From Tim Johnson – Burlington Free Press
What is to become of Burlington College?
This is a question on many minds after a series of grim financial revelations and a virtual reprimand from the regional accrediting agency.
Will the college survive in its present form, as a nontraditional independent school that boasts an individualized educational approach in its mainstay, four-year bachelor-degree programs? Or will it go belly up in the face of its massive debt and watch its majestic lakefront property go through foreclosure, only to be auctioned off among developers?
EARLIER
Burlington College’s Mozart concerts canceled
Burlington College on probation for finances
Those who are in the best position to answer these questions aren’t saying much. The college maintains an upbeat public face, resolved to see through its avowed strategy of growing its way out of its financial challenges.
“Burlington College is the perfect choice for students who are undecided on college for the fall of 2014,” read a July 28 news release promoting an Aug. 7 “open house” for prospective students. “It’s not too late to apply — and financial aid is still available!” Classes begin Aug. 25.
What’s not clear is why new students, or donors, would be drawn to a school that’s not willing to be more transparent about the financial problems that resulted in a two-year probation from the New England Association of Schools and Colleges — to a school, in other words, that will lose its accreditation if it doesn’t resolve financial inadequacies that it declines to discuss publicly in any detail.
The irony is that increasing enrollment is one key to the college’s professed vision for its future. Another key, one might suppose, is its ability to raise money.
The new academic year approaches amid other signs of turmoil: the resignation of the director of the college’s fledgling music program, along with the collapse of an associated summer concert series; and votes of no confidence in President Christine Plunkett by the Student Union and the Faculty/Staff Council.
The NEASC probation letter, dated June 27, explained with specificity why the college does not meet the agency’s standard for “financial resources” and ordered the college to supply detailed financial information in coming months, beginning July 15. The college issued a news release acknowledging the probation and expressing confidence that the agency’s concerns would be addressed. Both NEASC and the college rejected a request from the Free Press to provide the June 27 letter and Plunkett’s response due July 15.
The college also rejected a Free Press request for copies of its annual financial audits and its detailed operating budget for the coming academic year.
“I am unable to release the documents you requested,” wrote spokeswoman Coralee Holm, in an email. In a phone interview Thursday, Plunkett called the requested the financial materials “internal documents.” The college is a private nonprofit organization, and its records are not subject to public disclosure except as they pertain to public business.
The NEASC letter was leaked, however, and circulated among people at the college and members of the Vermont media, which began quoting excerpts. Meanwhile, a public information request to the Vermont bonding agency that facilitated the college’s property purchase led to the release of three annual audits, through Fiscal Year 2013.
The last audit, which covers the fiscal year that concluded June 30, 2013, notes that the college ended the year with “a net reduction in its net assets of $758,769” and that a creditor has declared the college to be in default.
Adding to the college’s expenses is “an agreement with a former President to pay him a retirement salary of $600 per month for life beginning July 1, 1995, increased each Jan. 1 by the Consumer Price Index but not to exceed 5 percent.” Including medical and dental benefits, the audit estimated the current value of the payments for life at $253,835.
That beneficiary is Steward LaCasce, who founded Burlington College in his living room in 1972, who led the school for more than two decades, and who now lives in Arizona. Reached by phone, LaCasce said he received no salary for about half his tenure and that he effectively bankrolled the school. As approved by the Board of Trustees in the mid-’90s, he said, the payments to him represent not so much a retirement package as compensation he should have received in the first place.
For its first 20 years or so, LaCasce said, “the debt the college accumulated was owed to me.”
The current debts of more pressing concern, however, are much bigger, a result of the college’s purchase in 2010 of 32 acres from the Roman Catholic Diocese of Burlington..
The diocese, saddled with costs from priest-abuse litigation, was eager to sell, and willing to part with the property — including a 77,000-square-foot building — for about $10 million, close to the city’s assessed value.
The purchase
In buying the diocese property, Burlington College acquired a debt exceeding $10 million. The obvious question was how this small institution, with fewer than 200 students and an annual budget of less than $4 million, could afford the deal.
