID BEA: I think there will be a time when we do the
budget portion today where we can actually resurface that comment.
When we talk about the adjunct faculty funding and the classroom
funding structures, then I will explain how this fits in with that,
and you can then resurface that point.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: I call for the question.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Okay. All in favor of paying Kelly
Services this additional amount to finish out the 2024 year, I
believe that's what it is, say aye.
(Ayes.)
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Any opposed?
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: I oppose.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: So motion passes 4 to 1.
Moving on to item No. 2 on the agenda -- thank you very much,
everybody. We appreciate you being here today.
>> DR. DAVID BEA: Folks who often aren't properly recognized for
making sure that everybody gets paid every two weeks, thank you, all.
You guys rock.
(Applause.)
>> DR. DAVID BEA: We have often said it's the most important
thing anyone does in an organization is pay their people.
Good evening or afternoon. I'm not sure if we're to evening yet.
I think we are not quite there.
It's my pleasure to have a conversation with the board today,
again following up on the conversations we have had at the previous
study session and some other conversations we have had, talking more
in detail about the budget, giving more updated information, talking
a little bit more specifically about some of the direction and
feedback the board has given us and what that means so that we can
lead into the March meeting during which we plan to propose a tuition
-- well, if we hear that you're favorably inclined towards a tuition
increase, that's when we would propose a tuition increase. I will
get back to -- I'm not jumping the gun. Just saying, March, it's
important that if we increase tuition, it's important that that
happens at the March board meeting.
The reason for that is because the fall schedule opens up in
early April, and that means that you can then set up the new tuition
and fees in time for students to enroll, and that prevents or avoids
the problem of if you change tuition rates after that, you have to
then go back and rebill, right? It's not something you can't do.
It's just not good practice. So we have always tried to get tuition
decisions to happen for March in order for the schedule to open up in
April.
As we have talked about, the board has sort of the general
parameters are looking at what our expenditure priorities are,
balancing them with revenue projections. Mostly we talk about it in
the case of, like, okay, start with the current-year budget, then
make the changes to revenues, make the changes that you know about to
expenditures. So it's an incremental budgeting model. It's not
exclusively incremental, but mostly that's the way we talk about it,
because you're assuming that we're starting from a decent place and
then saying, okay, well, we know we are getting these additional
revenues, are those going to offset the additional costs that we know
we're incurring. So we are always trying to balance.
We have had the issue of enrollment, which is misaligned with the
size of our staff. We have talked at length with the board about
that for a number of years. So working through a plan to try and
right-size the institution.
And then, as I mentioned, we have gotten some board feedback
principally related to I think a strong hesitance to increase either
tuition or property taxes, particularly in light of the size of our
infrastructure staff, from a staffing standpoint. So we'll be
talking about how does that look and how we can right-size the
institution that way.
Factoring in the basic things that we are starting with, we have
talked about sustaining the class in compensation structure, so
because that factors in, because we are tying our positions to
market, and that the midpoint is tied to having eight years of
experience, that the way the structure is if you're hired at
something, hired at the minimum, and if, at eight years, you want to
be at the midpoint, you need to move up each year a certain amount.
So factoring in that, a year of experience to the budget, that's one
of the base things that we want to start things with.
Contractual obligations, principally those are things like
utility costs and IT system licenses, things like that. Factoring in
what increased costs you might have in a given year for that.
We do not budget for inflation. So office supplies, things like
that, we don't build in a natural, oh, inflation last year went up by
5%. All of that stuff is absorbed. That has always been the case so
that over time it can become a problem, but I want to make sure that
the board is clear on that, that we don't build extra inflation into
operating expenses in any way.
So everything is held flat other than known priority changes or
known increases for known contractual costs. Mostly that's done by
reallocating resources or absorbing those cost increases trying to
find more efficient ways to do things or less-expensive ways to do
things.
One of the things that the staff is doing this year is looking
back at historical spending and pulling money, if units have
historically not spent to their budgets, pulling that money back so
we will reduce budgets to a more accurate level.
I want to caution the board that doesn't mean that they save
money. So let me do my simple analogy here. If you have a budget
for $100 for office supplies, and historically the unit always spends
$90 on office supplies, so you have $10 of savings versus the budget,
if you then say, okay, well, let's change the budget to $90, what can
happen is they spend $90, and they spent exactly to their budget.
They don't save versus the budget. So you don't have any operational
savings. So the expenditures might not change at all. Just the
budget goes down.
That's something we also always have to factor in. Not a huge
issue for the board to be aware of, but it's something that more from
an operational standpoint I get concerned that if we get more
efficient with how we budget and we reduce budgets for actual spend
but people are spending 100% of their budget, you might be right back
to where you started.
So you can save a little bit by reducing budgets because mostly
people will come in a little bit under, but you can run into that
problem.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: Do we do the same thing with FTEs?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: So FTEs are budgeted, the college budgets
them, we budget for salary savings that's built into how the overall
budget is, but the units do not realize salary savings. In other
words, if, in my area, I have a vacancy, the college saves that money
from not filling that position. I don't have that money in my budget
to spend.
So that's how we control that problem where you can suddenly have
an issue with, oh, well, we don't have an ABC in finance, as an
example right now, that's a fair amount of money. That doesn't mean
that all of a sudden we are going to do massive travel. It doesn't
turn into that in my budget.
So we do some control over that. The downside is, though, if
they do need to cover expenses by temporary wages, generally they
will absorb that. And if there are special needs that might come out
of that, we would then be in conversations with the units, but mostly
salary savings, we budget for a pretty significant amount of salary
savings in a given year. The amount that we spend on our personnel
budget is about 95%, 96% of what's budgeted. So that 5% becomes
important to saving money.
Then, again, resizing the staffing structure for the enrollment
realities, we've talked about that. Different metrics that we use to
identify how staffed we are versus the size of our enrollment.
This is a quick review. A dollar of tuition roughly represents
an increase of $350,000. Property taxes, levy neutral, that's just
for growth of new property. That doesn't change the tax rate for
people as an average. We will generate just a little bit under $2
million for that, so the college doesn't do anything different.
That's essentially holding things flat.
We also have the capacity to go all the way up to $6.2 million,
because we are a little bit under our max, and the max is based on
you can increase by 2%, if the board goes through the
truth-in-taxation process, can increase by 2% every year. So we have
about 3% between our starting point and our maximum right now.
Other revenues, we are expecting to get an additional, just a
little bit under $2 million of additional revenue principally coming
from investment income and also from some increased revenue generated
from Prop 207. That's the Smart & Safe Arizona legalized marijuana
bill.
This is just for context, where we are at in terms of tuition
versus our peer institutions. So there is two bars there for Pima
and Mohave. That's because we both have per-credit charges. For us,
we have an IT charge and a student services charge, those total $5.50
per credit, and our base tuition is $92.
That's where you see the blue chart. The blue line there is $92.
So our base tuition is one of the lower in the state, and we are
right in the middle basically with what our combined per-credit-hour
rate is. Along with our peers, I will say that the peers, the median
increase proposed for our peer institutions is $3 per credit hour
this year, so most of them will be going up from where this point is.
Then this is the comparison of where our property tax rates
versus our peer institutions, and we are on the very low end of the
spectrum in terms of our property tax rate.
Let's talk about ongoing challenges that we have talked about.
Again, I'm not going to get too much into this. The struggling
enrollment outlook, the fact that our enrollment has decreased
significantly from COVID to now, but our staffing has not decreased
proportionately with that.
We have limited potential growth in other areas. We have talked
about the two that we have control over really are tuition and
property taxes, but we want to keep tuition as low as possible, and
property taxes, being good stewards of public funds, being judicious
with our property tax revenues.
That puts in place what we are trying to do, which is identify
structural inefficiencies, recognizing that it's challenging at this
institution to make changes. There is a tendency to want to have all
services at all locations.
There is a tendency to want to continue to offer the same service
that we have always offered, because there might be a small number of
people who continue to do that. For example, cash payments, things
like that, that become with how many people actually make cash
payments at the college is very small at this point versus
historically we used to have cashiers and the majority of payments
used to come in through cash or through onsite cashiering.
Making that kind of change isn't as easy as it sounds, because
there is always pressure. If someone comes in and they want to pay,
and you don't have the hours of the cashier open, that kind of thing
leads to pushback and dissatisfaction for the individual who is
trying to make a payment.
In addition, classroom inefficiencies, things like how full
classes are, making sure that classes are available. We have, and
I'm going to get into the adjunct faculty model, the classroom
funding model so you can see how that works, because we have had some
good conversations with that. Those kinds of things, scheduling can
be really inefficient. Having courses available at all locations at
decent times might lead to a class having 10 students early in the
morning versus that same class later in the afternoon or online might
have 30 students.
Those are inefficiencies that if you're offering the class, and
you're meeting the need of the 10 students or the 8 students at that
time, that's great for the students, but overall it's an inefficient
model versus what we are trying to do.
And then reallocating resources. When we have growth areas, we
have new priorities that we have to push resources to, shifting from
the way we were structured to a new way. The most obvious example of
that is how much has had to shift from traditional education to
having resources for the sophisticated online and educational tools
that we now have for state-of-the-art educational training.
What we did is we put together three scenarios for you, but I
have a model that we can play with. So then you guys -- I want to
make this interactive. The three scenarios are basically, A, what
the board originally, the guidance we have gotten, which is what does
it look like if we don't increase the tax levy, if we don't have a
tuition increase, and then what we have built into it is a year of
additional experience.
In this particular case, it also adds 3% additional to the
adjunct faculty model, to the adjunct faculty load rate. Then the
college is absorbing the additional costs of benefits, and that it
would not provide a pool for compensation increases beyond the one
year of experience.
So what we have done in the last few years when we have done the
class comp is done a year of experience or it's the minimum of, and I
think it's both years, it was the minimum of $2,000 or how much your
year of experience gets you.
That means that everybody gets an increase. The way that the
Scenario A is structured is not everybody would get an increase.
Just the people who are below their sort of target point.
Scenario B, similar to that one, only what it does, and then the
position reduction, so that's based on an average position. It's not
a specific -- no position has been identified. It's just on average,
how many positions would that take to reduce again through what we
have talked about through attrition. In order to have a balanced
model in that Scenario A would be a reduction of 22 positions.
Second scenario is to increase the student services fee or
tuition. It really is somewhat synonymous. There is a slight
difference between them, but it's a per-credit charge of $3.
Essentially what that's doing is offsetting, and when I show the
model and the page that you guys are probably one ahead of me
already, is that helps offset the structural budget problem that we
have between athletics and performing arts.
So we have talked with the board about how that used to be funded
by the student services fee. That student services fee, because
enrollment has declined over time is now insufficient to help cover
the costs for athletics and for the performing arts as stands.
So what it's saying is that we would increase the student
services fee to help cover some of those costs and offset those
costs. If we did that, again, the model is basically the same as the
other one. It reduces the number of positions that we -- or it
decreases the number of positions that we would reduce from 22 to 10.
And then the last model is more of a making-progress model, and
it's also analogous so what the college historically has done. So
increase the property tax levy by 2%. Again, it's keeping that
student services fee at $3. It would give the one year of additional
experience, 3% increase for adjunct faculty, and then it would give a
little bit of money so that we could do a minimum increase for all of
the employees.
