Moapa Valley CSN Center To Remain Open

Advocates for higher education in Moapa Valley had reason to celebrate at the end of last week. As the Nevada System of Higher Education Board of Regents finished hashing out budget issues on Friday afternoon, College of Southern Nevada (CSN) President Michael Richards announced that the Moapa Valley CSN center would remain open “for rural access”.

This brought a sigh of relief from many in the community who had fought hard to save the local center. “I’m just ecstatic that we were selected to remain open,” said local CSN site coordinator April Krell. “There was a lot riding on the center being here next year and in the future. I’m glad that we will be here to continue that important role.”

About a year ago, Richards announced that, due to projected state budget cuts, six of the CSN satellite centers would be closed. Among these six was the Moapa Valley center.

“The Governor’s original notice to us then was to prepare for a 14% budget cut across the board,” said CSN spokesperson, K.C. Brekken. “This would have been catastrophic to our system.”

In order to give adequate notice for CSN contract employees, Richards had to make some quick decisions, Brekken said the announcement to close the six centers “provided the insitution with the flexibility to deal with potential budget cuts if necessary.”

But the word came at the worst possible time for local education administrators. They had just begun to ramp up a program that enhanced existing partnerships between CSN and Moapa Valley High School (MVHS). The program offered college courses to high school juniors and seniors. With MVHS just having received Empowerment status, the CSN program was viewed as an essential part of a chief Empowerment goal: that of providing a better college prep experience to MVHS students.

The expanded college prep program has experienced impressive growth in the past year and is still gaining steam. During the 2008-09 school year, the prep program grew to include 83 enrolled courses for the year. That was up from 25 in 2007-08 and 13 in 2006-2007. Next year the program is expected to include about 120 enrolled courses for live instruction classes. An additional 110 are enrolled to take online CSN courses.

The success of the program has attracted interest not only at CSN but also at the school district level. “We have gotten to a point now where a lot of other high schools in the district are seeing what we are doing and are trying to model the same types of programs,” said MVHS Principal Grant Hanevold. “I think that it is great that, even though we are a small rural school in a large district, we are still on the cutting edge in this area of academics.”

Thus, when the announcement was made last summer that the center would be closed effective July 1, 2009, it caused some waves in the community. Local advocates went to work immediately to save the center by showcasing its immense value to the community. Members of the Moapa Valley CSN Advisory Board quickly mobilized in the effort.

“The function of the committee changed almost overnight,” remembers Committee Chairman John Pulver of Logandale. “Before we had been dealing with campus development, financing, public relations in the community and creating an awareness of CSN offerings. Those were our primary goals until this hit. Then all of that became a subset of doing what we could just to keep the center open.”

A group of board members pleaded the cause before Board of Regents Vice Chancellor Daniel Klaich and in a separate meeting with CSN President Michael Richards. “They were very supportive of keeping our center open,” Pulver said. “Especially when we shared the fact that the students in the rural area would have to drive long distances to get to these services and that they probably would not do so.”

“When we showed the growth that the local center was achieving and also pointed out that it was operating in a facility that was being funded by the school district, they realized that we were practically self sufficient,” Pulver continued.

CSN officials listened with a sympathetic ear. But they told the local board members that their hands were tied. They were dependent on funding decisions that had to be made by the State Legislature.

So the local advocates focused attention on their legislators. This included meetings with Senator Warren Hardy and Assemblyman Joe Hardy.

Board members also approached elected officials at the county level for support. “Commissioners Tom Collins and Steve Sisolak were very instrumental in keeping the center open,” said Board member Shari Lyman of Moapa. Lyman is a member of the CSN faculty and also serves as President of the Nevada Faculty Alliance. “Both of our Commissioners spoke to legislators, regents and the CSN President and let them know very clearly that the county was supportive of the center,” Lyman continued. “They expressed willingness to work on some alternative funding to keep the Moapa Valley center open. They made it clear that our center was critical and they pushed hard for us.”

In the end, the budget cuts to the state’s higher education system were substantial, but not as bad as they might have been. The Nevada Higher Education System ended up with a 12.5% overall budget cut. But CSN only ended up with an 8% cut. This is still significant. It will result in funding cuts in virtually every area of the school including pay cuts for employees, modest tuition/fee increases for students and substantial cuts to operations and facilities budgets.

“If you look at the cuts, no one is going unscathed,” said K.C. Brekken. “But it could have been so much worse.”

The news is generally good for the six centers that were targeted for closure last year. In a letter last Friday, President Richards announced that the six centers will remain open, though with much slimmer operation costs.

The two urban centers: A.D. Guy center and Downtown Learning center; will remain open. These two centers will have staff reassigned to streamline personnel costs. Furthermore, CSN will no longer operate the facilities at these centers. Rather the school will collaborate with private organizations to fund the operation and maintenance cost of the facilities. The Sahara West center will also remain open.

The Boulder City campus, once eyed for closure, is now expected to remain open as well. Negotiations are in progress on an opportunity for private funding that would keep that site open, the letter stated.

The Lincoln County site will remain open for at least one more year. During that time, the school will collaborate with private entities to seek alternative funding for the center.

Richards’ letter also stated simply that the Moapa Valley site would remain open. It gave no other conditions, limitations or budget constraints regarding the local center. “The word that we have received is that the Moapa Valley center will stay open just as it is,” explained K.C. Brekken. “There will be no changes to its operations.”

As the word spread that the local center had officially been taken off of the chopping block, local advocates expressed satisfaction that their efforts had finally paid off.

“I think that (this success) was due to a convergence of a lot of different efforts from a lot of people,” said MVHS Principal Hanevold. “There was (CSN Site Coordinator) April Krell, members of the Community Advisory Board, our County Commissioners and State Legislators. Just a lot of people pulling from a lot of different directions to keep the center open. It really was a true group effort and it is encouraging that we were heard and that we were successful.”

CSN officials were also happy with the results of the local support. “We deeply appreciate all of the efforts that the members of the community in Moapa Valley went to in making it known that higher education access is needed especially in the rural areas,” said Brekken. “The effectiveness of those efforts really can’t be underestimated.”