*********************************************
DISCLAIMER: THIS CART FILE WAS PRODUCED FOR COMMUNICATION
ACCESS AS AN ADA ACCOMMODATION AND MAY NOT BE 100% VERBATIM. THIS IS
A DRAFT FILE AND HAS NOT BEEN PROOFREAD. IT IS SCAN-EDITED ONLY, AS
PER CART INDUSTRY STANDARDS, AND MAY CONTAIN SOME PHONETICALLY
REPRESENTED WORDS, INCORRECT SPELLINGS, TRANSMISSION ERRORS, AND
STENOTYPE SYMBOLS OR NONSENSICAL WORDS. THIS IS NOT A LEGAL DOCUMENT
AND MAY CONTAIN COPYRIGHTED, PRIVILEGED OR CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION.
THIS FILE SHALL NOT BE DISCLOSED IN ANY FORM (WRITTEN OR
ELECTRONIC) AS A VERBATIM TRANSCRIPT OR POSTED TO ANY WEBSITE OR
PUBLIC FORUM OR SHARED WITHOUT THE EXPRESS WRITTEN CONSENT OF THE
HIRING PARTY AND/OR THE CART PROVIDER. THIS IS NOT AN OFFICIAL
TRANSCRIPT AND SHOULD NOT BE RELIED UPON FOR PURPOSES OF VERBATIM
CITATION.
*********************************************
February 3, 2021 Governing Board...
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Good evening. I'd like to call to order
the February 3, 2021 regular Governing Board meeting of the Pima
Community College District.
Prior to our roll call, I'd like to make an announcement we are
having a little technical difficulty with our live stream to our
YouTube channel. You may only be able to hear the audio. If the
problem persists, we're going to try to make some adjustments
throughout the meeting to move the person who is speaking to the top
corner so they should be able to see us.
A full live video recording will be made available after the
meeting on our Governing Board page always.
Again, we apologize for the technical difficulty, but we feel
it's important to move forward with the meeting this evening. With
that, I'd like to go ahead and do the roll call.
Mr. Silvyn, could you read the roll?
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair.
Catherine Ripley?
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: Here.
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Demion Clinco?
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Here.
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Maria Garcia?
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: Here.
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Dr. Meredith Hay?
>> DR. MEREDITH HAY: Present.
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Luis Gonzales?
>> MR. LUIS GONZALES: Here.
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Terrific. Looks as if all members are
present.
The next item on the agenda is our public comment and call to the
audience.
The Pima Community College Governing Board welcomes public
comment on issues within the jurisdiction of the college. Generally
the total time for public comment will be limited to 45 minutes, and
comments will be limited to 3 minutes per individual. These time
limits may be modified by the board or board chair.
Individuals sharing comments are expected to communicate with
decorum and respect. Individuals who engage in disorderly conduct or
use divisive or insulting language may have their time reduced or
concluded by the board chair.
At the conclusion of public comment, individual board members may
respond to criticism made by those who addressed the board, may ask
staff to review a matter, or ask that a matter be put on a future
agenda. Members of the board, however, may not discuss or take legal
action on matters raised during the public comment unless matters are
properly noticed for discussion and legal action.
Finally, be advised that internal college processes are available
to students and employees for communication.
This evening we only have one member of the, one call to the
audience. Natividad Gonzales.
Mr. Gonzales? Is Mr. Gonzales there?
Okay. Since we only have one item I will give Mr. Gonzales one
more moment. Does anybody know if he's on the call or we're able to
elevate him?
>> I do not see him listed or as an attendee.
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Okay. He provided some written comments
to the board, so I would ask that Andrea send those out to everybody.
Our next item on the agenda, remarks by the Governing Board. I
have no remarks at this time. I will hand it to Mr. Gonzales.
>> MR. LUIS GONZALES: Well, the only remarks I have is that we
started a new year, and I'm hoping this year is going to be a better
year than last year because of the pandemic, and I know that we all
want the best for our faculty but more important for our students.
I wish all that we will have a successful and productive year
this year compared to the last year. I know that the pandemic is a
challenge, but with God's will, it will happen. It will be better
than last year going forward. Adios. Gracias.
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Dr. Hay?
>> DR. MEREDITH HAY: No comment. Thank you.
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Ms. Ripley?
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: No comment. Happy to be here. Thank
you for those comments, Luis.
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Ms. Garcia?
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: I don't have a comment, either. Maybe just
welcome everybody and I hope we get through this pandemic very soon.
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Me too (smiling). Okay. Thank you very
much.
Administrative reports. We have a number of them this evening.
The first is a COVID-19 vaccination rollout. First of all, for
clarification, before we move into that, I understand that Mr.
(Indiscernible) had a conflict, and we may need to move his item. I
see him on the call now.
Would we prefer to move him up because you have a conflict later
this evening or --
>> It's been resolved. I'm good to go.
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: If you don't mind waiting, we will
continue and then we will circle back around.
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: We will start with the COVID-19
vaccination rollout with Bill Ward, vice chancellor for facilities.
>> BILL WARD: Can you all see it?
>> MR. LUIS GONZALES: Yes.
>> BILL WARD: Chair Clinco, members of the board, Chancellor,
students, colleagues, guests.
Before I start moving forward with this presentation, I would
like to introduce Dr. Francisco Garcia. He's the deputy county
administrator for community and health services and chief medical
officer at Pima County, and once I'm done with this quick
presentation, we'll both be able to hopefully answer your questions.
So just to give the board an update -- hold on. I don't know
what happened here.
As you are well aware, we started our partnership last year with
Arizona State University and Pima County, and we developed a number
of testing sites. We started out with three sites. We actually
opened up our West Campus as our first drive-through site in November
2016, and as you can see, we have accomplished over 3,734 tests and
then opened up Desert Vista and East Campus directly after, the
following month, and we have also completed 982 tests there. East
Campus, 725.
Then just recently, beginning of this year, we opened the
Northwest Campus. As of this time, I don't have the numbers, but we
are collecting that information.
It has been running very, very smooth. We are really proud of
it, and also, too, our partnership with the county and Arizona State
University.
Also, too, as you guys know we have worked hand in hand with
Dr. Francisco Garcia's team, and so we have been meeting since last
year to kind of try to look to see how this whole process would go.
And so as you all are aware, there has been some e-mails that have
gone out. I know Lisa sent them out last week and they will go out
weekly to let our staff know that they are able to go on and work and
register on the portal that the county has set up for the college.
We know there has probably been close to a thousand or more of
our personnel that have already done so, and so we are really excited
about that and continuously encouraging people to get out there and
get vaccinated.
Also, too, one of the things that we applied for last year was
that hopefully Pima College could eventually be a site to administer
the vaccine. We had talked with our county partners about a good
year ago when this whole thing started, and so we filed our
information with the state.
They got back to us, asked us a few questions or wanted some more
information. We provided that information to them, and as of two
days ago, received confirmation from a couple of our partners, and I
will have a meeting with them tomorrow about setting up West Campus
as a potential vaccination site.
That concludes my presentation with the team, and then hopefully
we can answer your questions. Dr. Garcia? Or board, I'm sorry.
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Thank you so much for the presentation.
Are there questions from the board for Vice Chancellor Ward or
Dr. Garcia?
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: I'd like to know when the site is going to
be working, the registration site. It's a mess. (Laughter.) Sorry.
>> That's quite all right.
Chairman Clinco, Chancellor Lambert, thank you for having me here
today, and thank you for allowing us to sort of partner with you.
Pima Community College is an essential institution within our
community, and at this point we are committed to continuing our
partnership.
We have stood up very quickly vaccination sites as well as
testing sites, and we are carrying these out simultaneously during a
period that is very operationally difficult for everyone.
But we are particularly hopeful for the assistance on the testing
site. I think that it is a mutually beneficial kind of arrangement,
and at this point, even your Northwest site now has had over 500
tests delivered to that location.
I will turn over to vaccination, because that is obviously an
area of interest. What you need to remember is that we started
vaccination in this county on December 18. So a little bit over a
month ago is when we started vaccinating in this county.
Currently in this county we have vaccinated nearly 120,000
individuals. That is 120,000 individuals have received vaccination
through the process.
The way we have done this in using a variety of modalities, using
these fixed pods at TMC, at Banner North, Banner South, TCC as well
as the University of Arizona.
These pods are serving anywhere between 500 to 1,500 individuals
on a daily basis. Understand that the phasing of the vaccination is
dictated from the Centers for Disease Control and from the Arizona
Department of Health and Human Services.
At this point we remain in the 1B1 priority group, which is
inclusive of individuals who are 75 and older, because those are the
people that are more likely to die and have severe consequences.
It is inclusive of law enforcement, inclusive of teachers and
educators, and most recently the governor has added an additional
category, which we have not yet fully moved into, which is people
between 65 and 74 years of age.
So the way that the process is set up by its nature is
distributed, and so different locations will have slightly different
registration processes.
The process for registration for educators is through the REDCap
link that you can find. When you Google Pima County COVID vaccine,
you will hit a landing page. When you scroll through that page it
will say priority 1B, and you hit that button, and then you can
identify where you fit in those priority groups.
It will take you to a form that allows you to find out five data
elements, I believe. Those data elements are collected and are batch
transmitted to our partner TMC who then generates new electronic
health records within their system.
As you might imagine, any time that we do a health intervention
in a healthcare setting, you actually have to have documentation,
identity verification, and accountability for that. Especially
because this is a federal asset and especially because we will not
receive any more federal asset unless we can demonstrate that these
assets are being moved through quickly.
So that's the way the process is designed to work. After three
to four days after you go onto that REDCap link, you should receive a
My Chart invitation from TMC, and it will say TMC My Chart will be
the e-mail address, and it will invite you to create a user name, to
identify a password, and to actually go onto the site to schedule
your appointment.
Because this process has been hectic and because this process has
been a little bit rough, we have also provided some on-site
registration capability at the Tucson Community Center in order to
meet the needs of especially folks who are not technically
technologically savvy or who have Internet access or literacy issues.
We think that that's important.
Effective last week on Wednesday, educators K-12 and otherwise
are able to create appointments either at the University of Arizona,
at TCC, and next week we will even have additional options.
So that is the way the process is working currently. Currently I
can tell you we have vaccinated over 8,000 educators, which is quite
a significant proportion of the folks that are in the system. Most
of them have been K-12 educators, honestly and appropriately, but we
are seeing a lot of folks also from the University of Arizona, from
PCC, as well as from the trade and technical schools that train
individuals in our community.
We have made a commitment, the county administrator has made a
commitment that we will vaccinate 100,000 people each month over the
next three months. We have met and exceeded that goal in this month
of January. We intend to meet and exceed that goal in the month of
February and March.
I believe that if we have the kind of vaccine supply that we need
from the state and from the federal government, we are going to be
able to vaccinate essentially 60 to 75% of the entire population of
Pima County by the time we get to summer, by midsummer. So I am
super excited and super happy to be able to share that with you, but
I do so adding the caveat that this is all dependent on vaccine
supply.
This week we received an allocation of approximately 30,000
doses. We are on track to expend every single one of those doses by
early next week. We are expecting our allocation numbers, the state
will be sharing those with us tomorrow, and again, if they are in
that general range in terms of volume of doses, I believe that we
will be able to do well.
However, we actually have more capacity, we built more capacity
into the system so that if, all of a sudden, vaccine starts to flood
the market, we are able to pick it up and quickly put it in the hands
of partners who are quickly able to vaccinate a lot of individuals
across this community.
So that is where we are today. If you look at the state website
you will see that we have effectively delivered approximately 70,
depending on the day, 70 to 80% of all the vaccine that we have
received has already been delivered into people's arms and that we
are on schedule to meet that need.
So I'm going to conclude my remarks there, open it up for
questions, and happy to take them.
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: I see a lot of hands raised. So
Dr. Garcia, first of all, thank you so much for being here. We
really appreciate you taking the time from your incredibly busy
schedule to meet with us and to update both us and the Pima Community
College community about what the county is doing as part of the
rollout. We are very, very appreciative of all the work that's gone
in to make this happen.
