During the monthly regular meeting held by the South Plains College Board or Regents, the group received a detailed presidents report that covered storm recovery, construction and legislative updates.
South Plains College President Dr. Robin Satterwhite began his report by focusing on storm recovery. He began by informing the board that the college served as the head quarters for the American Red Cross once the storm had passed on May 29. The initial intake of community members began at 2 a.m. After several days, the Red Cross and the community members staying on the grounds moved to a permanent Disaster Recovery Center which was a declaration by the Red Cross. All parties including the 13 occupants relocated to Tubb Hall.
Satterwhite added that the moved allowed for more accommodations for the occupants which was comprised of two families and several independent people. Additionally, individuals from Fostering Youth Ranch spent some time at Straud Hall due to some damage their building had sustained. By June 14, all individuals were checked out of Tubb Hall and the recovery center was shut down.
Satterwhite took the time to offer his compliments to Nick Castillo and Rob Perkins who were immediately at work following the storm at 2 a.m. to coordinate with Red Cross.
“I am really proud of them and they responded immediately,” said Satterwhite. “The Red Cross had been exceedingly complimentary and appreciative of our willingness to offer any assistance we can.”
In regard to damages sustained, Satterwhite explained they had a roof inspector come to the campus and noticed there were several roofs with varying levels of damage.
“I say varying levels of damage because to my knowledge we did not have anything ripped off and there were no new significant leaks,” explained Satterwhite. “However, we do have hail damage to a lot of the buildings.”
With roughly 45 different buildings solely on the Levelland campus, the roofs with built-up tar withstood the storm better than the membrane type roofs with PVC.
“To our knowledge those membrane type roofs are not leaking, but we may have to put them on some sort of rotation to get them fixed,” said Satterwhite.
A chart was provided to the board with a majority of the buildings on campus listed with their address, square footage, roof type, value and if there was damage. Additionally each building was matched with the deductible of three percent or the minimum deductible.
Satterwhite explained that the insurance deductible is $500,000 per address (per building). If the building value exceeds roughly $15 million in value then the three percent kicks in and the deductible would be slightly higher.
An example of that would be the Texan Dome that is valued at roughly $18 million, the deductible would be $542,761.08. The dome is the only building that exceeds the $15 million value.
The buildings marked damaged on the chart provided includes the Allied Health building, auto-diesel mechanics shop, both cosmetology buildings, the old service tech building which is part of the welding building currently, Gerstenberger Hall, metal technology building, Nathan Tubb Dorm, physical education building, Small Wood Apartments, the Texan Dome and Texan Dome Annex, the visitors center and welding technology building.
The mentioned buildings are either comprised of PVC or shingles such as the visitor center.
A final column was provided where each building damaged was maxed at the $500,000 deducible minus the dome with its costs. The total expense projected is a little over $7 million in liability. Satterwhite explained that not every building will need to be maxed out at the $500,000, but it provides a point of reference as estimates had not been made available to the college at that time of the meeting.
Moving forward, the college plans to have their consultant and insurance company come to the campus together to conduct evaluations of each roof. Damaged will be assessed using drone technology that can trace heat signatures to see if there are holes from the hail that penetrated all the way through.
Once everything is turned into the insurance and they provide a full analysis, Satterwhite believes the expenses should not reach anywhere close to the $7 million mark.
Another component to the equation is FEMA assistance. Satterwhite explained that he has received mixed reviews in regard to qualifying for assistance. The board was informed that a report must be submitted before July 4 with a value in mind as well.
Regent Richard Ellis also suggested contacting colleges along the coast that are more prone to hurricane weather that sustain damages to see how their process had gone with assistance.
Once everything is turned in, FEMA will go to the Levelland campus and conduct their own survey.
“In conjunction with FEMA, our insurance and our consultant feel that a particular roof does not need replacing, that is good,” said Satterwhite. “I just want to bring everyone’s attention to the worst case scenario just to know what our position is.”
Like many across the community waiting for results from insurances and resources, Satterwhite explained the process is going to take time for all parts to play out.
In respect to non-roof damage, there were 22 windows that varying degrees of breakage. It was reported that a majority had already been replaced. There was skylight damage to the green house by the Ag building and a few fiberglass skylight damages at the rodeo arena and miscellaneous damages to fences.
Financially, Satterwhite added that the college is looking well to address the damages if needed without delaying any timeline for capital projects, which are still being weighed for approval.
Capping off the discussion of the effects the storm, Satterwhite and the board spoke highly of the college’s maintenance crew that had been working on cleaning up the campus early that morning following storm.
For the construction update, Frasier Hall has begun renovations by moving furniture out and will follow with demolition. The timeline for completion appears to have been moved further back before the beginning of the Fall semester due to the amount of extensive renovations.
Satterwhite explained that the housing department is making adjustments to avoid overbooking, but the college will be down 26 rooms at the beginning of the semester.
For the women’s complex, North Sue Spencer Hall abatement is complete along with flooring. South Sue Spencer Hall abatement is completed and flooring will be completed at the end of June. Baker Center abatement should be completed by June 28 and flooring is expected to be completed by July 5. August 9 is the projected date to have all furniture moved in and other small jobs completed.
During the legislative portion of the update, Satterwhite explained that the new funding models have provided a very positive outcome for SPC. The draft date for the next fiscal year, the funding is expected to increase by roughly $1 million over last year. Last year, the colleges funding increased by over $5 million.
For fiscal year 2025 compared to 2023, there is a funding increase of $7,084,732.
Additional topics addressed in the meeting include Vice President for Academic Affairs Ryan Gibbs discussing the current state of the ALERRT Training Breaching Facility and an Ed2Go update.
Gibbs presented a slide show of modifications made to the facility to better equip the program with breaching instruction.
Multiple door units have been constructed for officers to work on their breaching techniques continuously. Currently building three at the Reese campus is where the ALEERT training is held.
“We had a situation where multiple doors were donated to us but we did not have a facility to put them in,” said Gibbs. “We did not have a way to use those doors and our welding department built a metal frame. Our ALERRT contact and came in with his people to build plywood walls and windows to create a fully functioning breaching facility for the class to be taught year round.”
Gibbs explained that the benefit to having this facility is because most of the breaching facilities are held outside which hinders training during bad weather. To his knowledge, the new facility is the only one of its kind. The breaching facility is placed in building six.
The facility allows for different scenarios to be played out throughout the training exercise.
“We are very pleased and proud with this setup,” said Gibbs. “We are very proud of our welding faculty who stepped up. We told them they were going to take a literal battering ram to these doors and they did a phenomenal job making these doors rigid.”
Gibbs also reported that Ed2Go is open and running on the SPC website. Ed2Go offers over potentially 900 courses and Gibbs noted that several other community colleges in the region are already offering these programs. He noted that the relationship is a wholesale-retail agreement. They sell courses to South Plains College and in turn the college would sell those to the public in retail fashion.
Gibbs focus is on courses that fill absences the current course offerings and things that would work as bridge programs into other current offerings. Gibbs did note that is probably not a revenue generator for the college but certainly would deepen the course offerings.
The challenges the college is facing on increasing the course offerings is primarily filling roles for instructors for those courses. This meets that challenge in a simple way.