The Faculty Senate met with the Kansas Board of Regents last Thursday in the Preston Family Room. The meeting was to allow faculty to voice concerns and questions directly to KBOR and to allow discussion on the topics.
One of the major concerns discussed at the meeting was over the budget cuts.
“The state is so fiscally mismanaged how are you going to address that in terms of education, can you do anything as the board of regents?” said Michael Behrens, chair of the committee on campus governance and assistant professor of English, modern languages and journalism. “It really does affect our ability to do our job to be constantly worried about funding, rescissions and budget cuts. ”
Dennis Mullin, KBOR member, suggested lobbying.
“We can’t change tax policy,” said Bill Feuerborn, KBOR member. “We have to play the cards we’re dealt with and that kind of comes from the legislatures from the governor. We’re very concerned and we think about it a lot, what cuts are coming and what cuts may come.”
KBOR has had some success in getting additional funding to things such as Senate Bill 155, which allows for high school kids to start taking college level classes, particularly in the focus of technical type class so that those kids can come out, have a skill, be able to earn a wage to help maybe offset their cost of college or also maybe have a career track that if you don’t want to go to college can have some success there and it’s been an immensely successful program, according to Shane Bangerter, KBOR member.
“Community colleges are the primary benefactors of that,” Bangerter said. “It’s definitely providing additional revenue into higher ed(ucation), so it’s not a complete disaster and we have fought very hard to have stable funding and that’s what we’ve battled for, for the last two years with the legislature.”
Faculty and staff aren’t the only ones affected by the budget cuts, students are affected as well.
“It’s a stress on our students because ultimately if our budget gets cut, their tuition goes up,” said Gaile Stephens, assistant professor of music. “I didn’t have to work a full-time job on top of going to school, but so many students have to meet all the requirements I had to as an undergrad(uate) plus they have to work a full-time job so they can pay for tuition. Many of our students are first-time college graduates and it is very overwhelming and it definitely affects their performance in the classroom.”
Students are often working two jobs and dropping out for a semester so they can get enough money to get back in and continue on with their course work, according to Connie Phelps, professor of elementary education, early childhood and special education.
“We are trying to do a lot of things but as you’re (KBOR) lobbying, I just want you to remind the legislature that when they do these budget cuts, yes, there are a lot of us faculty sitting in our ivory towers that it worries, but what it really does is affect the students,” Stephens said. “It affects the future of Kansas.”
The regents were unable to provide any answers on if the budget would get better, but encouraged the faculty to get in touch with the legislatures and have the alumni do the same in hope of sparking change in the legislature.