Question of the Month

 

August/September 2004

Under the guise of increasing efficiency, the California Performance Review (CPR) proposes to eliminate the Community College Board of Governors (CCBOG). The report does not recommend elimination of the system governing boards for either UC or CSU. What are the strongest arguments to counter this proposal?

Please e-mail responses to Communications Director Keri Goulart at kgoulart@faccc.org, by September 30. (Please use the subject "September Question.") Your response, along with your name, e-mail address and college, will be published here at www.faccc.org, and may be published in other FACCC publications.

RESPONSES:

Thur 9/23/2004 10:37 AM, Sylvia.Montejano@gcccd.net, (Sylvia Montejano, Grossmont College)
The California Community College system is a large, variable system, and because of that it isn't the easiest to monitor and regulate. To do away with the Board of Governors and join this system with K-12, under the control of a Secretary of Education, would make matters worse, not better. The CCC system is part of HIGHER EDUCATION, not K-12. To link us with K-12 would erode our credibility as institutions of higher education, would result in more confusion, rather than less, and would create an even more unmanageable bureaucracy. Put into simple terms...IT MAKES NO SENSE TO COMBINE THESE TWO SYSTEMS, it would be like mixing apples and oranges!

Sun 9/5/2004 4:06 PM, leeloots@comcast.net, (Lee Loots, Vista College)
Attached is a resolution I received when I attended the Vista Faculty Senate meeting on 9/3/04. The resolution is against the proposed consolidation of the community college chancellor's office into a division of higher education reporting to the secretary of education. I am not "reporting" this on behalf of Vista (they can do that officially), but I was there for the vote, and saw that this resolution passed unanimously. You asked for feedback, and here is mine.

Sun 8/22/04 11:42 AM, twindart@msn.com, (Darwin Thorpe, Retired, Compton College)
Although there is much work remaining to make the CC system a more qualitatively-efficient one, throwing out the CCBOG baby with the bath water is not the answer for its reform. The fact that there is a separate system under the CCBOG has figured mightily in the debate over who could perform remedial education well, and inexpensively. Quite aside from local CC district ability to respond to local job training and remedial needs in a more timely manner, if the current CC system had not been in the face of the two more highly-financed UC and CSU systems, the latter would be continuing to admit large numbers of unprepared students, instead of stopping their pillage in the fall of 2000, and referring these remedial problems to the less expensive CC system.

Perhaps the bright light of reform could be better directed at the County Ed. Departments, who have failed in their fiduciary responsibility to monitor local CCs, issuing proper warnings long before college districts, such as the Compton and South Orange districts, hit the financial doldrums.

Mon 8/23/2004 11:47 AM, gconrad@sdccd.cc.ca.us, (Gail J. Conrad, Academic Senate President/DSPS Coordinator, San Diego Mesa College)
I think our strongest arguement is that we are a higher education system, not required education as K-12. Linking us with the Dept. of Education will further erode the work that has been in process to meet industry and transition needs from 2 to 4 year institutions. Community Colleges need to remain a separate entity with independant goals. The size of the K-12 system will require the Dept of Ed to respond to those issues before it deals with the CCC....a step that will not help the workforce needs of California.

Do you have suggestions for future questions?
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