Crowley's Ridge Technical Institute is two steps closer to where it doesn't want to be -- part of its neighboring community college.
A day after Gov. Asa Hutchinson announced two new appointments to the Crowley's Ridge board -- Kathy Frein and John Jordan -- three members of that panel called a special meeting on a possible merger with East Arkansas Community College. The board on Tuesday voted 3-2, with all of Hutchinson's appointees supporting a merger.
"It is dirty politics at its best," said David Brown, the interim president at Crowley's Ridge. "You appoint all the people to the board, and you get a board majority. And, boom, it's over."
The vote comes after legislators passed Act 636 of 2017, which called for a merger of the vocational-technical institute with the two-year school if the boards for each approved it. Tuesday's vote called for a merger next Tuesday, said Fredric Smith, the chairman of the Crowley's Ridge board, who did not support the move. Details of the merger remain unknown.
On Wednesday, East Arkansas' board unanimously voted in favor of taking in the technical school, said the college president, Coy Grace.
"I think that working together, we can accomplish more than we could working separately," Grace said. "We look forward to the future in terms of the two institutions coming together and working together for the betterment of the students and for the betterment of eastern Arkansas."
Now, the merger proposal is in the hands of the Arkansas Higher Education Coordinating Board.
A merger would put to bed a decades-long fight over merging the two schools, both of which are in Forrest City. That fight started in 1991 when legislators allowed 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 would have to do to make the change.
Many of the vocational-technical schools subsequently made the change, but Crowley's Ridge didn't.
About a decade later, the state looked at the remaining vocational-technical schools. In 2001, the late Sen. Jodie Mahony, an El Dorado Democrat, took a shot at merging the Crowley's Ridge and East Arkansas institutions, but Crowley's Ridge fought it off.
Talk of a merger surfaced again in July 2015 when Crowley's Ridge's longtime president, Burl Lieblong, stepped down. And that November, Hutchinson pushed for a merger, saying one institution would be more efficient, provide students more courses and services, and make it easier for student transfers. The technical institute didn't take the hint.
At the time, the president's position and a dozen others at the Crowley's Ridge school had not been filled because state agencies -- not including higher education institutions -- were under a hiring freeze put into place when Hutchinson took office in 2015. Crowley's Ridge Technical Institute is under the state Department of Career Education, not the Arkansas Department of Higher Education, so the freeze applied to it.
On Aug. 1, agencies will no longer have to ask the governor's office before hiring employees.
The merger matter made its way into a special legislative session in 2016 through a bill sponsored by Sen. Ron Caldwell, R-Wynne, and Rep. Mark Lowery, R-Maumelle. The bill -- which would have forced a merger -- didn't get far.
Crowley's Ridge employees were prepared for the 2017 legislative session. Brown, the interim president, and marketing coordinator and business industry training coordinator Tom Holbrook showed up at education committee meetings ready to fight a merger, which was covered in House Bill 1543 filed by Rep. Steve Hollowell, R-Forrest City.
Brown said a merger would increase costs of attendance for Crowley's Ridge students, take them longer to finish a program and eliminate a transportation program in six counties that rounds up students for class. Crowley's Ridge charges an equivalent of $5 per credit hour for courses that run either 37 or 53 weeks long, he said.
In the fall of 2016, East Arkansas Community College charged $84 per credit hour for in-district undergraduates and $94 for in-state but out-of-district undergraduates. That same semester, the college had 1,142 students, Grace said.
This year, the technical institute ran out of luck.
Caldwell, the senator, said the state reached out to Crowley's Ridge administrators a number of times to show them the advantages of merging. The state called on someone from Arkansas Northeastern College in Blytheville to talk up the idea. That college was the result of a 2003 merger between the Cotton Boll Vocational Tech School and Mississippi County Community College. Then-director of the Higher Education Department Brett Powell also went to Crowley's Ridge to talk up the merger idea.
"We were working toward merging the two institutions," Caldwell said. The schools "both sit on basically the same campus. There's not even a street or a driveway between the two buildings."
In previous merger attempts, the state guaranteed Crowley's Ridge employees' jobs for at least five years. The latest effort does not include that language, he said.
Caldwell said he was pushing the merger as part of the governor's agenda to save taxpayer money. The schools would avoid duplication and administrative costs, he said. At the same time, vocational-technical students would have access to state scholarships and federal aid, which they haven't been able to get in the past, he said.
A merger would not eliminate any vocational programs, he said, adding that state leaders have pushed for high-quality job training in recent years.
Smith, the Crowley's Ridge board chairman, has said he was open to a merger but he voted against it Tuesday because he felt there were still a lot of unknowns.
"What I mean by that, just in good faith, I feel like there needed to be some other questions answered," he said, adding that his board and technical school sent a list of 30 questions to East Arkansas Community College administrators and that board "to help us feel some of this. Even to this day, we still don't have the answers."
Grace, the East Arkansas college president, said some of the questions required that the two-year school have information related to Crowley's Ridge and he told a Crowley's Ridge employee that.
"I think the unknown is always what makes change occur a little bit slower," he said. "I think once we're able to sit down and ... begin to look at each other face to face and eye to eye and talk over the things we both want to do, that we'll be able to react positively, and that the things that maybe people are concerned about, that hopefully they will realize those concerns are unfounded, and that we can move from square A to square B and get together on the same issues."
Smith felt torn, he said, between a loyalty to Crowley's Ridge employees and students, and supporting the governor's position on conservative spending.
"Really, my fight for the past three years has been how can we work together because I knew this day was coming," he said.
So much bad information has circulated in Forrest City since the start of merger talks, Smith said.
"I feel like when people's minds, people's agenda, people's efforts and people's energy is set right, anything can work," he said. "If we want this to work, it will work.
"But people's minds and their energy has been set against each other. Now, it's about telling my kids not to like your kids. It's about changing your church membership. We've went too far with making this a back and forth thing. I totally could see how it could work, but now, some things and some people are probably going to have to change. That is the tough part now. Either you change your mind or ... this may not be the institution for you to be a part of."
Metro on 07/27/2017