That also has built into it, again, I'm going to say this is a
making-progress model that has a reduction of 25 positions. It would
still be getting at what the board's concern is, is that we too many
staff. This would be making the staffing size more efficient. In
addition to that, and I'm going to shoot ahead to the model, in
addition to that, that model, Scenario C, also helps the college
structurally.
So that helps put aside, set aside money for strategic
priorities, for shifting resources, for handling deferred maintenance
better than we currently do.
So that's how that Scenario C, so it's a little bit, a
combination. Again, it's sort of a cafeteria model. I'm throwing
out a few different examples of how you do it, but you can kind of
pick whichever entree you want. This is talking about, this shows
different things related to the adjunct faculty model.
Then I'm going to stop, because then we can sort of play around
with the models a little bit and talk about the board's priorities
and what their interests are and how they would all balance together.
What this model shows is what happens when you add an additional
course. So tuition, currently $92. Adjunct faculty load rate is
currently, just looking at the base model, left-hand column there, so
the expectation, the way the college budget is set up, is that onsite
classes are funded at a 20 students in the classroom average and
online is funded at 25 students on average.
How that plays out, then, if you look at the base model, is the
amount of tuition generated, instate tuition generated by that
particular class, if 20 students pay their tuition, that generates
$5,500 of tuition.
The comp and benefits for that adjunct faculty right there would
be about $3,200, little more than $3,200. Getting back to
Dr. McLean's question or comment earlier, that if you factor in the
additional costs of Kelly Services, that's where that cost would go
up. For a class that's an adjunct faculty cost that has Kelly
Services as an out-of-state employee, the cost for that would be
worse and the bottom line would be worse.
So for the average class, the net marginal income is a little
over $2,200. That class generates two FTSE, so this is three-credit
class, three-load class, so most typical kind of class.
Then that versus budget base net, that's compared to what the
budget expectation is. That's why that's a zero, right? That's the
base model.
If you estimate that we have about 5,000, because this place is
big, it's always like these numbers always shock me, because that is
like a large number of sections that we teach, so 5,000 sections of
adjunct faculty courses, that if you take that net marginal income
that you generate a little bit of additional money for that class,
and you multiply it out by how many sections we teach, that that
actually generates support for the other parts of the college to the
tune of about a little more than, about $11 million, give or take.
I mean, these numbers are rough, by the way. You don't need to
totally fix it on are they perfect. The model is just to say overall
does it work or get you in trouble? The idea, close enough.
Again, then there is a comparison for what online looks like and
the expectations for online, because these are conversations that the
board has had, questions they have had.
Okay. Now, this column here, tier 1 and tier 2, shows what
happened if you add a class that has low enrollments? So these are
set up to be they break even so that in other words, you add a class,
it doesn't have that many enrollments, but the tuition covers the
direct expenses of that class.
So for this particular case, for the tier 1, that's the
less-experienced adjunct faculty, they would, to break even, that is,
so that we don't lose money on the class, it would be about 12
students. So you can see generates $3,300 of tuition, the comp and
benefits is a little bit under $3,300, so the net marginal income is
$52 for that class. So we are not losing money. We are making $52.
Except the problem of that, that works if it's just adding a class,
one class at the end of the line.
The problem is that we can't sustain that overall. If we did
that for all of our classes, we would have a huge problem, because
you'd be essentially not generating that $11 million that helps
support the rest of the college.
Tier 2 becomes a little bit harder, because the costs for the
adjunct faculty are greater. It's 5% greater for tier 2 faculty. So
in order for that class to essentially break even, it's 13 students.
That's the question that's come up about, like, can you just add a
class. On the margin, you cannot lose money by adding a class with
12 or 13 students, depending on who is teaching it if they are
adjunct faculty.
If they are regular faculty, whole 'nother can of worms. That
number for regular faculty, if they are teaching, just to say the
comparison to the base, so a regular faculty teaching 20 students at
a typical regular faculty salary, that generates a net marginal
income of negative $4,000 per class. And then versus the base,
that's negative $6,000.
So, Greg, you asked the question, can't you just add a faculty, a
regular faculty, the problem is that, no, that's going to have to be
covered by property taxes. I mean, these all assume that they are
being covered by tuition only. What I'm saying is, no, property
taxes cover a large share of our operations and we have to always be
aware of that. However, we do have some expectation that tuition
helps cover the costs of education, and that's what this is intended
to show.
Last part of this is if you increase the adjunct pay by 3%, sort
of what we put in the scenarios, that results to the budget a
negative $98 per section. If you multiply that out, that's around
$500,000, which is what we would tell you in the normal model. It's
just a different way to show it than we have ever shown it before.
If that was entirely borne by tuition, so you said, okay, what we
want to do is let's increase the adjunct faculty load by 3%, but we
want that to be totally be borne by increasing tuition to offset
that, that would be an increase of just a little bit more than $1.60.
So different ways to look at it. There are ways that we haven't
talked about it before, but it gives you context in a different way
to see marginal class adds and what the impact is to the college, and
then the challenge is the scaleability of it all. Because it's fine
if you do one class and you add one class at the end. The problem is
that if the whole thing works that way or you start, if all of a
sudden you started offering all of your classes and we were just
having 12 students in every class, it doesn't work. We start having
problems.
Okay. I have already talked about this stuff, and I promised you
I would make this interactive and fun. Let me pull up the model, and
then the board can have their comments, questions, and give ideas.
>> MR. GREG TAYLOR: Dave, while you're pulling that up, we, at
one point in our discussions, talked about differential tuition for
certain programs with higher costs.
Is there anything new in these models in that regard, or...
>> DR. DAVID BEA: (Off microphone)...anything new in the models
as we are talking about it. What we have looked at, and it's more of
a net change in terms of the slight increase in one area, slight
decrease in another area, and it sort of nets out to zero as the
college historically has done differential.
What I think we should talk about, though, is in the span of the
next year -- actually, let me clarify, because you probably don't
know how the college has done differential. So what it did is we
looked at the cost of direct instruction for each program, and then
the costs of direct instruction and then the number of students
taught by those disciplines, and then the programs that have greater
than two times the median costs per FTSE, and then those that are
above, they are sort of two tiers, those get differentials put on
them.
They are really high-cost programs. Again, that is not the total
cost of the program. That is just the direct instruction. So really
what you find is that that reflects the programs where they have to
have student-to-teacher ratios of like 10 to 1, like nursing, for
example, where there are a lot of restrictions in terms of how many
students can be in the class, that sort of thing. Aviation is
another one.
Then what we did is we had the differential is tied to the
proportional share that's covered by tuition. So it's really the
differential is only increased to cover the direct expenses to a
proportion of what the total costs of that direct cost are.
So it's a small -- it does not cover the total costs of the
program. It covers a share of the costs. It's a very moderate cost
increase. It's like $20 to $30 per unit for only those differential
programs.
Now, that's how we have done it historically. If you actually
started looking at the true costs of some of these programs, and you
say, okay, well, aviation has this whole facility, and it has special
support services, what if you factor in the utilities and the
custodial costs and the special support costs for that program, you
would find that those differential costs go up, I mean, dramatically.
Then that's what I'm saying, if it the board is interested in
that kind of a conversation, I think we're at a point where we have
the data for a handful of programs to start looking at that and start
identifying do we want to look at that, and then the other thing that
you'd factor in is, okay, earnings potential for those programs is
always important. And then looking at market comparisons, right?
So it wouldn't be just, oh, our differential is going to be now
it's $40,000 a year for aviation, and it turns out that some other
school, obviously we don't have any other competitor in town, but a
competitor in the state or something like that, maybe their tuition
is 25. So you wouldn't want to get uncompetitive with it. But I
think that we are now, particularly with a handful of the programs
that have specific clear facilities tied to them, we're in a position
where we could actually really look at those kinds of differentials
that would be significant and then talk about, well, how much do we
want to look at that.
We are not in a position to be able to do that. The data is just
starting to be good enough for that, partly because aviation up till
now was the only clear stand-alone program. Now we have automotive,
and then we are seeing some of these other programs. We can start
allocating out other costs to these programs, but it's going to take
some time and some thought to do so.
At this point, what we have looked at is just looking at -- it's
been a while since we looked at the differential -- so looking at it
the way we used to do it. What happens is a couple of the programs
go from the higher cost to the lower cost. A couple, I think there
is a little bit of change between them, and then looking at how the
proportion, it kind of nets to not much. It kind of balances. Some
things are a little bit more, some things a little bit less, but it
doesn't generate a lot of additional income for the college at this
point. So I'm not including it. Sorry, long-winded answer on "it's
not in here."
But I think it's a conversation that we are getting prepared and
we are getting in a position to be able to have a real conversation
about that.
Okay. So I have a model where we can plug and play, if you will.
What it does is it looks at the primary variables that the board
talks about. Property tax, tuition and fees. Think about this, this
is either tuition and fees or it's on a per-credit basis is how it's
calculated. It could be student services fees.
What happens if state aid, so one thing I didn't mention is the
state has a budgetary challenge, and there is about $1.7 million of
STEM funding that I think is somewhat at risk, hopefully it isn't.
That's not factored in here. That's another reason why that third
model that has a plus to it, it would help compensate. If we lost
revenue from something that comes later in the game, that would help
us be able to keep flat regardless of that.
The regular salaries is set up so you could add a pool amount, so
in other words, if I put a 1% in there, that's saying that other than
in addition to the year of experience, we're adding in a 1% pool
across the board to provide minimum increases.
That 1% translates roughly to a thousand dollars minimum, just to
keep in the back of your mind. And then adjunct faculty, we can
change that from the 3% that we currently have. Adjustments and
reductions, right now it's built so that there is not a cost increase
for the contractual obligations, utilities, any of that stuff. This
model is assuming that we will have cost reductions, because we have
a number of cost reduction strategies that we are looking at, and we
know of a few things where we are going to realize some savings. So
right now I have this put in at a flat level.
I think that I'm confident that we are going to be able to do
that. This is there for the board to say we want more, we want an
across-the-board type of a reduction, and then I can sort of show you
what that would look like. Similarly so this folds in though that $2
million of structural problem that is the athletics and performing
arts.
So again, that sets it up where we're continuing to do the
athletics programs and the performing arts programs that we currently
do, right? So if there was a reduction there, the reality would be,
okay, we have to probably look at what we are offering in those areas
and cut back. Then the offsetting position reductions is just set up
to do a balance to try and make it all work.
All right. I have explained the model. Any questions, comments,
things that you want to look at or feedback that you'd like to give?
Again, the goal today is to get something clear so that we can
put together a proposal in March that would include both what the
tuition -- if there is no tuition increase, obviously we would just
say we're not increasing tuition this year. But it would also, what
we are looking to do, is to tie also to make a board statement
related to property tax.
Typically we don't make that commitment until May. That's when
the final budget comes together and the board makes a decision. That
gives flexibility, if the state decides to do something weird, we
still have the one tool left other than reductions. But I know the
board is interested in making commitments and getting that set.
Quite honestly, from our standpoint, if we know what the board is
interested in from a property tax standpoint, it makes the whole
process quite a bit easier bureaucratically, like we know exactly
what to do and it's not a last-minute thing, we are not making
changes last minute. So it sort of sets in place what the overall
budget would look like, and, well, the rest of it sort of would flow.
That's our goal for March.
>> MR. GREG TAYLOR: So in the part where you talked about the
-- I understand the adjunct faculty benefit and the additional year.