Could you tell us, in terms of the vaccine rollout, when really
we would expect to see the bulk of the PCC employees who have
currently registered, when we would anticipate seeing them
vaccinated?
>> So PCC employees who have currently registered should have
received a My Chart account by now. If they have not, then either
there is an error in the information that they provided or in the way
that that information was transmitted.
Surprisingly, to me, perhaps not to those of you who are
educators, there is a fair amount of data entry error that goes on
when people are entering information. So if people have not received
a My Chart account by now, have not received an e-mail from TMC My
Chart, it means that either the information they entered was
incomplete or incorrect or the information was not transmitted
adequately.
So those individuals who are in that position, all they need to
do is hit that REDCap button one more time, re-enter, be meticulous
about especially the date of birth and the name and the last four
digits of the Social Security number are the key identifiers that TMC
is using to create these new accounts. And within about 48 to 72
hours there should be a response from TMC letting you know that they
have received your information and that they have a valid information
set to work on.
So right now we have availability for vaccinations at our sites,
so if you got that link today and you hit that link, you will see
availability both at the University of Arizona and at the TCC. You
will not see availability necessarily at TMC. Banner is a completely
separate system. You have to sort of hit the Banner link if you want
to go through that system. And right now, the availability at Banner
is a little bit limited.
So that is where we're at today. My expectation is that before
the end of the month, everybody who is an educator who wants to be
vaccinated will be vaccinated.
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Well, that's terrific news. We really
appreciate that update. Dr. Hay?
>> DR. MEREDITH HAY: I'd like to, Chairman Clinco, publicly
thank Dr. Garcia and the entire Pima County health team working
nonstop 24/7 the last 14 months on this horrendous issue, and it's
just so amazing what you have done, Dr. Garcia, and your team.
I'm just so very proud to have you in Pima County and leading the
way. And so thank you, thank you, thank you for all you've done.
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Ms. Garcia?
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: Well, I want to thank him because I didn't
realize that they were taking people that didn't have Internet
access, and that was a real concern of mine, because a lot of people
-- I don't even think they are aware that they can go in and that
there are some slots available.
I think probably that needs to be communicated a little bit more
within the community. I know right now the focus is line of first
responders and our educators, but further on down the line there
probably has to be a little bit more communication on that.
Anyway, thank you so much for all the work you're doing. I know
it's difficult. I have been trying to get my vaccine for the last
three weeks, so I know how hard it is. (Laughter.)
Okay. Thank you.
>> Chairman Clinco, Ms. Garcia, a couple of things that I will
share with you, because we have a very diverse and heterogeneous
community, we have to have a lot of different doors that people can
walk through.
So in fact if you use your Smartphone, and most people have
Smartphones, not everyone, but if you use your Smartphone and you
Google COVID Vaccine Pima County, there is also a land line number to
our call center.
That call center is staffed by 20 operators whose job it is to
help figure out just how technically savvy you are and whether you
will be able to make it through that process.
We actually hold the hands of people who are not able to make it
through that process, for whatever reason, be it literacy, be it
language barriers, be it whatever, we literally hold their hands
through the process and in fact are able to appoint them directly
into available slots.
It does take being on the phone. Today our call wait, however,
was less than six minutes, and we responded to over 1,500 calls.
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: Wow.
>> I think we are doing pretty well. It's not perfect. I also
want to encourage you to look at our website, because maybe your
neighbor is not particularly computer literate, but all of us have a
social network that includes people with differential abilities to
access this different kind of information. You could be a really
important conduit for how they do that.
One of the questions that has come up from neighborhood
associations is what is it we can do to help our elders get through
the process? And my consistent answer has been offer them a hand
when they are at the computer screen. Because we are seeing people
make some fairly simple errors.
I just looked at a situation, you know, a 75-plus couple, who
were very good about documenting everything they have done January
14th, January 15th. You know, got on to REDCap. And on January 18,
19, they had something back from TMC My Cart.
On January 20 they called TMC to say, where is My Chart, which
TMC appropriately said you got one. All you have to do is hit the
link and they re-sent the e-mail. Of course these people shared this
with me. So I see the e-mail with the actual link. The folks didn't
understand that what they needed to do was click that link and
actually schedule an appointment.
And I get it. You know, my mom is more than 75 years old. I
helped her through the process. So, yes, people with differential
abilities will need differential levels of support, and we're hoping
to be able to provide that.
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: Thank you.
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Chancellor Lambert?
>> DR. LEE LAMBERT: Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair. Dr. Garcia,
first I want to say thank you to you and your team for all the
support you provided the college.
During this very difficult time, that relationship we have with
you and the team really has made a big difference in terms of how we
make our decisions on the ground. So I just want you to know that.
As we look at the current criteria, a lot of them are still in
the red and not met, so given the numbers you see currently, when
might we see those moving out of the red category, maybe into the
yellow, and obviously into the green? What time frame, provided
people continue to exercise good hygiene, et cetera?
>> So Chairman Clinco, Chancellor Lambert, a couple of things.
So those are really super important questions to sort of grapple.
And I think I would think of them separately.
There is the issue of how and when you resume instruction, and
what does our disease burden look like in our community?
Until about a week ago, I was unwilling to say that we were
improving, that our metrics were improving. But now for the third
week in a row the number of cases per 100,000 has dropped. We are
not yet to the level we need to be, which is 100 cases per 100,000.
We are in fact at approximately 400 or 500 cases per 100,000 on a
given day. So, you know, we are not where we need to be.
In terms of the test positivity, that is also trending in the
correct direction. We want to be in a test positivity range of
approximately less than 5% of our tests coming back positive.
Right now we are in the mid to low teens. We have been as high
as 28%, so this is a tremendous improvement over approximately the
last month or so.
Finally, the final criteria is COVID-like illness, and that is
the number of people who are presenting to hospitals and emergency
rooms with COVID as a diagnosis. That is also trending in the right
direction and I believe is going to move positively.
What I have told the superintendents when I meet with them, and
it's a similar set of concerns, is that I do anticipate being closer
to those threshold metrics starting toward the end of this month. I
really believe that most of those metrics will start to be either in
the yellow -- will start to be in the yellow zone, and it will take
us a while to get to the green zone.
The separate decision with regards to instructional activity and
instructional models is a completely different kind of conversation.
The decision to engage in whatever model of instruction, whether it's
in person, hybrid, or entirely virtual, that's a really complicated
conversation, and you guys are the educational experts and I would
never dream of telling you how to do your job.
What we do know, based on the science, based on the case
investigation and contact tracing that we are doing is that most
infections are not occurring in classroom settings. Certainly most
infections in the K to 5 arena are not occurring in classroom
settings. I would even be willing to say most infections in general
among people who are school age inclusive of university age are not
occurring in school settings.
Most infections are occurring either at home or in educational
settings or are associated with attending gatherings of 10 or more
people. We are seeing that consistently in our case investigation
information. We are seeing that consistently across the country. We
are seeing that actually out of the UK, very good, out of Israel very
good data, all of which say schools are relatively safe places when
you put into play good, strong mitigation measures, when you create
nice space between people, when you make sure that you are
circulating the air appropriately, when you're making sure that
you're encouraging teachers and students to stay home when they are
sick.
When you do all those meticulous things, and mask wearing,
obviously, when you do all those things, schools can be a relatively
safe place in comparison to a lot of other locations. I certainly
would prefer for folks to be in that setting than in a bar setting,
for instance, for the purposes of disease transmission.
So I think that that's what you were getting at, and we totally
appreciate the partnership that we have with Pima Community College,
and we are happy to be supportive in whatever way we can.
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Thank you very much. Final words,
Mr. Ward, and then we have to move along.
>> BILL WARD: Yes, I just wanted to ask Dr. Garcia one more
question, and we have been getting a number of questions that are
consistent, and one of the big ones we get all the time is how long
do you anticipate social distancing, wearing PP?
Pima has been really adamant about ensuring that's not anything
that's going to change any time soon with us when it relates to six
feet, being around someone six feet or wearing their protective
devices. What are your thoughts about that?
>> Excellent question. Chairman Clinco, Mr. Ward, super great
question.
So I don't believe that we will ever be back to normal. I
believe that the days of people sort of being -- I don't believe that
we will have -- this pandemic has fundamentally transformed the way
that social interaction takes place across the board in a variety of
settings.
I do not believe that we will get to a place where there is
absolutely zero mitigation. I expect environmental controls to
remain, continue to be strong. I expect us to do messaging when
disease pops up around masking, hand washing, and staying at home
when you're sick. I expect us to continue to do this for a good,
long time.
I do think, however, that the game changes completely when we hit
about a 70, 75% vaccination rate, because at that time, we start
hitting what we call, what I call community immunity, what some
people call herd immunity.
When you have a sufficient percentage of your population that's
been vaccinated, that's protected, the likelihood that you're going
to be rapidly infecting other individuals really does go down.
And I think that's when you start relaxing. I believe that we
can get to some level of community immunity before the end of the
summer. I'm hopeful that we can have a near-normal fall. Still
probably a little bit of mask wearing, with still meticulous hand
washing, meticulous stay-at-home policies, but I think we are headed
for a near-normal fall if we continue how we're moving forward.
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Thank you very much, Dr. Garcia. A very
hopeful way to end this presentation. I certainly hope -- I would
love to talk to you about the variants and a whole slew of other
topics, but we are short on time.
Hopefully we can have you back again, or if we have additional
questions, we can pass them through Mr. Ward and we can connect
again.
>> Happy to do it. Thank you so much for your time.
>> BILL WARD: Thank you so much.
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Thank you.
>> BILL WARD: That concludes my report.
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Okay. Thank you very much, Mr. Ward.
Moving on, what we will do is the legislative update with
Jonathan Peyton.
Mr. Peyton, thank you so much for being patient. I wanted to
make sure that Mr. Garcia could continue on with his urgent work
across the county.
>> JONATHAN PEYTON: I wanted to talk about this legislative
session. It's a very unusual session, as I'm sure you can imagine,
as it's unusual for you what's going on right now.
There is a blanket ban on really entering the capitol grounds, so
except for lawmakers, right now I have never seen it this way. You
actually, you can't testify in any of these committees in person
except for in select committees in the House and they are requiring
you have to be there.
So that's a very unusual situation, and to sign up for the
system, you do it at a kiosk, and you have to be signed up at the
capitol, but you can't go on the capitol grounds.
It's very confusing for those of us who have to work there.
There is a number of bills I want to talk to you about. The first
one in question is 2136. This involves adult education. It's
sponsored by Michele Udall. We are calling it the Goodwill Bill.
What it does is allows outside groups to offer high school
equivalency education for adults. Goodwill would be the recipient of
this.
The issue is is that currently our adult ed system, when I talked
to our folks about it, we get about a few hundred dollars per
student, but what they are saying that Goodwill and these other
groups would get would be well over $6500 per student.
So because it would be under the kind of the K-12 system per
student, there is a huge inequity in the amount of money. Our issue
with this bill is how do you compare, A, either they are not going to
be able to do as good of a job with -- we are doing more with less,
or we should be getting $6500 per student.
So that has to be -- we have some serious questions about that
bill. Part of the issue is that Goodwill is sponsoring it,
obviously, and name itself, everyone loves Goodwill, but the policy
we have some serious problems with.
So that bill is making it through the system. We have met with
lawmakers to talk to them about our concerns with that bill.
The second major bill...
>> DR. LEE LAMBERT: Jonathan, can I just stop you real quick, I
just want to, Mr. Chair, note something that's very important about
this bill. The bill was designed to address a very serious problem
in the State of Arizona, and that is there are over 700,000
individuals in this state that do not have the high school
equivalency.
So the intent is good, but the way the bill is structured is
where it's problematic.
>> JONATHAN PEYTON: And like I said, the only -- there is two
ways to address it. One is they get the same amount we do, $200 per
student, or we get the $6500 per student. Given the state of affairs
right now with the Arizona budget, I doubt that that's gonna happen,
that second option.
