[Speaker 2] (0:00 - 0:23) I hereby call the meeting of the Lee College Board of Regents on December 18, 2025 at 6 p.m. to order. It looks like we have a quorum. All is good there. Next on the agenda will be Regent Hall will deliver our invocation and pledges to the United States and Texas flags. Regent Hall, join me in prayer. [Speaker 10] (0:23 - 1:15) Father and Creator, we come to you in this holy season in celebration of your birth, thanking you for your son, the sacrifice that he gave for this season. I just pray that the spirit of peace that he brought to the world can be a spirit here. God help us as we conduct the business of this college and help us to work with each other, with the community, with the race, and pray that that love will spread even beyond our campus, our community, God. Bless our efforts this evening. I pray that you'll bless our entire campus and our student body as we go into the celebratory Christmas season. In Christ's name we pray. [Speaker 19] (1:16 - 1:16) Amen. [Speaker 15] (1:17 - 1:46) Please join me in the pledge to the United States flag. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. And pledge allegiance to the Texas flag. I honor the Texas flag. I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one state under God, one and indivisible. [Speaker 2] (1:46 - 1:54) Thank you. Thank you, Regent Hall. All right, next on the agenda, we have a donation presentation. Dr. Villanueva, you. [Speaker 6] (1:54 - 2:38) Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I, am I on? Yes. Okay. So, I am honored to introduce two different groups of individuals who are with us and I think, well, actually, John, you're by yourself, right? Okay. That's okay, but you're just as important. So, I am really honored to introduce Wesley Carter and several guests who are with us. He is the chairman of ATC International Incorporated and he is here to present the college with a special gift and I'm going to turn things over to Wesley to introduce himself and those with him and provide whatever comments he would like to make. [Speaker 3] (2:40 - 3:01) Thank you. Thank you all. Thank everybody in attendance. My name is Wesley Carter. I am retired shell and I'm also the chairman of the International ATC. It's short for the Analyzer Technology Conference and you were able to go to the last one we had. [Speaker 6] (3:01 - 3:04) Well, Ed, by the way, he forced me, so. [Speaker 3] (3:05 - 3:06) Well, you're more than welcome to come again. [Speaker 6] (3:06 - 3:10) It wasn't under duress. I really enjoyed it, but I just wanted you to know that Ed forced me. [Speaker 3] (3:10 - 7:44) Oh, that does not surprise me. I have dealt with Ed for a long, long time. That's okay. We are an international organization. It's a non-profit. Our mission, our purpose is to advance the art and science related to theory, design, manufacture, and use of analytical instrumentation and controls in various sciences and technologies. Our mission statement is the mission of our ATCI is to further the education of all members of the analytical measurement community, including but not limited to the use of symposium, training, public meetings, and newsletters. Today I have Grant Merriman. He is an at-large member and Jerry Zalumke. He is another at-large member of our board of directors and I happen to be the chairman. The details, the description of our conference is vendors and end-users come together to present new technologies and applications within the industry. Training is a core part of our conference. That is for subject matter expert engineers and also new technicians from Lee College, which we promote a lot. We are a non-profit volunteer organization under the umbrella of the 501c3, which is the international organization, which is ATC International Incorporated. I stepped down as the chairman and next year our chairman will be a gentleman from Canada. Hopefully the next year or two years after that it will be somebody from Holland that is going to be our chairman. So we are truly an international organization. We are presenting this donation and the reason is because we have been connected to Lee College ad bomb and couldn't even tell me how long it was. I was the one who wrote the Department of Education and signed it to get the initial funding for the curriculum that was generated by the Department of Education person that came in with Lee College and San Jacinto College. We've partnered more with Lee College because Lee has taken that ball and run with it and we are appreciative of that. Your lab and many of the instruments that you're doing are donated by our members and as I've been told, I volun-tell people stuff or twist arms. I'm retired Shell, Jerry is retired Balmett or Siemens for 30 years, Grant, he's ABB, he works. Most of our board members are still working. So it's up to the retirees to really do the heavy lifting when it comes to the corporation or to the international organization. Are there any questions that you have? You do know the amount that we're giving you, right? $30,000 is what we're giving you this term. Just to let you know, it's important to us and the reasons it's important to us is because we recognize that we're aging out. Our organization is aging out and we need young people and so we have made a strong commitment to go to the colleges and to recruit not only males but females too because we are also not gender diverse. Our organization is almost dominated by males. There's probably only four or five women in our industry and that needs to change. So I've been an advocate of this for a long time. [Speaker 6] (7:44 - 7:45) Look at all the women clapping by the way. [Speaker 3] (7:46 - 8:20) I've been an advocate of this for a long time and that's nothing new when people know me they know who I am. I do not speak with a forked tongue. So is there any other questions you may have? Otherwise, we are presenting Lee College with $30,000 and hopefully this is the first of many that is coming your way. We cannot do it without these gentlemen here too. [Speaker 6] (8:24 - 8:28) Our amazing faculty members are all happy. [Speaker 3] (10:41 - 10:48) Thank you very much. I'm not always this nervous. I just don't give $30,000 away all the time. [Speaker 19] (10:52 - 10:52) Okay. [Speaker 6] (10:56 - 11:34) I am also honored to present John Peterson or introduce John Peterson. He is, this is a long title so I have to read this off of here. He is the VP of Business Development and Marketing at United Steel Structures, Inc. and he is the scholarship chair for Houston GPA Midstream who is with us to present, and this, I love this, a check in the amount of $30,000 which is the first installment of their $100,000 endowment to Lee College to support students who are pursuing degrees in instrumentation, in process operations, and related fields. So we are honored to have you here. John, would you like to make any comments at all? [Speaker 5] (11:35 - 14:06) Thank you. Yeah, thank you for having me here. It is a long title so I apologize. Part of, I guess I'll just give you all a background of the Houston Gas Processors organization of who we are. We, like the previous gentlemen's, we are a nonprofit organization solely focused on the oil and gas industry, primarily within the greater Houston area. I was the chair of the board, I think, six years ago. Since then, I've taken over the role as the scholarship chair. And when I got into it, we had been donating money year after year to the traditional four-year universities, the UTs, the A&Ms, A&M Kingsville. It's great to support them, but I come from a different background where, very similar to a lot of the students here, blue collar, hardworking, not that those others aren't, but I really wanted us to focus on getting involved with the communities that we live and thrive and work in. And so my mission has been, and now is the board's mission, is to get with the community colleges within the greater Houston area, support them, because all of our members are companies like Targa's, P66, Energy Transfer, all of the midstream companies. And we all know that we need workers and we need welders and we need engineers. And so the goal is to touch as many students as we possibly can. We know that there's a lot of very talented young individuals who just need the support and they want to better tHimselves and better their lives. And so that's our mission, is to try to help all of the organizations within the greater Houston area to sponsor those students to help them better their lives. So that's our goal. And Lee College was identified primarily