You said that would leave out a certain group of individuals that
wouldn't receive a salary increase.
Can you help me understand what is that group, and why aren't
they covered by one of those other two?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: Well, depends on what someone's pay was prior
to the college, if they were hired above the minimum. So, for
example, someone comes in and they are really experienced -- this
doesn't happen a ton, but it happens -- so they are hired, they have
a lot of experience to do that exact job, and we hire them
essentially at the level of four years of experience. So until they
get to that four-years-of-experience point, they would be above their
target threshold and they wouldn't get an increase.
So I think it's probably about a third of the staff and faculty
are in that category. I'm, like, totally guessing. I'm pretty sure
that's about right.
It also could depend on what their job was prior to what their
current job is. Like people make transfers, do different things. So
it's for a number of different reasons that you might be above your
target point.
>> MR. GREG TAYLOR: So just tell me if what I say is correct,
the way I understood it. So everybody gets the year of experience,
but for some people, that year of experience doesn't translate into
additional dollars based on where they are in the range?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: Correct.
>> MR. GREG TAYLOR: Okay. I gotcha.
>> DR. DAVID BEA: Yes. So what we are doing is we are comparing
what their current pay rate is, everybody gets -- yeah, sorry, that's
clunky language, I suppose, since I said a year of experience just
for -- everybody gets a year of experience, but then it's compared to
where their target point is. And if their current pay is above the
target pay after getting another year of experience, then they would
be set to not get an increase, like, their pay would be flat. So the
minimum increase gives people the ability to have some increase for
the year to offset inflationary costs, that sort of thing.
We have been doing that since we implemented the class comp
structure, and if we don't have something like that, there will be
dissatisfied people, right, because they will not have a pay increase
and that doesn't go over particularly well.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: So here we hire these people because they
have skills and talents and we really need them, but then we're not
going to give them a pay increase for a couple years.
>> DR. DAVID BEA: In that case, yes.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: What about the people at the top of the pay
scale?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: Same thing.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: How many people are up there at the top,
just ballpark?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: I don't remember.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Are we talking, like, a third of our
employees won't get a pay raise if we do this?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: I think it's about a third. I'm totally going
on memory. It's in that ballpark. I can certainly have that
information for March. At the next board meeting I can definitely
explain what that would be. I'm just going off of memory and seeing
lots of numbers on spreadsheets, and I think that's about right.
Go ahead.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: My other question is, to me, it seems like
if we -- I have been advocating, and I'm going to ask again that we
have a survey given out to all of our students currently in classes,
what do they want to take next semester, where would they prefer to
take these classes and what times. Let's figure out what our
clients -- I don't like to use that, because I don't think we're a
business, but in some ways, we are, right -- let's figure out what
they need, and then let's offer as many of those as we can, because
if we can increase enrollment, a lot of these tricky spots will be
eradicated, right, if we can just start increasing significantly
enrollment, and I think how we do that is we offer classes where and
when they're asking.
Chancellor and I were together in a meeting, I can't even
remember right now who it was, but the daughter of this person has to
take her classes at three different campuses. Sometimes she has all
of those classes -- and she's not, like, taking rocket science and
basketball weaving. She's taking normal college classes. So anyway,
I think we need to do that survey to make sure we're serving the
needs of our students and hopefully helping us in the same aspect.
>> DR. DAVID BEA: Yeah, I mean, the key, you have heard this
through the Strategic Enrollment Management Plan, the key thing is to
not lose enrollment, right? Students who might be interested in
coming here, students who are here and leave, right, and Chair Riel,
you have mentioned that one in particular, right, the idea of
ensuring student success, trying to keep the students we have, trying
to make them be successful absolutely helps.
>> DR. DOLORES DURAN-CERDA: So STAR and academics are working on
that survey to send out this semester.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: Tell me again, I missed this whole
conversation, what's the fee? Where does the fee go?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: The student services fee?
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: Yeah.
>> DR. DAVID BEA: It supports primarily athletics but also
supports student activities. So there is base tuition, and then
there's $3.50, I believe, that goes to support athletics and these
student services, student activities, and then there is an IT fee
that's $2, and that helps support the IT resources around the
college, but the total is $5.50.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: So if you go back to slide 10, so by
increasing the fee, it would not have any effect on any of these
compensation models?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: What it does is it cuts down the number of
positions we are reducing. If you do the comparison of those two
side-by-sides, and let me show you where the actual dollars are. So
what that does is it generates -- this is slide, this was three
ahead, like 13, 12. Slide 12.
So there you can see how it plays out in terms of increasing, it
adds about a million dollars of revenue. Everything else stays the
same, and we just offset it to keep a balance at the bottom by
reducing the number of positions that we are reducing.
Again, these are just ideas.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: Yeah, I'm still having trouble with the
concept. If we charge $3 more and it goes in the pot for athletics,
that doesn't have anything to do with compensation. We could give
the coaches a raise, or we could add a team, or we could buy
uniforms, but how does that affect compensation?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: So why that's put in there is currently the
general operations are supporting athletics and performing arts to
the tune of $2 million. So what it does is if we add that $3, it
helps cover that amount that we're already covering.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: Okay. I didn't hear that.
>> DR. DAVID BEA: That's all it's all intertwined.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: So basically we're subsidizing athletics.
This would decrease our --
>> DR. DAVID BEA: Yes, it's not self-supporting.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: It isn't anywhere. Even at the University
of Arizona football it's not, right?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: It used to be more self-supporting. It has,
over time, become unsupporting, like, we are heavily subsidizing it.
It's trying to address that structural deficit in tying the student
services fee directly to that. But not the whole thing, right? Not
covering the whole thing. It would cover half of it.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: I'd prefer to have a conversation that says
we are going to charge the students more money for athletics, but
we're not going to increase athletics. We are just going to decrease
the amount of money the college is giving to athletics.
>> DR. DAVID BEA: I'm not disagreeing that -- that would be an
accurate statement.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: But if we said we were going to give the
money to student activities and athletics if we increased fees, we
wouldn't have an improvement in the budget scenario, but we would
have an improvement in student activities and athletics, which would,
because if we increase the fees, decrease our subsidy, we are
actually changing a philosophy?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: Right. The counterpoint would be if we don't
subsidize it, and we don't have a source of revenue to help offset
it, at some point you're talking about reducing to make it balance.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: Or giving them more money.
>> DR. DAVID BEA: Right.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: But I think we ought to have -- I think we
ought to call it that, because the person on the street sees an
increase in student fees, they're going to ask me, well, what other
services are you going to give the students? And I'm going to say
none.
>> DR. DAVID BEA: Right. None that they would see, right. But
you're not reducing anything, either. The counterpoint is, okay,
well -- different mindset, right? You're saying, okay, we have a
structural deficit and we need to cut to address that structural
deficit.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: You could do the same thing by saying we're
going to increase tuition.
>> DR. DAVID BEA: Uh-huh. Totally agree. It is a little bit of
semantics, and it's semantics around the fact that we have a
structural deficit problem of some sort, and we have limited revenue
possibilities that we can play around with.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: I think it's more of an optics problem and
not being totally open with where that funding is going. Just one
thought.
The assessed valuation, I know you gave it to us, what's the
increase in assessed valuation across the board without us doing
anything?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: The number that matters is that the growth of
new properties generates an additional $2 million, it's $1.9 million,
of additional revenue.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: What percent would that be?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: Let's see, we're at 140-something, so 2 over
140 -- it's 1.6%, something like that.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: So do you get the information on average
homeowner on assessed valuation increase?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: We get total for the county. So what the net
taxable current value is, and this is the slide that has this
information. It was later, in the back.
So primary -- whoever did that, that was cool. Someone's doing
some controlling that isn't me. So I said it was about 140 million,
so currently, $136 million, that's where we're at currently. Next
year this is from new property, so that generates 1.9 million.
The net taxable value, this is essentially 1.06 billion. That's
the total Pima County taxable valuation number and how much it's
grown.
So the overall change, which is 5.7%, that's not -- the money,
that's why I keep saying, the thing that matters is more like 1.6%.
That's the new property. How much assessment values go up because
the property is assessed at a higher value, that doesn't change the
situation for the college. The only thing that changes it for the
college is new properties.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: But it changes for the homeowner?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: It does, yeah.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: So do we know, figure on what the average
homeowner's property increase will be next year?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: So let's just go with 5.7, because that's the
best I've got right now, so that's the overall change for properties.
What that means, though, is if you did a levy neutral, you're saying,
okay, we're just going to get new property, what it means is our tax
rate is going to go down by 5.7%, so it offsets it, right? Does that
make sense?
So the only way that the -- so for the average property, the
typical property, would be their assessment valuation goes up by
5.7%, but Pima College's tax rate is going to go down, and the net
would be zero for that, for that perfect property. It doesn't work
perfectly, because neighbor A and neighbor B's assessment valuations
go up slightly differently. So they don't see exactly the same
thing.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: What's your estimated benefit increase cost
this next year?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: So we have a benefits increase for health is a
little over 2%, really good news. Yeah, really good news. Yeah, it
was good news.
And we have some other benefits-related costs that are going to
go down, so we're planning on benefits costs will go down overall for
the college, and that's partly going to help with, and I'll explain
that in a second, but that's going to help do the overall cost flat
increase because a fair amount of that is coming on the benefits
side.
Public Safety Retirement System, we have been supplementing the
amount that goes into Public Safety Retirement System. We talked
with finance audit about this, and you'll see this item on the next
board agenda. We have been supplementing it very heavily, and we are
making really good progress in terms of funding up the liability. So
the recommendation is to decrease the additional amount, not -- we're
still going to be paying above and beyond what the contribution rates
are, but to decrease how much extra we are paying will free up enough
money, and that will make the overall cost for benefits go down,
exclusive of taxes. So over the contract-related benefits stuff.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: So this may not be a question for you, might
be one for you, so I'm sure we have had conversations and studies on
what are traditionally underenrolled courses, overenrolled courses.
Who has that conversation and where are we with that? Do we say,
okay, here's a traditionally, last five years, this department has
decreased in enrollment, and what we need to do is start dropping the
offerings in that department or the department totally? Do we have
that conversation? Where are we?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: Yes. I think we're getting closer to having
better conversations, but there is a model, right, this classroom
funding model that is basically set up to have -- and again, on
average, it's 20 students in an onsite classroom, 25 in an online.
That is averaged out, though, so nursing doesn't get penalized and
that they can't possibly hit their goals.
So what happens is the units, departments, disciplines are funded
to have the adjunct faculty to hit the enrollment target that they
have. And that enrollment target is also based on the number of
students in a course.
So a nursing would be expected, you want to hit at least 10
students in the course for -- and what that means is for social
science-type courses, the expectation probably ends up being closer
to 27 to 30, something like that.
So then when you're looking at how is enrollment going and you
start breaking it down by discipline, you can start seeing where the
fill rates aren't hitting what the expectations are. And the deans
and department chairs, sort of an art and science of deciding the go,
no-go decision to hit those targeted averages.
Historically we are not hitting the averages, I will tell you
that, like, by quite a bit.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: Well, that's not exactly the question. The
question is traditionally departments that have courses or subjects
that are decreasing over time on the number of sections that they are
offering, at what point in time and who makes the decision that that
doesn't exist anymore?
>> DR. DOLORES DURAN-CERDA: So I think you're referring to gen
ed courses? That's our bread and butter, right, and those are the
ones that transfer to the university.