But there are some inequities built into the bill. Legitimate
issue and intent behind the bill, but some real inequities behind the
bill as well.
The second major thing I want to talk to you about is dual
enrollment. So this bill was going through the system, had almost no
pop position last year. HB 2021. It's one that we were supporting.
The chair of education, also Michele Udall, sponsored the bill. It
died because of the pandemic. Like many bills did last year, they
adjourned before any of these bills ever got a hearing in the
opposite chamber. So the bill is back again, and we are hoping that
it will pass.
Another major issue we are going to be seeing this year is a
four-year baccalaureate for community colleges. This is being pushed
primarily by Eastern Arizona and Maricopa. The universities were
very much against this last year.
We, as a community college have, and the chancellor can talk
about this at length, but we have relationships with our university
as well as with other universities, so it isn't as much of an issue,
but for some of the rural areas, they look at it as a way to keep
their students home.
In addition, we have -- so that's one huge bill that is going to
be going through the system. We have not -- I don't think we have
taken an official position on the four-year degree, but I know that
it's going to be out there. So I just wanted to inform you about
that four-year baccalaureate. You may hear something about it.
Another big issue that we will be addressing this year is the
expenditure limitation. We are in a very different situation than we
were a year ago because of the passage of your local ballot measure
to address expenditure limitation.
Right now, we are certainly supportive of the bill. Part of it
is going to be more addressed towards the pandemic and temporary
expenses possibly trying to take away any penalties for violating
expenditure limitation for a given amount of time during the
pandemic. But it's not going to have a huge impact because of the
passage of that ballot measure in Pima County.
I think the biggest issue that we are working on is the noncredit
bill. The number on that is 2597, HB 2597.
That bill is a top priority for us because of the arrangements we
have with companies like Caterpillar and others. Those companies, we
don't get the FTSE credit for those students, and this bill would
allow us to do that. We'd be able to pursue grants. It would also
count in our favor for the expenditure limitation, and it would
encourage a lot more partnerships with job creators throughout the
state.
And the final issue that I think is important, just for you to
understand some context, the Prop 207 passed this past election
cycle, and I have already gotten a lot of questions from lawmakers
about how much money each of the community colleges are going to be
receiving, certainly how much are we receiving. I think Dr. Bea can
answer this, but I think it's around $2 million at the moment. It
may increase in the future.
It's important for us to understand, because when we talk to them
about our budget issues or getting back into the state formula,
lawmakers are inevitably going to bring up the passage of this ballot
measure. They will say, and I have already heard them say, this,
you've gotten a lot of money because of the passage of Prop 207. I
don't think they realize it's not really a lot of money, only 2
million at this point, but it is out there, and I think it leaves a
bad taste in a lot of their mouths because they believe incorrectly
that the community colleges were lobbying or campaigning for the Prop
207, which was unpopular at the capitol.
I have educated them that we were not involved as a college.
Certainly individual board members, you may have your positions, but
the college itself was not involved in campaigning for that.
So that's kind of what's happening at the capitol. Those are the
bills that we are focusing on. I'd be willing to answer any
questions you might have.
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Are there any questions for Mr. Peyton?
Okay. Thank you very much. We look forward to the continued
updates from...
>> DR. LEE LAMBERT: Mr. Chair?
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: I cannot see your hand raised.
>> DR. LEE LAMBERT: No problem (laughter).
First of all, I just want to thank Jonathan for all he does for
Pima Community College. Thanks to Jonathan, we have been successful
over the last few years, as you all know, to get some key legislation
passed, get some key funding support and the like.
Also want to recognize Libby Howell, as well. Libby is our
on-the-ground interface, and she keeps everything moving and so
forth. So thank you, Libby.
I just want to add a few finer points on some things Jonathan
said. We're not opposed to the four-year baccalaureate degree. What
my concern has always been were there were no guardrails to protect
the interests of the students.
I believe in this iteration of the bill they have put in
guardrails now that will protect the interests of the students. In
other words, a district isn't going to just offer a Bachelor's degree
just to offer a Bachelor's degree, that there are actually jobs out
there, if you take those Bachelor's degrees, so if you have to incur
a loan, you can pay that back.
So that's an example, that there will be quality. There was
market research done that there is a need for it. I just wanted to
emphasize that.
But also to Jonathan's point, we have such great relationships
with our universities here in our community at this point, not that
Pima would move down this path, but I also want to make sure that
Pima's position, should it ever decide, that it could take advantage
of that opportunity.
On the noncredit piece, and sometimes folks get hung up on
noncredit versus credit. Where the world of work is going, the world
of learning is going, that distinction is being blurred, and a case
in point of that is the Google IT professional assistant support
certificate is a case in point. Some schools are offering it
noncredit; some schools are offering it credit. It's the same thing.
So why would we draw a distinction between the two? So that's
where the world is going skills required, degree optional. You'll
hear a lot of this at the national level as part of the conversation.
We are just trying to make sure that our state starts recognizing and
rewarding and incentivizing our colleges.
Other states actually provide resources for noncredit. So our
state is lagging behind where some of the national trends are going.
Then the last thing, that Prop 207, we can't underscore that
enough. We're going to have to overcome the perception but also
there is a reality that at the state capitol that we are just going
to have to continue to work through.
Thank you, Jonathan and Libby.
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Thank you both so much.
Next we're going to discuss the re-entry plan, summer and fall
2021 with Dr. Dolores Duran-Cerda, the provost and executive vice
chancellor for academic affairs, and Dr. David Doré, president for
campuses and executive vice chancellor for student experience and
workforce development, and Bill Ward, vice president of facilities
again.
>> DR. DOLORES DURAN-CERDA: Good evening, everyone.
Hello, Chair Clinco, members of the board, Chancellor Lambert,
students, representatives, colleagues and guests.
Before I start, I also want to thank Dr. Francisco Garcia, I
think he's already left, but the information he shared is hopeful and
it's a good lead-in to our presentation.
I'm presenting with my colleagues, Dr. David Doré and Mr. Bill
Ward, on the 2021 summer and fall scheduling and re-entry planning.
So from the beginning, as you know, our priority has been, the
beginning, now, and in the future, health and safety of our students
and our employees.
That is our No. 1 priority. So every decision we make, the data
that we analyze, the feedback we get from our stakeholders, that is
our main priority.
Of course we follow the CDC guidelines, Pima County guidelines,
state and national guidelines, and any adjustments that they make, we
also make.
It's a fluid situation. It's a delicate dance where we make a
decision one day and then it can change the next day. So we're very
aware of that and try to follow all of the processes that we need to.
Then of course following the health and safety protocols that go
along with that, the PPE, temperature checks, washing hands, all of
that comes into play.
We have established a Pima vaccination strategy group. We meet
pretty much on a weekly basis. I'm happy to say this week we have
two new members that have joined us. One is our dean of health
professions, Yolanda McCoy-Stokes, and then we also have a faculty
representative, EMT faculty, Brandy Randolph, and he's also Faculty
Senate officer.
We wanted some additional perspectives from the health-related
field, so we are very happy they have joined us.
We also look at the local community and national surveys and
reports that are constantly coming up, the data that we see. The
STAR office created and sent out a prospective student survey, so
these were people who were thinking of coming to Pima and their
thoughts about scheduling and how we deliver the course modalities.
So we are accumulating all of this data as we make decisions.
And of course feedback from our students, faculty, deans, staff, and
administrators.
We will start off with the summer. So our plan for the summer is
to continue just as we are now, same as the spring: virtual and
online with a handful of hybrid courses.
I'd like to now pass it on to my colleagues, Dr. Doré and
Mr. Ward, for their re-entry plans.
>> DR. DORÉ: Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Duran-Cerda.
So as Dr. Duran-Cerda stated, we're going to maintain the same
process in the summer as we did for the spring semester.
Where we are going to present some scenarios will be in the fall
schedule. So pretty much everything is staying identical for the
summer, and then the summer would be used to prepare for any changes.
And so Dr. Duran-Cerda, if you want to go to the fall schedule
now.
>> DR. DOLORES DURAN-CERDA: Yes. Thank you.
So for the fall schedule, we have the plans of having three
different scenarios, and I'm very grateful for our vice provost and
the deans and the campus VPs and the facilities team who are working
together. Of course we are involving our faculty department heads in
these creations or establishing three different plans, scenarios.
So one is, plan A, is full operation of post-COVID, new normal.
As Dr. Garcia said earlier, we're never going to go back to how we
were before. There is always going to be some precautions that we
have to take. So this would be the post-COVID new normal.
Plan B is to open up to 50% of the college at any given time, and
that's not only the classes and the faculty and the students, but
that also includes student affairs, advisors, counselors, staff,
academic support, that's the learning centers, tutors, libraries,
et cetera. So that that's scenario.
Third scenario is to pivot back to what we are right now, virtual
and online with a handful of hybrid courses.
With that, David and Bill?
>> DR. DORÉ: Yes. So essentially, with plan A, we will not be
able to continue the current safety protocols. So that would be a
significant change for us to fully open our campuses.
There is some reasons for that. We have been adhering to very
strict protocols which go all the way to our public restrooms, to
isolating cohorts so that there is not cross-contamination,
et cetera. Those kinds of protocols would not be possible to keep in
place with a full schedule.
In the 50%, the biggest challenge if we go to a 50%, we will be
able to maintain -- of course, in any scenario, we're going to
continue to require masks, but with a 50%, it's not feasible to
maintain six feet the way all of our classrooms are structured. That
would only allow us, in most of our classes, at a maximum of about
eight students, which is not particularly feasible.
So we would have to release some of the six-foot social
distancing. We need to make some adjustments to that.
And then of course plan C, we would continue being able to
maintain the strictest social distancing, all of the entry protocols
that we currently have in place.
Our plan is to adhere to, and I think Dr. Duran-Cerda stated
that, under any of these, we are going to adhere to the current CDC
guidelines, the Pima County guidelines, and state and national
guidelines.
So that will determine which of these options is most feasible.
Now, Dr. Garcia left us with a very optimistic prediction for the
fall, which I think would allow us to have some adjustments, and then
therefore maybe look at the 50%.
Then I will turn it over to Bill.
>> BILL WARD: Yeah, what I would like to add, board, to what we
are talking about now, is one of the things too that we are going to
need to consider, especially if we do expand, you know, our
percentage, is right now, as both Dolores and David said, we're able
to manage what we have now. But as we start bringing more people to
the college, then that means that our protocols that we have in place
will have to expand.
I will just take an example. Right now, we have a contract
custodial operation. What we have been able to do with our contract
custodians is we pinpoint where they are cleaning. They clean in
areas that the college is utilizing. But they are not going to areas
all the time that we're not utilizing.
So the idea would be if we bring more people back, then that
regimen would need to stay the same, which in a sense the college
could incur more cost related to it.
And the same thing with our temperature checks and things like
that. The college is -- we are looking at technology for that, but
the way that it works now, as you all know, people go through a
temperature check. They get a band and then they get to go in.
Depending on whether that is relaxed for the college, that would
be something that we would still have to have in place. So as both
Dave and Dolores have stated is is that the horizon, hopefully the
horizon does look better for us, but I think Dr. Garcia also stated
that that would, these PPE and social distancing guidelines and
things like that somewhat would still have to stay in place.
So that's kind of how we're looking at it. The goal would be is
we would want to be able to open up, that is, the chancellor has said
from the start, and it's going on a year now, that it's always been
about saving lives.
>> DR. DORÉ: Bill, just to give a concrete example, the Aurora
Room at the 29th Street Center, that holds over and with our strict
social distancing guidelines now, we have maxed that out at only 25
students. We simply don't have those kinds of large classrooms all
over the district.
>> BILL WARD: Agreed. And then to add to what Dave just said,
remember when we assess a site, or say we assess an area, we have to
now not just look at it for -- we always have looked at it based on
our disabled. So just understand that we still have to look at these
areas based on our disabled that are coming to class plus the social
distancing related to COVID.
So it's not an easy thing to do. We are working very hard at
coming up with recommendations and full-fledged plans and monitoring
what's happening out there literally by the hour what's happening in
our community.
