If there was ever proof of the attention being paid to the Austin Community College annexation initiative it could be seen in the mixed company attending a Monday night Bastrop County Republican Party meeting.

A crowd of more than 80 people – Republicans and Democrats alike – showed up to hear arguments laid out on both sides of the issue during a debate hosted by the GOP between annexation proponent Tom Scott and Bob Parmelee, chairman of the BEARPAC group opposed to the ACC push.

Just one of the many points touched on was why joining ACC’s district and earning a new campus in Bastrop is the best option being proposed for local post-secondary education.

Service area and the Bastrop center

Bastrop County is one of eight counties included in ACC’s state-designated service area.

According to Texas statute, a public community college may not expand their boundaries into that of another community college’s designated service areas and build a campus. Yet regardless of that statute, Parmelee and others have suggested alternative options for post-secondary education other than joining ACC’s taxing district do in fact exist.

Some of those proposed options include an online distance-learning center utilizing space in an existing BISD campus or other facility, partnering with a four-year institution or potentially expanding the ACC center already in Bastrop County to offer more classes.

On the latter point, it’s important to note the difference between ACC full service campuses – of which there are now eight throughout Travis and Williamson counties – and ACC centers that offer a variety of core curriculum classes to both high school students and adults.

The Bastrop ACC center has been located at Bastrop High School since 1984, according to Dr. Louanne Preston, executive director of school relations for ACC. Here, junior and senior students from BHS may take up to two tuition-free dual-credit ACC courses per semester during daytime hours. These classes include most core subjects excluding science. In addition, the center also offers nighttime courses to adults or recent high school graduates or adults. These students pay the standard ACC out-of-district tuition rate of $150 per credit hour. According to preliminary figures from Preston’s office, in the fall of 2009, there were 101 high school students taking advantage of dual credit ACC courses at the Bastrop center and 45 other students enrolled in night classes.

Asked to clarify some of the benefits an ACC campus would bring to Bastrop compared to that of the existing center, Preston stressed that a campus would allow for far greater course offerings and degree programs, as well as specialized workforce programs.

“A center is a limited presence,” Preston said. “We can only offer so many classes and those core curriculum classes tend to repeat themselves over the course of semesters.”

Alexis Patterson, ACC spokesperson, also spoke to some of the direct benefits of a campus as opposed to a center in the high school, emphasizing the full range of student support services that would be offered at a campus such as a testing center, computer and learning lab and bookstore. Patterson also addressed the often-raised question among some in Bastrop as to why existing high school facilities – whether at the new Cedar Creek High School or BHS – cannot be expanded as a center with more classes.

“They (high schools) can only stretch so much,” Patterson said. “They have their own mission to fulfill and it involves being cooperative with us but they can’t turn over their facility to us.”

Another individual intimately involved in the Bastrop center’s offerings is its coordinator, Terry Hamm. Besides her part-time work for ACC at the center, Hamm also works as a full-time lead counselor at BHS and says she is all for a new campus being built in Bastrop.

“I’m so much in favor of it,” Hamm said. “The difference in tuition is so much less expensive than many four-year colleges. It will help kids enormously. We have kids that have difficulty with transportation getting into Austin. We also have a large number of first generation kids who would be more comfortable with something that is here.”

Taylor Center

According to Parmelee and other opponents of ACC annexation, however, the possibility of expanding the Bastrop center to encompass more classes should be explored and does not have to be limited to school facilities. On Monday night, Parmelee offered up the example of the Taylor Center, a school that is located in a refurbished H-E-B store in Taylor and part of the Temple Community College service area – not its taxing district. At the Taylor Center, students can earn a range of associate degrees, as well as complete vocational nursing, EMS, paramedic and other programs.

Charlotte Herron, Community Education coordinator for the Taylor Center, says a local foundation called the Temple College at Taylor Foundation raised funds though grants and community support to purchase the building close to a decade ago.

With the building secure, a consortium of school districts in surrounding communities of Hutto, Granger, Bartlett, Thorndale, Thrall and Rockdale then joined together to pay into the center and allow for students residing in those respective school districts to pay in-district rates. In-district tuition at the Taylor Center is $88 per credit hour and out-of-district tuition is $138 per credit hour.

According to Herron, 900 students are currently attending the Taylor Center, the large majority of whom are paying in-district tuition.

“It wouldn’t surprise me at all to get to 1,000 students soon,” Herron said. “The growth is phenomenal.”

On Monday, Scott seemed to take issue with the Taylor Center being cast as the best solution for Bastrop, saying the school was overcrowded and has been stymied on recent expansion plans – a development which according to Scott, has developed because the center is outside Temple’s taxing district.

A few other options

Yet the Taylor Center is only one potential post-secondary education model opponents to the ACC initiative are suggesting be explored. According to Parmelee, on-line distance learning programs should be explored much more in depth as a means of  “looking outside the box” towards enhancing the educational levels.

Asked on Tuesday what his opinion is on the benefits of distance learning, Scott emphasized that they are not a new development.

“They have been available for some time and it hasn’t made a dent,” Scott said. “In my view, price has gotten to be a big deal in our town with our people. Those distance education courses aren’t discounted. You still pay regular tuition rates and they are substantial.”

Another suggestion some are mentioning as an alternative to ACC is a partnership with a four-year college such as Texas Tech or Texas State University.

Scott, however, stressed he and others have spoken with the above-mentioned universities over the past decade as momentum towards a college in Bastrop has been building. According to Scott, the universities have indicated that any willingness to bring course offerings or programs to the Bastrop area would be predicated on existing ACC facilities and infrastructure being in place.