because our chairman works for Targa and he works out here in Baytown. And so it made a lot of sense to him that we start with y'all. We have... [Speaker 6] (14:06 - 14:09) You can come back anytime, too, if you want to put him back. [Speaker 5] (14:10 - 14:49) We've also identified, we have an endowment set up with Lone Star College. That was the first one that I put in place and the board was gracious enough to name the scholarship after me because of my work within the organization. We've partnered with San Jack and then Houston City College. Is that what it was? Houston City College. And so, like I said, our mission is over the next probably three to five years is to try to branch and surround Houston and all of the community colleges and try to help as many students as we can. [Speaker 6] (14:49 - 14:52) We're so very grateful to you. Thank you. Thank you. [Speaker 5] (14:56 - 15:00) Do you want me to give you that actual check? [Speaker 2] (15:02 - 15:04) Hold on to that check. Hold on to the check. [Speaker 5] (15:06 - 15:08) That's the actual check. [Speaker 16] (15:09 - 16:18) Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. [Speaker 2] (16:43 - 16:48) We may need to bring Delane back with you to all our meetings so she can help us get organized. [Speaker 18] (16:49 - 16:50) No. [Speaker 2] (16:50 - 17:25) Thank you for your help. Oh, no. All right. Those are two great gifts to Lee College and we know that we're going to put that money to great use and provide the workforce that they need today and in the future. So, thanks to the foundation as well. Thank you very much. All right. Next order of business, disposition of minutes. We have the building committee meeting, November 19th, 2025. The board meeting, November 20th, 2025. And special board meeting, December 1st, 2025. Anyone who's read the minutes, I'll entertain a motion to approve. Move approval. [Speaker 17] (17:25 - 17:25) Second. [Speaker 2] (17:26 - 17:47) Motion from Regent Cotton. Second from, I heard stereo. I'm going this way. I'm leaning this way today. All right. Second from Regent Geralds. Any comments, corrections to the minutes? Hearing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Minutes are approved. We'll move to a report of the chairman. I do not have a report. We'll move straight to the building committee report. Regent Fontenot. [Speaker 9] (17:53 - 18:32) Okay. So, we met yesterday and we had a very informative meeting and we received a presentation from Pfluger who will be rebooting our facilities master plan in January. The reboot will add approximately $100,000 to the original $450,000 contract. We are also, and the timetable will be 9 to 12 months starting in January. We were also informed of the upcoming demolition of the TV8 building. This will occur in January. And we also received our regular monthly updates to ongoing projects. [Speaker 2] (18:33 - 18:52) All right. Thank you, Regent Fontenot. Any questions for the building committee? Very much. We'll move to policy committee report. Looks like you had a deer in the headlight look. You know it comes up every meeting, right? [Speaker 19] (18:52 - 18:53) Okay. All right. [Speaker 2] (18:55 - 19:00) All right. I got it right this time. It's you. All right. Audit investment committee report. [Speaker 17] (19:00 - 19:20) Yes, we met this week and you will get a report from Whitley Penn on our annual audit. Very, very good annual audit. We did discuss other things, but I have to apologize because I left my notes. I didn't put them on my phone. And I left my glasses, so I couldn't have read them anyway. So, next month I'll give you a much more detailed report. [Speaker 2] (19:20 - 20:24) All right. Well, thank you very much. The last report we have is called our annual Board of Regents training report. I'm just going to report for our policy BBD legal and BBD local. The following regents have completed these trainings. We have Regent Herron Thomas completed intensive short orientation, Open Meetings Act training, Lee College Board of Regents orientation, Public Information Act training, public funds investment training, training for members of governing boards, full-day orientation at Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board's Higher Edge Conference. Along with that, the following regents have completed the annual cybersecurity training. Regents Weston Cotton, Daryl Fontenot, Gina Guillory, Judy Geralds, Mark Hall, Mark Himsel, Gilbert Santana, Herron Thomas, and Pam Warford. So, we have officially reported our training for this year. All right. Next, we'll move. Any questions on that report, by the way? All right. Next, we'll move to report of the president. Dr. Villanueva. [Speaker 6] (20:24 - 21:40) Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'd like to begin by acknowledging the very tragic loss of a Sterling High School student who passed yesterday. Our thoughts and prayers are with the student's family, but also our Goose Creek ISD partner. Everyone is going through a lot, and at any rate, we're very sorry for their loss and our loss as partners. I want to thank everyone who worked as an incredible team for ensuring that our commencement ceremonies this past Saturday were successful and special for all of our graduates and their families. And thank you to all of the board members who were able to attend the ceremonies. I'd also like to extend my thanks to our amazing student success and belongingness team who led our second annual student-parent commencement. All our commencement ceremonies are special, but it's quite an amazing experience when you were able to witness our student parents graduate with their children dressed up in regalia. So, thanks again also to the board members who attended then. And then finally, I wanted to acknowledge and thank the ERP Selection Committee who led the cross-campus efforts to evaluate ERP systems. And I'm excited to present our formal recommendation to the board tonight. That concludes my report. [Speaker 2] (21:40 - 21:49) Dr. Villanueva, any questions? Thank you. Next, we'll move to informational reports. Report of Lee College resignations and or retirements. Dr. Villanueva. [Speaker 6] (21:51 - 22:05) Resignation for Johnny Ware, Liberty Education Center. And we have a resignation from Christopher Moss, Faculty in Welding. And then finally, we have a retirement. Frederick Cole, Cabinet Making Faculty, Huntsville Center. [Speaker 2] (22:08 - 22:09) Questions for Dr. Villanueva? [Speaker 16] (22:10 - 22:13) Next, we'll move to the financial report. Mr. Atkin. [Speaker 1] (22:24 - 25:04) Good evening. So, starting with our cash position, you can see that we have $15 million in cash as of the end of November. Obviously, in December, we start to collect our ad valorem taxes. So, you'll see that increase through the end of March as we continue to collect that revenue along with tuition revenue for spring semester and our second payment from the state. And then after March, you'll start to see our cash balances start to drop back down. In terms of our financial performance through November, you can see that our net revenue is continuing to exceed our expenses through the first three months of the year. Everything is trending very well for the institution. In terms of our projected over and under, right now, we're projecting revenue of $750,000 in excess of our estimated budget this year, which is always a good sign related to growth and the collection of revenue. And we potentially will be $1.2 million under budget on our expenses. However, our contractual services and our other operating expenses do not occur evenly month over month. And so, we expect to see some expenditures on those two particular categories pick up after the new year. In terms of our facility projects, the cosmetology renovation is in the closeout phase. We had very little activity. We had no activity on our ADA phase projects. We will see more of those expenses incurred as we continue the work and get billed by the contractors. And then in terms of our capital projects by departments, you can see of the $9.5 million that was originally allocated, we've allocated $450,000. We've expended $263,000. And that work continues to ramp up. The first several months are bidding and procurement. You'll see those expenses accelerate as we get into next semester as well. In terms of our restrictive fund, we're finally past the lockout by the federal government. And so, our deficit on the federal grants dropped from a million in October to $700,000 in November. And in December, we'll be back down to our typical three-month lag, particularly