But we are optimistic, but we want to make very clear that we're
not going to make a recommendation to the chancellor and to the board
if we don't feel comfortable with being able to manage what we're
talking about.
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Thank you very much.
>> DR. DOLORES DURAN-CERDA: Thank you, Bill. Any questions for
us?
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Any questions from the board members? No?
We really appreciate the work and keeping us up to date.
Hopefully we can get quick updates as the situation progresses and we
have a better understanding.
>> DR. DOLORES DURAN-CERDA: Absolutely. Thank you.
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: We are running a little bit behind
schedule. I really want to hold everybody to the five-minute
allotments of time.
The next presentation is our new community relief dollars with
Libby Howell, our executive director for media, community, and
government relations. Ms. Howell?
>> LIBBY HOWELL: Thank you. So the new federal relief dollars
are called CRRSA, which stands for Coronavirus Response and Relief
Supplemental Appropriations. Let me share my screen with you, and
I'll get into the details.
CRRSA was part of a huge 5,000-page appropriations act that
included lots of things having nothing to do with higher ed. It
included increases to the Pell Grant program and it added the FAFSA
Simplification Act, which was sponsored by Dr. Lamar Alexander before
he left office. The total bill was $900 billion.
So before I get into CRRSA itself and what it means to Pima, let
me tell you a little bit about some of those added things that are
also important to us.
Regarding Pell grants, the maximum grant will go up $150 per
person as of July 1, which will boost the maximum grant to $6,495 for
the '21/'22 award year. Remedial ed, or as we call it, developmental
ed, will be eliminated from the 12-semester Pell lifetime limit.
That's important to many of our students. As you know, many of our
students don't come completely college ready. They need a little
extra time to get up to snuff in reading, writing, and math skills.
That will be very important to them.
It also extends second-chance eligibility for incarcerated
students if they are attending nonprofit accredited institutions. Of
course we do serve those incarcerated students, so this is also
positive that they will have access to Pell.
It provides a $25 million increase in work study and in federal
supplemental education opportunity grant funding. These are all
positive things.
The part that applies directly to Pima that CRRSA refers to
includes a $22.7 billion allocation for higher ed. K12 gets 54
billion and then there is also a governor's emergency relief fund,
which is about 4 billion.
So we are looking forward to more information about that, because
it includes some language about additional dollars for technical
training.
So let's see what it means to Pima specifically. Pima is going
to receive about $22.5+ million. The amount that goes to students
must be at least the same as the amount that went to students for the
CARES Act. In our case, that's almost $5 million. It must go
directly to students.
However, there is a language change this year that gives us the
option to apply some of those dollars directly to a student's account
if, and this is an important caveat, if we receive the student's
permission to do that.
In the CARES Act, all of the student money had to go directly to
the student and the student would then have to turn around and apply
money towards tuition.
Getting the student's permission may be more trouble than it's
worth. We are talking about that. We don't know exactly how we'll
handle that.
So as you can see, the big difference is what we get for
institutional support. It's $17.6 million. This allows institutions
a broader method of applying the funds, and I'll get to that in just
a second.
Then the other big surprise is we got a birthday present. The
Department of Education discovered that some of the CARES Act funds
were not fully allocated, so they have decided to distribute those
remaining funds as well. So from those federal undistributed CARES
Act funds, Pima will get over $560,000, which brings our total to
$23.1 million. This is a huge benefit to the college.
I also would like to mention that Pima's allocation is the
largest allocation of any of the community colleges in the state.
That's if you consider the colleges that are part of the Maricopa
system as individual community colleges, because this money is
allocated per college, not per district. So Pima's amount is larger
than any of the other community colleges.
The other kind of interesting trivial fact I will tell you is ASU
received a whopping $120 million-plus allocation, making it the
largest university allocation in the nation. You can see that
Arizona did pretty well for ourselves.
Let's talk about what's different besides the money. For one
thing, we don't have to apply for this allocation from CRRSA. We do,
however, have to submit a year-end report to the federal government
explaining what we did with our CARES Act money, and I really have to
give kudos to my colleagues, Laurie Wright, who is the head of our
grants department, and Norma Navarro Castaños, who is head of
financial aid.
They worked very hard on our year-end report. It's already
submitted. So Pima is standing in good stead to wait for our
allocation dollars.
I have to call their staffs, as well. Pima was the first
community college, in fact the first higher ed institution in the
state to distribute our student money from CARES Act. That really
got the attention of members of congress and in fact some local
officials. It really showed how committed we are to student success
and to provide them any kind of resources that we are able to help
them be successful.
So why did we get so much more money this time around than the
last time? The allocation formula has changed. Last time in the
CARES Act, 100% was based on FTSE. This time 50% is based on FTSE
and 50% on head count, and we really do need to thank the American
Association of Community Colleges for lobbying for that change. They
really went after this, and it has had a huge impact on community
colleges.
The other thing that is different is that it contains more
flexible language to allow us to access that money. Of course it has
to go to defray expenses that are directly related to the
Coronavirus, but now that can include different types of funding.
For example, it can include lost revenue, expenses that are already
incurred, can apply to lost tax and tuition revenue, and possibly to
state budget cuts, if a state cuts its educational funding because of
lost revenue due to the Coronavirus.
Now, that doesn't have a direct impact on Pima, of course,
because we do not receive operations support from the state. Neither
does Maricopa Colleges. And we have not for about the last five
years.
The other important thing I want to mention is that about 89% of
the higher ed pot will go directly to public and nonprofit
institutions, whereas only 680 million, about 3%, will go to
for-profit institutions. That's a big change.
The bill also provides about 1.7 billion or that's about 7.5% of
the overall funding to minority-serving institutions. So our
allocation is calculated based on that appropriation, as well.
With that, let me stop sharing my screen and I'd be happy to take
any questions.
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Are there questions for Ms. Howell?
I have a question. This is to the chancellor. So in terms of,
you know, the next steps for how this money is allocated and spent,
what is the process? Will this just be rolled into our standard
budget process where there is an explanation of how it's restricted
and how we can use it? Is there opportunities for direction from the
board to focus on different components or elements of concern?
You know, I wonder, again, I think we're all concerned about
enrollment and when we have seen in 20 to 25% shedding of our
enrollment, can we use money to help reach out to those individuals,
really an entire cohort being left behind because of the pandemic to
figure out strategies to get them re-enrolled and support their
continuous enrollment?
Those are some questions I have, but Chancellor Lambert...
>> DR. LEE LAMBERT: Sure. Mr. Chair, so what we are envisioning
is that first half -- well, not half now, but that first piece around
the students, that will take probably a very similar trajectory as
the last, or the initial first round, but then it's that lion's share
of the money.
So Dave Bea, Dr. Dave Bea, is going to speak about that here
shortly. He will talk about how we want to approach that, and
obviously getting the feedback from the board is going to be key to
that piece of the equation. So I will just reserve for Dave to
address that latter piece.
I just want you to know we are going to move as quickly as we
can, like we did last time. We realize that students are hurting and
they are hurting right now, so as soon as we can get direct deposits
into their accounts, the quicker we can help make a difference for
them.
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Okay. Thank you very much.
Ms. Howell, thank you very much for your work, and again, thank
you for the acknowledgement and recognizing the full team effort to
get the monies sent out during the early days of the pandemic and the
impact that that has had on students. I'm thrilled to see the
financial support coming for the institution and the recognition from
our federal government.
So thank you very much.
Our next item is our fiscal year 2021/2022 budget update,
implications of the CARES Act and the CRRSA funds with Dave Bea,
executive vice chancellor for finance and administration.
>> DR. DAVID BEA: Chairperson Clinco, members of the board,
Chancellor Lambert, colleagues and guests.
We whipped up this presentation in the last two minutes based on
the questions from Chairperson Clinco. Actually, no, we anticipated
that some of these questions would come up.
I won't go through this whole presentation because I know we are
running short on time, but I will definitely address the questions
that came up and sort of follow up on what Ms. Howell presented a few
minutes ago.
Without question, the CRRSA funds coming in are going to be of
great assistance to the college. It's going to be folded into the
budget process, and it's really important to understand both with
CARES and with CRRSA that the timing of the funds delivered, they
both have stipulations that they follow these certain, like a year,
you have a year to spend the funds.
So it puts some restrictions on how we use the money, but the
limitations, they are just a little bit quirky. With CARES in
particular it was more restricted in terms of what we could use the
funds for than CRRSA, and that is actually very welcome news and will
help our budget immensely.
I will boil this all down very quickly. As we talked about with
the board, there are very significant adverse impacts from COVID that
we have been experiencing principally around tuition and enrollment
declines, things that we have chosen to do as an institution where we
reduced tuition costs by providing STU classes for free. We had the
fall rebate program. And then other ancillary revenues are going
down pretty significantly, and that will continue to be the case. We
are going to talk later in this meeting about bookstore revenues,
bookstore and food service revenues, and then investment revenues is
also something that will be going down.
So we've got a pretty significant reduction in revenues, and
we've got some increased costs associated with responding to the
pandemic.
So with CARES, what we have done so far is outlined there that we
invested pretty heavily in providing portable computing equipment to
students. I'm talking, by the way, about the institutional share.
The student share for CARES was about 5 million. The institutional
share was about 5 million. Of that 5 million, a little more than
half of it was directed towards technology for students.
Then we also set aside money for test proctoring, for financial
literacy education assistance, and then we have also used some funds
from CARES for reimbursement for some of the facilities remediation
costs, PPE equipment and IT costs for increased licenses that we
have.
So we have a plan for how to spend the CARES funds. We have
spent most of it, but we still have three months, and there is a
group right now working to figure out how to spend the remaining
CARES funds in the most effective way possible. That includes using
CARES funds for reimbursing for expenses we have already incurred but
just identifying which things those are.
So we had estimated that proctoring expenses could be as much as
$800,000. The true cost of that is dramatically lower. So we're
making adjustments for that, and that will free up some resources.
Going forward, what we have done is put together a group, a
pretty wide-ranging group of folks to talk about and brainstorm ideas
for use of the CRRSA funds. That's where we will fold these ideas
into the budgeting process.
Some of these include, obviously we will have continued direct
student aid. We are looking into ideas, including books, book
allowances, providing scholarships for students from CRRSA funding,
and continuing some of the additional costs, proctoring expenses.
We also, and this is one of the quirks that I mentioned, that one
of the most popular things that we did was purchase Wi-Fi hotspots
for students and then were lending them out. The demand is greater
than the supply right now. So what we will be doing, knowing that
the CRRSA funds are coming in, we are already looking to buy more of
those pieces of equipment.
The challenge was with the CARES funds the expenses had to finish
up by May, and when you're talking about purchasing something that's
on an annual license that you're paying it out over the course of
the -- to continue that past May, we would have folded that into the
budget. Now we can use CRRSA funds for that. So we are working to
get more hotspots available for students right away.
Other things we are looking at institutionally we will be
enhancing marketing. What I keep saying to the group, is, or what I
have said to the group is we need to focus on how to get all of those
students who are not coming to the college to the college.
Our enrollment is down. We need to make sure we don't have that
lost generation that was just referenced.
There are continuing expenses on software licenses, and then
prioritizing some projects like digitizing documents, making it more
efficient at the college. Investing in HyFlex classrooms is one of
the things that we will be talking more about.
If we go to a model where, and Mr. Ward and Dr. Doré and
Dr. Duran-Cerda mentioned a few minutes ago, as we phase in, if we
phase into a 50% or above model and we continue to have the social
distancing practices, it's going to cut down how many students can
fit in classrooms, and we will incur costs associated with that.
So we are going to be working on how does that fit within the
model and how do we make sure that we provide the students with the
classes that they need. That might come at additional costs, and
fortunately the CRRSA funds will help offset that.
We also talked about work-from-home costs. And we are also
looking into a system that would provide essentially ongoing, I don't
want to say the word the wrong way, but sanitizing classroom space on
an ongoing basis.
