Emporia State President Ken Hush says the university’s decision to end operations for the Center for Early Childhood Education and demolish Butcher Education Center was made almost a decade ago, and statistics released by ESU on KVOE’s Talk of Emporia on Monday pinpointed the need for that change.
Hush says the decision was made as part of the Campus Master Plan back in 2014 under then-president Michael Shonrock. Statistics about the center’s use back in 2014 aren’t immediately available, but Hush says the center wasn’t heavily used by the campus community when the closure-and-demolition decision was announced in late May.
With 40 children using the facility at the time the closure was announced, that means a quarter of the spots were claimed by people associated with Emporia State.
Hush says Butcher accumulated a lot of deferred maintenance costs — around $5 million at the time of the announcement. It costs around $540,000 per year to operate CECE and another $130,000-plus to operate the rest of Butcher. Demolition will cost Emporia State around $1 million on top of everything else.
Director of Media Relations Gwen Larson says several key parts of the Campus Master Plan — the future of Butcher included — were delayed.
The announcement about CECE and Butcher caused several Emporia State faculty to reach out to KVOE News to express their dismay, and it also led to an online petition that generated hundreds of responses asking the university to keep the facility open. Hush says CECE was originally part of the Emporia State Teachers College program, but education has trended away from that kind of program at the university level. ESU is the only Regents school without some form of on-campus daycare for faculty, staff and students. Hush says there will be conversations later about an on-campus center, but there is nothing on the table.
Hush received flak for a comment to the ESU Bulletin, where he said he laughed at some of the criticism because of the different factors involved in the decision. On KVOE’s airwaves, he said he owned the comment, saying it was not meant to disparage anybody but also saying it reflected his own frustration about concerns ESU not fully researching the issue.
Butcher was constructed in 1960. CECE will end by August 2023 The latest plan has the building razed by the end of next year and turned into a campus entrance.
