Board of Trustees Report
Trade Tech College
July 14, 2010
Planning and Student Success Committee
The meeting was dedicated entirely to accreditation reports. Gary Colombo, just retired
as Vice Chancellor, returned to report that the Valley-side colleges had their midterm
reports all accepted, and, more significantly, all three of the City-side colleges had had
their accreditation reaffirmed. East’s warning was removed, and City’s probation was
removed. Trade was taken off probation, but it was issued a warning. Detailed reports
from the three colleges followed.
Faculty Accreditation Chair Brenda Baity noted that East had successfully integrated
planning with decision making and resource allocation, as instructed. It also added an
annual update component to program review. Completion of SLO assessment for all
courses by 2012 remains a big challenge. President Moreno drew special attention to
this, saying faculty were not acting vigorously enough for the college to get to 100%
compliance in two years. He said the administration would have to take further steps to
assure that the goal was reached.
City had three recommendations to deal with, according to VPAA Kim Perry: to ensure
that program review results were acted upon more systematically, to develop a better
professional development program, and to strengthen its research function. City's goal
was to not just to meet but to exceed these expectations. The effort was led by an "ATeam," which consisted of top college leaders. Their deadline for meeeting their SLO
targets is December of 2011.
Trade has been the college that trustees have been most worried about, but it, too, did
well. Newly elected Senate President Lourdes Brent and Faculty Accreditation Chair Joe
Ratcliff reported in, noting how the college had responded to its four recommendations
(dealing with evaluation and planning, SLO's, leadership stability, and communication).
Trade was issued a warning, however, and that will result in a follow-up report and visit
next spring. I pointed out that we have had yet another dispute with the administration
there, this time over an administrative hire (see Open Session and Comments.)
The Sea-side colleges then reported in on their progress towards meeting the allimportant 2012 deadline for SLO completion. Harbor Dean David Humphreys,
Southwest Senate President Allison Moore, and West Acting President Betsy Regalado
made the presentations. All were confident that the goal could be reached. The need for
additional administrative support and faculty reassigned time to coordinate SLO work
was discussed, as was the need for faculty to work sufficiently on SLO assessment, as
required in their evaluation. The inadequacy (at times) of the evaluation process in this
regard was mentioned.
Infrastructure Committee
The plans for the new middle college high school at Southwest were presented. The
buildings will be built to LEEDS gold standards, and possibly platinum. The plans
showed open, airy interiors, a far cry from the old bungalows that were the home of the
high school for many years.
Harbor presented plans for a new marquee (the old one is extremely energy inefficient)
and for new small buildings (restrooms mostly) near its swap meet area. Most
importantly, Steinberg Architects presented an update of Harbor’s EIR/master plan. It
consists mostly of refinements having to do with landscaping and walkways.
Interestingly, a riparian area is planned down the center of the campus, though it may
not actually have water running through it. A new quad is also planned. Careful attention
seems to have gone into the layout of walkways. Mona Field stated her preference for
non-deciduous trees so that maintenance is kept to a minimum.
West also presented an update to its EIR/master plan. Striking images were displayed of
several new buildings in various stages of development or construction. There was a
discussion regarding "sensitive receptors" (residential neighbors, in particular) and
attempts to mitigate construction noise and traffic disturbances. West’s enrollment
projections for 2022 (sic) have been considerably changed. Rather than 19,000 (FTES, I
assume), the number has been reduced to 11,000, a 42% drop. The reason given was
increasing demand for distance education courses, resulting in fewer students on
campus. I commented that such a reduction seemed odd, given that DE demand was
likely to level out district-wide (currently West offers a far higher percentage than any
other college).
The rest of the meeting was devoted to a review by Lloyd Silberstein of BuildLACCD of
the recently completed comprehensive evaluations of the college project managers, a
first for the bond program. All nine firms have contracts that expire this month. Campus
stakeholders (administration and faculty, et al), Larry Eisenberg and his staff,
BuildLACCD, and the CFO along with other district staff all participated in the process.
All the firms did pretty well, though Pierce, Southwest, and Trade gave their teams the
highest marks. Mission and West had slightly lower scores overall. Jack Daniels
identified the key characteristics of a good CPM as integrity, an ability to work with user
groups, good budgeting, and receptivity to criticism. Sue Carleo reviewed how the
evaluation was conducted at Valley.
While five-year contracts are the industry standard, our CPM’s will be given contracts of
only three years, with annual evaluations and renewal options included. Nancy Pearlman
was "thrilled" with the evaluations, adding that the district is doing an "excellent job with
the building program." While no common problems were noted in the evaluations
according to Silberstein, Eisenberg pointed to change orders as a regular problem.