And as mentioned a few minutes ago also, if we scale up the
students coming back, in order to scale up, there is going to be
additional costs, whether it's technology for checking students in to
make sure that they are coming in with no symptoms, et cetera, or
other procedures and protocols, we will have additional costs
associated with that.
As those get defined and as we identify what the needs are, we
will be taking that to the board as part of the normal budget cycle.
And with that, that's this part of the presentation. I will also
add that we are going to have a study session on the 15th, and we
will get into all of these. We will be going through all of these
things again, again and all through the spring as we develop the
budget.
But the really good news is there is a significant amount of
money that will help us offset these costs and help us get our
students back into the classroom and back into their education.
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Are there any questions for Dr. Bea?
Ms. Garcia?
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: A couple of questions that I had, Dr. Bea.
Is it cheaper to do hotspots or to provide Internet service?
Which is less expensive?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: Generally speaking, the hotspots are providing
Internet service, so it provides a mobile device that gets you
connected to the Internet. So it essentially is providing the
Internet service for you through this mobile device, and you can take
this mobile device in different places.
There are different ones. Some connect to cell service and some
connect to satellite service.
The good news is, and we are exploring this right now, there may
be a new technology coming out that is actually even more affordable
than what we have been using. So we are exploring that.
We will give you more information as we know and go forward with
the purchase.
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: Then the other thing, the new software
licenses that you put here, is that existing, things that already
exist, software, or is it new software?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: Well, so going back in time, things like
adding Zoom licenses is one of the things that we are talking about,
and then continuing the cost of things like Zoom licenses.
There are other academic technologies that as faculty have been
experiencing teaching virtually and online that they are finding that
they need some additional tools. So it's those kinds of
technologies.
In addition, administratively, there are some systems that are,
you know, as we have been working from home, we have been able to
identify better ways to do business, and some of that is through the
use of additional software packages.
Some of the stuff that I'm talking about would be stuff you're
really familiar with, like Zoom licenses. We have additional costs
we have incurred because of the pandemic and because of how we are
teaching.
Mentee (phonetic) is another one that's been mentioned, getting
an institutional license that allows you to interact with the
students and ask them questions and have them respond on the fly,
kind of creates an interactive experience, which I think the board
may have seen, because Nic Richmond uses it really effectively in
some of the work she does.
It's sort of a live surveying and asking questions of students.
It's a good way to keep the interaction going with students. Those
are the kinds of things we are talking about.
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: Thank you. Last question is work-from-home
costs. I happen to be aware of some of the staff people that in the
beginning of the pandemic did not have Internet access at home.
There is an increased cost to them staying home and working from
home, and I just wondered if there is any consideration being given
to that.
>> DR. DAVID BEA: Yeah, I mean, it's on the list. That's one of
the things we are talking about and staff council has mentioned it,
that in some of those cases we have actually provided technology to
folks working from home. We have provided some of the hotspots. We
have provided laptops to individuals who didn't have that kind of
technology from home.
So we sort of responded as needed, and then on an ongoing basis,
a lot of our employees are working from home and you incur some
additional costs, so we will be exploring that and talking with the
board about that. That will be a board-level decision talking about
when we go into class compensation and those kinds of decisions about
how to approach next year for wages and so forth.
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: Thank you.
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Any other questions?
Okay. Hearing none, Dr. Bea, if you'd like to move on to the
comprehensive financial report for fiscal year ending June 30, 2020.
>> DR. DAVID BEA: All right. Chairperson Clinco, members of the
board, Chancellor Lambert, colleagues and guests, good evening again.
It is my pleasure to provide a brief summary of the fiscal year,
the college's annual financial report for fiscal year 2020. The
report was sent out to the board in December. That's when it was
formally published. It's posted also immediately on the state
auditor general's website and we post it also on our own website.
It is the culmination of months-long process, finalizing
financial transactions for the fiscal year and then having
information reviewed and audited by the state auditor general's
office. As is indicated in the report, we received an unmodified
opinion, indicating that the information in the report is reliable
and fairly presented.
In other words, and according to generally accepted accounting
practices and standards. In other words, that's a lot of almost
gobbledygook for saying we had a clean audit, which is what we are
looking for on any audit report that we get.
Now, to quickly go through, and I know we are running low on
time, I will point out that we always go through the audit
information in more detail with the finance audit committee, and the
finance audit committee also has an opportunity to talk directly with
the auditors. And they do that. They excuse the staff for part of
that conversation so that there can be a direct conversation. Those
are following best practices that came out of Sarbanes-Oxley and
other basically accounting best practice standards that we have
implemented with that finance audit committee.
The news is very favorable in the financial report. Revenues
overall grew pretty dramatically by about $30 million year over year.
A couple of key things were behind that. One is that tuition and
fees in fiscal year '20 grew. That was primarily due to the increase
in the tuition rate that was set, so this is, remember, this is the
year ending June 30 so we are going back in time.
So next year it will look quite different in terms of our tuition
because our tuition revenue is going down significantly because of
COVID. But last year we had a slight increase in tuition.
We did see some reductions in our other expenses, and that was
related to COVID and the response that it was only three months of
the pandemic in this fiscal year but there was an impact on some of
our ancillary revenues, as I have discussed already.
Property taxes went up. That was all planned and budgeted as
expected. Federal grants went up. That's principally related to the
CARES Act funds coming in. Investment income went up, and again,
that was planned and known at the time that they were going up.
The most significant increase, and this is worth noting, is that
the $15 million towards the bottom of the page is the state
appropriation for the aviation facility. So that $15 million came
into the college. We incurred some costs related to aviation but not
anywhere close to the $15 million. So this year we will be having
more expenses that are essentially being paid from the revenue we got
last year.
In terms of expenses, they also went up pretty similarly to how
revenues went up. A lot of that is related to the construction and
the costs related to building up our centers of excellence.
In addition to that, there were some increases for employee
expenses, known salary increases that we had put into place in that
budget year. Then also the distribution of CARES Act funds. Those
were the biggest increases in expenses.
Then I'm going to shoot down, there is another page where it
summarizes it in a different way. You can see travel expenses went
down dramatically. Supplies, materials went down dramatically, but
we had increased costs in contractual services. Again, centers of
excellence, but that's also related to some of the COVID-related
expenses that we incurred.
I want to focus on this page, because that's the one that's the
snapshot that we look at once a year, and it tells us about the
long-term financial health of the institution. This is
overwhelmingly positive information. The overall net increase in, or
the overall increase in net position was significant this year, as
you can see at the bottom.
Then going through some of the various -- there is a pretty
significant increase in our short- and long-term investments, so that
is we have net position. Again, some is we had the $15 million
coming in from the state. We are holding on to that money until we
spend it. Some of it is just strong financial performance that is
going into now our reserves and our financial stability basically of
the institution.
So we have, you know, we are increasing, had a net performance,
it was positive. We are essentially putting that into our reserves,
and then we are going to be talking with the board at upcoming
meetings. I will get into more detail about this at the study
session but having a board-approved reserve policy where we look at
what are our reserves, what are our target reserves, and how are we
going to use those reserves.
Some of those we already have plans for. The Allied Health
building. I mentioned aviation. We got the money up front and
spending money down. Allied Health is another one we are setting
aside funds.
So we have a number of projects that we have in mind, but we are
going to be talking with the board the next few months about
additional uses and some of those reserve funds while still
maintaining a healthy reserve that we are expected to do, both from
an accreditation standpoint and also our creditors expect us to have
good strong reserves on hand.
We will talk more about that with the board, want to sort of lead
into that.
I do want to focus attention down here. This is the first year
that we have an unrestricted net position. That's sort of money
that's not specifically set aside or restricted for other purposes
and not otherwise invested in our capital plant.
Our unrestricted net position is a positive $13.5 million this
year. That's the first year it's been positive since the GASB change
that required us to fold in the liability related to pension
expenses, so Arizona State Retirement System and Public Safety
Retirement System. That was a big liability that came on our books
about five years ago.
This is the first year, because we have been having such strong
financial performance, we actually are now net positive when we
account for that liability. That is a very strong, positive piece of
information.
Then going forward, I will just now skip ahead to the summary. I
mentioned it's an unmodified opinion. That is what you're looking
for when we get the audit, that we had increases in total
expenditures that were essentially planned. We had a significant
increase in investment revenues due to diligent cash management and
favorable interest rates that are -- you know, the interest rates we
can't control. The solid cash management we can control.
We had an increase in capital appropriations for aviation, as I
mentioned. The net position really indicates strong financial
standings in addition to our college's reserves and investments.
So again, there are a couple of slides down here where it talks
about some things that we are going to be doing in the near future
including talking about that financial stability, talking more in
detail about the budget, some of the goals and what the revenue
outlook is, what the expenditure outlook is, again, with the CRRSA
funds, with Prop 207 funds, and with what looks like going to be some
pretty decent growth in new properties in Pima County.
We do have some good revenue coming in that will help us offset
some of the known expenses, and we will be able to I think put
together some good priorities for how to really stabilize and help
the students in the community.
With that, I want to thank the team that's involved in the audit.
This is, again, I mentioned it, it occurs over a number of months
where the auditors come in, they test expenses, make sure everything
is done well, everything is accounted for appropriately. Again, to
give the assurance both to the board, to the community, to our
creditors, and the financial community that we are running a strong
financial operation here at the college.
I will also point out this is new news from when we put this
presentation together, the A-133 audit was just published this week
and was sent directly to the board. That is an audit specific to our
federal programs. It also includes what the internal controls and
compliance information is.
All of that is also an unmodified opinion. There is one finding
that is a continued finding for the last few years. We have had a
multi-year project in place to get our information technology
processes and procedures up to a standard that was introduced a few
years ago. We talked with the board about this in the past and also
with the finance audit committee.
We think that we actually are very close to finalizing and
getting that cleared up, but there are no other findings which is
also really good news for the institution.
So we are about to clean up the one remaining one we knew was
going to take multiple years to get off of the findings, and there
were no other findings related to the audit this year.
Again, very good news for the institution. I'm really proud of
all the folks who have been working diligently to make sure that we
do things extremely effectively here at the college.
With that, I will ask if the board has any questions.
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Any questions for Dr. Bea? No?
Thank you very much, Dr. Bea. We appreciate it.
The next is our enrollment update with David Arellano, dean of
enrollment management. You have five minutes.
>> DAVID ARELLANO: Thank you, Chairman Clinco.
Good evening, Chairperson of the Board, board members, Chancellor
Lambert, colleagues and guests. I'm going to provide a short update
on our enrollment effort since our last discussion.
Our overall head count, enrollment, and applications continue to
be down even despite our best efforts. But I do want to highlight
there is stable enrollment.
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: David, did we lose you? We can't hear
you. We can't see you.
What we will do is come back to you -- oh, okay.
>> DAVID ARELLANO: I'm back. Sorry about that.
So I do want to highlight that we have had some stable enrollment
occur within certain programs, so when we look at certain programs
like accounting, bookkeeping, our EMT program, logistics, social
services, vet tech, and especially our health-related programs, we do
have some positive highlights there.
Moving on a bit here, this is a follow-up to Board Member
Garcia's request last session where she wanted to look at enrollment
by course modality. So when we look at 2019/2020, those specific pie
charts, you see an enrollment growth from 26% up to 30% term to term,
and that really relates to the slide that Nic provided at our last
study session where she was showing year-to-year enrollment growth in
the online modality.
When we fast forward to 2020/2021 academic year, you can clearly
see that we have kind of a mixture of what's going on. We have our
virtual and online -- virtual, hybrid, online, and in-person going
on. So it's not a real direct comparison to last year.
You can see the pandemic has shifted a lot of our modalities. It
also relates to some of the plans that our provost and campus
president shared out today.
Finally, I wanted to share a little bit on our spring '21 virtual
support for students. We continue to do our enrollment and program
advising. We continue to do improvements to our application, moving
forward with the adult basic ed application, making that more of a
seamless process for students seeking a GED or high school
equivalency.
We have continued moving from manual processes over to automated
processes with our course to program of study. That is essentially
making sure students are on track and are in courses related to their
degree. It really decreases that time to completion, that credit
bloat that we see in community colleges.
