click to enlarge - Caleb Kenna ©️ Seven Days
- Vermont State University-Castleton campus
The financially troubled Vermont State University announced on Friday it will eliminate 33 faculty, administrative and staff positions and reduce benefits for the remaining workers for an annual savings of $12 million.
Workers received layoff notices on Thursday, and VTSU’s outgoing interim president, Mike Smith, made the details public on Friday in
a report that outlines cuts to the schools’ health insurance and retirement plans. The move comes t
wo years after the administration agreed with state lawmakers to cut $25 million from the budget within five years.
Twenty-one of the job cuts were at the executive, management or supervisory levels. As he has throughout his six-month tenure, Smith emphasized on Friday that the cuts were needed in order to help the system survive without the one-time funding allocated two years ago by the legislature.
Smith is also putting the final touches on a plan called Optimization 2.0 — due to be released on Tuesday — with cost-saving changes and cuts to academic programs. Those changes, he said, combined with other planned savings and hoped-for revenue increases, will help VTSU attain a balanced budget starting in 2027.
“These combined plans will put the university on a stable fiscal track for the first time in decades,” Smith said.
Faculty from several departments have pointed out errors concerning programs and staff detailed in the Optimization 2.0 plan. Rich Clark, a political science professor, said he was described as a member of the history faculty and that another poli-sci instructor was listed as a creative writing professor.
“A lot of the president’s office and folks who make these decisions don’t really understand what the staff does,” said Steve Howard, executive director of the Vermont State Employees' Association.
The Vermont State Colleges Faculty Federation sharply criticized the recommendations, promising it would seek to block the layoffs.
“You have consistently and recklessly clung to faulty data, both in the areas of finances and personnel, as the basis for your recommendations about program closures and modifications, buyout availability, and potential layoffs,” the federation wrote in a letter to Smith on Friday. “We are reviewing our options under both the Agreement and state labor laws and are prepared to aggressively pursue all avenues of relief open to our members.”
VTSU was created this summer through the merger of the former state colleges in Lyndon, Johnson, Randolph and Castleton. Since the merger process began in 2021, many services, such as human resources and enrollment management, have been combined, and some of the job cuts outlined reflect the fact that the four campuses will be sharing services that they used to have on-site.
Smith, who was hired in April to serve as an interim replacing president Parwinder Grewal, has been saying since then that the schools would need to achieve some financial savings through attrition or job cuts. The report released on Friday says VTSU was about 20 percent overstaffed, based on the ratio of students to full-time staff.
It presented a table comparing VTSU’s ratio of 11:1 with those at peers such as Framingham State University and Worcester State University in Massachusetts and Plymouth State University in New Hampshire, which have ratios around 14:1.
Eight people on the campus of Vermont State University-Castleton, the largest of the four campuses, received layoff notices, said Clark, who is chair of the campus chapter for the faculty federation.
Even before the layoffs, Castleton was reeling from the effects of consolidating the schools, Clark said. When a former Castleton dean, Honoree Fleming,
was fatally shot near campus earlier this month, he said, the school keenly felt the lack of a college president or dean of students who could manage the response. Each campus has an associate dean who is overseen by one dean located at the Johnson campus.
“The assailant is still at large, and we had nobody on our campus to coordinate this,” Clark said on Friday. “Don’t get me wrong, we have a wonderful dean of students, but they’re not here. They’ve been in the job since July, and they’re located on the Johnson campus.”
Smith denied that VTSU left Castleton on its own, saying the university's vice president of student services arrived that night to coordinate campus safety after the shooting, which happened during a week when students were on vacation. He added that he arrived at 7:30 a.m. the day after the shooting and stayed on campus for a week.
The VSEA, which represents staff, plans to write to Smith with alternatives to the layoffs, executive director Steve Howard said. Four VSEA members received layoff notices.
The health insurance and retirement plan changes announced on Friday will add costs for employees, some of whom pay nothing toward their premiums, Smith said.
Smith, 70, made it clear when he was hired that he didn’t intend to stay past his retirement date at the end of October, and he is still planning to step down on Tuesday, the last day of the month. He’ll be succeeded by another interim, David Bergh, who was hired in September; the board of the Vermont State Colleges System — which includes VTSU — is searching for a new, longer-term president who would start work in about 18 months.
Bergh will still have plenty of reorganization to manage. VTSU is trying new strategies to build its enrollment, which is key to raising revenues. It’s putting together a facilities strategic plan that is likely to lead to selling off land and buildings.
“I think I’ve laid out a path here,” Smith said on Friday.
But Howard said the timing of Smith’s tenure made it impossible for Smith to learn details of the work under way in the colleges. The process was rushed, he said.
“I know he’s trying to achieve this before he leaves so the new president doesn’t have to deal with it, but we want somebody who is going to be around to work with the faculty and staff to think this through and see what might make sense,” Howard said. “I get why he wants to do it before he leaves, but is that really in the interest of the system?”