on our Perkins grant. With that said, are there any questions on our financials through the end of November? [Speaker 16] (25:08 - 25:12) Questions? All right, thank you very much. [Speaker 2] (25:14 - 25:18) All right, next we'll move to public comment. Do we have anyone signed up? [Speaker 5] (25:18 - 25:19) Mr. Chairman, we have David Isaac. [Speaker 2] (25:20 - 25:41) David Isaac, come on up. Rush, we'll give you set-up time. Thank you, Chairman. [Speaker 8] (25:42 - 28:16) And if you don't mind, get these a little higher for me next time. So, I just wanted to report to the, Mr. Chairman, just wanted to request that, let's see, how do I frame this without being incriminating? Let's see. I'm looking forward to hearing back from you guys about some of the things I've asked for in the past. Just wanted to remind you, Mr. Chairman, that some of this is important to some of our alumni like myself, who have been part of Lee College for now 20 years. The funding for student government has been stagnant over the years. I know that we've been in different financial situations over the last couple of decades, but from 2006 to now, that budget has either stayed the same or gone down, and I haven't heard or been corresponded back with about that particular issue. So, I kindly request that I get that information, please, so that we can assess how we can empower students in terms of student government. I'd also like to look into the fact that our student service fees aren't being paid, possibly. Again, I was told that I was going to be heard back from, and I'm looking forward to that. That our impact students aren't paying into the student service fee, yet they are serving mostly on student government and in a lot of other clubs, and I would like to see whether or not that is true and how we can assess that and address that and empower traditional students as well to serve on student government. I know we spend a lot of time on basic needs, but if you look at Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, you look at the top of that, people are trying to self-actualize. If it wasn't for student government, if it wasn't for the Anime Club, if it wasn't for Honors Club, if it wasn't for the Walter History Club, I wouldn't be where I'm at today. I wouldn't be the entrepreneur that I am today, and I think traditional students shouldn't miss out on those opportunities. And so, I'd also like to make sure that we don't forget what we learned in this last election cycle about Board of Regents endorsing, meddling, and participating in the political process. I think they should stand back from that. I also would like some sort of assurance to the general public about that particular issue, and so I hope that my tone was palpable enough for you guys tonight not to ruin your Christmas dinner that I'm not invited to, all right? So, have a good one. Thank you. [Speaker 2] (28:16 - 29:27) Thank you, Mr. Isaac. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas. All right, next item on the agenda, we have items of action. We'll begin with personnel. We have a consent agenda. All right, consideration of new hires. The administration recommends that the board approve the new hires as presented below. We have Dr. Richard Davis, Mr. Saad Khan, Mr. Brian Knight, and Ms. Brittany Brown. Pleasure. Motion from Regent Faunt, no second from Regent Hall. Any comments or questions on this item? Hearing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. That item is approved. Move on to new business. All right, first item, consideration of annual audit report for fiscal year 2024-2025. The administration recommends that the board receive, discuss, and accept the annual audit report for fiscal year 2024-2025 as presented by Whitley Penn. Carol, are we going to have a? [Speaker 16] (29:28 - 29:29) Okay, thank you. [Speaker 4] (29:37 - 34:13) Good evening. I'm very happy to be here. My name is Laura Lynch. I'm an audit senior manager at Whitley Penn, and I've got a quick presentation for you to go through the results of our fiscal year 2025 audit. So we're just going to go through an overview of the process, what we do. The purpose of our engagement is to provide reasonable assurance that the financial statements are free of material misstatement and to issue our independent audit opinion in accordance with generally accepted auditing standards as well as government auditing standards. We also provide assurance on compliance with major federal and state programs. You have a federal single audit under the uniform guidance and then your state single audit under Texas grant management standards. The key areas that we focus on include revenue recognition, your tuition and grants, and then compliance with those federal and state programs. Your major programs this year included student financial aid cluster, makes up 17.5 million or 86% of your total federal awards. And under the state side, we had Texas educational opportunity grant at $950,000, which made up 72% of your total state awards. Our audit process includes coming out earlier in the year. We do planning and risk assessment. We gain an understanding of your internal controls and we test those internal controls. So we test payroll transactions, we test invoices, we test your procurement process, we test revenue transactions in order for us to come back after the end of the year, after we have gained an understanding and comfort that your controls are operating as they're designed. And we do our substantive testing. What we do then is we confirm your balances, we confirm cash and investment balances, debt balances, and we perform analytical procedures in order to be able to issue our opinion and the report. So we do have an unmodified or clean opinion. What that tells you is that the financial statements are presented in accordance with government auditing standards. We identified no material misstatements, no material weaknesses or significant deficiencies in internal control, and no instances of noncompliance required to be reported under government auditing standards. We also have required communications to wrap up our audit. That is that we received all the supporting documentation that we requested. We encountered no difficulties in performing the audit. Quite the contrary, Renee and her team worked very hard to give us all of the information that we asked for and we asked for a lot of information. Your internal controls are operating as designed. You do have estimates in the financial statements. What we do as it relates to estimates is we look at that underlying supporting documentation that goes into the estimates and determine that the finance department has a reasonable basis for making those estimates. And then we review your accounting policies, determine that they're standard in accordance with industry standards, and then we look at your new GASB standards to ensure that they are implemented appropriately. Related to the federal single audit results, again, we have an unmodified opinion on your compliance for major programs, no findings or question costs, no material weaknesses or significant deficiencies in internal control over compliance, and your schedule of expenditures of federal awards or SEFA is prepared, accurate, and timely. The direct and material compliances related to student financial aid that we're required to test includes cash management, eligibility, we do a lot of student eligibility testing to make sure that the appropriate students are getting the financial aid, we look at special reporting, institutional eligibility, verification, we look at the disbursement to or on behalf of the students, return of Title IV funds, the NSLDS reporting. As you can see, a lot of work goes into that student financial aid as a major program, a lot of testing there. For the state single audit, also unmodified opinion and compliance for major programs, and then direct and material compliances for the TEOG is a little bit shorter. We look at the activities allowed or unallowed, we look at cash management, eligibility, matching, make sure the funds are used in the correct period, and financial reporting. And that is Patrick Simmons, he's the audit partner. He would be here to answer any questions if he could, but if you have any for me, I'd be happy to answer those. [Speaker 16] (34:16 - 34:32) Questions? Comments from the committee? Great, thank you for the presentation. Thank you so much. [Speaker 2] (34:33 - 34:49) So we have a motion and a second. Any other discussion or comments, questions? Hearing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed, no. Annual