Then really engaging with students from Student Life, with our
Zoom into 2021 events, our First Year Experience for students, our
virtual Connect U and Career Cafe sessions, virtual tours for high
schools and our drop-in hours that our recruiters are offering to the
community.
Finally, I do want to leave you with a bit of student feedback.
Even during our most busiest and stressful times during our spring
registration, we were still able to maintain a high level of customer
service and student service. You can see we are about 94% satisfied,
very satisfied in the service our enrollment and program advisors are
providing.
Also put for some student feedback, some of the comments received
directly for some of our advisors. You can see again that high level
of service is still ongoing for our students.
With that, I will open it up for any questions or comments you
may have.
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Ms. Garcia?
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: Okay. So one of the things I would like
you to do, and I'm not sure if you're the right person to ask this
question, but I hear complaints about the registration process, that
it's difficult, too many tabs to go through or whatever. I don't
know. I have thought about registering just so I can see how it
works.
If you could please look into that and see what the issues are,
either talking to the people that are actually handling that, you
know, and give me some feedback on it?
>> DAVID ARELLANO: Yeah, we can definitely look into that. We
use our student information system Banner, so we can reach out to our
registrar's office to see if there is any follow-up for you.
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: Okay. Talk to the people who are working
it, please.
>> DAVID ARELLANO: Thank you.
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Any additional questions? Okay.
I would just really challenge your team to really think
creatively about what, you know, if you came to this as part of this
budget process, come to this board to be able to get resources, what
are the tools that we could implement that are out of the box to
really reach to those, again, those students who we are not reaching
and what can we do to get people back who we have lost?
I think that's a real opportunity. But, you know, what are the
sort of things that we haven't done yet that we can do to reach them.
I know you guys are working so hard on this, but I think this board
is prepared and I think we are ready to support that type of
innovation.
Again, thank you.
>> DR. LEE LAMBERT: Mr. Chair, I just want to put this in a
larger context for a moment as it relates to the State of Arizona.
Based on the information we have, all the districts are down.
There is only one district that is up. One district is down by about
30%. Most of the districts are right in what you saw for Pima
numbers. So we are all struggling in this regard.
I just want you all to know we are not the outlier. But also, we
all recognize, as a collective 10 districts, that we've got to keep
pushing to do better and figure out how we create opportunity, and
the challenges have just been amplified because of the pandemic.
We're fortunate that we have a great team here with David and so
many others.
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Okay. I really appreciate it. Thank you,
guys. Thank you for your hard work.
Next we are moving on to item item 2.2, reports by
representatives to the board.
I believe everybody is reporting this evening, so again, if you
could just keep your comments to about five minutes. Our first is
our student report with Sage Fukae-McCollough.
Are you with us this evening?
Okay. If she is, we will come back to her. Next is our adjunct
faculty report with Sean Mendoza.
>> SEAN MENDOZA: Chairman Clinco, Chancellor Lambert, members of
the board, and honored guests. One year into the pandemic, many of
our concerns, both in and out of the classroom, continue to be
focused on our health and safety of our students and the college
community.
When the chancellor recently shared the e-mail on how to obtain
COVID vaccines for employees, my thoughts went to my fellow
colleagues, whose status as employees can change with each semester.
For example, if you've not received the COVID vaccination, one
requirement is a verification of employment.
You can imagine how this may be a challenge to adjunct faculty
who may have taught last fall but did not receive a spring contract
due to low enrollment or canceled classes.
I brought this concern forward to the provost, and I'm happy to
report that the college will provide adjunct faculty who do not
currently have spring contracts to access the COVID vaccine.
It's yet another example of how the college administration and
the board continues to support faculty and students.
I thank you to the provost, Dolores Duran-Cerda, and Chancellor
Lambert, for their continued support of adjunct faculty.
That ends my report to the board.
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Thank you very much, Mr. Mendoza.
Next is staff report with Michael Lopez. Mr. Lopez?
We will move on to our faculty report with Brooke Anderson.
>> BROOKE ANDERSON: Good evening, Chairman Clinco, board
members, honored guests, colleagues.
The senate has been busy since we last reported to the board in
November. My report tonight highlights a few of our activities.
In November, senate president, Josie Milliken, organized a
student panel. During the panel, students shared their perspectives
with faculty senators.
Hearing from students helps faculty reflect on the best ways to
meet their needs, and President Milliken is planning to schedule
another student panel for the senate.
In December, the Faculty Senate systemic justice action committee
shared with faculty optional syllabus statements approved by the
provost and Dr. Mitchell that emphasize equity and student
well-being. A few of the statements the document includes are
recommended diversity, equity, and inclusion statement, an addendum
to the attendance policy that takes into consideration the hardships
students are facing due to the pandemic, a wellness statement, and a
land acknowledgement statement. This spring this committee will
focus on equitable assessment practices.
I presented on contract grading, which is an equitable assessment
practice, at our December meeting to encourage faculty innovation in
assessment. Next week my colleague Frankie Rollins and I will be
leading a four-part virtual learning community through the TLC. In
addition I met with the chancellor, provost, and director of faculty
affairs about how to best support faculty innovation in equitable
assessment practices like contract grading.
They have invited me to submit a proposal on this topic, and I'm
currently working on it in collaboration with colleagues Josie
Milliken, Frankie Rollins, and Elliott C. We plan to submit this
proposal by midsemester and are hoping to implement these plans this
fall.
The college held its first virtual All Faculty Day on January 12.
The provost and TLC awarded 11 faculty with Striving for Excellence
in Teaching awards. Faculty Senate President Josie Milliken and
PCCEA President Matej Boguszak presented the Faculty Senate fall 2020
survey results. The survey revealed that faculty have many concerns,
some of which include concern regarding the lack of a process that
allows faculty to provide yearly evaluative feedback to the college
on supervisors and administrators; trepidation and fear about the
classification and compensation study, especially during this
difficult time; a need for more support in professional development.
The TLC has been an invaluable resource for faculty. Thankfully
it was implemented before the pandemic hit, and faculty are hungry
for even more opportunities.
To end the day, the college held open conversations about current
events that provided faculty with an opportunity to talk about
national events that occurred in January and the ongoing reality of
the pandemic.
This opportunity was repeated Wednesday and Thursday afternoons
as part of All Faculty Week, which included informational and
professional development offerings hosted by the TLC.
As far as faculty notable accomplishments go, as you can see from
this month's report, I can only highlight a few, because there are
too many to share orally with you here today.
Generally speaking, you can see how hard at work our faculty are
working to meet the needs of our students in creative and important
ways, from workshops to public virtual events, publications,
partnerships, and innovative pedagogical and curricular advancements.
In particular, Dean Jan Kempster shared with me that Josie
Milliken, Kimlisa Duchicela, and Robert Foss made important
contributions to Pima's Bellwether award. They contributed to the
narrative document that was included in PimaOnline's Bellwether Award
binder.
On January 22, 2021, the Faculty Senate and the TLC developed and
coordinated the first cross-discipline conversation, a series created
for the purpose of sharing faculty projects and programs with other
faculty and administration while fostering collaboration and
cross-discipline work.
In the session, panelists discussed how they have worked across
disciplines to create a program for jobs that don't exist yet,
including autonomous vehicle operators and drivers. Panelists
including Jay Lau, director of transportation at TuSimple; Jim Craig,
dean of business; and Missy Blair, advanced program manager, Center
for Transportation Training. Devin Marble moderated the session.
The next event in the series will be about student involvement in
our city's vaccination program. Brandy Wright, EMT faculty member,
discipline coordinator and program director has received approval
from the health department and TMC to utilize student volunteers for
COVID-19 vaccine distribution. His cross-discipline conversation is
scheduled for February 11.
In December 2020, a group of math faculty at Pima and UA joined
COMMIT (phonetic), a national network of regional committees of
faculty who practice active and inquiry-based learning. Joining this
network gives Pima's math department more visibility and networking
opportunities at the state and national level, as well as access to
NSF funding for many grants to promote inquiry and active learning.
Dean Corson wanted to recognize math faculty member Kyley Seeger
(phonetic) for leading this effort.
Senate's next meeting is on February 5, 2020, and while these
meetings are open to the public, the senate extends a personal
invitation to board members. We would welcome and appreciate your
presence as guests. Thank you.
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Thank you very much, Ms. Anderson.
Our final report is our administrative report from Jeff Thies.
>> JEFF THIES: Good evening, Board Chair Clinco, board members,
Chancellor Lambert, colleagues and guests. Thank you for this
opportunity. I'm Jeff Thies. I'm the dean of college readiness and
student success at Pima.
In this board report, I'm providing a snapshot of student success
evidence from fall 2020. I'm describing a few of the academic
support systems that are in place and were in place to support our
students. Also touching base on a grant that the college is in
partnership with the University of Arizona for STEM students.
A quick look at the PCC core success rates based on information
pulled from WEBI, you can see that the aggregate A through C or P for
passing course rate in fall '20 was only one percentage point lower
than fall '19. Some may feel a percentage point drop may be a
negative thing, but considering the massive efforts that faculty,
staff, administration went through to convert over 50% of our courses
from an in-person opportunity to the synchronous online version that
we call virtual, I see this as a strong point for us.
When you bifurcate the data to not online, it's a two percentage
point drop, but again, keep in mind that that not online group is
in-person in fall '18 and '19 and then virtual or synchronous online
in fall '20.
And kudos to those that were not only overseeing but teaching in
the online as that success rate jumped from 66% to 70% from fall '19
to fall '20. Kudos to all those that helped faculty prepare, kudos
to the faculty and staff and administrators that put forth this
effort in the fall.
At the same time we also need to always look for continuous
improvement. Our Latinx population still has a considerable gap
between success rates, and in particular, when you look at our Latinx
male population, 18- and 19-year-old, they had a four percentage
point drop, but more concerning, 34% decrease in enrollment. So that
was one of our subpopulations where we saw the greatest drop from the
previous year.
Moving on to some of our academic support opportunities. The
learning centers worked with STAR last fall to correlate the success
rates of students that attend any sort of support mechanism within
the learning centers versus those that do not, and in all three
scenarios, success in the course, persistence at the college, and
retention or returning next year, the learning center students
correlated to more success in all three of those areas, and that was
also true when you worked across disciplines, ethnicities, age
groups, gender, and the new to higher ed status.
Learning centers currently are offering tutoring via virtual
learning center. We use Google Meet to do one-on-one tutoring
sessions six days a week, Monday through Saturday. We have also
significantly increased the number of embedded tutors. That's a more
proactive, bringing the tutor to the classroom so they are part of
the experience in the classroom and then part of the experience
outside. When I say outside, virtually, obviously. The paper
dropoff and the American Sign Language labs are also available
through the learning centers.
Our biggest challenge for the learning centers is to continue to
entice more students to take advantage of these services.
Communication is out there through D2L, through faculty, and syllabi.
It's on the website. But continuing that message is something that
we will focus on as we move forward.
Testing and placement obviously shifted some priorities this
summer. We worked to make sure we had ProctorU as an opportunity for
students to be doing their proctored tests in the fall and the
spring. At the same time, Chelsea James and her staff were able to
open up the Downtown Campus to serve our community and our students
in a way to continue their education through providing GED testing,
something the students had stopped being able to have access to back
in March. So by beginning of August, we were back online supporting
our community with GED testing through Pearson VUE.
We also provide (indiscernible) tests that allow students to move
forward in different classes in a testing format as opposed to taking
classes. We also partner with external tests, for example, we have
an Air Force group of paramedic graduates that needed to test in a
proctored situation, and our testing center at the Downtown Campus
was open and functioning in a way that provided those opportunities.
And as a side perk, actually brings in revenue. Although the
revenue was down a little bit, I'm sure you all can imagine why that
was, being closed from March through July limited some of our chances
to support.
Moving forward, what we are looking at to help increase that
service is to look at our space design. It currently limits the way
we can actually filter people in and out of the testing center at
Downtown Campus, and possibly opening up at other campuses, as well.
The last academic support area that I'll mention is the library.
