Hi folks. Darren Otten, Superintendent/President at Copper Mountain College, with your follow up report from last Thursday, September 11th, 2025 board meeting. The Board of Trustees did have a closed session. There was no action taken coming out of that. And then they moved into all kinds of activities, discussions and presentations as well as action items for the day.
The big one started out with the recognition of Alyssa Zarate for the Star Award. Super exciting to acknowledge that. I know she’d been presented with that already, and the board took a minute to acknowledge that.
There was a public hearing associated with the budget, which I’ll talk a little bit more about in just a minute. And then things moved right into normal board reports. We had several information items from the district that were presented, including an AP update on 3410 non-discrimination, as well as AP 6530, which is a new AP associated with district vehicles. The board then moved into several consent items before then engaging in a prolonged discussion about goals.
And I just want to start there first. Just a quick minute, because first and foremost, I want to thank the Classified Senate, the Academic Senate, and all other folks who reached out to me with feedback for both the Board of Trustees as well as my own goals to be considered for additions. What you saw, if you were there, is that the board engaged in a conversation guided by board President Mary Lombardo, specifically trying to take the feedback that was received to engage in a way and acknowledge in a way that would ultimately reflect in their goals and to the end of the day, is that the board did add an additional bullet point to their goals based on the feedback specifically from the Academic Senate. Specifically for my goals the board also concurred that a goal specifically around enrollment, enrollment management, and retention, as suggested by the classified Senate was something that we did need to include in mine, and so that was also included.
Those goals will be publicly facing on our website and can be found specifically in the Community portion that has all the reference documents. That includes not only this year’s goals, but the previous few years goals. Kind of interesting to watch how they’ve progressed and the progress that we’ve made. So, moving on from that particular component, we did move right into the budget area and I want to stop there again as well for just a minute [to] acknowledge the work that the entire Business Office puts in, specifically Jared Zwicker, as prepping the budget for the annual adoption. And I want to just say that thanks to all the hard work, solid resource management, Copper Mountain College continues to be on very, very solid financial footing. This is different than many community colleges and many K through 12 throughout the state.
And, you know, we continue to ensure that we are able to address the needs of the campus but also ensure that we’re able to navigate deferred resources that come from the state. This year alone, we’re again looking at a five percent deficit factor deferral factor that ultimately will be hopefully paid back. But that’ll be 18 months later. And that definitely puts a little bit of a strain on cash flow as you navigate it. But again, because of our fund balances, we’re able to do that without having to go onto the market to borrow, to make payroll, pay our bills. And so again, I want to just thank everybody for that hard work that’s gotten us into a place where we are not financially strapped so badly that we can’t navigate those particular things on our own.
I also want to take this quick minute just to kind of remind folks of the student-centered funding formula and how kind of primarily we are funded. The primary driver of resources that come to Copper Mountain College in what’s called the SCF or Student Centered Funding formula, again, is enrollment. So 70% of the resources comes from essentially those students that are enrolled in that particular class, period. There’s then what’s called a supplemental allocation. And that’s where20% of our resources come. This is actually a function of how financially challenged the community is that we serve. And this is something that going back to 2017, 2018, Copper Mountain College saw a benefit, meaning more resources that came to the college, given the number of students who were Pell eligible or financially needy. And that has really continued to help us serve those students across the board and grow those various programs that we know and love to support our students.
And then the final 10% is based on student success allocation metrics. And those things can be things like completion of a transfer degree, completion of a CTE degree, but also things like math and English in the first year. And, you know, the types of things that the Chancellor’s Office has ultimately prioritized for our students. And so that all goes into a big formula that allows us to see those resource numbers kind of combined and ultimately funds our base level, general funded side of the equation. And so that’s something always important to remember, because as we focus on enrollment in the future and as we continue to focus on retention, that is something that will ultimately benefit the institution from the, you know, the baseline of more resources.
Now it takes some time. Currently, the funding formula is a three-year rolling average. So, as you ramp up or ramp down, you kind of get a little bit of a longer runway, which means as you ramp up with enrollments, you see unfunded enrollments, which potentially can be problematic if you have too many unfunded enrollments. And obviously, on the other side, if you see declining enrollments, the idea of a three-year rolling average is to give you a softer landing while your enrollments decrease. But I am happy to report that again for 24-25, we saw historic full time equivalent student enrollments in Copper Mountain College’s history and so we’re about 1,800 full time equivalent students. And that is the highest it’s ever been. And so that is something that, again, everybody here should be very proud of. And we continue to focus on expanding that to the limit that the institution can handle. And that’s going to be the question is how far can that enrollment go based on our population, based on our online enrollments, based on all of the factors that come into play, area growth, even things like, you know, are we continuing to see CVC enrollments across the state. So, these are all things that are going to kind of amalgamate together as we navigate a plan for sustained growth, but also growth only that, you know, ideally is funded. And so that’s kind of the priority for that.
As the board wrapped up their meeting, they just kind of wanted to remind everybody that our next board meeting is on October 9, 2025, but then the joint board meeting will be in November, and then we’re all the way back in December as we look towards the end, and there will once again be a reorganization of board members, board president, vice president, etc.. And so it’ll be interesting to see how all those things play out as we navigate the fall.
Have a great day, folks. Bye.