So those are steady, but I think you may be referring to niche or
boutique classes where they do diminish in enrollment, so that's the
conversation between the provost and the deans and department heads
as to how many sections are open or not opened.
So there is an assessment taking place currently and discussions
with each of the units that Nic Richmond has been having with ELT
members but also with being academics.
We also see where there are opportunities of growth, such as
cybersecurity, as we have heard there is a request for more faculty,
and other areas that are more workforce-related.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: It might be nice to hear part of that
conversation at some point in time. I'm just interested in how the
conversation occurs.
If we come back in another board meeting in March, and we set
tuition, we set tax rates, we set all this, we then determine our
revenue, do we also determine how we're going to spend the additional
revenue? And what is the role of shared governance and Meet and
Confer when we're actually declaring the revenue that's available
before they're finished with their conversations -- I'm actually
going somewhere with this -- and I think what I, for one, would like
to do is have an executive session item to discuss Meet and Confer,
the status, what's being said, and also how that implicates our
budget decisions, in private, and then we can come out and do
whatever we want to do in public.
But this is getting pretty awkward for me, because are we going
to determine how much is available for raises at a step, at an
increase, at fringe benefits, and then Meet and Confer goes and talks
about it and then comes back with us with a recommendation? I'm
getting a little confused.
>> DR. DAVID BEA: Yeah. Let me walk you through where we're at.
So the board's given some guidance, and we have had conversations
with the Meet and Confer groups. The conversation is, like, okay, we
have a reality where the board is clearly expecting that we've got to
be more efficient with our staffing size, the expectation, what we
have talked about, resistant to increasing tuition, resistance to
increasing property tax, particularly without seeing some reductions
in staffing size.
In addition to that, so they know that the idea is the base that
we'd be starting with is a year of experience, that anything above
that would be set in a pool, kind of like what I'm talking about,
that that would be the conversation of what's the priority in terms
of using that pool.
So while I'm saying a year of 1% would be roughly a minimum
increase of a thousand dollars, that would be one judgment as to how
that conversation could happen. I'm saying with some confidence that
that would be received, it would be understood.
There might be other priorities, though, that the groups and how
they're talking about what the priorities are that would be slightly
different from that, and so it could be that they make a
recommendation, well, we want the minimum increase to be slightly
lower than that, because we want to address, one of the conversations
with faculty is the hourly -- I don't remember. Chairperson Riel,
you might remember what this is, the supplemental rate. The
supplemental rate, which is for faculty who are off contract, if they
do an hour of work, there is a rate that they get compensated for.
It hasn't changed in a while. That's something that they're
interested in looking at. So it would be some balance potentially of
those things.
So what the board would do then is essentially give some guidance
of we would have a pool available, and then the conversations with
the group would be, okay, this is what looks like it's available,
what priorities would you see? And like I said, with some
confidence, the minimum increase is probably up there, because that
is a pretty generally accepted way to deal with it when you have
minimal increases.
>> DR. DOLORES DURAN-CERDA: If I could add also, we also have a
program review process where divisions or departments supply data and
inform, other faculty are part of a group, committee, that look at
their own data, as to what programs are growing, what aren't. They
talk to their advisory committees, as well, who give them advice or
say, you know, this is the class that we need, and we need to add it,
or decrease it.
So there is a model or process in place already in addition to
what we have been talking about.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Do we still have the college curriculum
council, too? And don't they focus on some of those things too? We
have deactivated I think two courses or two programs in the last year
here, if I remember right. It might have been an information item,
because it's not really, really popping out, but I think things like
that do happen.
So obviously I just want to point out that math used to be the
forerunner in courses taught. I'm not sure if that's still not the
case? Do we know which one is, like, the leading enrollment?
>> JEFF THIES: (Off microphone.)
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Got it. Communications division, writing,
foreign languages, all of that.
Maybe I think increasing enrollment would I think help all of
that, right? Okay, thank you.
Any other questions?
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: So where do we go from here?
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Did you want us to play the game?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: If the board is interested in seeing different
things and how it plays out to get to a different comfort level, that
is what is -- it's structured to do that. It also could be something
that you take home and play with it, and then we have a conversation
at the upcoming board meeting.
What the challenge with that, though, timingwise would be when we
set the recommendation for a tuition increase, we're going to have to
be somewhat generic about how we set it because we won't know what to
recommend, right, because we don't have guidance to -- Dolores and I
can make a recommendation and then know that you guys can go in a
different direction, and we would write the board report up such that
that kind of flexibility would exist. That can be done.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: Well, in regards to the process, again, I'm
not so sure I'm ready to look at the budget to come up with a pool of
money. I'd rather have a conversation about what we want to be able
to do and then go after the money.
>> DR. DAVID BEA: Same. I mean, to me, it's six of one and half
a dozen -- just start at the bottom and work your way up.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: Well, to me it's not, because I think in my
first scenario, we want to be able to do this, this, this, this and
this. And those are decisions based on steps and whatever, fringe
benefits, things like that, staffing, class size, athletics, whatever
it is, as opposed to what can we manipulate in the budget so we come
up with a pot of money and then figure out how to spend the pot of
money?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: I'm going to say it slightly differently what
I said when I said six of one, half a dozen of the other. So if the
idea is, okay, we want to address the structural deficit in
athletics, we want to have a pool of money for strategic initiatives
that's $500,000, we want to have a reduction of positions of, you
know, a reasonable amount so we're starting to make progress, but we
want to do it through attrition.
So you can plug those things in, and then looking at the bottom
line, go, okay, where does that put us in terms of additional revenue
that we might need, and then going what would be the best revenue
sources to get that from? That would be starting from the expense
side.
Now, what I'm saying is that we have kind of started that for
you, because we are saying, okay, the current year, we are going to
do some cost-reduction strategies. We are going to basically do the
other things mostly the way we do them right now. That's the
starting point. And we're going to address the structural problem
that we have with athletic and performing arts.
So it really is starting with the expense side and then going,
okay, how do we balance that? Do we balance that by going -- the
last two things, I would say, is by reducing more positions, you
know, changing the number of positions you're planning to reduce, or
by generating revenue through the two means that we really have to
generate revenue to make it balance or super-balance.
Again, like I said, the last version, last scenario, was
structurally getting the college to a better place so that we have
surplus revenues that would enable us to do more strategic things.
>> MR. GREG TAYLOR: And this is maybe what Wade was talking
about, and, you know, when we had this conversation last year, I
think I was talking about not letting the budget drive our strategic
direction, letting our strategic direction drive the budget.
That's why I get -- Wade, maybe this is what you were saying,
forgive me if it is not, but when we start talking about pools of
money to do things, the way I understand that when you say that is
based on the pool of money that we decide sort of arbitrarily that
might exist, then you all do what you can with that money, I would
rather have you say we need $500,000 to do these strategic
initiatives, we are going to do A, B, C, this is what we recommend,
and then we approve the $500,000 to do that, as opposed to we approve
some money and then somebody else divvies it up.
So in that way, it's different for me when we're doing that, or
if, like, we approve this pool for additional minimum increases but
through Meet and Confer they might decide, well, we're not going to
do this amount of increases, we are going to do this other thing, and
this other thing, my preference would be finish that process, let
them recommend what they want to recommend, bring it to us and say,
this is what we are recommending, this is how much it would cost, and
then we start doing this worksheet as opposed to us allocating pools
of dollars that then get allocated by somebody else. Because that
seems like we don't have a frame of reference for that pool of
dollars. We are just trying to make numbers add up.
But I don't know if -- when I talked before about I was
uncomfortable raising tuition or taxes, which I am still, the caveat
I kept adding was unless you give me a really good reason. So I'm
waiting for the really good reason. We need a pool of money to divvy
up in my brain is not a really good reason, but we need X amount for
Y thing is a good reason.
>> DR. DAVID BEA: One of the changes I think is that there is an
unlimited number of good things we can do with money, ranging from
better managing deferred maintenance, which is unromantic to the Nth
degree, to $30 million for a public safety building or the debt
service related to that, something like that. It is literally
unlimited what things we could do so that the idea is starting with
the base assumption that, okay, keep doing what we're doing, and then
on the edge address some of the things that seem to be strategic
priorities and then having conversations. It's not like the college
can't do that. That's how we did the revenue bonds, right?
It was, okay, we have a strategic plan that says we want to build
some new buildings, how are we going to go do that, and then that
gets folded into the budget more in a decision that's more up front
than how you're perceiving this is all playing out.
This is a sort of keep doing what you're doing, and then on the
edge do some things that you'd like to do model. I mean, it will
always be that way until there is a big set of priorities like the
revenue bond priorities, the building the buildings which are bigger,
or some other key initiatives, right? Like I said, it ranges from
you could do all kinds of things, you could say we want to have
one-for-one instruction in 150 classes, and then go, how do you fold
that in and what's that going to cost? There could be all sorts of
things like that.
But mostly the challenges that we're a public entity that has
fairly restricted revenues and we've got a timing that is, like, each
year there are certain things that have to happen. It isn't that the
college doesn't think strategically, it isn't that these things
aren't coming up. It's that right now one of the things we are doing
is catching up for the strategic decisions through the centers of
excellence and making sure those things happen, and then
operationally move through, knowing that we have enrollment is down
significantly, we are inefficiently structured, we need to reallocate
resources. That's all a challenge. That's all sort of built into it
stays the same. Well, staying the same doesn't mean we're not doing
a lot of things. It just means you're not doing big and interesting
priorities.
Those sort of come in different ways and then get folded in, go,
okay, it's time, let's go build a new building, let's do this, let's
do that, how are we going to do that? And that takes a little bit of
time and a little forethought. This is more like the nuts-and-bolts,
less-sexy stuff, I guess.
But it doesn't mean that we are not making good, important,
smarter decisions. That's why the stuff on the increments, we are
reducing positions, we are more effectively setting up our operating
structure.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: I think Greg and I are awfully close to
being on the same page. You know, you all live this every day, and
it would be nice to hear you tell us what your initiatives should be,
your top priorities in spending.
You know, I would like to hear things like we're having
significant problems recruiting faculty so we need to bump their
salaries, or, you know, this debt service we are paying is not a good
thing, we need to take part of that, or, and go on and on and on.
Day-to-day business, I don't understand what the priorities
should be, but I'm more than willing to vote on changing allocations
and budgets or whatever statutory responsibility I have in order to
make the institution function consistent with what the leadership
says.
>> DR. DAVID BEA: Okay. So I want to clarify. There are a
couple of things you said there, okay, yeah, we're doing that. So if
we need to pay certain positions more and the class comp structure
identifies, yes, that's merited, we're having a problem hiring, we
don't need to go back to the board to do that. Operationally, we can
figure out mechanisms and we have mechanisms in place to do that.
What happens though is that then gets folded into this boring
budget, right, and so the increased costs that we might have for
having additional costs for hard-to-fill faculty or something like
that, that's not a strategic decision to me. That is, okay, you've
got to do what you've got to do.
I mean, I'm not saying I make it on my own. I'm saying the
mechanisms in place identify that we need to invest more in aviation
faculty, or right now the department chair structure is in the works.
That may have additional costs in it. It's not going to be something
that on the side we need to come back to the board on. It's
something that it's like, yeah, I'm not saying it wouldn't go to the
board, I'm saying the budget would be structured to either have to
absorb that or we would fold it in the next year and then I would say
to you, as you guys all talked about last year, we're adding
additional money to fund up that particular type of faculty.