Librarians were embedded in over 600 courses last fall, primarily
writing, history, and psychology. The embedded librarians helped
students to develop skills in conducting research, evaluating
relevance, the credibility of the information, supporting both
information and digital literacy as they go through.
Not only were our librarians focused in the classrooms in an
embedded role, but they also continue to work to communicate directly
with patrons using the virtual tools, LiveChat, and the Ask a
Librarian e-mail. Recently the LiveChat was just extended to a 24/7
option by our librarians working through a co-op that's international
and allows us to provide that library service 24/7 as opposed to our
previous 40-hour workweek. That's a great new tool for students.
They also are providing curbside pickup for library resources and
are the main focus of administering the distribution of the
technology tools, the lab tops, hotspots, et cetera.
Some of the challenges are with the staffing. Obviously in this
trying to work virtually and on campus with some of these curbside
and other pieces is the absence of some of the student workers that
historically would have supported the libraries.
So hopefully with some of the CRRSA Acts, we will be able to
bring back some of the federal work study students in those
opportunities that we all know are a best-practice opportunity for
students to be able to work for the college that they are attending.
Last, but not least, our Pima University of Arizona STEM grant,
that 26 is now up to 29 based on some of the diligent work that's
been done over the last three weeks since this was turned in. The
students that are part of this program, they have to be STEM
students, so Associate's of science at Pima. They get up to an
$8,000 scholarship their second year with us or their final year with
us, depending on how their part-time/full-time status is. Then they
are able to turn around and pick up a scholarship for the remaining
two-and-a-half years at the University of Arizona at around the range
of $10,000 per year to cover tuition and expenses.
We currently have, of the 29 students, 16 are female, so over
half in STEM are female. That's a great sign. Two-thirds are
students of color. Two-thirds are also first-generation students.
As that grant continues to increase, you'll see success of moving our
students through that STEM pipeline on to the U of A.
That concludes my report.
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Thank you very much.
Our next item is item 2.3, the chancellor's report.
Chancellor Lambert?
>> DR. LEE LAMBERT: Good evening, everybody, and thank you,
Mr. Chair. I just want to say first and foremost thank you to all
the faculty, staff, administrators, the board, and our students for
your incredible patience and resiliency as we continue through this
very difficult period of time.
I had the great pleasure of watching the cross-disciplinary
conversation piece that Brooke was referring to earlier. Just a
fabulous example of the transformation that's been underway at Pima
to go from a concept that we talked about in terms of reality of
Industry 4.0, the four super powers, and the Human + Machine reality,
and to take that and work with a partner like TuSimple, and the
process that went leading up to creation of the first-ever autonomous
vehicle driver program in the nation, just a prime example of how
transformation and change works.
I look forward to many more of these conversations as they go
forward. So kudos to the Faculty Senate, the provost, teaching and
learning center, and all that were involved in that.
Also, we have so much to be proud of. This past week we had five
of our programs featured as a Bellwether finalist. That is
unprecedented. Since my time as a CEO, I have not -- I don't think I
have ever seen, and Morgan can correct me if I'm wrong, a single
college district, not a multicollege district, a single college
district like ours have five programs represented.
That's something to be proud of. But more importantly, it
reflects the fact that our employees, faculty, staff, administration,
and the board have bought into the vision of being a premier
institution committed to student success, diversity, equity, and
inclusion, and community engagement.
You don't get to that level of success without a majority of
folks buying into that kind of vision. It just doesn't happen.
But it wasn't just the Bellwethers. We have also been recognized
by Aspen as a top 150 community college. Can you imagine, just a few
short years ago, Pima was on the brink of going in the opposite
direction. We have turned it around and we have turned it around in
a short period of time.
I just want to say I'm just proud to everybody who was involved
in that. And I know not everybody got to be the ones presenting, and
I recognize that there were a lot of people behind the scenes to help
bring about that success. It is truly a team effort, and as long as
we are each doing our part, this is what we can continue to do as an
institution.
I just want to say a little something about COVID. I mean, I
think we all want to get back to our campuses, to our offices. We
all want to get back to what is more normal. We all want to be able
to compete in athletics. We want to be in the classrooms. We want
to be the labs. I wish that for all of us.
But the reality is, as Dr. Garcia said earlier today, we're just
not there yet. There is a light at the end of the tunnel. It will
be a new normal. It won't be like it was before we went. We just
have to continue to be patient. We've got to see the case rates
coming down.
Just this week in the news, we heard that TUSD lost six employees
to COVID. That's what's on the line. I want us not to lose sight of
that.
Maybe we're a little too conservative, but what's the
alternative? Six deaths of employees? I mean, what are we willing
to trade off? I just want you all to know that I have been very
conservative in terms of how we have been running the institution, in
terms of how we manage this COVID crisis.
It's hard on all of us. I recognize that. But I also want to
say to the folks who are athletes, and we really appreciate your
commitment to your sport. We appreciate your commitment to your
education. Also, we also appreciate your patience as we go through
this.
We will continue to look at the caseloads and determine what
makes sense for Pima Community College. Based on what Dr. Garcia has
said tonight, I think there is hope as we move through the balance of
this month that we might be able to start opening up competition
again. I just hope that that downward trend continues and really
willing to be flexible as that starts to happen.
Also, I'm just so proud of our work, Jule Medo (phonetic) and Jim
Craig and the faculty in our center of excellence for hospitality,
culinary. So Jules sits on the city of gastronomy board. They just
recently launched a certification for our area restaurants and
businesses tied to hospitality to really recognize the excellence and
that our Pima Community College was part of a supporting and creation
of that certification. Just know that we are leading the way in our
community in many, many areas.
Also, Dr. Nic Richmond will be taking a different approach to the
Futures Conference this year. We're going to break it up into
smaller sessions, and so she'll be sending out an update on the
schedule of events.
Again, we are taking a different approach to how we normally do
things, but we still are committed to being accessible to the
community for their feedback on the direction and vision of the
college.
I just want to close by mentioning, thank you to Jeffrey Lanuez
for filling in in our HR role. He stepped in in a very difficult
time. We were so pleased that we have been able to hire Carleen
Thompson. Hopefully I got your last name right. She will be joining
us next week. When she's onboard, I will look forward to giving her
a proper introduction to the board at the next meeting.
With that, that is my report, Mr. Chair.
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Thank you, Chancellor Lambert.
I just want to echo what you said about the Bellwether awards.
It was so incredibly inspiring to sit through the presentations and
see the real innovative work that we are doing that's transforming
the lives of individuals in our community. It is inspiring.
Everybody, if you haven't seen those presentations, take the time
to go online and watch them. Congratulations to all of the amazing
faculty and staff who have worked so hard to innovate and create
these programs.
Next we have information items. Item 3.
Mr. Silvyn, could you read the information items?
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Thank you, Mr. Chair. Be glad to.
The information items for this evening's meeting that were
included in the board materials include the financial reports for
November 2020. Employment information which includes one hire, I
believe four retirements, and about a dozen separations.
Next item is faculty hiring. This is identifying three
individuals who had been serving as adjunct faculty who will be
serving for one semester as regular faculty. Those are provisional
hires. We do that because of uncertainty about what the ongoing
enrollment and course needs will be.
Next we have the list of individuals who have been certified as
qualified to serve as adjunct faculty at Pima College.
Next we have the 2021/2022 academic year course fees. Finally,
we have the first reading of three proposed board policy revisions.
The first is the board policy regarding academic freedom. That's a
new board policy.
The next is one on financial controls and institutional budget.
One on cash reserves. Actually, these are more recent board
policies. So these are now open for comment.
They are going through the different governance groups. Once
that process has concluded, we will come back to the board with a
summary of what the feedback was, any suggested changes, and then the
board can consider that and decide what the final version for
adoption should look like.
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Thank you very much, Mr. Silvyn.
Next is our consent agenda. Could you read the consent items?
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Thank you, Mr. Chair.
First items on the consent agenda all relate to meetings that
happened in 2021. The first are the minutes from the January 13
executive session. Second are the minutes from the January 13
regular meeting. Next we have the minutes from the January 19 study
session.
The next item is a proposed amendment to a dual enrollment
agreement with Lourdes Catholic High School to add additional
courses. Next is a proposed intergovernmental agreement with the
Arizona Office of Economic Opportunity to allow Pima College to
participate in a statewide data collection and analysis effort that
will attempt to better link education and workforce data.
Next we have a proposed intergovernmental agreement with the Pima
County Health Department. This is to allow students in a variety of
programs at Pima College, healthcare, sports science, and other
programs to participate in clinical and hands-on experiential
opportunities with the county.
And finally, we have an intergovernmental agreement with the
Greer Fire District to provide training in the area of paramedic.
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Do I have a motion to adopt the consent
agenda?
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: So moved.
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Is there a second? Anyone? A second?
>> DR. MEREDITH HAY: Second.
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Dr. Hay. All in favor of approval of the
consent agenda, signify by saying aye?
(Ayes.)
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Anyone opposed?
Hearing none, the motion passes unanimously.
Next, action items. Notice of intent to amend the bylaws and
discussion.
Mr. Silvyn, could you read the item?
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: So, yes, thank you, Mr. Chair.
Let me just explain what this is. In accordance with the bylaws,
when there is a proposal to amend the bylaws, one of the steps is
that public notice at a regular meeting is given. So that's what we
are doing with this.
The proposed text of the bylaw amendment accompanies the board
materials. Essentially what it would do is change the current term
of board officers, which are two years, to one year, and there is
also a provision essentially recommending that terms not, that there
not be more than two consecutive terms, although any of the
parameters related to terms could be waived by a majority of the
board.
So that's the proposed bylaw amendment. The decision that's
before the board this evening is at what subsequent meeting would you
like to have the more substantive discussion and the vote on this
item?
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Mr. Silvyn, I would move -- well, I would
move to the board that we put this on our next regular scheduled
meeting in March.
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: I have a question. Is that to vote for it?
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Yes, that would be to vote. But we have a
motion. Is there a second?
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: I second it.
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: So it would be in March.
Is there any discussion on the item?
Okay. Hearing none, all in favor, signify by saying aye.
(Ayes.)
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Anyone opposed? Hearing none, the motion
passes unanimously, and it will be on our regular March agenda.
Next item is the naming opportunity in honor of Dr. Sylvia Lee.
Could you read the recommendation?
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Thank you, Mr. Chair.
For this item, the chancellor recommends that the Governing Board
consider the naming of the student services center at the Pima
Community College Northwest Campus in honor of Dr. Sylvia Lee.
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: I will move the item.
Is there a second?
>> DR. MEREDITH HAY: Second.
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Discussion? Is there any discussion from
the board on this item?
Okay. I will just say prior to the vote Dr. Lee really made an
incredible sacrifice to this institution. She retired early because
of her concerns about the direction the institution was going, and
she gave tremendous amount of service and commitment to this
institution in her board role to help correct the ship when things
were headed in a very seriously negative direction.
Through her leadership and her guidance, I think she really
helped correct course for this institution, and it is a small
acknowledgement of that tremendous, tremendous gift that she gave to
our community through her time and through her early retirement.
Additionally, she broke numerous barriers in this community and
in leadership across the state. She's I think worthy of this type of
recognition.
No more discussion? Okay.
We have a motion on the floor. All in favor of the vote, signify
by saying aye?
(Ayes.)
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Any opposed?
>> MR. LUIS GONZALES: Oppose.
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: Oppose.
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: The vote passes 3-2 with Member Garcia and
Member Gonzales dissenting.
>> DR. LEE LAMBERT: Mr. Chair? Can I just offer some parting
thoughts? Probably because none of the five current board members
were here at the time that I arrived.
Dr. Sylvia Lee has a lot to do with the current governance model
of the college, because the college didn't really have a very
effective governance model. Thanks to her leadership, we have policy
governance, which is a best practice across the entire country.
Her tireless effort to make sure that this college did not go in
the direction it was headed, which was on a going-out-of-business
curve, because the college was placed on probation twice. That's
very rare for an institution to be placed on probation twice.