Here’s how the financing worked:
• $6.5 million in tax-free revenue bonds were issued by the Vermont Educational and Health Buildings Finance Agency. Before approving the issue, the agency reviewed an 18-page application from the college covering its finances and commissioned a report from a Boston financial consultant who studied the proposal and ultimately made a favorable recommendation.
The bonds were purchased by People’s United Bank, with principal and interest to be paid off by Burlington College in fixed installments. The loan has a 10-year term with a 30-year mortgage-style amortization. In other words, after 10 years, the college would have to renew the loan, find a new lender or pay off the remaining principal.
According to the bond agency, the college is current in its payments to the bank. In Fiscal Year 2013, according to the college’s audit report of that year, monthly payments of principal and interest amounted to $33,511.
• $3.5 million came as loan from the diocese. The terms of this loan are unknown. One scenario spelled out in the loan application filed with VEHBFA stated that the college would repay the $3.5 million over a four-year period and that the loan would be interest-free for the first two years.
As of June 30, 2013, according to the audit, the college had not paid any of the principal or interest on the diocese loan because it didn’t have the cash balance stipulated by the loan agreement. The audit noted that the diocese had given the college notice of default, that the college did not agree, and that “The ultimate resolution of the matter is unknown.”
Bill Breen, who served as the college’s chief financial officer for a little over a year, said that the diocese expected payments to begin in early August 2012 but that the college made no payments on the loan during Breen’s tenure, which ended in late August 2013.
Plunkett said Thursday that the college had paid off about $500,000 in principal from the proceeds of the college’s sale of three houses. She said the default disagreement was “a technicality” and said the college and diocese have a cordial relationship.
Martin A. Hoak, finance officer for the diocese, did not return phone calls from a reporter.
• $500,000 in the form of a “bridge loan” from real estate magnate and philanthropist Tony Pomerleau. This was money for basic work on the diocese building to allow the college to move in and begin using it.
Pomerleau said last week that he made the loan in support of both the college and its then-president, Jane Sanders, who orchestrated the purchase.
“It wouldn’t have happened without Jane,” Pomerleau said. “In my mind, she did a tremendous job.”
Pomerleau is also an old friend of Sanders’ husband, having been one of the few local developers to back Bernie Sanders as a candidate for mayor of Burlington in 1981. When Sanders won election, Pomerleau recalled proudly, “I was the first one to congratulate him.”
As for his loan, the college has not repaid it. “Maybe some interest,” Pomerleau said. The due date for payment in full has been pushed forward a year, to Dec. 31.
Debt barometers
Many institutions of higher education rely on numerical benchmarks in managing their debt. The idea is to avoid borrowing beyond their means and to maintain their good standing with credit agencies.
One such benchmark is called the debt viability ratio, a measure of an institution’s financial health: expendable assets divided by total debt. Schools that monitor this benchmark often set a target that’s like a floor: If their ratio dips below that floor, they’re especially wary of taking on new debt.
“Ratio Analysis in Higher Education,” a 1999 treatise for independent institutions by the accounting firm KPMG, recommends a viability ratio of 1.25 to 2.00. While “there is no absolute threshold that will indicate whether the institution is no longer financially viable,” the analysis states, when the viability ratio falls below 1, “the institution’s ability to respond to adverse conditions from internal resources diminishes, as does its ability to attract capital from external sources and its flexibility to fund new objectives.”
The University of Vermont’s debt policy sets the floor for its debt viability ratio at 0.8. When the university’s annual numbers push the ratio lower, that signals caution on taking on new debt and get special attention from the Board of Trustees, who approved the policy.
This number was above 1.0 for UVM earlier in the decade, but in Fiscal Year 2009, during the financial crisis, it dipped to 0.48. By Fiscal Year 2013, it was back up to 0.71 but still below the desired threshold, and UVM trustees were wary of taking on new capital debt in those years.
While UVM dwarfs Burlington College and the finances aren’t of comparable scale, the cautionary principle embodied in the viability ratio provides an illustrative perspective.