Open Session
Mona Field, concluding her term as Board President, thanked her colleagues for their
support. They presented her with a small gift in appreciation of her year of service. By
way of concluding comments, Field said that she looked forward to the imminent arrival
of Dr. Daniel LaVista, who would be an “outstanding chancellor.” She added that he had
been working with the Board and has been involved in recent decisions.
Georgia Mercer was nominated to be the next president. Nancy Pearlman was also
nominated but withdrew her name. Mercer was then elected. Miguel Santiago was
nominated for vice president. Pearlman was again nominated (again by Rodney
Robinson). She expressed support for Santiago and again withdrew her name. She did
note, however, that in ten years on the Board she had never been chosen for a
leadership position, and she expressed an interest in serving as Second Vice President.
Robinson then nominated her for that post, but Camille Goulet pointed out that no such
position existed. The Board then voted to create it, and Pearlman was elected to fill it.
I commented that I stood by my statement at the last Board meeting regarding Mission's
energy savings plan and the lack of adequate shared governance in the bond program. I
have written to the Board about these issues in the last week, substantiating my earlier
charges. I then complained about violations of proper procedure on the part of the Chip
Chapdelaine, president of Trade, in regards to a recent VP hiring. Without going into any
details, I stated that the Trade Senate and DAS had done all we could to avoid a public
complaint, but Chapdelaine's actions had left us no choice. In response, Adriana Barrera
remarked that Chancellor Wieder and she had found no violations of proper procedure.
Laura Gutierrez and Micky Jackson, two of the Atwater community activists who often
speak to the Board regarding the Northeast Center, were next. Gutierrez expressed a
strong interest in working with the Board, despite the past acrimony. Jackson focused on
emails from Ken Sherwood and others that they obtained under the Freedom of
Information Act and which include some off-color language. She asked for an official
apology from the district. She also alleged that Sylvia Scott-Hayes had engaged in a
cover up of district intentions, citing certain emails. Scott-Hayes denied any such action
and gave her account of the contents and timing of the emails in question.
No action was taken in Closed Session that needed to be reported out.
Committee reports were given (see above).
Tina Park was selected to serve as the trustee representative on two local education
boards.
Linda Spink, at her last Board meeting as Harbor College president, was presented with
a certificate by Adriana Barrera and Georgia Mercer. Mercer said that Spink had done
an "incredible job" and had been "one of our extraordinary leaders." In reply, Spink
thanked the Board for their support and said that Harbor was being "left in a good place."
The Consent Calendar was passed unanimously as usual, after two extended
discussions. The first had to do with the multiplier rate used in the bond program.
Readers will recall earlier discussions about this. The rate refers to the money beyond
salary that we pay to the firms from which we get consultants. A rate of 2.2 or higher,
which has been the district figure until now, meant that we were paying the salary as well
as 120% of the salary to the firm itself in order to pay for that person's health benefits,
retirement package, et al. The figure has recently been reduced to 2.0. Kelly Candaele
voiced remaining skepticism as to whether all that extra payment is really necessary.
Eisenberg did not respond directly, but did say that we could go to an hourly
compensation payment instead. He said that it would be simpler and easier to
understand, but that the total cost would be the same (for reasons not made clear).
The second discussion concerned the whistleblower program (for non-bond matters in
this case). Classified representative Sandra Lepore had a number of specific concerns
about the language. These were resolved, but only after quite a bit of wordsmithing.
A new taxpayer representative joined the bond District Citizens Oversight Committee.
The next item on the agenda was a presentation of the West EIR/ Master Plan, which
had been presented earlier in the day to the Infrastructure Committee (see above). It
was announced in advance that there were 26 speakers scheduled to speak regarding it.
At that point, yours truly left. It had been a very long day already, and I just didn't see the
necessity in sitting through an hour's worth of complaints from West's neighbors
(something I have heard a lot of already), as it is not a pressing academic issue.
Comments
Though we’ve anticipate it for some time now, it's great to see City and Trade come off
probation. I was sorry that we had no choice but to bring up the latest shared
governance problem at Trade. It's not a good idea to go into details, but it shows the
residual trouble there. I certianly take issue with Adriana Barrera’s assessment, and
have written her and the Board to that effect. Much else is going well at Trade, however,
so we want to remain positive.
West's FTES projection for on-campus enrollment seems very peculiar. An 11,000 total
is only about 3,700 beyond its current figure (7,300, including DE students). And that's
their figure for twelve years from now. Isn’t one point of building all these new facilities to
aim for much greater enrollment? I'm eager to hear more from the West faculty and
administrative leaders about this. Perhaps I’m missing something.
I’ll miss the next meeting, as I’ll be on vacation, but someone will sit in for me.
All the best,
David
District Academic Senate President
213-891-2294
dbeaulieu@email.laccd.edu
www.laccd.edu/das