audit report for fiscal year 2024-2025 is approved. I missed the motion. [Speaker 9] (34:51 - 34:56) I don't think we... Oh, was that this one? Yeah, you two. Yeah, oh yeah, me. [Speaker 2] (34:57 - 36:02) Yeah, the two of you made it. Okay, thank you. Regent Fontenot, then Regent Hall. Okay. Okay. Next item on the agenda. Consideration of limited amendment to tax abatement agreement, Chapter 312, NRG Cedar Bayou 5 LLC, Project Moonshot Reinvestment Zone. The administration recommends that the board approve a limited amendment to the tax abatement agreement, Chapter 312, with NRG Cedar Bayou 5 LLC, Project Moonshot Reinvestment Zone, value and term provision. Amend Section 4, value and term of agreement, so that the college abatement commences January 1, 2029, instead of 2027, and runs for tax years 2029 through 2038, 10 years, with no other changes to negotiated percentages or mechanics. Any more detail on this? Might be a little behind schedule. [Speaker 14] (36:02 - 36:06) Can you explain the advantage of the abatement, of this agreement? [Speaker 2] (36:06 - 36:08) Would you like to explain the advantage of the abatement? [Speaker 1] (36:12 - 36:33) In terms of revenue or tax incentives for the college, there are none. This abatement was approved really before my time here, but this is an incentive to invite NRG to expand their operations within the Goose Creek Taxing District. [Speaker 2] (36:34 - 36:55) Yeah, a little bit behind it. It was a partnership with Chambers County and the City of Baytown, and we were asked to participate in this incentive abatement. And in the spirit of partnering with our other taxing entities and hopefully starting the process of looking at abatements that would be beneficial to us by incentivizing projects to come to this area, we agreed to do it. [Speaker 14] (36:56 - 36:59) But there's no incentive to us? Okay. [Speaker 2] (37:02 - 38:14) Any other questions? Comments? Move approval. Did we not get a motion? All right. Well, oh, I just read the thing. All right. I've got a motion from Regent Cotton. That guy, Regent Cotton, and a second from Regent Warford. Somehow I let the question come before the motion and second. All right. Are there any other questions or comments related to this item? Hearing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion's approved. Next item on the agenda, consideration of purchase of four vehicles from Silsby Ford. The administration recommends that the board authorize the president or her designee to negotiate final terms and approve the purchase of four vehicles from Silsby Ford for the sum of $138,821. Motion from Regent Himsel. Second, Regent Geralds. Are there any questions on this item? Do you have the information? [Speaker 9] (38:14 - 38:18) I don't have it, Mr. Chair. Oh, we've got, oh, we've got. But I will tell you, that was one of the items we've got. [Speaker 2] (38:18 - 38:28) Yeah, so we've got, we've got our facilities guys coming up. They've got all the information. Yeah, it was presented to the building committee, but I don't recall the details. They're our oldest vehicles. [Speaker 11] (38:32 - 38:55) How are we doing? Good evening. Yeah, this is actually the start of our lifecycle program that we're going to be running. The four vehicles that we're training at this time are two 2006s and one 2005. We'll be continuing this program throughout the years to get rid of the older vehicles and reenhance the vehicles that we have here at Lee College. [Speaker 2] (38:59 - 39:06) Several other questions that came up in the building committee yesterday. If anyone has a question, we'll be able to answer it. [Speaker 13] (39:06 - 39:15) Just a question. Do you also use mileage and maintenance costs in addition to the years to determine the order in which you move them out? [Speaker 11] (39:16 - 39:59) Right now, we're looking at everything that we have with the vehicles. We're looking at the actual value of the vehicle, what the vehicle is worth to us, what it's actually worth to the college as a whole. We're looking at all the maintenance records that we have. We're using our school dues system to actually track everything from this point on on oil changes, tire rotations, anything that we have to do to the vehicle. So we'll have actually a full standing vehicle record. Some of the vehicles in the past, we've been holding them together with bubble gum and baling wire. And that's not even a joke. Yeah, we use duct tape. Yes, ma'am. But with this program, I believe that we can actually stay on a cycle to not only have safe, reliable vehicles, but also to show a better image to the community about Lee College. [Speaker 19] (40:00 - 40:01) People are looking at mileage. [Speaker 11] (40:02 - 40:04) Yes, we are gonna be keeping mileage as well. [Speaker 2] (40:04 - 40:10) Not only looking at mileage, they're looking at engine hours. Yep. Because the vehicle's idle and they don't have mileage, but they have engine hours. [Speaker 11] (40:11 - 40:13) That's with a simple OBD2 sensor. [Speaker 5] (40:13 - 40:16) Also making sure they're all being used. [Speaker 18] (40:19 - 40:24) Correct. We're looking at the full usage of all the vehicles throughout the college right now. [Speaker 2] (40:24 - 40:27) They're tracking everything with wheels and an engine. [Speaker 11] (40:28 - 40:38) Yeah, that's not only the actual vehicles, wordworthy vehicles, it's also our golf carts, our Kubotas. Anything that we have, it's on this report that we're actually trying to do for a full life cycle change. [Speaker 16] (40:39 - 41:03) Any other questions? Yep. [Speaker 2] (41:04 - 41:54) Any other questions, comments? All right, hearing none. All right, thank you. Thank you. Hearing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion's approved. Next item, consideration of data box contract for campus wireless upgrade. The administration recommends that the board authorize the president or her designee to negotiate final terms and approve data box corporation for upgrade of the campus wireless controllers and access points for a total of $154,785.75. Second. Motion brings Gerald, second Regent Cotton. Any comments or questions or additional information needed? [Speaker 16] (41:57 - 42:06) Does this include student housing? One no. Yes. Does? All right. [Speaker 2] (42:07 - 44:35) Any other questions? Hearing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion's approved. Next item, consideration of Dell contract for upgrade of computer labs. The administration recommends that the board authorize the president or her designee to negotiate final terms and approve the purchase of computers from Dell for the sum of $342,845.40. Motion from Regent Cotton and I'm going to give a second. Regent Thomas, there we go. You're stereo, but I'm going to, I'm leaning left today, I don't know why. All right. Any information needed on this item or any comments or questions? Hearing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion's approved. Next item, consideration of agreement with Pfluger Architects for college master plan services. The administration recommends that the board authorize the president or her designee to negotiate final terms and enter into an agreement with Pfluger Architects for college master plan professional services in the amount of $370,300. Motion from Regent Fontenot, second from Regent Warford. Additional information or comments or questions on this item? Hearing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion's approved. Next item, consideration of agreement with Precision Task Group, PTG, for workday ERP and implementation services. The administration recommends that the board authorize the president or her designee to negotiate final terms and enter into an agreement with PTG for a 10-year college ERP system subscription with workday and implementation services provided by PTG for a total of $20,746,599 over a 10-year period. Got a motion from Regent Himsel. Second from Regent Geralds. Do we have a presentation? [Speaker 1] (44:35 - 55:53) I do. Of course, if you guys just want to approve this, we can skip the presentation. All right, so just a reminder, the ERP system is the core accounting and operational system for the college. Everything that has to do with the operation of the college eventually connects into the ERP system. The college adopted PeopleSoft in 2002 which was an appropriate wise decision at the time. Obviously, that's the older generation of ERP systems and it's no longer meeting the needs of the college the way that we would like to. So during the summer, one of the budget items that