Using numbers in Burlington College’s Fiscal 2013 audit, the Free Press calculated the viability ratio for the college’s aggregate debt of $10,524,044.
Burlington College’s FY13 viability ratio was about 0.14.
For UVM and many other institutions, one incentive to abide by such benchmarks is to maintain favorable ratings with credit agencies. Burlington College, however, is not rated by Moody’s, Standard & Poors, or Fitch.
Another pertinent ratio is mentioned in the audit: “The VEHBFA bond contains certain covenants including a debt service coverage ratio.”
According to the bond agency, that ratio — assets available to pay for debt service divided by annual principal and interest payments on the bank loan — is 1.2. Considering that the 12 monthly payments totaled $402,132, the college was supposed to have $482,558 available. Apparently it did not.
“The college did not meet the debt service coverage ratio as of June 30, 2013,” the audit stated.
On that date, according to the audit, the balance in the VEHBFA debt service reserve fund was $8.
The plans
Over the last several years, the college has entertained two different plans aiming to retire its sizable debt, to maintain its financial stability, and to fulfill its educational mission.
The first plan was promoted by Jane Sanders, who served as president from 2004 to 2011 and who, in her last years, championed the move from the college’s diminutive headquarters in the Colodny building at the top of North Street to the capacious diocese property.
This plan, which the bond agency apparently found persuasive, relied on fundraising and enrollment growth that would increase the income from tuition, the college’s primary revenue source. (Full-time undergraduate tuition in 2014-15 is $23,546.)
In its 2010 application to VEHBFA, the college projected raising $6 million in a five-year capital campaign. On the enrollment side, full-time-equivalent students, totaling 162 in Fiscal Year 2011, were projected to increase to 195 in FY 2012, 235 in FY 2013, 280 in FY 2014, and 335 in FY 2015.
“The projections show enrollment growing approximately 20 percent per year …” wrote the consultant, the PFM Group of Boston, “a five-year growth rate of over 100 percent,” adding that revenue would grow 187 percent and expenses 148 percent. “One key assumption in the revenue growth is that it assumes one to two million dollars per year in capital campaign gifts between FY11 and FY14.”
The consultant recommended that the agency approve the college’s proposed financing, partly because of the “transformational nature of the project” and “the collateral value of the property being purchased.” The report, however, noted these risks:
• “Debt coverage requires meeting growth projections, especially enrollment growth;
• “Debt coverage requires successful capital campaign without an established institutional history of philanthropy.”
Sanders resigned in September 2011 and eventually was succeeded by Christine Plunkett, who had served as chief financial officer. In the fall of 2012, Plunkett and academic dean Stephen St. Onge spent about a week in China in hopes of laying the groundwork for a new enrollment stream. The results were limited to one Chinese student who attended Burlington College for a year, Plunkett said, and that strategy has been given up.
The second plan emerged last year, under Plunkett’s watch.
This plan, dubbed a “master plan,” also relied on enrollment growth — the ultimate target was 500 to 750 students. The major new feature was the proposed sale of roughly half the 32 acres for a housing development, which Plunkett said would allow the college to retire about half the debt. Residence halls, a lakeside pavilion and other features would be added to the remaining, campus parcel, and the college would sell off four houses that had served as student residences. The vision was presented at an Oct. 30 news conference at the college, and Eric Farrell of Farrell Real Estate, was introduced as the trustees’ unanimous choice for lead developer.
At that time, Farrell said that the work ideally could be done in three to five years, with a groundbreaking in 2015. Yves Bradley, who joined the Board of Trustees in early 2013, said at the event that the college needed to grow to fulfill its mission and that “the only path to growth is housing.”
Sanders, by contrast, has said that she believes her plan based on enrollment growth and fundraising could have succeeded, and that she did not favor selling off the college’s new campus assets.
Bradley heads the commercial real estate division of Pomerleau Real Estate and served as the listing agent for the diocese sale to the college. He also serves as chair of the Burlington Planning Commission.
“From my perspective as trustee,” Bradley said at that Oct. 30 news conference, “the sooner we break ground, the better.”
