Letter to FSCC Board on the Proposed Partnership with PSU:

I am calling on the FSCC board to summon the courage to do something difficult: slow this train down.  If the proposed model is a good one, it will be still be there a few years down the road.  Guard our community’s interests by insisting on a three-to-five year window to explore this model in the context of other possibilities.

I do not know whether a formalized partnership between FSCC and PSU would be a positive move.  I do know that the challenges before the FSCC board and Dr. Tatro are massively complex.  And I am sympathetic to their claim that some new educational and economic model is needed.

 

Here are my observations about what this process feels like.

Dr. Tatro is exercising a kind of leadership that is unnerving and unpopular.  He wants to make things happen, move things in a new direction, even in the face of considerable resistance.  Let’s at least admit that this leadership approach has gotten our attention. 

Sometimes, we need leaders who stir the pot.  Make things happen.  Tell us the bad news no one else wants to tell us.  We need leaders who engage in imaginative, creative problem solving.  We need leaders with the courage to outline a new way forward that adapts to wider forces of change.   Plenty of “leaders” simply keep the peace while the organizational ship goes down.  On this score Dr. Tatro deserves credit as a provocative leader.

It’s probably helpful for all of us involved to be honest about what’s going on, psychologically speaking, in our community: we’re confused, overwhelmed, and afraid.  We’re living in a time of fast-paced change.  We feel unmoored, scared the bottom is dropping out.  When we feel unstable like this, we’re tempted to voice personal animosity to Dr. Tatro, or to assert that we have all the answers.

While this anxiety is justified, let’s do our best to remain constructive.  Change washes over us in waves and leaves us sputtering and disoriented.  In nearly every area of our lives, economic, cultural and technological changes require us to adjust to a new way of life. 

In terms of community college education, the model has undergone massive changes already: from a local “junior” college providing basic education courses in preparation for a four-year school, to a “community” college offering a mix of general courses and vocational training programs, to what is now a “regional” model that is hard to even describe. 

But let’s be clear – we’re a long way down the road to a different model.  A full 55% of the students of FSCC are in either Crawford County or attending the Paola campus.  So the actual Fort Scott campus is already playing a minority role in the strategic decision to provide education regionally where the population centers are.

Nostalgia won’t work.  Something new needs to emerge.  But why on earth would we want to make irreversible shifts towards a partnership with PSU without a slow and deliberative period of exploration of ALL the new models available to us?  After all, this college has been funded and supported by Bourbon County citizens since 1919.

I attended the first community conversation at the college and came away frustrated.  It is clear that Dr. Tatro has invested considerable time and energy exploring how to further deepen our ties to Crawford County in general and Pittsburg State in particular.  Yet it’s troubling that there isn’t more clarity about what’s being proposed and about the merits of this model relative to other possibilities.

That’s why I’m calling on the FSCC board to intervene.  It will take a little time to figure out whether this, or some other model, is actually in the best interest of Fort Scott and Bourbon County.

Dr. Tatro was asked at Rotary why FSCC would partner with Pitt State and not with, say, KU and K-State.  He responded, “I hadn’t thought of that.”  PSU is an acceptable regional school.  But we have other universities in Kansas that might be open to this new model of partnership.

This window of time will also give Dr. Tatro and other community college presidents time to raise hell, rally the rest of us, and lobby the state congress on the massively unworkable model of current funding.  Currently, 18 counties have to fund community colleges while all 105 counties benefit from the system.  Why move community colleges to a “regional” model of education while continuing send the bill “locally”?  This taxation model is actually the least defensible feature of the “current model.”  Yet Dr. Tatro’s current plan for a “new model” leaves this unsustainable funding model intact.

I’m sure I’m getting some of this wrong.  I’m happy to be better informed.  But I have attended two or three events where the partnership was discussed.  And I have read Dr. Tatro’s pieces in the newspaper.  

Here’s what I can gather:  The current proposal will function to shift strategic planning, the power to make decisions, and eventually, duplicated administrative jobs to Pittsburg.  Yet the model of taxing Bourbon County at current rates will be left in place.  Dr. Tatro was clear when speaking at Rotary that the partnership would not lower the mill levy.  There is only the hope that such a partnership can keep it from going even higher.  This doesn’t sound like a “good deal.”  If this is the bitter pill we have to swallow, let’s at least make sure we’ve explored every other possibility.

Right now education at all levels is in massive flux due to the arrival of online platforms of education.  It seems nervous and premature to formalize a partnership with PSU when so much of this technological change is just coming into focus.  Georgia Tech just made news by offering an online Master’s Degree in Computer Science at a fraction of the cost of traditional education.  Many schools are taking advantage of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses, offered by EdX, Udacity, and Coursera) as a way of providing excellent education while lowering overhead costs.  If we’re interested in finding a larger student base, why limit ourselves to Crawford County?

Or to stir the pot a little more – I find myself wondering why Dr. Tatro isn’t pushing for something even more radical.  Why not a full-blown merger, where FSCC is fully acquired by PSU?  Why not become a local campus for a regional university?  Why not de-fund FSCC at the county level completely (or simply fund the minimal operational costs of a local campus that’s part of PSU)?  At least then we’re getting a clear financial break in exchange for what is sure to be a diminished identity and a loss of jobs.

Partnering with PSU may, in the end, be our best option.  But it is far too early to tell. I have heard Dr. Tatro say that action could be taken as early as this Fall or Spring.  This seems unnecessarily speedy.  With the rich history of the college dating to 1919, and with so much at stake for the citizens of Bourbon County, this process warrants more time and further exploration of alternative models.

I urge Bourbon County residents to call or write our FSCC board members, asking them to commit to a three-to-five year window for exploring these options.