we brought forth to the board was $2.5 million for the beginning of the replacement process for the ERP. In terms of the evaluation process, it started in August and we had several steps that we went through. First, we formed a selection committee and on that committee, we have representation from all operational areas of the college. So you have Dr. Walcerz from Academic Affairs, Dr. Bennett from Student Affairs. I'm on the committee from Finance and Business. We have Leslie Gallagher who's representing Human Resources in the President's Office and we have Farrell Prestidge who is our CIO and represents IT. The committee identified the must-haves and we specified that there were two absolute must-haves in this new product. Number one, that all of the modules required to operate the college be existent in one system. So finance, HR and student modules. The second was that the system would be hosted in the cloud. So we would no longer be responsible for maintaining the hardware, maintaining the system. That would be done remotely and provided by the vendor. We would simply be managing our access and the operation of the system. After we identified the must-haves, we identified only a handful of systems that even met those two requirements. That was Ellucian's Banner SAAS, Oracle Cloud ERP and Workday ERP. Once we identified those vendors, we reviewed and determined that each of those vendors had already been competed on state contract. And what that means is that from a procurement perspective, we're not obligated to go through a full RFP process. In fact, from a procurement perspective, we could have picked the one that we liked and just pursued and signed with them. We, of course, didn't want to do that. We still wanted to go through and make sure that we could make the best decision for the college in the long term. So we offered each of those vendors the opportunity to present their best offer in the mechanism that they felt represented their product the best in hopes that that would provide us with the greatest understanding of each of those products without artificially limiting what they're doing through a structured RFP process. Each of the vendors went through a pretty similar process. They all wanted to do discovery with key stakeholders from across campus to figure out what we do and what we need. Each vendor wanted to do several days of demonstrations that were extensive and included stakeholders from across the campus. And then each vendor went through a process of describing and exploring their implementation process. Now, what we're presenting today for recommendation is the subscription with Workday and implementation by PTG. And they presented together through this process. Following all of these demonstrations that took place over the course of three months, we conducted a survey with all of the participants. And in that survey, we asked what they thought of each of the individual products, what did they think of the individual modules within those products, right? So how did the finance modules compare to each other? How did the HR modules compare to each other? How did the student modules compare to one another? And then finally, we asked them, how do you feel each company is doing in terms of integrating AI and advancing their product through technological advancements? Following the survey and actually after the survey, before the survey, during the presentations, we were checking references related to these products. So all of the vendors had references that were part of their presentations, right? So members of other colleges and universities that have implemented their product, they did a presentation and we were allowed to ask questions. In addition to that, they provided references to us and we took it one step further and reached out to our colleagues at institutions that have implemented these products to get the down low from our friends and our colleagues about the experiences that they've had. The last activity that we engaged in was to seek counsel from a current consultant. So, so boring that I'm driving the president out? So PS Tuners is a current consultant for IT and they're a trusted consultant. They've done exceptional work for us in helping us to maintain our PeopleSoft systems and their expertise is really in implementation and utilization of ERP systems. And so we sought their guidance in terms of addressing the questions and the concerns that we had internally trying to compare the different systems with one another. And we found their feedback to be incredibly helpful as the very last source of information that we sought in terms of trying to decide what system we wanted to select. Based on all of that information, which was collected by dozens of individuals over the course of three months, we came to our final recommendation, which is Workday and PTG. So let's talk about the evaluation criteria and particularly the key evaluation criteria. So obviously vendor history and reputation and there are other things, but the three most important criteria that we evaluated were price, implementation timeline, and then fit and functionality of the actual system. In terms of price, an ERP selection is genuinely a 20 to 25-year commitment. If we're going through this hideously long and painful process more often than that, we're doing something wrong as an institution. So we're genuinely trying to take the long-term approach to making this decision, which meant we pursued a 10-year contract, which is the maximum length of contract that can be awarded under a state cooperative contract. The initial contract that we are comparing includes both the subscription price for the product as well as the implementation costs, and you can see that I have that broken down here on the screen in front of you. One thing I would note, Workday was the only company that recommended that we set money aside for a contingency, and that contingency is not part of their written contract. That is money that we would like to set aside and identify as part of this approval so that we have those funds available in the event that there are unforeseen expenses in the future, and those unforeseen expenses could be the need to hire additional staff to help us work through this process. We are a lean and mean organization. We don't have a lot of excess manpower, but this particular process is going to require a tremendous amount of effort. While still maintaining PeopleSoft and continuing to serve our students, we're going to be in the process of building, developing, and implementing an entirely new system, and so that $2 million gives us a little bit of cushion if we need it in order to acquire additional resources as necessary to ensure absolutely that the implementation is successful. One thing I will say about the references that we checked. Everyone said it's long and it's difficult and it's painful, and that really wasn't a surprise. The ones who had a pleasant experience nailed the implementation. They were quick with their responses. They were decisive. They coordinated with the implementers well. The ones who had a terrible experience didn't do that, and that led to delays and additional costs and generally a more frustrated experience, and so I appreciate the recommendation from Workday to ensure that we are properly prepared for inevitable contingencies during this process, but as you can see with the contingency, it does land them as the most expensive vendor. The other thing that I would like everyone to keep in mind is after the initial 10-year period, the only expense that we will have as an institution is essentially the subscription cost, so you can see that the subscription cost is less for Workday than it is for Ellucian Banner, and I'll explain why I'm pointing those two out in a few minutes. What that means is that while the initial contract is more expensive, we would expect to save between $2.5 and $3 million on the second 10-year contract with Workday because their subscription cost is lower than it would if we were to go with Ellucian, who has a higher annual subscription cost, and so part of this is just trying to manage the total expenditure of funds over a 20-year period. Well, so we would do that, but what I was trying to show you here is how the individual vendors presented their information, and that's an important distinction for us because that seemed like a business best practice that the other two individuals were not including in their proposal. So this information that we're giving you is straight from the vendors themselves in terms of their proposal to us. [Speaker 