So one is bad, but twice, you can just imagine. But the other
things that folks didn't realize back then, the institution was also
on probation with the Department of Education, the U.S. Department,
because of its loan default rates. And the college had all but blown
his ability to certify veterans' benefits for a community that is
about the armed services and our veterans.
There is so much here that we couldn't articulate in these
materials but for her tireless commitment. So this is an
exceptional, exceptional individual.
I'm just so pleased that the board is honoring her. It's the
least we could do. These were not ordinary times. They were
extraordinary times and not in a good way.
So I think she deserves all that we can do to recognize her.
Thank you.
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: We have a comment from Ms. Ripley.
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: Yes, thank you so much.
So for clarity, to the other panelists, it's the Northwest Campus
student services center, which, please correct me if I'm wrong,
Ms. Lee had a significant part in creating. Is that correct?
>> DR. LEE LAMBERT: That is correct.
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: And it's the student services center
which is not an entire building but it's the center part of the admin
building . Is that correct?
>> DR. LEE LAMBERT: Board Member Ripley, that is correct. It is
the center area of the campus for the students. It is not a
building, it's not a room, it's the space and area where the center
is located.
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: Okay.
>> DR. DORÉ: To be exact, it's just that first floor section of
the B Building at Northwest Campus.
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Thank you all so much. I look forward to
a dedication ceremony when we can be together hopefully in the fall.
Finally, we have item 5.3, which is a contract with Follett
Higher Education Group contract amendment.
Mr. Silvyn, could you read the recommendation?
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Our last action item this evening, the chancellor recommends the
Governing Board authorize the chancellor or designee to execute an
amendment to the agreement with Follett Higher Education Group for
bookstore, food service, and vending services management.
The amendment changes the commission structure and the service
delivery model and extends the current agreement by one year to June
30, 2020. Just for information purposes, a summary of what the
changes would be like are contained in the board report and the text
of the proposed amendment is attached.
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Is there a motion to adopt the
recommendation?
>> DR. MEREDITH HAY: So moved.
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Is there a second?
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: Second.
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Any discussion? Do we want a deeper
presentation on the information?
>> DR. LEE LAMBERT: Mr. Chair, we had prepared a brief
presentation for you. I wanted the board to understand the overall
context of what's happening with, in this case, our bookstore and
food service operation and why this is of critical and urgent
importance.
I'll ask Dave Bea, Dr. Bea, to take you through that if you don't
mind?
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Yeah. That sounds terrific. Dr. Bea?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: Good evening again.
As Chancellor Lambert mentioned, there is sort of a greater
context going on that's underlying the recommended amendment that the
board has in front of them to act on today.
Over time in the last 10 to 15 years, there has been a pretty
sizeable change in the college store environment, particularly in the
stores that aren't like your Big Ten or Pac-12 schools that have
large amounts of sales for college-branded merchandise. Even those
institutions are experiencing challenges. But the other store
environments have pretty significant pressure.
So I'm going to start, and I'm going to go through these I think
relatively quickly, but I want to kind of explain the business model
of college stores and what the big challenges are.
If you take the basically cost versus sales perspective, the top
part of this slide indicates the cost pressure these stores
experience. One is basically the cost of goods sold. That would be
as food prices increase, they either have to increase the prices or
they absorb the cost increase and their margins decrease.
On the book side, what we see and the bigger issue that we talk
about and bigger priority at the institution is the challenge of
publishers increasing costs and changing the model so that students
are forced to buy new textbooks and/or they are forced to buy bundled
packages that have software that may or may not be needed.
The college I think has taken a great initiative to move towards
open educational resources. You may recall that in the past there
has been reference to saving more than a million dollars, I think
it's more than a million dollars a year in terms of the things that
we have done to decrease costs to students through open educational
resources.
Well, one of the impacts that has is that's great for students.
It does not help the publishers. But it also doesn't then flow
through the bookstores. So sales at the bookstores go down
dramatically. And then the other challenge that they have is on the
cost side is staffing costs.
The big challenge that we have at our institution is we have
multiple campuses. It's the same issue we talked about the
inefficiency of the staffing model by having so many different
locations. The sort of national standard for a sustainable store is
sales in the neighborhood of $500,000 at a particular location.
Because we are so spread out, our sales in total are okay to have
a sort of a viable structure, but because it's spread out between the
five different locations, you have what is, in reality, three
locations that fall below that $500,000 threshold.
Now, compounding that are other things that are specific to the
college or to the national trends, which is that as students have
moved online, as the information about textbooks has been more
readily available to them, that was something that came out of the
Higher Education Reauthorization Act a number of years where ISBN
numbers were required to provide them to students, the students can
go online and find the books if students are online.
It might be much easier for them to just keep clicking and look
at Amazon and try and find their text that way rather than going
through the on-site text bookstore.
On top of that, the college, as you know, has experienced pretty
dramatic enrollment declines. When you compound the enrollment
declines over the last number of years with the fact that we have
also had increases in online enrollment, you realize our foot traffic
that goes to these stores has declined dramatically.
There is no way around it. We have talked about this with the
board for a number of years, that the expectations, the sales are
going down, and that it's going to continue and that we are going to
have to probably come up with a new model going forward.
That all got accelerated with COVID, and now the stores have
essentially no student foot traffic. Thus Follett and other
bookstore contractors across the country are going back to colleges
and renegotiating.
That's where the amendment comes from. They are basically in a
situation where they need to change the terms of the agreement in
order to stay viable.
We negotiated with them I think, had a series of progressively,
progressive negotiations with them that resulted in what the
recommended amendment is.
This chart outlines what I was saying. It contrasts or compares
the changes in enrollment. The top line is our FTSE enrollment since
2011, how it's declined.
The gray enrollment is if you factor in the on-site, so that's
taking away the online enrollments and taking that out of the mix, so
you say, well, the students who would be more likely to use the
on-site bookstores are those who are actually on-site, so you can see
how that has gone down over time.
Then you see what this is is gross sales over that period of
time. So we used to have sales that were in the neighborhood of $11
million. Now it's significantly less than $4 million. Then you can
see, in order to keep that kind of an operation viable, you have
problems.
That gets to where our amendment is, and Mr. Silvyn I think
summarized the key changes pretty well. It reduces the commission
structure just a little bit from 11% to 10%.
The changes in terms of on-site locations, it will trigger when
the students are back on campus is when this will actually trigger.
So right now they just have an on-site, online service, providing
bookstore services online, and we are working on getting them to have
the ability for students to come pick up their books and have that
kind of service available. But as our students are not on-site or
only a very small minority of them are on-site, we do not have open
stores.
When we get above a threshold, and just to give you an idea of
that threshold, when we were talking about the plan A, B, C earlier,
that this was actually going to trigger, the opening of the stores
will trigger when we get back to a more normal environment. So
that's like a plan A.
So think about it, the new commission structure or the changes to
this agreement in terms of changing what locations are open, is
actually going to take -- they will be visible to students, at the
earliest we are talking about, based on the conversation earlier, at
the earliest would be fall and potentially could be spring. So we
are talking about one or two terms in this new amendment structure.
They are committed, Follett is committed to having as good a
service as possible, online, popup services, those kinds of things.
What they are looking to do is consolidate the Desert Vista Campus
from two locations, so there is a food location and a book location,
and consolidating it to be one location. It would be closing the
Northwest Campus store, providing popup services at the beginning and
end of terms, and then having enhanced vending options for students
at the Northwest Campus.
Then at West Campus, we talked to them about continuing to have
both the cafe and a bookstore, where they have separate locations,
but if we have both locations up, we forego $8,300 per month,
basically covering the extra staff and costs they have to do that.
What going forward, this amendment gets us to June of 2022. What
we have put in place now is we have two task forces working on
envisioning future services for the college, so the future state of
our bookstore and book services and our food services going forward,
we have two separate groups trying to come up with a vision of what
they would like to see. And then what we will do is we will roll
that information and those desires that's inclusive, we will have
students, faculty, et cetera, roll that information into requests for
proposals, develop that in the fall, this coming fall, and then roll
those out on the street to identify new vendors or identify new
contract structures, could be the same vendor, identify the best
provider for those services to take effect for fall of 2022.
So we have a plan in place that's already in action for how to
get the services to be the ideal services that are serving the
college's needs, and this amendment sort of bridges that gap in the
best way possible.
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Any questions from the board? Ms. Ripley?
Do you have your hand raised? Is that from -- okay, no. Any
questions from anyone else?
Okay. Hearing none, all in favor of the motion, signify by
saying aye.
(Ayes.)
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Anyone opposed?
Okay. Hearing none, the motion passes unanimously.
Item 6, request for future agenda items. Any requests from the
board?
Hearing none --
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: Wait.
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Mr. Gonzales?
>> MR. LUIS GONZALES: I would like to, for the next agenda item,
I really would like to look very carefully reference to the PCC and
IGA with Pascua Yaqui.
Last week and this week we have been getting -- there is too many
unanswered questions, and I think we really need to look at where we
are, approaching a year with it, but I think we need to really come
and look at what's going on.
I know that they have a lot of unanswered questions, and that's
one thing that I would like to put on the next agenda item for next
month.
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: I believe there is an item -- I mean, I
think it probably will be on a future agenda. We will touch base
about when we will get it on so --
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: Chairman?
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Yes, Ms. Garcia?
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: So he made a motion to put it on the
agenda. I'd like to have it on the agenda. I second that.
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: It's not a motion to put it on. It's just
a request. So I hear you. I'm going to talk to Chancellor Lambert
where we will work to get it on.
>> MR. LUIS GONZALES: Okay. Sounds good.
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: I appreciate it. With that, we are
adjourned.
>> MR. LUIS GONZALES: Thank you.
(Adjournment.)
*********************************************
DISCLAIMER: THIS CART FILE WAS PRODUCED FOR COMMUNICATION
ACCESS AS AN ADA ACCOMMODATION AND MAY NOT BE 100% VERBATIM. THIS IS
A DRAFT FILE AND HAS NOT BEEN PROOFREAD. IT IS SCAN-EDITED ONLY, AS
PER CART INDUSTRY STANDARDS, AND MAY CONTAIN SOME PHONETICALLY
REPRESENTED WORDS, INCORRECT SPELLINGS, TRANSMISSION ERRORS, AND
STENOTYPE SYMBOLS OR NONSENSICAL WORDS. THIS IS NOT A LEGAL DOCUMENT
AND MAY CONTAIN COPYRIGHTED, PRIVILEGED OR CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION.
THIS FILE SHALL NOT BE DISCLOSED IN ANY FORM (WRITTEN OR
ELECTRONIC) AS A VERBATIM TRANSCRIPT OR POSTED TO ANY WEBSITE OR
PUBLIC FORUM OR SHARED WITHOUT THE EXPRESS WRITTEN CONSENT OF THE
HIRING PARTY AND/OR THE CART PROVIDER. THIS IS NOT AN OFFICIAL
TRANSCRIPT AND SHOULD NOT BE RELIED UPON FOR PURPOSES OF VERBATIM
CITATION.
*********************************************
超级玩家
Online-gambling-platform-hr@877961.com
New-Portuguese-gambling-official-website-media@jgytzg.com
Crown-website-contact@hunan263.com
Online-gambling-platform-contactus@thegoldsearch.com
东风论坛
CQ9-electron-careers@papercrafttoys.com
驾校一点通驾驶员从业资格证考试
Crown-Sports-help@ilhuan.com
18183歪歪八卦频道
Sports-betting-sales@huangguan-lgd.com
福建农林大学-金山学院
Crown-Sports-Betting-media@ournetlife.com
宝瑞通典当行
美骑易购自行车网上商城
足球外围平台
90后心动劲舞团官方网站
Sports-betting-service@edidi.net
陕西民政
QQ宠物猪猪
配音秀
尖兵户外
哈哈
漯河医学高等专科学校
315防伪查询中心
上海京颐科技KingYee
星辰漫画网
亚讯车网
水果邦论坛
中国杯壶网
山东再担
泰兴银杏花园论坛
站点地图
龙巅三湖慈鲷
黄记煌官网