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Questions arise over qualifications of $150K hire
As KU talks ‘efficiency,’ workers worry
By Scott Rothschild srothschild@ljworld.com
Mike Yoder/Journal-World Photo
CUSTODIAN GARY PLANCK, a nearly 30-year employee at Kansas University, sweeps the hallways Monday in the Art and Design Building. He joined other KU workers for town-hall meetings, at which KU identified some potential areas to save money and increase overall efficiency. Areas that may be involved include campus construction, facilities maintenance and upkeep, human resources, information technology and procurement. “It’s not a bad job,” Planck said. “They just keep wanting to change things.”
University initiatives will involve cutbacks in personnel, provost says everything we can to use attrition to handle job reductions,” Vitter said. “That doesn’t mean there won’t be job losses.” He said the Vitter overall level of staff reductions associated with the effort still wasn’t known. After audience members peppered Allen Humphrey, KU assistant director of human resources and equal opportunity, and Mike Phillips of
By Andy Hyland ahyland@ljworld.com
As Kansas University officials and members of the Huron Consulting Group told KU staffers about plans that will likely lead to job cuts, consolidations and other efficiencies in how KU does business, maintenance staff members expressed frustrations with the process. Jeff Vitter, KU’s provost and executive vice chancellor, acknowledged in an interview that some of the initiatives will involve cutbacks in personnel. “We would certainly do
the Huron Consulting Group with questions for about 40 minutes on issues related to KU’s plans to consolidate its maintenance operations throughout the campus, one questioner expressed concerns. “It sounds like to us you have virtually no specific answers to specific questions that have been asked,” the questioner said, after which the audience leapt into applause. Humphrey tried to answer the group’s questions, but said many elements were still unknown. “I want everybody to under-
stand we really are at the beginning of a process here,” he told the crowd. “It’s going to take awhile to move through that process.” Though handouts distributed at the meeting included some specific mentions and time lines — they said the maintenance changes could be implemented by March 2013 — Phillips said those weren’t hard-and-fast dates. Humphrey encouraged the group to submit feedback, and placed a sign-up sheet for those interested in contributing to more discussions at the Please see KU, page 2A
TOPEKA — Gov. Sam Brownback on Monday introduced Jim Mann as his new $150,000 chief information technology officer from Florida, but hours later the Brownback administration was fielding questions about Mann’s educational background. Mann lists a business administration degree from the University of Devonshire. The Chronicle of Higher Education and other reports list that school as among a group of unaccredited schools called diploma mills. Mann’s online résumé says he attended the University of Mary- Mann land from 1972 to 1974 and the University of Devonshire from 1993 to 1995. But Sherienne Jones-Sontag, a spokeswoman for Brownback, said Mann was hired based on his “20 years of top-flight private sector experience.” She said where Mann received his degree wasn’t as important as his work experience because information technology is such a fastchanging area. Earlier Monday, Brownback said Mann was an important hire. “This is a position the state desperately needs in order to catch up with advances in technology, to improve communication among and between Please see HIRE, page 2A
LAWRENCE SCHOOLS
Consolidation group ready to move from talk to action By Mark Fagan mfagan@ljworld.com
Missouri’s departure won’t change KU fight song By Andy Hyland ahyland@ljworld.com
Although Kansas University’s athletic teams won’t be twisting the Missouri Tigers’ tail as part of Big 12 Conference play starting next year, the lyric in the fight song won’t be going anywhere any time soon, KU Alumni Association officials said. “I think we made it pretty clear,” last year, said Kevin Corbett, KU Alumni Association president and CEO, when the association led the first revision for the song’s lyrics in more than 50 years. “We weren’t going to change it again, no matter what happened with conference realignment.” Last year, KU removed references to the University of
Nebraska and the University of Colorado, and added in references to the four Big 12 schools from Texas. Since then, both Texas A&M and Missouri have announced their intention to leave the conference. And even though the Tigers play a larger part in the song than most other conference foes (“Got a bill that’s big enough / To twist a Tiger’s tail,” reads one part of the song), they’ll be sticking around in the song for a while longer at least. “With the way the conference realignment is going, it would be kind of like roping the wind,” Corbett said. Matt Schoenfeld, a Coun-
feld said the initial version he turned in to the Alumni Association didn’t include the Aggies, as a sort of nod to his undergraduate institution’s rivalry with them. “As a slight to them, they were the one team I didn’t include,” he said, even though the person who edited the song added them in to be able to include all the teams. “I sent an email to the guy who ran the initial contest,” Schoenfeld said. “And I told him, ‘Now you see why I left the Aggies out.’” — Higher education reporter Andy Hyland can be reached at 832-6388. Follow him at Twitter. com/LJW_KU.
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tryside resident and Baylor University alumnus, has been a KU fan since the days when Ted Owens coached basketball. Schoenfeld wrote the winning entry in a contest to change the fight song’s lyrics. “My version didn’t last very long, did it?” Schoenfeld said on Monday. He said he was obviously disappointed that the conference didn’t hold up longer, and wasn’t too pleased that Missouri messed up the lyrics by leaving the conference. He said if the Alumni Association ever decided to change the song again, he’d be willing to work with it. In a moment that turned out to be rather prescient, Schoen-
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Members of an advisory group plan to start discussing actual possibilities for closing or expanding or building schools in older sections of town, just as elected officials are expecting by early next year. Whether the group’s deliberations Nov. 21 will lead to actual recommendations by their Jan. 31 deadline remains an open question. “I think they understand they’ve got to move,” said school board member Randy Masten, who observed Monday’s meeting from the audience. “People want a lot of information, but there comes a point where you have to move forward.” Monday night, members of the Central and East Lawrence Elementary School Consolidation Working Group spent more than two hours reviewing past discussions, exploring new ways to communicate, hearing how the district’s English as a Second Language program functions, determining how to consolidate requests for information, receiving student demographic data, and learning how various school representatives are receiving and sharing information outside meetings of the working group. Several of the topics led some members to question why they even were discussed. “In my opinion these are all very nebulous,” said Lois Orth-Lopes, a teacher at Cordley School,
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