2] (55:54 - 55:55) The vendor proposed the contingency. [Speaker 1] (55:55 - 56:05) The vendor proposed the contingency. They didn't require it, but they proposed the contingency. The other institutions did not do that. No. [Speaker 10] (56:09 - 56:13) Type expenses with either. Other words. [Speaker 1] (56:14 - 56:53) The same expense? Maybe. So they swore that there wouldn't be any other expenses, but that is not the result or the truth based on the references that we got, and look, we're talking about multi-year implementations that impact every single aspect of the institution. There are going to be delays and problems and additional expenses, so that's why I left it this way. If we were to go with either of the other two entities, we certainly would want to set that same amount of money aside for the implementation process. [Speaker 16] (57:01 - 57:03) $20,746,599. [Speaker 1] (57:07 - 59:17) Oh, yes. $22,069.50. Right. So apples to apples, Workday to Ellucian is about $3.7 million for the first 10 years, but if you look at the way that they bill and the increase in their subscription costs, we get $2.5 to $3 million of that back in the second 20 years. So pretty close. There's not a significant price difference that would cause us to abandon Workday simply because Ellucian is less expensive. Implementation timeline. Each vendor provided a detailed timeline for implementation, and you can see here that Ellucian has the shortest implementation timeline of 24 months. Workday ERP has an implementation of 37 months. Oracle's ERP implementation is harder to gauge. They currently don't have a complete student module available. Their first beta tester colleges don't go live until fall of 2027, and that will be the first time that they have a full student service module in production. They didn't even have a full student service module to demo for us, and so because of that, their implementation timeline for all three aspects would probably take us into 2029 or 2030 without any unusual or unexpected delays. To develop and then implement. I will also say I'm kind of skipping ahead. That really eliminated Oracle Cloud from serious consideration for us. We couldn't see their product. We couldn't compare it. If we were to go with Oracle Cloud, we would be doing so based entirely on faith that they were going to develop a product that would meet our needs. [Speaker 9] (59:19 - 59:26) So where in that 37 months is PeopleSoft completely phased out? [Speaker 1] (59:27 - 59:32) So 37 months is when we turn PeopleSoft off and we're done forever. [Speaker 9] (59:33 - 59:36) Both systems are running simultaneously for the full 30 months? [Speaker 1] (59:36 - 1:00:39) They will be. Now, it will take 12 months for us to implement finance and HR. So in February of 2027, two-thirds of PeopleSoft turns off permanently. During the next 24 months for the student implementation, there are actually four key periods of implementation where we turn on aspects and turn part of PeopleSoft off. But it's not until the end of the 37 months that we are completely and fully implemented and we are no longer running PeopleSoft in the background. Now, we will still maintain our PeopleSoft system for our historical record. Part of this transition doesn't mean that we transfer all of the records from the old system into the new system. That would be wildly expensive and really not a good use of our funds. So we will have that for historical records. But 37 months from now, we should have no users that are operating in PeopleSoft for operational purposes. [Speaker 16] (1:00:45 - 1:00:45) Yes? [Speaker 1] (1:00:50 - 1:01:32) If you want it monthly, we can do it monthly. There will be key points in the process where we will report back on the progress. And so, you know, at the first, we'll be doing lots of planning and lots of architecture work, developing our chart of accounts and setting the initial structure. And so we'll give you regular updates on this. And certainly, if we see any reason to think that we might be getting behind schedule, we'll bring that to the board's attention immediately. Potentially, yes. And that depends on why we're late, but yes. [Speaker 13] (1:01:32 - 1:01:38) I think regular is better than monthly because sometimes the answer is that nothing's changed. [Speaker 1] (1:01:38 - 1:01:40) We're doing what we said we were going to do. [Speaker 13] (1:01:40 - 1:01:56) So when you're going through the process every month, you're not going to show a big difference. So I'm just saying that so we don't try to lock them into monthly, you know, or trust your judgment, but to bring us back so that we know that we're on schedule would be my thoughts. Yes. [Speaker 1] (1:01:57 - 1:07:45) If we could not commit to monthly, because to your point, monthly, you know, some of these tasks take more than one month to implement, so we would not be reporting anything new, but we will give you regular updates. All right. Since Oracle was eliminated because of their lack, this really came down to a comparison between Workday ERP and Ellucian Banner SAS, and they have different strengths and weaknesses. This was an incredibly difficult conversation, and no two people in here feel exactly the same about these two products. But if I could, I'd like to try and walk you through the thought process that we went through as we made this decision. So as we look at Workday, they have some clear advantages. Number one, they have a multi-tenant architecture, and what that means is that they have a very structured architecture that they use, that they force all of their partners to use in their implementation. And what that means is that when they provide an update, there's no specific customizations to Lee College, right? We're in their same tenant architecture development that they use for everybody, so when they do updates, those updates roll out almost automatically for us, right? We don't have to do testing. We don't have to, like right now, PeopleSoft can roll out an update, and we may not implement it at all, or we might go through a lengthy process of testing it and fixing the bugs and then trying to implement that update. That is unique to Workday. Ellucian, on the opposite side, has a single-tenant architecture, which means every single system is unique in their architecture and their implementation, which means while there's additional customization under that model, it requires a lot more work to keep it maintained. And that maintenance debt can really mount over 20 years, and it's one of the biggest issues that we currently have with PeopleSoft is that our maintenance debt is so high, we really have lost the ability to keep up with new implementations. Second, the finance and HR model for Workday are vastly superior to that of Ellucian. Workday originally started as a system not built for higher ed but built for corporate America, and so those aspects of their company are best in class. You know, they have hundreds of Fortune 500 companies that use their system. It's incredibly well flushed out. They've integrated AI into those aspects. This is going to bring incredible tools to us in terms of managing the business behind the scenes of the institution. What Ellucian has done, they are an education-only system, and so they have invested heavily in developing the student module. So in terms of what the students see, it's the most complete system of any that we reviewed, and it's the most out-of-box ready to turn on and change the experience for the students. And so we really, as an administration, struggled with which is better. Now, we believe that the architecture and the advancements that Workday have made would lead to longer-term success, but, you know, at what potential sacrifice are we making in the short term when the student module for Ellucian is clearly better? And so we went back and forth trying to decide how to prioritize those equally important issues but with differing priorities depending on what your job is inside of the institution. So what tipped the scales for us was our visit with PS Tuners. You know, and I have Workday and PTG here back in the back. So they're salespeople, and you can only believe about 70% of what they say about their product. And so even though they were telling us, look, we can configure this, whatever deficiencies we have compared to Ellucian, we can work around and make it work in the short term. And in the long term, you know, they're prioritizing this, and they're going to be adding these services in the future. Right, so we were torn because we knew it would be a quicker install with a