EX-TEACHERS ASK FOR LAGUNA ART SCHOOL INQUIRY

Claiming that too much work, too little pay and an insensitive administration ruined faculty morale, eight former teachers at the Art Institute of Southern California in Laguna Beach have asked an accrediting board to review practices at the private college.

In a two-page letter outlining their complaints, the instructors urged Samuel Hope, the executive director of the National Assn. of Schools of Art and Design (NASAD), to investigate the college. The July 3 letter alleged that poor working conditions at the institute, formerly called the Laguna Beach College of Art, prompted the teachers to resign during the past 18 months.

“There has been a systematic and conscious severing of a great part of the faculty . . . which we feel is, rather than a healthy turnover during a dynamic period, an indicator of an underlying set of serious problems,” the letter states.

Those problems include excessive workloads, poor communication between the faculty and administrators, the hiring of unqualified teachers and a subsequent decline in enrollment, the letter noted.

But college President Patricia Caldwell denied the charges, saying the disgruntled teachers, six of whom were part-timers, represent a minority of the faculty. The college has six full-time and about 25 part-time teachers. She added that such complaints are to be expected because the institute is growing and changing as it improves.

“These (complaints) are the hazards of a community school developing into an academic institution,” Caldwell said. “This is just a hazard of the road.”

The college, which was founded in 1962, has in recent years increased its faculty, offered more courses and moved from a local “prep school or secondary school” to a degree-bestowing institution (it was accredited in 1982 by NASAD) now able to attract serious students interested in art careers, Caldwell explained. The college has 1,200 students, she said.

While taking the charges seriously, Hope said, the letter alone is not enough for NASAD to take action. The teachers would have to file an official complaint, complete with documentation supporting each charge, before a probe might be launched.

“A letter saying they are unhappy is just not enough,” he said. “We would need some sort of proof, like minutes of board meetings or whatever else that would show their position.”

He noted that this is the first complaint NASAD has received against the institute since it was accredited in 1982. The college is scheduled for a routine review next year during which faculty, administrators and students will be interviewed to determine if a good academic environment is being offered, Hope added.

But the teachers want a more immediate inquiry, said Ray Jacob, an instructor for 16 years and chairman of the design department when he resigned in April. Jacob, the unofficial spokesmen for the eight teachers, said he is preparing a more comprehensive complaint to file with NASAD that would, at the least, document workload increases.

“We don’t necessarily want it (the college) to lose its accreditation or to put it out of business,” he said. “What we want is to have the problem on the record. We want NASAD to know what’s going on.”

Most of the problems can be traced to cost-cutting measures as the institute faces shrinking enrollment, Jacob claimed. Caldwell declined to talk about the college’s finances but stressed that the student population has consistently stayed at the 1,200 figure.

The issue of work hours and pay figured prominently in the letter to NASAD and many of the teachers’ resignation letters obtained by The Times.

Jacob said he was told by Caldwell that he had to increase his teaching hours for the spring quarter to 24 a week, even though his contract mandated 18 hours. He was not paid for the extra hours.

Caldwell, however, said there was “no basis for the complaint” because the additional hours are consistent with “institutions similar to ours.” Furthermore, she said the new schedule did not cause class instruction to suffer, as some teachers claim.

Valerie Bechtol, a part-time sculpture instructor, said she resigned in June because “unrest” grew after communication between the faculty and administration dwindled to almost nothing.

“My principles will not allow me to teach in an institution where communication . . . is so closed. Art is communication!” she wrote in her resignation letter.

But Caldwell denied that she and other administrators neglected the faculty’s needs. Caldwell said there were regular meetings between the academic dean and instructors, and she has “always been open to their (teachers’) point of view.”

The letter to NASAD also claimed that the college is trimming costs by replacing those who have resigned with “underqualified” instructors. Jacob said the new, relatively inexperienced teachers do not grouse about the extra work and can be hired at lower wages.

Caldwell scoffed at the charge, saying the institute follows strict hiring policies that determine if a candidate meets educational and expertise requirements. “We want to be a very good institution. Why would we hire bad teachers?” she said.

She also pointed out that six of the eight teachers who signed the NASAD letter, even though many worked at the college for several years, were part-timers and not informed enough to offer opinions on institute policy.

Jacob replied, “I was there for 16 years and I’m qualified to say whether it’s having problems or not. I don’t want to go back there (to work); all I want is for it to be an excellent place to learn.”