An Open Letter to the CVTC Board

I am speaking not as an employee or union member but as a taxpayer (I own 2 acres and my home in the town of Drammen). I am incensed that my taxes are being shunted for services rendered to other states in a wasteful manner.

I was taken aback by your professed lack of knowledge of a half million dollar rolling contract that was written earlier to cover telephony services. This is in addition to the 2.3 million dollar contract that we have with Sunguard Collegis. It was my understanding that they were hired to outsource our IT department. If this is the case, why are we spending millions in addition to their contract? An estimate that I heard was about 3 million dollars. The “word” is that there are multiple contracts out there for various services. Another probability is that every time someone, such as the corporate brass from Sunguard, comes here we pay them extra on top of their contract to the tune of about $500 per hour. When I was in business for myself I considered this kind of travel “the cost of doing business”. Wouldn’t you? Perhaps you should check to actually see what the case is.

If Sunguard is simply a management company to manage & outsource all IT/IS functions to other vendors, why are we not hiring our own managers and pocketing the extra 2 million dollars? We could pay all of our additions to the health insurance, hire extra people, and still save a whole lot of money.

Another thing you should do is read/approve the contracts before they are signed. The last contract for Sunguard that I read, which probably has been updated since then, and for more money, did not have a single word about what either party is REQUIRED to do or supply beyond us paying them for whatever service they do provide. There is not a single word about whether or not the service is adequate, timely, or any other qualification. However, do not take my word for it. READ THE CONTRACT. You also should be aware of what the legal requirements are (not the verbal statements), what happens if something does not happen, what happens if something does happen, and who can end the contract and under what circumstances. Being required to pay Sunguard no matter if the service is shoddy or nonexistent is simply unacceptable.

The first Sunguard contract stated "that the only way to cancel the contract was if one party went bankrupt." Is this still the case?

But, we are rapidly approaching that very possibility. The “word” is that we reallocated 13 million dollars this past year in order to get down to budget. I can’t prove this, but I do know that we can’t hire a part time person to cover the offices, or hire an adjunct to teach a class, or buy a box of pencils unless we can prove that we have the budget dollars. Furthermore, we seemed to reallocate 7 million dollars the year before, 5 million the year before that, 3 ½ the year before that. If this progression continues the way it appears, this year we will have to reallocate nearly a full half of our entire budget in order to meet the coming year’s budget. Maybe you should be asking some very pointed questions.

While you are asking about these issues, perhaps you should also read the climate survey that was done some time ago. The climate is very ugly. There is almost no communication at all. What will you say to AQUIP? It has been months since the survey was done and nothing has been done to make positive changes. When are we required to tell them about this?

I am constantly dealing with angry students. The local high schools are also very upset at being shortchanged at the last minute by us. The teachers and the staff are both very angry as well. I have heard that both faculty and clerical unions have agreed to put a whole stack of grievances on hold until we get a new president. He/She will have a real mess at that time. This is very unfair to anyone, except for the present president.

What do I want the Board to do? I want:

1. You to return to fiscal responsibility. We can not continue to live beyond our means.

2. You to discontinue outsourcing without any thought about the additional costs, whether fiscal, political, operational, or other.

3. You to call a moratorium on all new or renewable contracts until they can be reviewed by an outsider that does not have a vested interest in any part of them. You also need to finalize them at your table where they can be discussed openly to avoid the appearance of impropriety.

4. You to foster communication for a reduction in the need for grievances. I recommend going back to the “team” concept. Only this time, let it work. Give the authority to the team and then accept their findings for approval. If the school needs to save money, let the people inside give different proposals that might keep service and still save money. Who knows more about how a system works than the people who are doing the work. I believe that the last RFP for a call center included a proposal from a group of management and staff that included a model for low or modest cost. Are they even being heard?

5. You to go back to the student driven model. We are shortchanging nearly every student we have. We are charging them fees for things that seem to change each and every semester. We are curtailing services all over the system. If the student does not learn well via internet delivery, they will be in trouble as we can not seem to be inclusive of all students. We have forgotten that high school students who are in trouble in their respective schools do put their lives back on track and want to go on to further their education. Why not let them come here and graduate into our various programs? Why are we changing programs and courses at the last minute so that the students are continually impacted? How long do we expect them to continue to be loyal under adverse conditions?

As a board your work is cut out for you. You need to do a lot of work and do it quickly. Whether or not we are here next July will depend upon what actions you take from here out.

Thank you.

This person wished to remain anonymous for a short while. Maybe there's more to come.