better student experience in the short term, but we thought Workday would be a much better long-term solution. So when we met with PS Tuner consultants, they have experience with both of these, and they argued heavily in favor of Workday and gave us a lot of confidence that we really were going to be able to build Workday to provide the same or very comparable level of service to our students in year three that we were going to get in year two with Ellucian. And so that addressed our short-term concerns, and in the long term, we believe we're partnering with a better company that's more innovative and is going to allow us to be more successful on a grander scale as we continue to grow as an institution in both size and in complexity. So our official recommendation is Workday ERP. Any questions? [Speaker 16] (1:07:47 - 1:07:50) Yes. Thank you, Jacob. You're welcome. We needed that. [Speaker 12] (1:07:58 - 1:08:05) Can you explain to them about the cloud and where the servers are versus what we're doing today? Yeah, so... [Speaker 2] (1:08:05 - 1:08:08) Them? Us? Oh, explain to us? [Speaker 1] (1:08:12 - 1:10:44) So, and this is true with any of these solutions, right? That is one of the reasons that we required that this be a cloud-hosted product. We will not maintain any local servers. We will not be required to maintain any backups. Workday will host our entire platform on their servers. They have built-in redundancies, so they have servers in different parts of the country. So if there were to be some type of natural disaster in an area where our primary server is operating, it would immediately go to our secondary server. This, from a college perspective, provides us with tremendous security to ensure that our core operating system will always be in effect. We could have a hurricane that could, you know, decimate our IT building. Not that we would wish that on anybody. But functionally, for our students, we could still operate with virtually no delays. And so that is why that was a particular requirement. Now, as a board, you've been asking about backups and redundancies. This solution really eliminates, by and large, the necessity of having that in place. Yeah, so this is the total cost. There won't be hardware purchases. There's no switches, no servers, no backups, no hardware purchases other than the individual operating computers for the individual employees or from home. Yes, they can. The other thing that is common amongst all of these is they all have mobile handheld device accessibility, which for our students is huge. We have a number of students who have phones but have no computer access. Well, this will allow them to access their student information, schedule meetings with counselors, follow up with teachers and advisors, all from their phone, which is not possible currently with our PeopleSoft system. And so this increases our access. It increases our redundancy in the event of an emergency. This solves a number of problems for us other than just replacing PeopleSoft as an operating system. [Speaker 9] (1:10:46 - 1:11:28) I see a sentence that workday can be comparable to the... problems with it. Number one, what I want to know is, is there a cost? Because the configure, customization, you know, is there a cost for that? And to me, if it can be, if you're selling to the education market, I think that would be baked in, specialized for us. [Speaker 1] (1:11:30 - 1:11:41) I'd like to come down, Nick, and maybe answer that question. That's why I invited him. I'll give them all of the hard questions. So he's from Workday. [Speaker 7] (1:11:43 - 1:12:49) Hi, everyone. My name is Nick. I'm from Workday. So to address your specific question about configuration, there's no cost. And I kind of want to delineate between what I consider legacy systems like PeopleSoft and Workday, right? Systems like PeopleSoft, other systems in the landscape, right? Historically, you would heavily customize them, right? Which I think led to a lot of the issues that Lee College is facing. When you're customizing these systems, then you need to maintain them. Then you have an upgrade. Things break. There's bugs. So when Workday says configure, we configure our systems. We don't customize. And what that means is everything's plain language. So business users at Lee College can reconfigure a business process, right? So you can optimize. We don't have coding inside of Workday, right? So when we do upgrades twice a year, there's no breaks. There's no patches. There's no bugs. There's no nothing like that. But to answer your initial question, there's no price to configuration, right? Lee College can configure the system as much as you want over the period of your partnership with Workday. [Speaker 1] (1:12:49 - 1:13:22) I would like to add, not that I want to contradict Nick, there are certain services that are not currently available in Workday. One of them being a CRM platform. So Ellucian has a CRM built in. Workday does not currently offer that. So, you know, unless between now and then Workday acquires a CRM and integrates that, there would be an additional cost if we wanted to add that type of service, which currently isn't available in Workday. Client relationship. [Speaker 6] (1:13:23 - 1:13:23) Yes. [Speaker 1] (1:13:24 - 1:13:30) And really, we use the CRM to manage our relationships with the students before they become students. [Speaker 14] (1:13:33 - 1:13:59) So, Jacob, for me, I'm hearing that Workday is better for HR and finance and Ellucian is better for students. Yes. What is Workday doing to improve it for students? Yes. I only care about what's best for the students. You know, if that's what we have to pick between if it's best for the students or it's best for us doing, I guess, additional work. [Speaker 1] (1:13:59 - 1:15:18) Can I respond to that first? So first, how much matters, right? So when we look at how much better Workday is on finance and HR, the gap is enormous. You know, the platform in Ellucian for finance and HR is essentially the same platform that they implemented in the early 2000s. It's at least 10 years old. It's clunky. It's not intuitive. They really haven't done anything to enhance that product in the last 20 years besides build a reporting function inside of the system, where Workday is the leader in those two particular aspects. Now, when you compare students, right, the gap between Ellucian and Workday on the student side isn't nearly so wide, right? It is better in Ellucian, but Workday is close. They're already close, and if they add a couple of the things like the CRM in the next two or three years, it will be difficult to reasonably say that Ellucian has a better student product than Workday. And so that distinction is important, but now I'll let you talk about what they're going to do. [Speaker 9] (1:15:18 - 1:15:34) No, thank you. Let me say one thing on the, help me understand here, on the student module. Currently our student module is run through PeopleSoft. Is it a safe statement to say both Ellucian and Workday are going to be light years better than PeopleSoft? [Speaker 6] (1:15:35 - 1:15:35) Yes. [Speaker 9] (1:15:35 - 1:15:50) Okay. That's a gross understatement. Just to put it into perspective. You're saying, you know, oh, well, are we neglecting the students? No, the students are going to get an experience that is light years better than the one they're currently getting. [Speaker 1] (1:15:51 - 1:16:12) Infinitely better, right? It's clean, it's intuitive, it's online, it's handheld, right? There are some things that Ellucian does that we want to make sure that we add to ensure that we have the full scope of services available to students, but the Workday experience is going to be tremendously better than what we're giving our students now. [Speaker 2] (1:16:12 - 1:16:28) Jacob, just another comment. You know, we're here to serve students. That's our goal, but we have to be able to run the business in order to serve the students. So we want the student experience to be as exceptional as it can be, but we have to run the business. That has to be a consideration. [Speaker 1] (1:16:28 - 1:16:29) It does. [Speaker 2] (1:16:29 - 1:16:30) It's equally important. [Speaker 1] (1:16:31 - 1:17:20) And, again, this comes back to the concept of, and we tried really hard not to buy a product or recommend a product based on what a company might do in the future, but this is a 20 to 25 year commitment, right? The trajectory, the history of innovation and development matters because where these companies are now isn't going to be where these companies are five years from now. Five