The reality
Given the magnitude of the debt, the fate of the college could depend on how well the various elements of these plans work out.
A clear assessment of where matters stand on enrollment growth, fundraising and the proposed land sale is not easy to make. The college has declined most requests for information on its finances and on enrollment.
Enrollment: Second-year retention and graduation rates are one piece of the enrollment puzzle, because they show the share of the college’s students who transfer out or drop out before they finish.
According to the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Educational Statistics, which the college makes accessible on its website, 23 percent of first-time students who began their studies in the fall of 2012 returned the following year. For students who began their studies in 2007, the overall six-year graduation rate was 22 percent, and the transfer-out rate was 30 percent.
Asked for an array of statistics — including full-time-equivalent enrollment in 2011, 2012 and 2013, spring and summer of 2014, and the number of applications for the fall of 2014 — college spokeswoman Coralee Holm replied by email: “I do not have a report for you that answers all of your questions.” She referred the questioner to “Quick Facts,” on the college’s website, that she said included the full-time undergraduate enrollment of 2013: 225 students.
The national center’s count is lower. According to those data, total undergraduate enrollment in the fall of 2013 was 220, of whom 73 percent were full-time. That works out to about 161 full-time students.
Both of those numbers are below the projection in the VEBHA loan application: 280 full-time-equivalents in the 2013-14 academic year.
Plunkett said the college is budgeting for 180 full-time-equivalent undergraduates and 12 graduate students. She acknowledged that the undergraduate number is lower than for the previous fall.
In a news release put out July 7, acknowledging that the college had been put a two-year probation by the accrediting agency, Holm said said “currently, the college serves approximate 290 students.” She did not specify how many were full-time-equivalents.
Fundraising: In May 2012, after she was installed as president, Plunkett said in an interview that the college had raised about half of the capital campaign’s $4.25 million goal. She said those funds would be used for building renovations, scholarship and other purposes, not operating expenses.
The FY 2013 audit listed $1,128,662 in “contributions receivable,” most of which comprised pledges due in future years, including an unrealized $1 million estate gift. Sanders had announced that gift in 2011, before she resigned.
Plunkett said new gifts in Fiscal Year 2014 amounted to about $125,000. She said the capital campaign had been put on a back burner as the college focuses on the development plan and on fortifying its presence in the community.
Housing development: On the northern 16 acres, where the master plan designates the campus, the plan calls for construction of two privately developed residence halls, a student center, a woodworking and agriculture center and other amenities. The current zoning, residential medium density, does not allow dormitories and would have to be changed to permit residence halls. A zoning-change request has not been filed with the city.
On the southern 16 acres, the master plan as disclosed last fall calls for a mixed development, including individual lots for single-family homes, senior housing, and affordable and market rate rental housing.
“The college expects to pay off more than half of its current debt when the project is complete,” Holm said in the July 7 news release.
This housing project would require a planned-unit development permit from the city’s Development Review Board. The Design Advisory Board and the Conservation Board could be expected weigh in on the proposal, and the review process would likely take a year or more.
The city’s Planning and Zoning Department has received no permit application to date. Phone calls to Eric Farrell, the lead developer, were not returned.
Plunkett said work on the plan is moving forward, in consultation with the bank, the diocese and bond counsel, and that she expects an agreement with Farrell to be completed next month.
Open house?
Shortly before 2 p.m. on Aug.7, a reporter walked in the main entrance at Burlington College and informed the receptionist that he wanted to attend the open house, an event advertised by a red and white sign on North Avenue. He was then informed by a college marketing staffer that the event was meant for students and families and that he was not welcome. She handed him two of the college’s informational flyers, and he left.
The reporter later emailed Coralee Holm, director of community and alumni relations, to ask how many people, or prospective students, attended the open house. She did not reply.
Whether the college would have supplied financial data at the request of open-house attendees is unknown. As matters stand, the only financial information publicly disclosed is more than a year old.
Besides the Fiscal Year 2013 audit, there was another assessment of the college’s finances that year — by the U.S. Department of Education.
