Crimson and Gold Connection; Dr. Steve Scott

Welcome to Crimson and Gold Connection, keeping you connected with the people and current of us at Pittsburgh State University. This is the Crimson and Gold Connection on 89 KRPS, and it's our final Crimson and Gold episode of the academic year at Pittsburgh State, one that started off much differently than how it ended. This week we catch up with the president of Pittsburgh State, Dr. Steve Scott. This Friday, the 2020 Kansas legislative session raged on for almost 24 hours. I first asked President Scott, now that the session has concluded, whether we have a better idea of the impact of the coronavirus on the bottom line of Kansas's state budget, and how that could affect Pittsburgh State. You know, we really don't. Normally, if the session wraps up, you have this sense of some major changes or especially right now, you might have thought they were taken on the budget, and then some reductions, but they happened. They didn't do that. What they've done is they've really left the allocations or they've called allotments

that the governor will be doing that actually are reductions in the budget. They've left that up to the governor, and they decide to focus on some other things, primarily how to deal with emergency funds that are coming from the federal government, so let's let your one more say in that, but they did not address the FY20 budget. We're going to wrap up at the end of June, or the FY21 budget. So ironically, there's actually some additional funding in the budget that was passed. But we don't anticipate that will ever occur because the governor will be forced fairly quickly into the new fiscal year to make some reductions. I don't think you'll have much choice. On Tuesday, Kansas Governor Lori Kelly vetoed the COVID-19 bill that the legislature passed last week, and called a special session that will take place on Wednesday, June 3rd. The pandemic has thrown everything up in the air, and the lack of time the legislature had to make changes to the budget didn't help.

They just didn't have much time. They only had a day. Yeah. They extended the clock, and I think there's probably going to be some questions about the locality of that. And I'll certainly let leave that to other people to think about that. But they just didn't have any time. The pandemic just retavied, as it has on everything, retavied on the session. So as they exited earlier to take there, what was going to be a three-week break, it just turned out to be they really could convene a meaningful way to conduct business without being a threat to their members, and really to the public that wants to interact with the legislature. So they didn't have a lot of choice. Well, politically speaking, it's probably wise of them to say, we're going to leave the cut to the governor. You know, I mean, there's some advantages to that as well. What does this mean for Pittsburgh State? Earlier this month, the university announced a return of in-person classes this fall. After the outbreak of the pandemic, the remainder of spring classes took place online. Summer school, which starts at Pittsburgh State on June 1st, is also, for the first

time, going to be taught entirely online. The work and planning continue over the summer, knowing that everything could change again. Well, first of all, we've got tremendous amount of cooperation and support and work, collaboration throughout the campus to make the decisions we've made and to respond to those decisions. So summer, as you mentioned, we're going to be fully online for the summer. We do have some workshops we're going to run in July, which we're going to be seeing those as, in some ways, as a test how we can operate in the midst of a pandemic and still protect people and do the kinds of things that we know are important. So we'll be doing some of that in July. And right now, our efforts are really focused on how do we get underway and more fully operational way and fall. And that's being done through three group of weeks for academic issues, having to provide instruction, having to modify instruction where it's needed.

The second group is going to look at student life, student activities, the top group, group of activities as well, student housing, what changes need to be made, student housing. And then the third group is focused on the financial implications of the pandemic and the state shortfall and revenue, the potential of changes in enrollment patterns. And so those three groups are really working hard. Several of them have, I think two of them at least have formed subgroups that have been working on various issues and thinking about the decisions they have to be made. And, you know, fall is a ways off, but if we're going to have enough masks for everybody, we better be ordering them now, so we've actually done that. If we're going to need flexible ice screens to provide some space between, and protection between our staff, frontline staff and student servicers, we've got to get after that, which we've done. So there's certain things we need to be doing right now, or be ready for the fall and we're taking those steps and really working. It's very, very hard to make that happen.

Finally, the issue of whether sports will be able to return in the fall to colleges and universities throughout the country is unknown. In Southeast Kansas, President Scott says reductions in the number of games that Pittsburgh State teams will play has already taken place. Well, I think that's one of the big unknowns in all this. And certainly we're all getting, I guess, more and more comfortable with uncertainty, because they're facing a lot of the sports. It's certainly one you see at the national level. I think this weekend, you saw a little bit of, you know, car racing is getting back underway. The credit calls outing this weekend. So Fred, one of the things we've done already, and we've been a part of this in Jim Johnson, our athletic director is part of the national governance structure. The division, too, just announced that they're going to reduce the number of competitions in all sports by 15 to 20%. And what that means is we're going to have, we're going to have your baseball games, your softball games. We're going to have 10 football games this fall, 7-11. And so that's all being with the purpose of, it's not a response to the pandemic in terms

of trying to be safe necessarily if the response in terms of the financial fallout. So the safety aspect will be governed by county health officials and state health officials. But the NCAA recognized and the conference recognized state institutions, public institutions, everybody's going to be stressed financially. So can we pull back on the number of competitions, reduce travel, reduce our costs for a student at athletic programs, and make that work better for all the campuses. And really it passed in overwhelming numbers. There's just a tremendous task for across the nation for doing this. And while we feel bad for the student athletes, we recognize this as a one-year approach. And it's something we just need to do. Dr. Steve Skahn, president of Pittsburgh State University. You've been listening to the Crimson Ant Gold Connection, a production of 89.9 KRPS. And to hear this episode again, visit our news blog at krpsnews.com.

Join us for Crimson and Gold Connection Wednesdays at 8.50 and Fridays at 350.