MORGANTOWN – The House Education Committee spent about four hours Saturday mulling over the bill to merge Pierpont Community and Technical College into Fairmont State University. Leaders from the two schools offered often-contradictory answers. The committee adjourned without taking any action and will resume work on Monday.
But before taking up that bill, the panel finished work on the bill to allow bill parents, custodians and grandparents to inspect instructional materials and books used in their children’s classrooms and sent it to the House floor.
The classroom materials inspection bill is SB 704. The panel spent two hours on it Friday and spent another hour on it Saturday morning, considering and rejecting a series of proposed amendments. It passed in a divided voice vote.
Pierpont bill
SB 653 is the bill to make Pierpont a division of FSU. Reunification would begin July 1 and the process would be completed by July 1, 2023. The bill says Fairmont State shall not discontinue Pierpont’s aviation maintenance technology program until three years after providing notice to the Higher Education Policy Commission and the Legislative Oversight Commission on Education Accountability of its intent to discontinue the program.
Pierpont Board of Governors chairman David Hinkle fielded questions, stating his doubts about Pierpont’s financial viability without the move. He said he will be asking for a forensic audit of Pierpont on Wednesday when the board meets.
“I don’t know if we’re going to exist or not exist. It’s a limbo,” he said.
Among the many issues discussed during the four-hour meeting were the $1.5 million annual payment Pierpont is required to make to FSU through 2032 as its share of debt in an FSU bond refinancing. That payment is one of the issues that concern Hinkle, he said.
Hinkle said he and the majority of board members are new – he was appointed seven months ago – and while they are successful businessmen they don’t have adequate numbers at this date to make sound financial decisions. But they’re trying to find the best way out of the college’s straits.
Dale Bradley, Pierpont’s chief financial officer since 2010, took the opposite view. “
“I don’t believe we’re in financial distress,” he said. Granted leave to speculate, he said most of the board members are new to higher education and perhaps don’t understand how public higher education is funded: It’s not the same as private business. For example, he said, community colleges are budgeted to break even, not generate a profit. To do that, they would have to raise their tuition price from $2,543 for 12 credit hours to nearly $10,000.
At the end of December, he said, Pierpont had a $10 million account balance and 180 days cash on hand. So it’s not his view that Pierpont could close in a year, as Hinkle said. The Fiscal Year 2023 payment of $1.5 million to FSU is already in the budget they’ve built.
Discussion also hovered around four programs that must leave the FSU campus by the end of June: culinary arts, veterinary tech, aviation and early childhood education.
Bradley said the only way they could fail is if the state stopped funding Pierpont and no one enrolled.
Various witnesses also offered contradictory statements on other topics: whether or not students who live more than 50 miles from campus will have to move into FSU dorms, whether or not Pierpont’s tuition will rise to FSU’s $7,970, and how many jobs might be lost as FSU seeks to achieve savings by eliminating duplication.
FSU BOG member Jason Pizatella said he was involved in drafting the bill and they made sure protections for Pierpont’s students were included. “We feel Senate Bill 263 is a great compromise and we can live up to our end of it,” he said.
However, Lyla Grandstaff, who was Pierpont’s vice president for Student Life until Friday – her last day there – worried that as Pierpont is absorbed, programs could be cut and tuition could be raised because Pierpont will no longer exist as a community college and Pierpont students will be FSU students.
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