CCSN to drop truck driving school

Thursday, Jan. 27, 2005 | 10:49 a.m.

CCSN's controversial professional truck driving school will be eliminated because it is losing too much money, President Richard Carpenter said.

The Community College of Southern Nevada program is the only public professional truck-driving school in the Las Vegas Valley and, as such, charged students less for the licensing certificate than most private schools, Carpenter said.

But the high cost of renting truck equipment often kept the program in the red, he said.

As of today, the program more than $273,000 in the red, including all known obligations, Patricia Charlton, vice president for finance, said. That includes $166,310 in debt and $107,185 in salary and leasing obligations through the end of March.

The program will bring in some revenue in student fees from those currently enrolled in the program, Charlton said, but she did not know how much.

As a continuing education program, the truck driving courses are funded through non-state resources and should be self sufficient, Carpenter said. The program will continue until March 31 to give the less than two dozen students currently enrolled the opportunity to finish.

"This will dig the hole a little deeper before we stop the hemorrhaging," Carpenter said. "But we have students who have signed up, and even though we know it's a money loser, we are obligated to the students who are in the program to let them finish it out."

Two full-time employees, instructor Frank Sinicki and recruiter Tonya Wendt, as well as 13 part-time employees will be laid off when the truck driving program ends, Carpenter said. The salary savings will amount to about $213,000 a year, Carpenter wrote in a memo to the Board of Regents last Friday.

The program does not have any long-term leases for equipment, vehicles or facilities and will not incur any additional costs by closing, Carpenter said.

The truck driving program began in October 2001 and offered several intensive training programs, including a five-week daytime program, a seven-week nighttime program and a 10-week weekend program, Joan McGee, interim vice president of Academic Affairs, said. Students pay $4,000 to earn the certification as a commercial driver.

About 611 students had gone through training since the program's inception, McGee said.

Extended Programs administrators developed the training program during the interim before former President Ron Remington took office, Charlton said.

The truck driving program held its own financially the first year but began to lose money during fiscal year 2003 when administrators tried to expand the program too fast, Charlton said. The program and its staff were cut to try to stem the losses, but the program never righted itself, Charlton said.

The program's elimination is the final piece of a major overhaul of CCSN's extended programs that will save more than $400,000 in administrative costs, Carpenter said. The restructuring is also making way for a new division of Workforce and Community Development that will tailor courses to the needs of local businesses.

In December, Carpenter removed three administrators from their positions, including dean Theo Byrns, continuing education manager Ralph Goudy and continuing education program developer James "Jim" Shaw.

All three were major proponents of the truck driving program and had even lobbied state lawmakers in 2003 for $1 million to help the already struggling program find a new driving range, legislative records show. The bill, written by former Assemblyman Wendell Williams, D-North Las Vegas, never left the Ways and Means committee.

The trio sought the money without the knowledge of then President Ron Remington or the Board of Regents, Assemblywoman Chris Giunchigliani, D-Las Vegas, a former spokeswoman for the college, told the Sun earlier this month.

During Legislative testimony, the three administrators argued that the truck- driving program offered low-income and minority students a chance to earn good paying, secure jobs at a lower cost than the private schools. The high end for tuition at the time was $7,200, Goudy told lawmakers, and CCSN was charging the lowest at $3,198 for the five-week course at that time.

Only a few months earlier, in December 2002, Shaw told the Sun that he saw the truck-driving program as a money-maker for the college.

Neither Byrns, Goudy nor Shaw was reachable for comment.

Both Wendt and Sinicki were "hopeful" that they would be able to find new jobs but referred all questions on the truck-driving program to CCSN administrators.

Out of the four private truck-driving schools in the Las Vegas Valley, only one, All Points Truck Driving Academy in Henderson, would release its tuition information over the phone. The price tag for its 160-hour, four week course is less than CCSN at $3,400 for the certificate, a receptionist said. The school offers payment plans but no financial aid.

Darryl Gill, director of Western Truck School, located on Las Vegas Boulevard near Lamb Boulevard, would not release the school's tuition information but he said Western offers financing plans to help students afford the courses. Also, Workforce Investment Act grants are available and, of course, students don't have to pay those back.

The financing option often allows Western to "beat CCSN out" for students, Gill said.

Because CCSN's program is not for credit, students are not elegible for financial aid and there is no financing available, Rand Key, special assistant to the president, said.

Truck drivers typically start out making about $36,000 a year, and there is a shortage of drivers nationwide, Darrin Roth, director of highway operations for the American Trucking Association, said.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor estimates that the current pool of truck drivers will grow by less than 1 percent in the next decade.

"The number of potential drivers in the workforce is not growing anywhere near fast enough to keep up with the growth in the industry," Roth said.