So that's on the smaller dollar end of the spectrum. Again,
something big like a building would be more obvious.
>> MR. GREG TAYLOR: So in those scenarios that you outlined,
then, would I you understand it correctly that the third one is
essentially Interim Chancellor and then your recommendation in terms
of a budget that would address your current priorities, which include
the structural deficit that we have and then wanting to make sure we
have enough dollars to move forward with the types of increases and
things that can pay competitively, all that?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: And I might say, some of the things I'd say,
there is an unlimited number of things, some of those are things that
are good, right? Deferred maintenance, yeah, it's hard to sell it,
because, oh, no one wants to do that, but you've got to do it.
If we set the budget structure up better, it gives us more
resources to be able to make and adapt to those kinds of things as
they come up.
>> DR. DOLORES DURAN-CERDA: If I may, a comment, perhaps we
could strategize on five to seven priorities as possible initiatives,
David, I don't know what you think about that, and then go from
there?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: Yes, but I think what I could do is probably
just go through even off the cuff right now and say things that you
guys just were talking about. So addressing the structural deficit
in athletics, like, that is a strategic decision. I have sort of
said how to do it, and yeah, semantics on how you say it, but that's,
like, clearly from my standpoint, that is my recommendation to the
board. We need to address the structural deficit we have. It's
creating problems, and it's only going to get worse.
So it has a series of recommendations related to it. Happy to
sort of put those forward as priorities, like, including it is a
priority to give people another year of experience. It's not a
requirement. We don't have to do that. That's our recommendation of
something I think is a base-smart thing to do. Dolores I think would
agree with that. We have talked about that one, right, so that's not
news.
The other different things like the, when it comes down to it at
the end, it's also how many positions are you reducing? And the
deeper you go, the harder it's going to be for the institution. So
creating a healthy balance to that is somewhat of a strategic
decision, and how we play that out, whether you do it through
attrition and you have it through a period of time, that's also kind
of strategic.
It again is not sexy. It's not anything lovely. But none of
this would say that we can't do normal, small-dollar things that are
important and strategic in addressing current needs. This budget
doesn't have the ability to do something like build a giant building.
>> MR. GREG TAYLOR: So I guess just in my thinking and, you
know, when you talk about there being an infinite number of
possibilities, I agree. So my question back would be, as senior
leadership of the college, my hope is that you're filtering those
infinite number of possibilities, and what you're bringing to us as a
recommendation is, yeah, we could do an infinite number of things but
these are the ten things we need to do, whatever number it is, these
are the ten things we need to do next year, and this is the budget
that's going to allow us to do it, which is why we're recommending
it.
But if I'm understanding that correctly, that's the third one
that you presented, right?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: I think that's the best model, yes, but I know
the board is hesitant on the tuition and the tax increases, and I do
think that creating a slightly healthier budget would be good. The
reason why is when we implemented class comp, the estimates for how
much that was going to cost to implement were a little low.
So we have absorbed a pretty big increase in class and
compensation the last couple of years. It's all for good things.
It's all for good reasons. But structurally we're on the edge, and
the big challenge is that with all the building that we're doing, all
the big capital projects we're doing, that operational change that we
absorbed is not as obvious. If we were not doing any buildings at
the time, you'd be, like, oh, wait, things got worse. And things got
worse.
So structurally this would set us up to be in a healthier place
long term. It's not anything I'd say you need to worry about, but I
just think it would be a good reset to get ourselves structurally a
little bit healthier. Scenario C, or the third scenario, is a better
version.
The other thing is that, like, the recommendations on
compensation, you know, if the employees' expectation -- I'm just
going to throw numbers, whatever. If there was so much pressure that
people were, like, we need a 10% increase, for us to turn around and
say, yeah, you get a year of experience and maybe a minimum increase
would be misaligned. If that kind of pressure was out there, and
again, for anyone hearing me, that doesn't mean I'm not hearing you
want more, I get it, but I'm saying if there was pressure like that,
the recommendation would be to have higher compensation increases up
front. It would be, okay, we need -- it's just we did big
compensation increases, and right now the issue is we have too many
staff for the size of our enrollment.
So the idea is, okay, let's take it, take the size of the
enrollment, or the size of the staffing down in a healthy, nonpainful
way, and then be able to address the other issues as in a normal
course of business.
>> MR. GREG TAYLOR: The last question, just in the vein of
strategy driving the budget, not budget driving the strategy, I
understand why there is that line in the spreadsheet around staffing
reductions, because that's what you need to do to make the math work,
right?
But I worry in doing it that way, because let's say with -- 22 is
on the screen, so let's just say it's 22, because we would need 22 to
level out that budget, are we overstaffed by 22 people? Or are we
overstaffed by 30 or by 10? So how does the actual reality of it
factor into the --
>> DR. DAVID BEA: We are overstaffed by way more than 20. So
the thought behind this -- first of all, you're looking at it and
you're saying, yeah, it's a plug number, and I sort of said that. It
isn't really a plug number, because if we weren't talking about, if
we hadn't made all the lead-in based on the metrics of how many staff
versus benchmarks versus our historical norms, if we hadn't all those
conversations before now, that wouldn't be a normal line. That's not
a normal line. If you go back four years, there is not a line
-- well, because there was a time when we were reducing. I may have
gone too far. But three years ago you wouldn't have seen that number
as a plug line. It's not a standard plug line.
That's a plug line that's acknowledging the fact that by all the
metrics and the benchmarking and the conversations we have had, we
are overstaffed for the size of our enrollment. So let's ratchet
that down.
And when you guys, if you get time to play with it, one of the
things that I did, so I put in some little color codings in there
where, if you put in numbers that are too big, it starts flagging out
that that's probably too big. 75, to reduce by 75 in a year, not
likely.
We have shown you some of the retention numbers, but attrition
numbers over time, and the attrition numbers that were expected due
to normal retirements. So normal attrition is about 150 positions a
year. So if you said that we're going to reduce by more than 75,
say, just, I mean, I just picked that number, but that's half, right,
of what our normal attrition is. That's saying that we are expecting
in the budget that half of the positions that go vacant this year, we
are going to close, that's going to put a fair amount of pressure on
the college, because we're not picking the positions. We are going,
retirements happen, we are only filling half of them.
Well, a lot of retirements that happen, you have to fill the
position. So if you just are ballparking half, that's a fair amount
of pressure. So going above that would be uncomfortable. 20
positions? We should be doing that every year.
>> MR. GREG TAYLOR: So for what it's worth in terms of feedback
that we can factor in here, I feel like that still doesn't get to
where, because if the amount of positions would be reduced as based
on people who are retiring from those positions, that's still an
arbitrary, like, just because someone is retiring from that position
doesn't mean that we need or don't need the position. What I'm
asking is when or where is the analysis being done of all of the
existing positions to decide whether that position is necessary or
not, regardless of whether it's vacant or not?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: So we have shown you information about sort of
the college's metrics. The number is way more than 150. The
college's financial structure is not dire to the point where I'm
saying let's go deep to what the metrics say. Let's go back to the
staffing levels that we're at in 2014, like, proportionately to the
size of the enrollment. That would necessitate something like
layoffs, and layoffs can be more strategic in the sense that you can
identify what positions you think you can do without.
What I'm saying is that the recommendation would be through
attrition, you then know that you're expected to in a given year
reduce by a certain number of positions, everybody, all the
executives will have an idea of, okay, what does that mean for your
area. It's not going to be proportional. It's going to be sort of
split, because it's going to be heavier on the enrollment side on the
things that are more student related.
For example, the number of positions needed in facilities does
not get changed at all by the number of enrollments you have. It's
zero, right? It's based on the size of your facilities and the
square footage that you have to cover and the deferred maintenance
issues you have going on, all that sort of thing.
So the idea with this would be, okay, we're not in a dire
situation, we're in a situation we know we're overstaffed, so through
natural attrition, let's start planning how to be better about the
positions, look at what retirements you might have and go, how would
you absorb that workload, how would you reorganize your unit to cover
that sort of, and be able to reduce over time, but not be so -- it's
certainly not intended to be this person leaves and they are doing
something super-critical to the college and therefore the college
falls apart because the one position you need is not being filled.
That's not the idea.
The idea is, okay, that one needs to be filled, so that means
maybe you have to do two others over here when they become vacant,
because then you figure out how to restructure and reorganize to
continue to do the good service, the good work that we do, without
falling apart.
So it's going to take some doing, but I hate it because it sounds
like when you allow it through attrition, that that is not strategic.
It is if you're actually thinking ahead and you're saying, well, on
average, you're going to have this many people leaving your unit.
How are you going to constantly think about reorganizing or changing
the work duties so that you cannot only handle that person leaving
but then reduce the positions and the burden on the institution?
That's the idea, and it's going to need to be done over time.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: When are we going to start talking about
PSESI? It sounds like if we need a new building, is that an option
that we can just plug that in, or is that something that we're going
to have to do more discussion? I mean, not, we're, I mean... do you
understand what I'm saying?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: Sort of. In terms of identifying that, yes,
we want to do that, the board, the conversation is that -- I think
there is some conversations and there is some proposals and ideas
that have to be decided by the board. Say the board decides it, then
it would be, okay, and how do you fund it? Then I come up, and I
say, here are the different ways we can do that.
The timing of it, what I would generally say, is that if we do a
big building, the next set of big building projects, we have enough
that we probably have to do around the college, we should start
thinking about a GO bond. Then you're starting to talk about
planning for something two to three years out before you're actually
going to the voters, because you have to go to the voters for that.
The benefit of revenue bonds is the college maintains the ability
to do that. We have capacity to do that. I'm not sure that that
would be the best thing to do for a singular building at this point.
It was a thing that it made a lot of sense when we did the
revenue bonds. We have some capacity to do some more that way. But
if we were to decide to build PSESI without also thinking about
having money available to reorganize other things at the college, to
deal with some renovations or deferred maintenance that's happening,
what my worry is is that we did one shiny project and neglected a
whole bunch of other stuff, and then you're going to be, like, this
is a five-to-ten-years-out problem that you now have a five-to-ten-
years-out problem.
We really need to start thinking if there is a lot of interest in
doing a couple of big capital projects, let's start talking about
that, figuring out what big capital projects are particularly
interesting, and then talk about how would we do that, whether it's
GO bonds, and if it's GO bonds, then okay, let's go around the
college and figure out what major other deferred maintenance projects
we want to include in that. Because you don't want to go out to the
voters for one-and-a-half buildings or something like that.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: So I heard you say three to more years? I
think PSESI needs to move soon. You know, that was all of the talk
that they are outgrowing that building where they currently are, so I
think we'd be proactive to start having this discussion and get going
on that whole idea instead of waiting for a couple of years to start
the conversation.
>> DR. DAVID BEA: So sort of to clarify a little bit, the
initial idea with PSESI was that there was money in the revenue bonds
project. It was a fairly small amount of money to do some
renovations and to create some space from currently existing space.
That morphed into a state-of-the-art high-profile facility. I'm
not judging one way or the other. I'm just saying the difference is
there was a plan to do something relatively short term that turned
into something more significant. The much more significant is, from
a resource standpoint, significantly more difficult to do.
