May 27, 2015 - Public Comments to the Board of Trustees of WCCCD by Joanne Wittbrodt
At the last Board of Trustees Meeting, one of the Board Members made a statement to the effect that he would not support a budget that included continued membership of WCCCD in the Michigan Community College Association (MCCA) because he felt that they had not supported WCCCD in its failed application for the Community College Skilled Trades Equipment Program (CCSTEP) grant from the State of Michigan.
I contacted the president of MCCA, Mike Hansen, and asked him about this grant. He indicated that MCCA advocated that the $50 million in grant money be divided among all the community colleges in Michigan, however, the State of Michigan and the Michigan Economic Development Corporation were committed to a competitive process. He also told me how to file a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to get a copy of the WCCCD application for the grant. He also suggested that WCCCD might want to explore ways to improve its application because there is a strong possibility that a second round of grant funding might be available in the near future.
Attached are copies of the following.
- Guidelines for applying for the CCSTEP grant
- Score sheet for the WCCCD application (See the last page of this file.)
- “Employer Engagement” section of the WCCCD application (See pages 39-42)
- Press release describing the winning community colleges.
- Response from MEDC to my FOIA request
- The guidelines states that “Each application must include a talent/labor/workforces plan ...”. The guidelines also provide directions on how to obtain such a plan.
- The score sheet shows that WCCCD failed to secure funding by submitting an incomplete application. The notes include the comment ,“Lack of a talent plan.” and a score of 0 out of 10 for this required component.
- Furthermore, the score sheet shows that WCCCD scored only 5 out of 30 points on the section entitled “Employer Engagement.”
- This section of WCCCDs application is literally only 3 very similar form letters from local employers, one of which is from Conrad Mallet at the Detroit Medical Center.
- A member of the Board of Trustees was willing to hold the MCCA financially accountable for the failure of WCCCD to secure funding from the CCSTEP grant. Is the Board willing to hold the WCCCD administration accountable for failing to submit a complete application?
- WCCCDs application focused only on one field, Nursing, which is technically a profession and not a trade. According to the data included in the press release, all of the successful applicants included multiple areas in their applications. Welding, CNC Machining, Automotive, and HVAC were strongly represented among the successful applications.. It would be interesting to compare the number of full-time trades faculty at these institutions to the number of full-time trades faculty at WCCCD.
- The response to my FOIA request shows how easy it should be to obtain public documents, such as applications and contracts.
- The Board of Trustees should require the WCCCD administration to be as prompt in responding to FOIA requests as the MEDC is.
- The Board should also require the WCCCD administration to file FOIA requests for some of the successful CCSTEP applications so that WCCCD can learn from its failure and submit a competitive application if a second round of funding is approved by the State of Michigan.
- The recent failure of WCCCD to achieve national accreditation for its Nursing program and this failure to secure a substantial amount of grant funding through an act of negligence should cause the Board of Trustees to scrutinize the processes that are used at WCCCD to create and submit important documents. If the WCCCD administration worked with faculty, rather than undermining and marginalizing faculty, WCCCD would be more successful in securing resources that help our students.