Monday, June 20, 2005 | 9:39 a.m.
The Community College of Southern Nevada is considering ending its lease with the A.D. Guy Center in West Las Vegas in exchange for newer digs being built by the Urban Chamber of Commerce up the street on Martin Luther King Boulevard and Mt. Mariah Avenue.
The move would save the college money and allow it to partner with the Urban Chamber to offer more to the community, CCSN President Richard Carpenter said. The A.D. Guy Center, which CCSN operates through a partnership with the Boys and Girls Club of Las Vegas, has seen dwindling enrollments and is in disrepair, and the college would be responsible for a new roof and a new air conditioning system if it stays.
But the proposal, still in the most preliminary discussions as the Urban Chamber has yet to even turn dirt on its building, has given some heartburn to that district's university regent.
Regent Linda Howard said the A.D. Guy Center has dwindled because of neglect, both administratively and financially. The center receives only $88,500 in funding, about $100,000 to $200,000 less than the other four main outreach centers run by the community college, has less programming and no site administrator, Howard said.
That budget includes the salaries for just under two full-time equivalent employees and operational costs.
With the little remaining funding, the center has been unable to efficiently advertise its current services, such as in computer technology, to the community, Howard said.
The site even shut down for two weeks without notice recently when the one employee assigned to the center was on vacation, Howard said. That left community members who depend on the center's computers to do their homework, look for jobs or pay bills in a lurch.
"The Guy Center is grossly underfunded when you compare it to the system's other outreach centers, and when you look at the surrounding area these are the people who need the services most," Howard said.
Howard said it would be more cost efficient to improve the Guy Center, which has a lease of $1 a year, than to sign the proposed $52,000 lease offered by the Urban Chamber.
But Carpenter questioned Howard's assertions, saying that funding at the A.D. Guy Center has gone down over the years because no one was using the facilities. He said he personally has not decreased the budget since he took over CCSN in August 2004.
The relatively brief closure of the A.D. Guy Center was a cost-saving measure, Carpenter said.
At the same time, Carpenter said, the college spends about $4,000 per full-time student at the A.D. Guy center, considerably more than some of the the other tech centers around the Las Vegas Valley. The 71 students take so few credit-hours that they amount to the equivalent of only 22 full-time students.
Similarly, the college's Neighborhood Learning Center at the Latin Chamber of Commerce divides its $177,000 budget among only 81 students whose credit intake amounts to only 14 full-time students, according to data provided by Carpenter. The college receives funding from the state based on its full-time-equivalent students ounts, not on its total headcount.
In comparison, the Green Valley Tech Center spends about $452 on each of its 641 full-time-equivalent students and the Summerlin Tech Center spends $422 on each of its 497 full-time-equivalent students. The Western Tech Center spends nearly $900 for each if its 433 full-time-equivalent students.
Carpenter said it's just not feasible to continue pumping money into a center that is only serving a small number of students. Only about 20 people a day use the open computers, according to the college report.
"There has to be a correlation between the students and what you are spending," Carpenter said.
The center at the Latin Chamber will be adding about 10 English-as-a-second-language courses in the fall, adding another 250 students and making it more feasible to operate.
Carpenter said he is looking at partnering with the Urban Chamber as a way to reach more students in that West Las Vegas community.
"The bigger issue that we are trying to address is the declining enrollment of African-American students," Carpenter said.
The black population at the college has slightly declined in recent years when all other minority groups are increasing in size, Carpenter said. That sends up "red flags" that more needs to be done, he said.
The proposed Urban Chamber lease is more expensive, but Carpenter said it would include some of the maintenance and salary costs that eat up most of the budget at A.D. Guy.
The Urban Chamber's new site, a $3.1 million, 20,000-square-foot building partially funded by the Economic Development Association, will serve as an "incubator" for new businesses, Brown said, with a bank, a coffee shop and the chamber's offices.
Carpenter said he thought the additional activities offered by the chamber and its other business partners would help draw more people to the classes offered by CCSN in their community.
Those courses may be expanded to offer some associate degrees at the site, a possibility that Brown called exciting. "We want to have the ability to provide a venue where the student can walk in with a high school diploma and walk out with a two-year degree," Brown said.
Education is key to the forward movement of the surrounding community, Brown said.
"Education is the only thing that is going to salvage us and it improves the quality of our community," Brown said.
"... If we don't get a more educated workforce we will never move up."
Howard said she is talking with Carpenter and Nevada System of Higher Education Chancellor Jim Rogers about the center and the proposed plans. She has also gotten the item placed on the Board of Regents agenda for its next meeting.
"I encourage progress but I don't approve of duplication of services in the same geographical area," Howard said.
Howard, the Board of Regents' only black member, is also asking her fellow regents next week to resurrect a former regents committee that would look at how to promote diversity on the system's campuses.
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