If we do that, then it's like, okay, now that's significantly
-- also, let's throw out there we have the Drachman properties and
what to do with that. That's going to cost money one way or the
other. Some. It may not be a lot. But some would cost up to -- you
know, and then more recently you have heard of another idea related
to the cybersecurity facility that would be another high-profile
thing.
Again, now you're talking about if you did, say, those three
things, easy to say -- again, we're talking, I think these are
super-fancy. I don't think they need to be 30 million, but 30
million, 30 million, and 10 million, now you're talking $70 million.
That's GO bonds. Then you're talking about what else needs to be
done around the college? Now you're really talking about GO bonds
and it's probably over 100 million.
And I wouldn't do a GO bond if you're not talking about 100
million-plus for the size of our institution. It's just too hard to
go out and get it all prepped. And then so if that's the leaning and
that's how we want to go, do a comprehensive, we have multiple needs
we have to do, which is what the major planning efforts are, then you
go, okay, let's plan out when and how we're going to do that.
Revenue bonds won't be sufficient to get them all done.
We could do it. You'd get a fair chunk of money. Interest rates
aren't what they used to be. I feel like an old man. Well, back in
my day... (laughter). Back a few years ago, interest rates were
really reasonable. They are not so much now. So the costs of
borrowing money for revenue bonds, when it's revenue bonds, would be
more impactful on the college. Down sides are also revenue bonds are
tied to enrollment, tied to tuition and contract. It's not property
tax related.
So our enrollment is down, we are already leveraged, some of our
capacity for revenue bonds, it means that suddenly we're not quite as
attractive because we are more heavily leveraging off of one revenue
source as opposed to GO bonds where it's super-good credit because
it's the taxpayers have voted for it.
So at this point, if you're going to do one to two big projects,
which I think is where things are heading, then you have to start
thinking it's the really big thing.
I have taken a bit more than an hour, it appears.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Any other questions?
>> MR. LUIS GONZALES: It's not a question. It's a comment.
If we initiate in reference to 2 or 3, new initiative in
reference to building more, I think the other thing we need to do not
only as a board but inform the public, as well, too, because they are
the one that needs to be engaged on our projects, as well, too.
But one of the things that I was thinking, it's nothing new, is
we really need to, as Pima has done, promote it, but also engage the
private sectors, I think not only locally but outside, as well, too.
Because I think, as I have always said, and everybody here on the
board has said that the investment we do now, it's for the investment
of the future, and I like the idea, but one of the big things that we
all have to look at, because you mentioned it quite a few times, is
the enrollment.
I think the enrollment is a big factor. I know that sometimes we
can do more if we have more students, but also, I think we need to
somehow bring the students as well, too. But I do like the idea that
as a board we need to sit down, and yourself, and everybody that
needs to hear this around the table, what is more conducive, what is
more cost-effective, what can we do within the three years or four
years or five years.
Because things are going to change in the next six months or so
in reference to coming back to the re-election, and we might have
three new board members in. See what other ideas they have, as well,
too.
But I just want to make a comment. I think if we do anything, we
put it on the table, but let the community be informed, because I
think it's a good idea, a lot of good ideas, but the big thing is the
enrollment that we have and we really need to make it a top priority
in that.
>> DR. DAVID BEA: I totally agree. One of the advantages,
challenges but advantages to GO bonds is that you have to engage the
community and show the vision of what you're doing and get them to
buy into the idea and that they like the vision and they support the
vision financially.
That's the big advantage of GO bonds. And the downside to
revenue bonds is that you can sort of do it. You know, we did it
certainly with the public being aware, but the board has more
authority with revenue bonds to do a project that the board is just
interested in. Doesn't have to have as much community engagement in
it.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Okay. Thank you.
>> DR. DAVID BEA: You're welcome. Thank you.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Now we're on to the second, Interim
Chancellor's midyear review of her goals.
>> DR. DOLORES DURAN-CERDA: Yes. Thank you, Board Chair. Good
evening, or I guess it's not quite evening yet, almost, so what I'd
like to do before we start with review of the Interim Chancellor's
goals is I'd like to give you an update on the strategic planning
institutional target update. I believe you have received data on
that. So these slides take highlights from the data you received
over the weekend.
So as part of the strategic plan, we have established two
institutional goals, and the institutional goal is Achieve60 Pima
County. Everybody is familiar with Achieve60AZ, but for Pima County,
it's by 2030, 60% of Pima residents ages 25 to 64 will hold a
postsecondary credential or degree.
If we go on to the next slide, we see progress on the
institutional target 1, which is increased completer counts by 6,000
by 2024/2025. If we go to the next slide, we see the target 2,
double completer counts of Hispanic or Latino, American Indian,
Alaskan Native, and Black and African American learners by 2024/2025.
So here we're looking at American Indian and Alaskan Native
completers, and you can see there has been a decrease, if you look at
the next one, next slide, we have Black or African American
completers. You can see the trend there. And I'll explain why we
think this is taking place right now.
Next slide, we look at Hispanic/Latino completers. Next slide,
before I go on to that, we believe that some of this decrease has to
do with the pandemic. We had students that had a learning loss and
did not come to the institution. We have been seeing an increase
recently about that.
Another is what we need to do is examine our policies and
practices through data analysis and looking at the inequities,
examining also our student transfer experience, making sure students
are getting on planners and collaborating with the universities. We
are looking at culturally responsive curriculum. Holistic support
services to students. Increasing dual enrollment, student transition
to the college.
We're in the process of restructuring PimaOnline and also program
review that's data-informed, as I mentioned earlier in Dave's
presentation. One example of what we are doing something positive
regarding this is through Pima College's Excelencia in Education, and
Excelencia in Education accelerates Latino student success, enhancing
workforce leadership and the economy.
So here are some bullet points. We have the partnership. I also
belong to, as a founding member, of the statewide Arizona his
Consortium. I will be co-presenting at the AZ transfer summit
regarding his, state-based his consortiums, models for developing
communities of practice. It's not only a Pima team but also
statewide.
We're partnering with the University of Arizona on other his
initiatives. For example, we'll be hosting this year the 2024 his
Grants Development Institute with the U of A. We are training and
having professional development opportunities for faculty for
culturally responsive pedagogy.
We are also working at the Desert Vista Campus, in April we will
be holding a partnership with English and Spanish first-generation
parent sessions, because I personally believe that education is a
family decision, and the more parents are involved and participating
with their children, the more access and the more promotion of their
children to complete is evident.
We are increasing his grants at the institution, so we have three
different grants. Strive Online Title V grant that helps serve our
PimaOnline students. East Campus has an his-STEM IT Knowledge in
Context project. And Pima and U of A have a STEM Bridge project.
We are also intentionally diversifying our job applicant pools.
We're also promoting jobs in Excelencia in Education. So this is
just one example of what we're doing to help with the institutional
targets of the institution.
Now I'd like to continue with the actual goals, and I have asked
for the goal owners to join me in giving a brief update on each of
their goals and subgoals. There are a couple of people who weren't
able to join us today, but we do have, for our first goal, we will
continue with Jeff Thies on accreditation, preparing the college for
the accreditation assurance argument.
We can close the slides. Thank you.
>> JEFF THIES: Good evening, Chairperson Riel, board members,
Interim Chancellor Duran-Cerda, colleagues and guests.
So chancellor goal 1 progress, as you have seen in the past,
we're making great progress on this particular goal. There is three
main components to this goal. The first was the additional locations
work that started last summer and worked through the fall. The
second is the creation of what we call our assurance argument.
That's the big report, has the different components in it. Then the
last is just preparing all of us for the visit that's coming in
December of 2024.
So with respect to the additional locations, we have completed
all of that work, so that segment of it is 100% done. However, there
has been additional work that we have recognized and so we created a
task force in the fall that's been working through the fall and early
in the spring to create an administrative procedure so the challenges
we were faced with last spring don't happen again. So we'll have an
administrative procedure, standard operating procedure that goes with
that, as well.
Additionally, we are looking at tying our additional locations to
our branch campuses. We have a branch campus report that's part of
this work as well, so making sure that we have a clear process for
identifying our additional sites and how they connect to our various
branch campuses.
So the assurance argument, we are about a little over halfway
done with the assurance argument. If you have been to any of our
Town Halls or looked on the website, we have the five criterion plus
we have the federal compliance. Those six have gone through the
whole phase of being reviewed, absorbing the comments, collecting
that information, making edits. So we are really close to saying
those chapters are very close to being finished.
Once we are ready to pull those all together and give it a single
voice, we will be doing that here and plan to have that full report
done by May of 2024.
The other components we are still working through that are part
of that larger report are the embedded reports, so we have an
embedded report -- we have two embedded reports. One is the
additional locations, other one for ODR. Those are due the end of
March, the first drafts of those, so they will go through that same
cycle of review and updates, as well, moving forward.
Then last is just preparation. We had the premock visit back in
December. Since then, we have created short, multiple-page kind of
Q&A-type documents for different levels of the institution. We have
ones for the board. I know you all have had that, and we've started
having meetings where we actually review that information, as well.
Leadership prep sessions for the visit. Monthly Town Halls, we
have one coming up in March on the 14th, Pi Day, 2:00 to 8:00, at
West Campus. I believe that's our last one.
Let's see. There was one more piece. Just in general, kudos to
Wendy Weeks for leading this effort. She's done an incredible job.
If you've been to the Town Halls, there is a lot of people supporting
that effort, faculty, staff, administrators, part of the writing
teams, part of the Town Hall visits, and part of the preparation for
the next visit. That was the last one.
So September we have the mock visit, right. We did the premock
in December. Friday, September 6, we will have the regular mock
visit in preparation for the December visit from HLC.
Any questions?
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: How are we doing with the HLC concerns
regarding dual enrollment?
>> JEFF THIES: So that comes through the additional locations.
So we have had visits all at the end of last summer and early spring
and part of the additional site locations. So dual enrollment is a
major part of the additional sites, but we also have, through
workforce, other additional sites, so prisons, or for added business,
those types of things.
We have an AP that's getting created, but in the intermediate,
we have also been doing administrative visits, so either myself,
Michael Parker, our vice provost for academic affairs, or Morgan
Phillips, vice chancellor for academic excellence, are going around
and visiting every high school that we have a dual enrollment
partnership with, along with James and his team. We are having the
strategic conversation. Not the, hey, I need this for the fall or,
hey, I need this to happen real soon. That's kind of James' and his
team's work.
What we are doing in the provost office is having a strategic
view as where do you want to see dual enrollment at your particular
site? Does that mean we need to create you as an additional site?
Because that's something we have to do through HLC. We are really
trying to have that pathways conversation.
Today I was out at Santa Rita High School visiting with their
principal and CTE director for TUSD, along with their team, to have
those conversations about we are going to have this new AGEC, right,
in two years, so fall of '26, what they recall is our AGEC, or
Arizona Gen Ed Curriculum, is going to be changing. The tweaks that
happen there, how does that reflect in what we do with dual
enrollment.
HLC has shifted the faculty qualifications, so we have an
internal group that's working at, led by Kate Schmidt and faculty, to
look at our faculty qualifications process, because HLC has tweaked
theirs enough where that provides us with the opportunity to take a
second look at the processes we follow to see if there is
opportunities to increase the value of teachers that are out there
that could teach for us, adjunct faculty, full-time faculty, or
through dual enrollment.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: Are you getting cooperation from the sites?
>> JEFF THIES: Yes, absolutely.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: So when I attended the first Town Hall last
August, I noticed that they had, each of those groups, had quite a
few things that they need at the college to fix, address, you know,
whatever.
