Legislators criticize university president’s handling of announcement and question budgeting
By Morgan Chilson
TOPEKA — The Sternberg Museum of Natural History will remain open after fear of its closure pushed donors to gift $1.2 million toward its operating expenses, the president of Fort Hays State University told a legislative committee Monday.
Despite the museum’s reprieve, legislators challenged the way Tisa Mason, who has led the university since 2017, managed the recent announcement the museum would close and also her reasoning for deciding to cut the facility from FHSU’s budget.
Mason told the Legislative Budget Committee that the announcement was mishandled through no ill intent. She had planned to let the museum staff know the museum would close in December before the message was publicly released, but someone posted the information online.
Although apologizing about the way the decision was communicated, Mason declined to apologize for the reasoning behind it. The most recent legislative budget cut was $2.4 million, she said.
“We’ve run lean for years, and when you’re cutting funding from the leanest operation, you’re not trimming fat. You’re cutting into the muscle,” she said. “I want to be clear that announcing the museum’s closure wasn’t our first move. It was indeed our last resort.”
Fort Hays State cut its budget by $7.4 million over the past five years, which included reducing 55 faculty and staff positions, Mason said. In budget year 2027, the university cut activities, suspended men’s and women’s golf and cut an additional 12 positions, she said.
“I leaned into one framing question: Does this activity clearly, indirectly benefit students?” Mason said. “And if we stopped it tomorrow, would students be less likely to enroll, persist, graduate, or find meaningful employment? The museum’s beneficiaries are statewide and community-wide, but the cost sits entirely in our university budget.”
Mason’s explanation about the decision to close the museum wasn’t received well by several committee members, at least two of whom were upset they weren’t told about the decision before it was publicly announced.
Vice chair Rep.Troy Waymaster, a Bunker Hill Republican, said he would have considered alternative funding for the museum if he had known it might close.
“We could have found action to not even have this discussion right now,” he told Mason. “I mean, in your testimony, you had that you talked to the executive team, university leadership, Senate presidents, and then the cabinet and broader university community. I wish we would have been part of that as well.”
Mason said she didn’t know the museum closure was on the table when originally talking about budget challenges with Waymaster and others in the Statehouse. Fort Hays State has to make budget decisions a priority because it lags behind other universities in full-time equivalency funding from the Legislature, she said.
Full-time equivalent metrics convert student credit hours to full-time academic year students and are used to determine base funding from the state.
“After the (budget) decision was made, we had to get back into the books and see what we could do,” she said. “I mean, the other scenario is that you have a great Sternberg and no Fort Hays State University. That’s not helpful either. In the ideal world, we have both, and we have a path forward for both now.”
Rep. Kristey Williams, an Augusta Republican, was critical of the data Mason presented about the university budget and asked for additional information.
Mason told the committee that the Sternberg museum budget is about $1.3 million annually and that it brings in about $470,000, leaving a gap of about $830,000 for the university to fill.
“This was a 1% cut of an operating expense when your enrollment in the last five years has declined about 18.9% FTE. Headcount is down 14.6, and I don’t know out of that what percentage is online versus in person,” Williams said. “So we’re paying more per pupil.”
Williams said the state fulfilled its obligation by increasing expenditures over the past five years by 35.9%, even as FHSU’s enrollment dropped.
“The state of Kansas has really been there for you,” she said. “When the state of Kansas has fulfilled its obligation, 10% over (Consumer Price Index for all Urban Consumers), has given more and more money to Fort Hays State, even when you have a declining enrollment, and yet you say you can’t even manage a 1% cut of operating budget. Then I’m kind of stunned.”
Mason said the university had growing enrollment for 20 years before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and is now recovering that growth trajectory. The university is managing its money responsibly, she said.
“The amount of resources that we get for FTE is substantially less than the other institutions,” Mason said. “When you give one person $5, one person $10, and one person $15, and you said, ‘Everybody, we need $1 back,’ it’s much more difficult for the person with $5 than $10, $15, $20, and that’s that’s how we’re feeling.”
Mason listed growing expenses, including $400,000 of a $785,000 increase in health insurance and the 1% increase in Legislature-approved salary increases for employees, for which the university’s share was $381,000.
“We’re managing responsibly,” she said. “We’re going to get there, but we just couldn’t get there without making this big cut, which now has been helped by community partners.”
Williams asked Mason to submit more data about university enrollment online and in-person, and staffing levels, saying she wants to ensure the university is being responsive to enrollment changes.