years ago in the past, I think Nick would admit student was brand new and there were some issues, right? So we're looking for a long-term partner that is going to be with us for the next 25 years so that we can ride their innovation to future success. [Speaker 7] (1:17:22 - 1:19:05) The only thing I'll add, just adding a little color of the history of Workday and why doesn't a student compare to HR and finance, right? So Workday is a company that was formed in 2005. We started with HR and payroll, and then we shortly after added financials, right? It wasn't until 2016 when our student product became generally available to the public. So next year we'll have a fully comprehensive ERP and student system for 10 years. So just to add some color on why we're so far ahead on the HR and finance space, we've been doing it for longer, but I do want to reiterate to all of you our commitment to higher education and the student platform. We're investing hundreds of millions of dollars specifically on Workday student, right? We're incredibly bullish on the momentum we're seeing in higher education with the student platform, and I do want to call out third-party research like the Gartner Magic Quadrant, right? There was the first ever cloud-based Gartner Magic Quadrant for student systems released earlier in 2025, and there was two leaders and it was Ellucian and Workday, and it was incredibly close. But when you look at the Gartner Magic Quadrant across HR, finance and student, there's only one vendor that's a leader in all the spaces and that's Workday. So in terms of comprehensive platforms to serve the entire operation of Lee College, and then I want to note the pace of innovation to Jacob's point about a long-term partner. Workday's pace of innovation, the amount of functionality upgrades we're releasing for our customers every single semester, right? I would say it's going to be a short amount of time before on the student side we're well ahead of any other vendor in the space. [Speaker 2] (1:19:07 - 1:19:08) All right. Thank you. [Speaker 17] (1:19:08 - 1:19:10) Do you want to put that in writing? [Speaker 2] (1:19:12 - 1:19:14) Don't worry. This is recorded. [Speaker 10] (1:19:15 - 1:19:18) Just remember, you heard that from the salesman. [Speaker 2] (1:19:19 - 1:19:20) All right. Any other questions? [Speaker 10] (1:19:20 - 1:20:03) I just have one last. With the advancement in technology and changes that we can't really even foresee sometimes, even you would probably admit that, how far out can you see which company is better positioned to take advantage of or use advancement that may come that we're not even aware of? And so I guess the question would be how the basic framework, how advanced or would we be in a situation where you at Workday would have to be patching and adding components and things to a system that wasn't originally designed for those things? [Speaker 13] (1:20:03 - 1:20:05) I don't think he's going to say Ellucian, do you? [Speaker 10] (1:20:06 - 1:20:10) Well, no. I was asking Jacob, but I figured he would speak to it. [Speaker 19] (1:20:11 - 1:20:11) I can add. [Speaker 10] (1:20:12 - 1:20:15) He was stepping forward. Yeah. Good salesman. [Speaker 1] (1:20:18 - 1:21:27) To your point, there will always be disruptive technology that companies have to adapt to. But in terms of cloud-hosted solutions, Workday was into that business long before Ellucian. And when you look at their revised architecture, the way that the different modules communicate with one another, in PeopleSoft we have three separate instances. We have to develop scripts to actually transfer information from student to HR, HR to finance. It's incredibly clunky. Workday has eliminated all of that. It's all in one single system. Ellucian is still separated out and is still using the old model from the 2000s in terms of their general architecture. They just took it and put it in the cloud and cloud-hosted all of that. But it's the same old structure. So when you ask who do I think or which company do I think is better positioned to address disruptive technological changes in the future, my answer to that would be a resounding Workday all the way. [Speaker 12] (1:21:34 - 1:22:09) I want to follow up on Darrell's question about PeopleSoft. And I think you said we're going to not do a data conversion, which means everything we have currently today in PeopleSoft, all the student records are going to stay in PeopleSoft and not be converted to Workday. And so are we going to have to maintain PeopleSoft and pay them licenses for many, many years to come? Because we keep records of students indefinitely, I think. [Speaker 1] (1:22:09 - 1:23:15) So we won't have an active license with PeopleSoft once we close down and fully implement, but we will have archival-related expenses in order to maintain and continue to access that data. But, you know, no more access, no more users, no more upgrades, no more implementation rights. It's simply a historical record that we can use to identify and address students or financial records from before the implementation. And we'll have that with anybody except Oracle. Oracle agreed to waive all charges associated with maintaining PeopleSoft if we selected them. And if you go back to their actual subscription cost, the reason that Oracle Cloud ERP is only at $8.8 million for their first 10-year subscription is because they gave us heavy discounts and eliminated additional expenses because we're an existing PeopleSoft customer. [Speaker 12] (1:23:15 - 1:23:26) Did we ask for the cost to convert the PeopleSoft into Workday? Because that's typically what I think most people do, but maybe not on the education side. [Speaker 1] (1:23:26 - 1:24:12) So what we have planned, we're going to go live not right at the beginning of a fiscal year. So all of the transactions from the existing fiscal year will be uploaded. Then we will do entries to transfer balances from prior years in so that we can see historical balances, but the detailed records from the previous fiscal year and later will be stored in the old system. And it would be, it's very expensive to convert, right, because we're talking about a different chart, a different org structure, a different architecture. You know, it's not as simple as going, here's all of my travel expenses in this ledger, here's all my travel expenses in this ledger. [Speaker 12] (1:24:12 - 1:24:13) I'm thinking more of student records. [Speaker 1] (1:24:14 - 1:24:14) Yes. [Speaker 12] (1:24:14 - 1:24:17) That when a student comes in, we're going to have to go to two systems. [Speaker 1] (1:24:17 - 1:24:20) So the active students will all be in the system. [Speaker 12] (1:24:23 - 1:24:26) Active students, all their records will be in there? [Speaker 1] (1:24:26 - 1:24:33) Yes. Okay. But the prior students, their records will be stored in an archive system. [Speaker 2] (1:24:36 - 1:26:04) Questions, anything, any other questions, comments? Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. Thank you for the support from Workday. And thank you for the robust discussion we just had. It's a big purchase. All right, so with no other comments or questions, I'll call the question. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, no. Motion's approved. All right, next item on the agenda, consideration of president's employment contract. The board should review and approve the president's contract as amended and discussed in the previous special board meeting on December 1st, 2025. Motion from Regent Warford, second from Regent Geralds. All right, any comments, questions, or discussion? All right, hearing none. All in favor, please raise your hand. Any opposed, raise your hand. All right. Did everybody vote? All right, that motion's approved. All right, at this time, the meeting of the Lee College Board of Regents on the above listed date after proper posting in accordance with Chapter 551 of the Texas Government Code for the specific purposes will recess from open meeting to closed meeting. No action will be taken while the board is recessed in executive session. [Speaker 1] (1:26:09 - 1:26:26) You know, we'll reach the same status as SanDAC and nursing might be one of those programs that we decide to go four-year with. My guess is we'll probably focus more on industry and manufacturing in this particular part of the state. And we have a good program. [Speaker 2] (1:26:26 - 1:26:37) All right, the closed meeting has adjourned and the board will reconvene into open meeting. Matters of concern for future agendas. Anything from anyone? Not hearing anything, we are adjourned.