Endorsed by: An independent candidate Question #1: In 100 words or less, what about your background makes you a qualified Santa Monica College Trustee? I taught English and journalism at SMC, retiring last June. I worked directly with the trustees in 1986-87 and in 1999-2001 as Academic Senate president. Over time, I chaired each senate committee. I advised the campus newspaper, The Corsair, for 19 years and always was a student club adviser.
I was a newspaperman before coming to SMC after 8 1/2 years with the Los Angeles Times. I covered local government and education.
I now chair the board of directors of the Pico Improvement Organization, a city-created business improvement district. I belong to the American Institute of Parliamentarians.
Question #2: In 300 words or less, do you agree with the way the SMC administration dealt with last year’s budget shortfall (i.e., the elimination of several academic programs)? What would you have done differently? Is it wise for the college and students to bring back those programs? The automotive faculty showed how their program could be cutback leaving just one full-time instructor to maintain a feasible offering until full restoration was possible. That plan as ignored. Respiratory therapy, police and fire science, tourism, and architecture programs also were ordered eliminated.
I believe the faculty showed how all these programs could have been maintained.
Oddly, for years the administration has said it needed to hire a massive number of part-time, nontenured faculty in case staff reduction became necessary. As for tenured faculty, reduction in force policies exist. But vocational classes that gave students valuable job skills were destroyed as a first choice.
The canceled programs should be restored. These classes met community needs, as well provided an inviting doorway into SMC for many minority students.
Replacing lost equipment will be a problem. When a program goes, the college has not been a good steward of equipment.
But the federal government provided funds for automotive equipment before. Perhaps it and other funding agencies still will be just as trusting in awarding more grant money.
Question #3: In 300 words or less, why do you think the city of Santa Monica and SMC have had a strained relationship for years? How would you bridge that gap? I think the problem is communication and, perhaps, institutional ego.
The college, the schools, and the city created a liaison committee to solve the problem, but it persists.
Not long ago college trustees voted nearly $1 million in taxpayer dollars to build an accessway off Bundy to the parking lot of the 10-acre property purchased near the airport. Trustees were told the new access was needed because the city had padlocked the lot’s Airport Avenue fence gate.
Years ago the college was urged by city officials to channel money to the city schools by leasing an unneeded elementary school, Madison, for $800,000 a year. A good tenant, the college has put $4 million into Madison, trying to make it usable. And SMC now plans another $2 million in development work plus it hopes to build a $25 million 500-seat theater there.
When a City Council member came to the board to suggest a joint venture at Madison, adding underground parking with a park on top, the proposal was met with silence. Perhaps some of the more experienced board members recalled the $1 million the college had to spend so Madison’s asphalt parking lot met city demands.
Newly elected trustees and council members might help end this costly silliness.
They must try. Question #4: In 300 words or less, there have been tensions between faculty and college administrators in recent years. Why do you think the faculty is upset and what’s the first step toward addressing their concerns? The faculty sees the president acting autocratically and the board rubber stamping her actions. Faculty input is ignored, and valued instructional programs have been cut.
When the faculty overwhelmingly voted no confidence in the president, they asked the board to speak with them before renewing the president’s contract. The board promptly renewed her contract and then this year raised her pay $25,000 to $203,000 a year and extended her contract to Dec. 3l, 2008.
Title 5 California Code of Regulation’s Section 53200 says “Academic Senate means an organization whose primary function is to make recommendations with respect to academic and professional matters.” It then lists 11 areas where the board of trustees is to “rely primarily upon the advice” of the senate or “reach mutual agreement.”
Faculty leaders believe Title 5 has been repeatedly ignored by the administration and board.
The first step addressing faculty concerns may have been taken by the creation of a campus task force designed to lessen tensions, restore a sense of cooperation, and to provide a planning process with meaningful faculty input.
Whether that is just a token step will be up to the board.
The administration hasn’t the expertise to see that the cafeteria isn’t closed by the health department or to adequately maintain classrooms by fixing broken blinds or replacing such exotic equipment as pencil sharpeners. But it can spend millions with outside firms on registration and records computer systems that don’t work. (The system the college now has working was designed and implemented by SMC staff.) In community college, it is the classroom, the counselor’s office, and the library where the rubber meets the road. At Santa Monica College, the trustees at the steering wheel seem happy to run on bald on tires as long as the wax job shines.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on October 27, 2004. Read the original PDF.