All colleges that participate in federal student aid programs are evaluated for “financial responsibility” and given a composite score based on financial-health criteria. The scores range from minus 1 to 3.0. The most recent year for which the department has scores is FY13. Burlington College’s score was 0.4. According to the department’s rubric, any score between minus 1.0 and 0.9 is “not financially responsible. The school must submit a letter of credit for at least 50 percent of its Title IV funding.”
By contrast, the Burlington College’s score in FY11, the year of the property purchase, was 2.3, above the 1.5 threshold for “financial responsibility,” and was above that mark in each of the previous four years.
Accreditation is a pre-requisite for a college to receive federal student aid funds. Burlington College retains its accreditation during the probationary period. But if NEASC, the accrediting agency, withdraws that certification, federal aid funds to the college’s students would be cut off.
NEASC apparently has some financial information from FY14 and is looking for more. NEASC wants to see the college’s next audit, for FY14, by Nov. 3.
The June 27 NEASC letter expresses concern about an anticipated FY14 ending deficit of $170,000, and concern that college did not have enough cash on hand to meet its summer payroll. (Breen, the former chief financial officer, said he was “constantly concerned about meeting payroll” during the spring and summer of 2013.) The letter noted, however, that the college had applied for a loan from the Vermont Economic Development Authority.
A loan of $250,000 to the college for “general working capital” from VEDA’s subsidiary, the Vermont Small Business Development Corporation, was approved in July. Plunkett confirmed that the loan helped the college meet its summer expenses, and that some of the money is still unspent. That loan comes due in October 2015.
Efforts to find out about the college’s current financial condition were unavailing.
Yves Bradley, chairman of the board of trustees, declined to answer questions and referred a reporter to Holm, who he said speaks for the college.
Plunkett said the no-confidence votes reflect a tension that’s inevitable at an institution that’s under stress. These are stressful times for higher education generally, she said, and especially so at Burlington College with its financial challenges. She said faculty concerns are understandable, but she expressed confidence that the development plan, as it comes to fruition over the next few years, would see the college through.
Contact Tim Johnson at 660-1808 or tjohnson@burlingtonfreepress.com
Editorial from SMARTvt:
Now in Loan Default, Burlington College must add enrollments or it will not survive. There are secret talks going on with other area colleges to salvage what they can from Burlington College. Similar actions were taken when Trinity College closed.
The Burlington College / Jane Sanders crisis started with the 2011 Acquisition of North Avenue Property from the Roman Catholic Diocese was a vision by Jane Sanders, wife of Bernie Sanders. http://bit.ly/1mbMzJC At the closing Sanders opined an anachronistic vision saying , “We’ll be the only college with a beach.”
Burlington College pays it former Presidents $958 per month for life and Jane Sanders received a $200K severance even though she resigned.
While visions of college students and beaches surfaced in the Burlington College President Sanders forecasts: Other risk managers and bank officials warned about the cost of debt service and predictions of college enrollments decreasing nationwide . Sanders had a reputation for silencing those who tried to sounding warnings. In an open letter to the trustees released on Sept. 21, of that year, a former faculty member Genese Grill described the atmosphere in harsh terms. Staff, faculty and students “have been reduced to silence and fear of retribution by what can only be described as a pattern of intimidation, spying, and targeting of critical voices,” she wrote. http://bit.ly/1m9ZThG
Now plan to stave off the banks by boosting enrollment is unreasonable – it can not be done unless you offer free tuition and books. Colleges everywhere are posting declines in enrollment. Word of being placed on a a Financial Watch List” will not boost enrollment nor create the momentum to carry the school to its enrollment growth within 10 years. http://bit.ly/1tjeVX8
Executing a frugality plan now – recruiting new students is expensive and will be harder – the school will have less money to spend for recruitment / marketing unless and Angel Financier emerges. The school has little or no endowment.
Other schools were thinking ahead: St. Michaels College planned on Enrollment Declines http://bit.ly/1hBiCeD
And Vermont State Colleges have been hit hard by enrollment declines http://bit.ly/1jJPozm
A “Fire Sale” of property to pay the bills is an example of poor timing. Selling the property at less than its value is a failed fiduciary responsibility to the trustees and the school.
