CCCC could face decline in enrollment, state aid

Preparing for a decline in revenue of over $1 million and planning for what educating the students during the fall 2020 semester would look like were topics discussed by the Cloud County Community College board of trustees during its regular meeting on Tuesday night.
Adhering to social distancing guidelines, the board once again met via Zoom video conferencing.
Cloud County has been informed to expect a 20-percent decline in enrollment for the fall semester.
A 20-percent decline in enrollment would result in a drop in tuition of $587,400.
The college is also anticipating a 10-percent cut in state funding that amounts to a loss of nearly $450,000.
“We will look at every way we can cut costs and try to minimize the decline in enrollment,” Amber Knoettgen, vice president for administrative services said.
Knoettgen said that the 20-percent decline in enrollment is statewide, and she hopes that is a definite worst case scenario.
In closing out the current fiscal year, all non-essential expenditures have been suspended and a hiring freeze has been put in place.
“To be able to minimize any damage to the budget based on the effects of COVID-19,” Knoettgen said.
Vice president for academic affairs and student success Pedro Leite said that he thinks the 20 -percent decline in enrollment would be the worst case.
“If I can bring the numbers to the same level as last year for the fall I will be very happy,” Leite said.
Leite said that at the Concordia campus there have been 429 applications for the fall semester, compared to 508 for the same period last year.
“It is not good, but it is not as bad as people are anticipating,” Leite said.
The Geary County campus has 47 new applications, compared to 55 for last year.
Cloud County has received 188 applications for on-campus housing. That is an increase from a year ago.
“I am really not counting on the 20-percent decrease,” Leite said.
It has not yet been determined whether or not the students that enroll for the fall semester will be on campus for face-to-face classes or if online instruction will continue.
Cloud County closed the Concordia and Geary County campuses to face-to-face learning and began online instruction for the remainder of the spring semester to help mitigate the spread of COVID-19.
It was announced earlier this month by the college that all summer classes would be online.
Now the college administration is working on a plan for the fall semester.
“We are going to continue to hear from the state, and monitor the situation with our local entities, as well as our emergency response committee, to help identify a safe transition for us and for our students,” college president Dr. Adrian Douglas said, “Although we don’t have much to go on at this point, we are starting to have those conversations. Trying to plan, see what the fall is going to look like. Whether we bring students back on campus or not.”
Douglas said there are not expectations for Cloud County to do what the universities are doing.
“The community college looks very different according to what our county situations look like,” Douglas said, “We are going to have to make decisions based on that.”
The college has established a task force with 18 members, including faculty members, deans, advisement staff and others, to work on a plan for the fall semester.
Leite said that the task force is looking at three possible scenarios for the fall semester; that includes returning to face-to-face learning.
“Based on what I have read, that would be very unlikely,” Leite said.
The other options are all online learning and a hybrid approach that combines a limited number of students on campus and online learning.
Douglas announced to the board during the meeting that the college will receive $763,000 from the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund that was established to help institutions respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.
At least half of the funds allocated to each institution must be distributed to the students as emergency financial aid, which can include any of their costs of attendance such as food, housing, course materials, technology, health care and child care.
The institutions are responsible for distributing the funds to the students.
“We have a group that is working on what students are going to be eligible for that and how those funds might be awarded,” Douglas said.
The portion of the funds that don’t go to the students are for institutional use to cover any costs associated with significant delivery of instruction due to COVID-19.
“When these funds are made available to us we will be able to reimburse ourselves for some of the losses the college is experiencing, or we have incurred, like the refunds to students for the last seven weeks of the semester for housing and meals,” Douglas said.
In action taken by the board during the meeting, the contracts for full-time faculty for the 2020-2021 contract year were renewed.
The renewal of the contracts was originally included in the consent agenda approved by the board.
On a motion by Jim Koch, the board voted to move the contract approval to action items.
“My reason to move this from the consent agenda has nothing to do with the approval of any or all of the faculty members. I do applaud the effort that the faculty has made to keep the college functioning,” Koch said, “I also would say that I think the faculty is one of the most critical issues, and one of the most important things these trustees need to address. So the reason I asked to move this from the consent agenda was that I was very disappointed as a trustee with the information that was presented to the board, simply a list of names and saying we are going to approve these folks for the coming year.”
Koch said he had no idea at the time if the list included all faculty members, both probationary and non-probationary. He also said there was no information provided on whether or not the evaluations of the faculty had been completed or not.
Contracts renewed include:
Full-Time Non-probationary Faculty:
Gwen Carnes, Michelle Farha, Spencer Farha, Cathy Forshee, Kristina Frost, Randy Gantvoort, Suzette Ghent, Susan Greene, Jamieson Gross, Craig Lamb, Cynthia Lamberty, Chelse McCall, Monte Poersch, Kevin Pounds, Christopher Preston, David Shirkey, Dennis Smith, Joshua Urban, Elizabeth Whisler, Mark Whisler.
Faculty Moving from Probationary to Non-probationary Status:
Sara Biekman, Carmen Brady, Andrew Clark, Abu Hossion, Andrew Myers, Michael Thompson.
Full-Time Probationary Faculty:
Stacey Baker, Bryan Bombardier, Brandon Galm, Paul Gardner, Charles Henry, Amy Kern, Violette Kjeldgaard, Kristin Kruse, Christopher Langsford, Angela Murray, Craig Smith, Kim Smith, Robert Zima.
Retiree:
Dan Cyre
The board voted to meet, via Zoom video conferencing, on May 8, at 5 p.m., to discuss the results of the survey on Douglas’ evaluation.
Trustee Ellen Anderson informed the trustees that they would be receiving the survey by email, and they are to be completed by May 6.
The renewal of the Jenzabar maintenance and remote services contract for the 2020-2021 academic year, in the amount of $141,769 beginning July 1, was approved by the board.
The contract includes $109,994 for the Jenzabar maintenance plan, $1,000 for JICS/iCloud maintenance and $4,775 for Nelnet Enterprise Interface custom maintenance.
Cloud County selected and purchased Jenzabar in 2005 as its enterprise planning software that supports functions critical to the college operations such as admissions, advising, financial aid, student records, human resources and accounting operations.
The board also approved a contract with Inceptia in the amount of $10,000 for default management services for the 2020-2021 fiscal year and authorized payment from tech fees.
Cloud County has contracted with Inceptia since 2017 to provide Grace Counseling Outreach and Default Prevention Outreach.
The board met in two executive sessions with Douglas, Knoettgen, Leite, Human Resources director Chris Wilson and attorney Justin Ferrell. The first was for 15 minutes for negotiations. The second was for 25 minutes to discuss non-elected personnel. No action was taken.