Push to merge with college raises defenses of vo-tech

In November, it was more of a request.

Gov. Asa Hutchinson had called for combining the two Forrest City schools that share a property line -- East Arkansas Community College and Crowley's Ridge Technical Institute -- saying it would be more efficient to have one institution that would provide students more courses and services and easier access to transfer.

But they didn't take heed.

And now, it's more of an order.

The proposed merger of the community college and vocational-technical school has bumped its way onto the special-session agenda in the form of a bill sponsored by Sen. Ron Caldwell, R-Wynne, and Rep. Mark Lowery, R-Maumelle. If it passes, the two campuses would be forced to become one. Legislators have been looking for efficiencies through mergers, whether in regard to state agencies or higher education institutions.

"It is part of what we're trying to accomplish," Lowery said. "These are two campuses that are right next to one another and have some duplication of services. Crowley's Ridge has an interim president right now. So, if we're able to pass this, we can immediately save."

Locally, the issue of merging has been a contentious one. Opponents say the schools have been able to coexist for many years because their purposes are different. They worry that a merger would mean increased tuition and fees for Crowley's Ridge students and elimination of some services currently offered by the school, such as its pickup transportation service in six counties to help get students to class.

Crowley's Ridge Technical Institute has gotten about a dozen resolutions of support from nearby cities and counties, said David Brown, the interim president of the school and its supervisor of instruction.

"It's all been backdoor politics," he said of the efforts to force the union of the two schools.

Crowley's Ridge opened its doors in 1966, and East Arkansas Community College got its start in 1974 in a temporary building in downtown Forrest City with 684 students. Later that year, the college got the OK to build a $1.5 million, 11-building complex at its current site on New Castle Road.

Through the years, each school has expanded many times.

Now, Crowley's Ridge -- under the state Department of Career Education -- runs 18 vocational-technical programs and an Adult Education Program. It's one of the two vocational-technical schools left standing, and its nearly 73,000 square feet in area serves a little more than 200 students. The institute is accredited by the Council on Occupational Education, which requires Crowley's Ridge to report its completion, placement and licensure numbers to ensure it meets the national accrediting body's benchmarks.

East Arkansas Community College -- under the state's Department of Higher Education umbrella -- has 1,200 students enrolled in about 20 technical programs and 16 associate degree programs.

And to this day, the number of articulation agreements, which help ease student transfers, between the two schools can be counted on one hand.

The idea to merge isn't a new one for the two institutions. Neither, for Crowley's Ridge, is the pressure to do so.

In 1991, state legislators passed a law allowing vocational-technical schools to become technical or community colleges. The state's higher-education leaders had reviewed the existing vocational-technical schools to see what each institution had to do to carry out the change.

Many of the vocational-technical schools followed suit. Crowley's Ridge fought it off.

About a decade later, all eyes fell on the state's remaining vocational-technical schools. In 2001, the late Sen. Jodie Mahony, an El Dorado Democrat, tried for the second time to merge the two institutions. Crowley's Ridge dodged the bullet again.

And in July, the late, longtime Crowley's Ridge Technical Institute President Burl Lieblong stepped down, prompting a revival of talk about a merger. The president's position and a dozen others at the school have not been filled because Crowley's Ridge and other state agencies -- not including higher-education institutions -- have been under a hiring freeze that was put into place when Hutchinson took office in 2015.

"One of the staff and faculty's main concerns now is the negative effect the freezing of 13 vacant Instructor and Administrative staff positions by the Governor's office is having on CRTI Students," stated a letter to the state's legislators signed by the institute's administration, faculty and staff members. "CRTI's current approved budget is for 57 full-time employees, but with 13 frozen positions, including the President's permanent position frozen, it appears as an effort to strangle the CRTI Staff at the sake of the students."

The Legislature earlier this year approved Crowley's Ridge's budget for another year.

"Everything is in line for this to be a smaller transition," said Lowery, the House member from Maumelle, adding that he's been preparing his fellow legislators for the opponents who plan to show up today, when the special legislative session opens. "There have been other vo-techs that have merged into community colleges that have been positive experiences. A lot of the fears here are just that -- fears that are not really founded in experience."

Brown, the interim leader of the institute, said that sharing a property line doesn't mean the two schools should merge. He called the duplication of programs a "kicker."

Crowley's Ridge, he said, has had a truck-driving program for more than 13 years, he said. Within the past year, the state approved a truck-driving program for the job-training initiative called the Arkansas Delta Training and Education Consortium, of which East Arkansas Community College is a part, Brown said.

He added that the institute's students now have the choice whether to continue on to earn an associate degree at East Arkansas.

East Arkansas President Coy Grace said his college is backing the merger.

"We believe that we will be able to combine resources, be able to offer some additional programs and expand opportunities in this area for economic development," he said. "We are interested in trying to enhance the vocational offerings that are already here and are currently being offered by both East Arkansas Community College and Crowley's Ridge Technical Institute."

Many of the community's concerns have been about what the students might pay and whether the faculty would need more credentials, Grace said. He said he was unaware of teachers needing additional credentials.

"We've not made any determination at this point in time," Grace said, of the tuition rate for Crowley's Ridge students should the institutions merge. "There's been no discussion about those particular subjects. I don't think anything would change for students for at least a year, and maybe never. There's a lot of information that I don't have in order to make decisions related to fees or tuition."

Many colleges and universities in the Delta have about 80 percent of their students receiving federal Pell grants, which help undergraduate students of low-income families and do not have to be repaid, Grace said. And the amount each student receives from a Pell grant depends on cost of instruction, he said.

"If cost of instruction went up, the amount received on the Pell grant would also increase," Grace said.

If the law does come to pass, Grace said, he would want to have meetings with the faculties and the staffs at both of the institutions to see where they can meld. He added he would set up a committee structure to help the two groups understand one another and integrate.

"I think it'll be positive," he said. "I think that whatever decision is made, that we at East Arkansas Community College and, I hope, at Crowley's Ridge and within the community will accept it and move forward."

On the other end, Brown and other Crowley's Ridge leaders are rallying supporters to show up in force at the Capitol today.

"I'm going to say it could probably go either way," Brown said.

"I don't want it to happen. I'm prepared for it. Everybody else is. We're going to fight it to the end."

Metro on 05/19/2016