YSU faculty union urges trustees to pause restructuring plan

YOUNGSTOWN — Ahead of the Youngstown State University Board of Trustees meetings starting today, faculty union president Steven Reale penned a letter requesting the board pause before approving proposed academic restructuring announced last week.

In four hours, 121 faculty members signed the letter.

On May 28, YSU Provost Brien Smith announced changes to address the university's financial challenges created by the coronavirus pandemic. The plan combines the Beeghly College of Education and the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences. It would cut 18 departmental chair positions, rolling their departments into other departments and demoting them to faculty — a move associated with a pay cut of about $18,000 per position.

The changes are expected to save the university $1 million annually.

In a YSU-OEA statement released the next day, Reale criticized the process, saying faculty and students had no input and the union found out about the plan minutes before the public did.

"A university is a democratic institution by its nature," said Reale. "Universities are very different than ... a corporation, where you would expect there to be a top-down leadership structure, where the CEO makes the rules and everyone else is responsible for following the CEO's vision."

The "recklessly hasty" manner in which the decision was made stands in stark contrast to the manner in which the university came together in response to the coronavirus pandemic, said Reale.

Faculty members are dealing with the uncertainty of what will happen in the fall, given the pandemic; a pending contract; and now, the restructuring.

"It seems to me that now is the time to try to make [the] environment as stable as possible," said Reale.

On May 28, Smith admitted, “The plan was rolled out quickly.

“There was not the ability to fully vet ideas like I had hoped," he told Mahoning Matters. "My hope is we'll still come out of this with a little latitude to work out some of the kinks.”

Upon learning of the plan, Reale said he was stunned. To make the decision-making process collaborative, cost-saving academic restructuring could have been the project of one of the task force groups YSU President Jim Tressel created for responding to the pandemic.

"What's the point of the task force if the larger decisions are going to be made behind closed doors?" asked Reale.

Further, Reale said, since YSU received $10 million in federal CARES Act funding, the university's financial situation is unknown. He was told the university is ending fiscal year 2020 with a balanced budget.

"Congress is currently debating the HEROES Act," said Reale. "My thinking is, why not wait and see exactly, get all of the data, understand exactly what enrollment is going to look like, understand exactly what kind of contributions we're going to get from the federal government or the state government."

Meanwhile, as trustees vote on belt-tightening for YSU academics, new turf is being laid at Stambaugh Stadium for a fall football season that may not commence due to the pandemic, WFMJ reported Tuesday.

Today, trustee committees and subcommittees will meet from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. The schedule is available here. The board will meet Thursday at 10 a.m. Meetings will be livestreamed from the board's Facebook page.

Restructuring of academic programs is part of a university-wide response to financial challenges resulting from the coronavirus pandemic. On May 27, The university announced $2 million in operational budget cuts and the elimination of 22 coaching and administrative positions.

In addition, the university and two of its employee unions have agreed to a plan that calls for furloughs, resulting in a 10 percent pay cut and a lack-of-work layoff of 69 workers, a savings of at least $2.8 million, the university said in a news release.

Earlier in May, Tressel announced he was taking a 15 percent salary reduction and that more than 100 other employees excluded from union membership will have their pay cut temporarily by as much as 10 percent, a projected savings of nearly $700,000.

Meanwhile, the university is preparing for the fall semester. Last week, YSU announced plans for the incremental return of employees to campus through the summer in anticipation of students returning for the fall semester in August.

Tressel said the university is developing plans with the intention to fully open campus as scheduled on Aug. 17, acknowledging that those plans are dependent on the COVID-19 pandemic.

This story was originally published June 3, 2020 at 4:11 AM with the headline "YSU faculty union urges trustees to pause restructuring plan."