When I went to the one last week here, I noticed -- I didn't stay
for the whole meeting. I have been to all of them, but I didn't stay
for, except for that first day, for the whole thing. But I noticed
that the questions, many of the questions that they asked, the items
that they needed in August are still information they need now.
So my question was why haven't you got those answers yet from the
college, from the administration? And what I was told -- that was
for the first one, for the federal compliance -- what I was told,
well, it is in the process, and some of these answers will be due in
April and some will be due in August.
So what Wade just asked you -- this is a long thing, right? When
HLC comes to us and they say, what do you know about the extra sites,
right? If we haven't been told in enough advance so we can sink into
our brains, we're all old up here, so it takes more than one -- well,
not you.
>> JEFF THIES: Sorry, Greg.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: No Greg. But he's got children, so he's
the same boat as us, he needs time to absorb all this stuff, right?
So my question is if we actually wait until April or May or
August to fix these things and then you're expecting all of us to be,
everybody, right, at the college, everybody needs to be able to
answer these questions, so my suggestion is, I'm encouraging
everybody to maybe up your deadlines. Instead of, you know,
finishing it all in April or in August, let's try to finish it a lot
sooner than that so we can start understanding what's happening
>> JEFF THIES: Absolutely. I'll take that back and we will work
with the different groups who oversee the different criteria.
I know one of the pieces is we have actually created several new
APs, and they are going through our AP process, so that may be where
the April dates are coming from. They go through the governance
process, and then they get reviewed, legal sends them out for the 21
days and all that, so there is a little bit of time on those.
The other evidence pieces we will follow up on, as well. Because
you're right. You don't want to be not knowing at the mock visit the
things you should already know and have to get all this information
flooded at you at once. It should be scaffolded. As soon as we have
it, we should be getting it in your hands, and we will work on that.
>> DR. DOLORES DURAN-CERDA: There are some APs that were
submitted just recently, a whole bunch of them. We are getting
caught up.
>> JEFF THIES: Any other questions?
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Thank you.
>> JEFF THIES: You're welcome.
>> DR. DOLORES DURAN-CERDA: Thank you, Jeff.
Next we're going to talk about the second goal, which is
increasing enrollment, and since Phil Burdick couldn't join us today,
Dr. Irene Robles-Lopez will be providing that quick update.
>> DR. IRENE ROBLES-LOPEZ: Good evening, everyone. Thank you.
So what Phil wanted to share with you all is here is a snapshot
of the recruitment goals. So he does have the percentages of what he
was looking for for first-day enrollment and head count. 3% increase
for '24/'25 fall applications being completed. Fall yield
percentage, which would actually be application to registration. And
then of course fall dual enrollment student increases, as well. So
that's just a snapshot of what his goals are for recruitment.
So with that, we see that student applications, if we look back
at fall '21, fall '22, and fall '23, fall '21, there was a 1%
decrease in student applications, and fall '22 and fall '23 there has
been an increase in student applications, which is positive.
Over looking at first-day fall enrollment, we do see that over
those last five terms, there has been an increase in enrollment. So
part of what I wanted to share that's not part of Phil's slides is
this really has been, through collaboration through several units
across the college working together, to make sure that we are
creating the best experience for students when they walk onto the
campus, when they go through the enrollment process, and then the
registration process, as well.
So we do have a first-year experience for our students as they
come into the college. That would be their onboarding. It's the
same as their new-student orientation. We make sure that they
connect with their program advisor, that they are getting to see a
familiar face.
So with that, it's several units across the college, along with
our Super Saturday events that really focus on making sure we are
there for students and able to answer their questions.
So that part has to do specifically with enrollment. Another
aspect that we are looking at and making sure that we are retaining
our students is some of the other work that we are doing.
So right now we have two initiatives, two pilot programs that we
are working on, so one of them is the first-generation student
initiative. Right now with the data that we have, approximately 35%,
30% of our students are first-generation students. We know that
oftentimes these students don't have the context for being able to
maneuver through college, the expectations, what about if they have
questions, what about if they run into any challenges.
So we have an initiative where we are specifically focusing on
them. That is done through the Garcia grant, which is a grant that
we received two years ago. We are going into year 3 through the
League of Innovation in collaboration with them. We also have
another initiative, which is the male minority initiative. As we saw
in the data for Achieve60AZ, that is the population where we know
that we are having a bit more challenge in getting them to come to
the college and then helping us retain them.
So we also have an initiative focused on specifically reaching
out to those students, helping them make a connection, and really
helping create a sense of belonging.
So with that, it leads into goal 3, which is the one that I
oversee.
Do you have any questions?
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: I'm wondering, we have a big emphasis on
minority recruitment. Do we have any information on the impact of
dual enrollment as it pertains to those students not enrolling in
Pima College as a full-time student in gen ed?
The kids that are going to walk out of high school with an
associate of arts degree or equivalent aren't going to go to Pima,
and we don't get any tuition from those students, and are we shooting
ourselves in the foot because we're allowing them to get a degree
from the institution without paying for it?
Has that had a negative impact on our enrollment? Just a
question.
>> DR. IRENE ROBLES-LOPEZ: Thank you. That's an excellent
question. I don't know if Jeff Thies would like to answer that or
our chancellor?
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: Jeff, just give us an interim answer.
(Laughter.)
>> JEFF THIES: Interim, okay. (Laughter.)
So one of the greater challenges is actually the University's
adjustments to who they go down and grab, right? So they are now
looking to capture students they would have not have brought in in
the past to meet that need.
So the majority of our dual enrollment students are capturing
anywhere from 9 to 12 credits. We have very few that actually
complete their full associate's degree with us. So I don't think
it's a challenge yet.
I think if you expand models like the early college high school,
which isn't quite the same, because Vail does have a different
partnership because that's co-enrolled instead of dual-enrolled.
That may be a challenge, but that is one of the conversations we're
having as we visit. If they want the full AGEC course block, which
is the general ed curriculum, about 36 credits that automatically
transfer to the University of Arizona, that will be one of those
pieces we will have to be looking at, are we losing that group.
They've got the gen ed block through dual enrollment, and now
they go straight into the University and not have to worry about that
gen ed piece. We're not getting the numbers there yet where the
students have that many credits. A lot of high schools still have a
blended AP dual enrollment approach.
Going back to the minority piece of it, the increase of our dual
enrollment, especially in high schools that are more predominantly
minority students, has actually helped support those students to go
to college, and so we think the win is more on that end right now at
this point, meaning more of them involved in college in high school,
and thus they decide that that is something they want to pursue,
right, they have said, look, I can be successful at this college
thing, maybe I will go on, that capture right there is the greater
amount at this point.
But it is a concern long-term. If you ramp it up and do it so
well, you're not capturing any tuition from that group.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: I'm going to assume that two of the most
popular dual enrollment courses are in English and math.
>> JEFF THIES: Yep. Comp I, Comp II, and college algebra.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: And so we automatically lose that tuition
when those students would have been first-year Pima College students
after they graduated from high school.
>> JEFF THIES: Absolutely.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: So an aside is if -- did you call it AGEC --
>> JEFF THIES: Yes.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: -- gets rewritten, and those students are in
high school AP classes that are getting dual enrollment credit,
what's that curriculum going to look like? Because the AP curriculum
is much different than the high school curriculum, it's probably much
different than the community college curriculum.
>> JEFF THIES: Yeah, so the AP is exactly like you said. So
that's the conversation high schools are having internally, right?
Do we offer AP in composition or do we offer dual enrollment? If
they offer dual enrollment, they're using our curriculum. If they're
offering AP, obviously they're using the AP curriculum.
The big change is they don't have to pay for dual enrollment, and
if they earn a grade, that grade sticks. They take AP, A, they've
got to go pay to take a test, although the district might cover it, I
think TUSD does a lot of that, but if they don't pass it, oftentimes
to retake it, they're going to pay for it. If they do pass it, the
institution they go to may not accept it, if they earn a 3 out of 5
or 4 out of 5. It all depends on the receiving institution, the
value they place on it. So we are seeing more high schools are
moving away from the AP and towards the dual enrollment.
>> DR. DOLORES DURAN-CERDA: Nationwide, right?
>> JEFF THIES: Yeah.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: So I think it's more of an issue than just
celebrating our dual enrollment that we have to really dive down and
take a look at what the impact is.
>> JEFF THIES: The capture rate, how many of them come to Pima
is a big piece, because that's where we are going to recruit, you
know, any losses, plus the community good that it does for them to
complete.
>> DR. DOLORES DURAN-CERDA: So Irene is going to continue with
goal 3, enhancing a culture of care, and she is the goal owner for
this one.
>> DR. IRENE ROBLES-LOPEZ: Thank you. And so with this
particular goal, again, looking at enhancing the culture of care for
students, for our employees, really for the Pima Community, so with
the most recent survey that was sent out which was a community
students survey, there were 42,000 e-mails that were sent out.
So you can also see the percentage, 13,000, 32% opened the
e-mail. 300, which is approximately 5%, clicked through it,
indicating that they interacted with the survey but didn't
necessarily complete the survey. Then we did have 200 people that
actually completed that survey. So that data will be looked at, it
will be analyzed to see what feedback it is that we're getting from
folks that would help improve enhancing the culture of care.
We also have identified or selected diversity, equity, and an
inclusion survey of employees, and so that one will run along with
the College Employee Satisfaction Survey, which is usually done every
three to four years, so that will be another part of that process.
All of the surveys and analysis will be completed by May of this
semester.
The next phase after the surveys is our listening sessions. So
this is something that is really important to us, because we want to
hear from folks. We want to know exactly what it is that they are
thinking, what it is that they would like for us to know, and so with
that, we are offering three different sessions. So these are, we try
to differ the times, the days, all of them are identical, all will be
virtual, again, trying to be as flexible as possible to have as many
people participate.
So folks are welcomed to attend any of them, so really the goal
for these sessions are for us to listen, to reflect, collaborate,
gather, and flourish. With that, again, it's that positive intent,
it's welcoming the feedback from individuals, and so we do have the
dates there. You all are welcome.
We do have the Zoom links. We didn't include them in here,
because it took up a little bit too much space. But if you didn't
receive that and would like to join, we'd be more than happy to be
able to share that with you.
So at this point the completion rate for this goal is at 33%, and
so the actual plan for the goal is at 100%, but the implementation
part of it is at 33%. So again, we are on track to have this
completed and are really looking forward to hearing and seeing the
feedback that we get from folks.
Does anyone have any questions?
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: No, thanks. But I'm just interested, not
right now, but I'm looking forward to seeing what you asked, what
kind of questions you asked, because what you ask determines what
kind of answers you'll get. So that would be -- thank you.
>> DR. IRENE ROBLES-LOPEZ: Yes, absolutely. Thank you.
>> DR. DOLORES DURAN-CERDA: Thank you, Irene.
For our final -- and I think you have received a bit of the
budget explanation earlier today, but we have the improve
effectiveness with Dr. Dave Bea. And I believe Nic Richmond is also
joining us online, virtually.
>> DR. DAVID BEA: She's certainly available.
Good evening again. We have spent a fair amount of time talking
about budget development and cost-savings ideas. Some of the things
are spelled out a bit more in this report, some of the different
cost-savings ideas.
Think about those. Those aren't just for this coming year.
Those are for the next few years and identifying different things
that we will be talking about exploring and so forth.
