Surry Community College budget holds even, student enrollment up

Surry Community College President Dr. David Shockley told the Surry County Board of Commissioners in the next fiscal year his school would be operating on virtually the same budget as the present year, even with a small uptick in enrollment.

For simplicity’s sake he told the board that the budget request was nearly identical to the school’s request from the previous year. Increases were found to fuel costs, cost of living and benefits for staff, and general facilities maintenance.

“We’re not really asking for much of an increase in any of the categories,” Shockley told the board. “Many of the line items are the same as they were last year. Increases reflect actual costs increase, cost of living, and keeping up with the pressure from inflation.”

Commissioner Eddie Harris sits on the state community college board and asked Shockley about the school’s full time enrollment number. “That FTE number is indicative of the health of the college,” he said.

“We’re actually coming out of this year with 1% growth and that is the first time we have had growth since before the pandemic, so that’s good news,” Shockley said. When all the numbers are crunched he said the final number may be higher than 1%, “but I don’t think it will be much higher.”

Having a good enrollment year is great, he said, but it could all be undone next year if the enrollment number drops. “As you know we’re funded on a two-year funding average — and we’re funded a year behind. Every good year we have at the college means we kick the can down the road another year in funding stability,” Shockley explained.

The commissioners have been told by the three public school systems that pandemic-era funding is coming to an end. Shockley said SCC is ready. “The other thing we did that was wise was we are able to carry forward funding from COVID that will have to be spent. We carried every bit of that forward in preparing for an emergency or a drop in enrollment.”

“In the past few years, we have been very judicious with that funding and have saved it intentionally in case we ran into a situation of having to make cuts and those types of things to help bridge it up.”

That means the college “will be in spending mode this year and trying to take care of some needs to move the college forward. A lot of those are going to be capital needs like maybe taking care of a burn center at the EMS facility. The one we have is from a bond project in 2004, before my time, but parts of that building are not fit for training anymore. We’re going to look at doing things like that, which will also offset the cost to this board into those types of projects.

“We are trying to keep our infrastructure moving forward and as viable as possible while offsetting costs, as we have always done at the college, while leveraging whatever resources we can into this community so that we do not have to come to you with as much.”

Facilities Director Dale Jessup told the board that projects needing attention across campus include the T-building, parking lots, roofs, and maintenance/upkeep of facilities. He said those costs are rising. “The increase on those costs is astronomical compared to what it used to be. So, we’re just using good ole’ Surry County know-how to get it done.”

In a change from other departmental requests, Shockley said he was not asking for an increase to the college’s utility budget, something the public schools, public works, and even the detention center have all had to contend with.

Shockley told the board an increase in funding for Surry-Yadkin Works was requested. In the current year, the program is funded at $266,000 and the new total would be $399,000. He said that would be an increase in funding from Surry County of $133,000 and an increase to Yadkin County of $115,000.

He said, “What that would do, when we came here originally we were designed for 100 students and this will cap it at 270, which will be our cap, so we won’t be coming back again and again” for more funding.

“The reason we capped it was because we feel that is the total capacity and quality that we can offer. If we do more than that we may be overextending ourselves and then the quality could drop and you then you lose the support of businesses, and the people in this remarkably successful program.”

Shockley said with change afoot and three new area superintendents at Mount Airy City, Elkin City, and Yadkin County schools that Surry-Yadkin Works is poised for a bright future. “The new superintendents are going to be very strong, and we won’t miss a beat which I think is another testament to the strength of this program that we built together.”