The Government is playing hard ball with struggling colleges and it is letting schools fail: Corinthian College with 12,000 employees, 140 Campuses is in a Controlled Crash at this moment: http://lnkd.in/dnQGbxn.
The school needs new leadership of a seasoned Financial Guru who has a powerful rolodex of resources.
Otherwise – like Corinthian College — it needs to close up shop. http://wapo.st/TQ4vxC
Mark Renekrt, Mscl
————– Update from VTDigger -…………..
BURLINGTON COLLEGE DEFAULTS ON LOAN TO CATHOLIC DIOCESE
Burlington College is behind on its payments to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Burlington and has financial problems that raise “substantial doubt” about the college’s viability, according to a recent audit.
The school is struggling to pay off $10 million in loans it owes from buying a 32-acre campus on Lake Champlain from the diocese in 2011. Burlington College is on probationfrom the regional accreditation agency because of the financial trouble.
The diocese says the college defaulted on its loan payment and is charging the school penalty interest. Burlington College disagrees, but acknowledged in the audit that it is suffering financially.
President Christine Plunkett called FY 2013 one of the most “challenging years in memory” at the college with regard to money. She has assembled a “financial task force” of advisers to help.
The small liberal arts school on North Avenue bought the property with money borrowed from two sources.
The diocese, which sold the property to pay legal bills stemming from a clergy sex abuse scandal, loaned the school $3.65 million. The Vermont Educational and Health Buildings Financing Agency loaned the college $6.5 million.
The school has suffered repeated losses from operations, has not met certain debt service covenants and has an unrestricted designated net assets deficit of $1.7 million, the audit says. Burlington College also extended its line of credit with People’s United Bank from $650,000 to $1 million, presumably to help meet operating costs.
The audit of the college revealed facts it said “raise substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern.”
The college has not met its required debt service and has used endowment money to cover operating expenses, the audit said.
Payments to the diocese hinge on whether the college has at least $1.45 million in the bank prior to each payment, which it does not. “The college cannot make any principal and interest payments due to the conditions not being met,” the audit says. The diocese has imposed a $140,000 interest penalty because of the alleged default.
In a response contained in the audit, Plunkett outlined ways the school plans to correct several accounting deficiencies identified by the audit, but offered no plan for how the school plans to pay its debt.
Staff have churned through the school recently. Former president Jane Sanders, wife of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., resigned in 2011, and there has been significant turnover in the business and admissions offices.
Sanders on Tuesday said she was surprised to learn of the school’s financial struggle. She said the school “got a very good deal on that property” and she left them with a multi-step plan on how to pay for the buildings that required adding only 12 students per year.
“They didn’t carry it out,” she said.
The audit said the lack of oversight of financial duties due to staff turnover led to long delays in financial duties, including collecting student tuition and preparing management reports.
The audit also reveals that the school pays lifetime benefits to past presidents including one who receives a salary for life that is tied to the Consumer Price Index. That salary was $958 per month in 2013. Sanders received a severance package of more than $200,000 when she left, the equivalent of one year’s unused sabbatical plus benefits, retirement contribution and one-time bonuses, the report shows.
Increased enrollment is a main focus of the school’s new plan, the audit shows. Attention shifted from the buildings to attracting more students, it says. The school’s endowment is about $168,000, leaving it to rely primarily on tuition to operate.
The school hopes to reach an enrollment level of between 500 and 750 students; its current enrollment is now 290.
Louis Mannie Lionni, a former member of the board of trustees, said he left the board around 2008 when he saw the school “wasn’t going anywhere.” When the college bought the campus there was no capital campaign, no fundraising by board members, he said.
“It’s always been tuition-funded, there is no endowment to speak of,” he said.
The school has been too timid to reach out to alumni, the community and beyond for money, he said, despite the fact that many of its programs, including one in Cuba, are excellent.
“I don’t think they have a clue as to how to go get the money,” he said.
The school added five trustees in the past year, the audit said. Lionni said at least that many also had left.
