CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The state’s community and technical colleges will be facing a few significant changes following the recent 60-day legislative session, including budget cuts, PEIA increases, and program funding alterations.

West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission Chancellor Dr. Sarah Armstrong Tucker recently met with the West Virginia Council for Community and Technical College Education to discuss several significant policy changes that were made during the session which directly effect CTCs across the state.

She said some of the changes approved during the session were positive, while others will be cause for them to continue to address the legislature about fixing.

Dr. Sarah Armstrong Tucker

While making adjustments to the budget for the institutions, Tucker said the legislature did adhere to the funding formula, including an inflationary adjustment for the entire model, which is the first time that has ever happened.

However, she said because of the confines of this year’s budget, they couldn’t use the Higher Education Inflationary Rate, which is somewhere in the 5% range, and instead, they used a .25% rate.

“So, institutions saw .25-percent inflationary rate attached to their overall budget, both the part that is subject to the funding formula and the part that is not,” Tucker said.

She said there were also increases put in for PEIA that would have an effect on CTC institutions and its employees.

Tucker said she has been looking into what those PEIA increases have meant for CTC institutions over the past three years.

“And so, for the most part, the cumulative effect of those three years is about half a million dollars, somewhere around half a million dollars for most of the institutions, for two of the institutions, Southern and Parkersburg, that number is higher,” she said.

She said what that means going forward, is that the institutions have about $500,000 less to work with a year than what they had before.

Tucker said the various institutions across the state have all been affected by this differently, some fairing very well with the funding formula while others have not, but she said that over the next several weeks, they will be working on this.

Governor Patrick Morrisey has said that he wants to have a special session soon to address PEIA changes and see what they will mean for state employees across the board.

But, Tucker said, no question about it, the PEIA changes have had a significant impact on all of the state’s CTC institutions.

Furthermore, Tucker said West Virginia Invests, the grant program that covers college tuition for any state community and technical college student to earn a certificate or Associate’s Degree, was cut by $2 million in this new budget.

She said the reason it was cut was because they were told my legislators that they have some reserves that they can use to help offset the costs this year.

“That is true for this next year, but we will be going back to the legislator the year after and asking for that increase to go back into our budget, so that you know in our general revenue budget this year, West Virginia Invests stands at about $5 million dollars, last year, we spent over $6 million dollars,” she said.

However, Tucker went on to say that the STAND program– an apprenticeship program that provides students in skilled trades the opportunity to earn their Associate’s Degree– has been approved for funding this legislative session.

After the bill was passed last year without any funding, she said this year, $1 million was allocated to the program.

Tucker said this ensures those students in the skilled trades sector counts too.

“We know that the work those groups do is incredible, we know that the hands-on technical training that they get, the math, the English training that they get is really, really strong, but it doesn’t get recognized in any of our state numbers and this is a way to help them get recognized,” she said.

Tucker said some other progress being made for state CTCs this legislative session has been in the passage of the “60 + 60” transfer, implementing the 60 + 60 transfer guarantee for community college students.

This means that students who complete 60 guaranteed transfer credit hours at a community college can have those hours fully accepted at any of the state’s baccalaureate institutions upon transfer, ensuring that they don’t need to complete more than required to earn their bachelor’s degree.

Tucker said this bill streamlines that process for CTC students and creates statewide pathways, but within certain guidelines.

“We will limit the number of pathways that there are, we’re not going to do pathways in every subject area, that wouldn’t make any sense, but for those subject areas where it does make sense, we will create those pathways and all institutions will have to honor them,” Tucker said. “I think that will be a big step forward.”

She said several states that have a much better transfer culture have already implemented this.

In West Virginia, Tucker said about 2,000 students transfer between two year and four year institutions, and so on.

She said this will also extend down to K-12 and help with some of those duel enrollment pathways there.