With that, I will ask if the board has any questions. I know we
have already talked ad nauseam about these things for an hour and 40
minutes. And I presented to you last week, so there you go.
Thank you.
>> DR. DOLORES DURAN-CERDA: Thank you, Dave. And I did forget
Ian Roark, because Ian was going to present as part of the enrollment
goal.
>> DR. IAN ROARK: Good evening, board chair, Governing Board
members present and virtual, Chancellor Duran-Cerda, colleagues and
guests, including those watching virtually.
Goal 2B is a subset of the primary goal 2 that Irene talked about
on behalf of our colleague, Phil Burdick, and also her role in that.
2B really focuses, is a subset of a strategic plan goal that extends
into 2025 under our current strategic plan that also helps better
position the institution to meet the needs of adult learners and new
majority learners in the community.
As people are living longer and working longer and changing jobs
more often, we can also be that place where people return to time and
time again for the education and training that they want to better
improve their family and household lives and have new opportunities
for gainful employment in our growing labor market.
There is a number that I'm going to talk about that's a macro
number that troubles me every day I see it or think about it or look
it up to see if it's changed, and that is the labor force
participation rate in Pima County. In the history of our country and
the history of the county, back in the '70s, '80s, '90s, labor
participation rates were upwards of 80%, 70%. Then we saw drastic
decline starting in the mid-'90s, then with the great recession of
collapse, and labor force participation rate in the United States of
America is at the lowest point that it's ever been.
This is not the unemployment rate. These are people who have
been out of work for one year or longer who could be working between
the ages of 25 and 64. In Pima County, it is now at a historical low
of 58%. That means 58% of the people who could be working are
chronically long term unemployed.
The new models for new majority learners that we talk about in
this strategic initiative are targeted to address that population and
others. How do we give people real systems and processes through our
programming that offers the same high-quality programming that are
taught by our faculty in our programs, at our campuses, and in our
centers of excellence, but in a way, as Chancellor Duran-Cerda and
chancellor likes to say, the institution is orienting around their
needs, we are becoming more learner friendly.
There are many different models that we can scale and launch, and
many of these things have been occurring as add-ones for some years,
but the three that were targeted in the strategic plan goal are the
IBEST program through Adult Basic Education for College and Career.
That is where individuals who have not earned their high school
diploma take both a CTE workforce program and earn their GED at the
same time, not one after another. They are co-enrolled and have
co-instruction.
The second is work-base learning up to and including
apprenticeship, and we want to see more what's called related
technical instruction coming out of apprenticeship. Not to get too
into the weeds, unless questions are asked about it, but in order for
something to be a registered apprenticeship at the state or federal
level, enrollment in a college program as part of that training
regimen is actually required by the federal government, and there are
employer benefits related to that.
The goal specifically here is that sometimes learners will come
to us even with an apprenticeship, but we did not have a way to know
if they were coming to us because of the requirement of their
apprenticeship or they were just generally enrolling. So that's the
second one we have targeted for scaleability.
The third, and the one that seems to have the most stickiness, if
you will, in terms of the people wanting this type of programming is
of course Pima FastTrack. These things are newer, and so in the
55-year history of the institution, and Dave spoke about it very
well, we are very large, we have a lots of processes oriented around
our fall, spring, summer, repeat regimen we have at the institution,
and for these adult learners, that sort of traditional system does
not always work well for them.
So the processes on which the institution runs are baked in over
many decades of evolution. When we try to insert something new, it's
usually as an add-on, but in order for these things to scale, we have
to change significant systems and processes at the institution, and
the details in the document have listed some of those already
underway that we have accomplished with respect to Banner changes and
changes of working with deans and faculty and how we schedule and
integrate scheduling of these types of offerings better.
So we are well on our way to more than just planting the seeds
for the future enrollment growth we know can come from these
initiatives. The numbers for this baseline year will not be
monumental compared to the mainstay of the institution. But given
the demand that we have seen compared to the numbers of courses and
learners that we are actually serving and the disconnect between
that, we know that there is future enrollment growth from these
models and others moving forward.
I know you have had the document. I know you have had the
opportunity I hope to review it, and we are late in the evening, so
if there are any specific questions about these or others under that
banner of the chancellor 's goal, I'd love to report out on it.
Currently we are at 66% of the enrollment on the approved KPIs
that you have approved form interim chancellor's goals back at the
beginning of the academic year.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Thank you.
Dr. Roark, I do have a question for you. When I first met you
the very first time you told me that there had been 2,000 people call
and they were interested, and we just didn't have the manpower to
touch and reach the educational needs of all of those people.
Then recently I heard too that the way that the system, and I
don't know if it's Banner or if it's college admissions or whatever,
my question for you is would it help you, do you guys have, like, a
team, a committee to work on these problems so they are being
ameliorated sooner than later so we don't run into those kind of
situations where students just get frustrated and they don't
matriculate because they are frustrated with the -- I don't know if
it's the website or the admittance process.
So my question I guess is twofold. Are we still in that same
situation where we have more interest than we can actually take care
of? And if there are problems, do you have a committee to help
ameliorate those so they are not problems as far as getting into the
door?
>> DR. IAN ROARK: I think I need to address that at two levels.
The first is at the strategic goal level, and the second is at the
tactical or operational level.
So there is a strategic plan goal that this is also a part of
-- sorry, my mouth is dry. At the strategic plan goal, I don't have
the wordy goal memorized, but it's reorienting the institution to
focus on the needs of adult learners and adult new majority learners,
and to clarify, that's all adults, not just those enrolled in adult
basic education.
We have nicknamed that No Wrong Doors, because we don't want
there to be, there should be no wrong door at the institution,
whether that's through the website or whether that's when somebody
interfaces with somebody they are getting services from at one of the
campuses or virtually, they should be able to know all of their
different opportunities and all of these different offerings.
So I could pick any one of the programs, for example, automotive
technology. We have an apprenticeship in automotive technology. We
have dual enrollment automotive technology, and we have Pima
FastTrack in automotive technology, and we have prior learning
assessment available in automotive technology. Just insert "program"
and that's the case for many programs.
But the current system is not maximized so that all learners at
all times know about all of those options that are available for
them. The reason why we nicknamed it No Wrong Door is that on
average, a full 50% of the learners who actually sign up for a Pima
FastTrack decline and enroll in the credit-bearing program instead.
The reason is when they look at the schedule for a FastTrack, which
requires more hours under a shorter period of time and longer days,
it doesn't work well for them.
So Pima FastTrack typically is oriented to those who are
long-term unemployed and don't have necessarily either household or
work obligations. So many learners actually opt to enroll in the
other.
We want to see that expand, and so we're working
cross-functionally with academic affairs, with student affairs, and
with that strategic plan goal, and there is a strategic plan team
that is working through that particular goal.
At the operational level, the issues have been identified and it
will take some years to fix every single issue that is causing us not
to maximize that potential enrollment. It's going to be more and
more critical and more and more people are really embracing this
because of the passage of Senate Bill 1400, and that's another thing
we are implementing and must implement, but it's not on a
chancellor's goal but it's related, right, because it supports it.
Senate Bill 1400 now allows for all of those sorts of offerings
including what you have seen at Gospel Rescue Mission, which you've
seen at the centers and which you've seen with FastTracks at the
campuses on the various tours we have taken you on. That now counts
for full-time student equivalent and there's a revenue source,
although it's not from the state, those are funded large part by
public workforce dollars, employer pay, or self-pay on the part of
learners, and some scholarshipping.
So there is a revenue source for it, and it also increases the
FTSE footprint of the institution. We have right now done a 50% --
and I'm going to get back to your other question with some numbers
that are stark, and they should challenge us to actually address
these systemic issues more holistically, and I believe that we will.
I believe we are at a better place.
But right now, just on a back-of-the-napkin estimate we had to do
for Senate Bill 1400, this is the first year that that's been law and
we are already estimating 150 FTSE at this point in time in the
academic year.
That's new. It's not monumental, but for the first time out the
gate, that just shows the growth potential with respect to FTSE for
these sorts of offerings. That's for noncredit workforce training,
specifically the new category that we, Pima, helped establish in law
for the state of Arizona.
Here's the numbers now. Since we launched in October and had to
pull up, so I got these accurate, these are as of January 31, 2024,
and we launched Pima FastTrack in October of 2021. We have now had
5,339 total requests by real people for information on Pima
FastTrack. Then now, 992 information sessions attended by people.
606 one-on-one advising sessions. Those usually occur with a team
called the corporate community navigators that were work
cross-functionally with student affairs, and then 352 enrolled.
5,539 reachouts for direct information. 352 enrolled.
So there is potential there. It's not going to be all 5,000, but
that enrollment funnel, I'm being very transparent about it in a
public setting, because that is a challenge, that enrollment funnel
needs to not be so wide and needs to be a lot cleaner with respect to
how many of those initial entrants we can get into these programs,
and I'm convinced that working collaboratively and cross-functionally
like we have been with these areas and others across the institution,
that we will meet that demand.
Again, the numbers and the goals seem small for these initial
years, but that's because there are a lot of systems and processes
that were never oriented to serving this particular demographic or
this particular model, and we now have plans and processes in place
to address most if not all of the systemic barriers that we see.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: So are we cooperating with OneStop, Pima
County OneStop?
>> DR. IAN ROARK: To a large degree this college has been
celebrated nationally with respect to how integrated we are, so I
would say we are true partners, not just cooperative.
Many of these learners, including those in the IBEST program and
all in the FastTrack program, are co-enrolled in Arizona@Work Pima
County. We actually have two team members from the workforce
development team that are co-located in the public workforce systems
job center, and we are collaborating right now with Pima County in
the Downtown Campus with funding that the county attained from the
federal government to establish a job center satellite at the
Downtown Campus.
What that will allow is the Downtown Campus to operate as a third
job center for members of the community, will then be able to be
brought on campus but also have access to federal financial aid, the
WIOA dollars, and all of the various titles that come with that, as
well as SNAP CAN, which is currently being implemented on a pilot
basis through workforce development, and ABECC, adult basic
education, but will be expanding to the entire institution. That's
another revenue source that will help offset the real expenses that
many of our learners have with respect to childcare, transportation,
food, clothing, and other needs.
Any other questions?
All right. Thank you very much. Hope you have a great evening.
>> DR. DOLORES DURAN-CERDA: Thank you, Ian.
So you have heard the interim chancellor's goals. We have a
description, all within the progress for reaffirmation of
accreditation, increasing enrollment, and I hear you talk about
that's a priority, a major priority for this board. So we are going
to do our best to continue with focusing on increasing in enrollment
and retention, of course, and completion, even postcompletion, after
our students graduate or get a job.
Enhancing a culture of care. Much of the work is being done,
implemented, as Dr. Robles-Lopez said, this semester but it's been a
work in progress and talking to folks on the campuses and through
this transition, because there has been so much movement, and so
healing and valuing the work of our employees at the college and the
community.
Then of course improving effectiveness that we focused on today.
So it's been, it's not only the team, the folks that presented, but
it's their teams and trickling on down to the faculty and the staff
who work with our students every day. So it's a collective effort.
What you see here is progress, and we're going to continue
progressing, but if you have any feedback for us, we'd really
appreciate as well.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: If no final comments, I'm going to adjourn
the meeting. Thank you all for being here.
Meeting adjourned.
(Adjournment.)
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