Plunkett on Wednesday declined comment on the audit or the school’s financial condition. Board of Trustees President Yves Bradley also did not return a call.
Bradley works at Pomerleau Real Estate, whose chairman, Antonio Pomerleau, underwrote a $500,000 bridge loan to buy the building, the report shows.
Board member Patrick Mahoney said he “would love to see things move forward” at the school where his daughter attended. He said this is his last term on the board.
Coralee Holm, director of community relations, pointed to a July 7 blog post she wrote about the two-year probation, which does not detail the reason for the probation except to say it was financial.
VTDigger obtained the report from Brady Toensing, a Washington, D.C., attorney and vice chair of the Vermont GOP. Toensing, who lives in Charlotte, placed a public records request for the documents. He said he was not paid to research the school’s finances. Bernie Sanders has said he is considering a run for president.
The school now has an “experienced team of staff” working to collect past-due student accounts, create more formal financial policies and make reporting more timely. The school’s IT director was also promoted to chief information officer, as part of the revamping, the audit documents say.
The task force includes people who are “among Vermont’s most prominent and experienced financial advisors,” the report says, without giving names.
“The college is confident that it has a well thought-out strategic plan and the appropriate faculty, staff and advisors now in place to carry out the plan,” the college says in the report.
Projections show a loss for fiscal year 2014 but less than either of the past two years, the report says. The school promised to use “conservative” enrollment estimates in planning its fiscal year 2015 budget.
Accountants at the Montpelier firm Sullivan, Powers & Co. performed the audit.
FOLLOW LAURA ON TWITTER @LAURAKRANTZ
Potential Presidential Candidate, Senator Bernard Sanders — his wife Jane, the former President of Burlington College — directed the purchase of the controversial property for the Catholic Arch Diocese for $10M.
Former Burlington College President Jane O’Meara Sanders resigned on Oct. 14 2011 and gave no reason for the change when just weeks previous said she looked forward to another four years according to Vermont Digger http://bit.ly/1m9ZThG
Critics claimed that the 2010 $10M property purchase was unwise. And Insiders say that the former President eliminated anyone who thought differently as reported here : http://bit.ly/1m9ZThG
Said Vermont Digger: After Sanders became college president in 2004, Burlington College initially experienced a decline in enrollment and, after a few years, faculty discontent. In an open letter to the trustees released on Sept. 21, former faculty member Genese Grill described the atmosphere in harsh terms. Staff, faculty and students “have been reduced to silence and fear of retribution by what can only be described as a pattern of intimidation, spying, and targeting of critical voices,”. http://bit.ly/1m9ZThG
Today, as reported in the WCAX – Burlington College is placed on a Financial Watch List.
Christine Plunkett is the President of Burlington College. She graduated from the University of Vermont with a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration and went on to earn her Master of Business Administration degree at Northeastern University. Following several years as a cost accountant at a Boston area manufacturing firm, she served as a member of the development team for the groundbreaking financial software VisiCalc, a precursor to modern spreadsheet programs such as Excel. She worked as an independent financial and software consultant in the greater Boston area for over ten years.
Ms. Plunkett has held executive positions in secondary and higher education for over thirteen years, with extensive prior experience in accounting, finance and technology consulting, and entrepreneurship. Prior to joining the staff at Burlington College in 2007, Ms. Plunkett was the Director of Finance and Operations at the Gailer School, a small, independent secondary school in Middlebury, VT, where she also served as Interim Head of School from 2000-2002.
In 2010, Ms. Plunkett participated in a higher education leadership symposium at Southern New Hampshire University, focusing on fundraising, board relations and finance.In 2011, she was one of 42 college cabinet members nationwide selected to participate in the year-long Executive Leadership Academy, co-sponsored by the American Academic Leadership Institute, American Association of State Colleges and Universities, and the Council of Independent Colleges. Ms. Plunkett currently serves as the Treasurer of the Association of Vermont Independent Colleges (AVIC) and is a member of the Board of Vermont Campus Compact.
Ms. Plunkett resides in Middlebury, Vermont.
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