Teachers, Students Up in Arms : Community College Races Spawn Bitter Politicking

As election day approaches, longstanding tensions over control of the San Diego Community College District are erupting into a full-scale confrontation between the faculty and the trustees who govern the 85,000-student district.

Galvanized by the possibility of taking the seats of two incumbents--and perhaps controlling the board--teachers are attempting to transform historically low-profile races into a referendum on the performances of the trustees and Chancellor Garland Peed.

In the past two weeks, faculty senates at Mesa and Miramar colleges have approved resolutions of no-confidence in the trustees with just a single vote of dissent. Teachers at the district’s flagship school, City College, will vote on a similar measure this week.

Students and faculty, angered that more than 220 classes had been cut from the curriculum at City College this fall, showed up at a board meeting last month wearing black armbands of protest and some have vowed to work against Daniel Grady and Louise Dyer, the incumbents facing opposition for reelection this fall.

Perhaps most significantly, the faculty and other district employees believe they have been forced to take a stand against the damage the trustees have done to the colleges and their careers by drafting two candidates to oppose Grady and Dyer.

They are bankrolling the pair, Maryann Zounes and Joe Abrahams, with a political action committee whose leaders say they have raised more than $68,000 to date, including contributions from teachers and classified workers unions.

“Morale is rock bottom,” said Charles Corum, president of the Committee for Better Colleges, the political action committee. “I’ve been here for 17 years, and I have never felt the black mood of despair that has descended on this campus.”

“I have never been in a circumstance where they (the trustees) are just forcing people back to the line,” said Clarence Stanfield, president of the academic faculty senate at City College. “One of the most conservative groups of people (the faculty) has said, ‘We’re not going to be pushed around.’ ”

According to a survey of 227 teachers taken by the faculty, 95% of the teaching staff believes the trustees and Peed are not encouraging “quality education in the district.”

Grady and Dyer contend that the spate of activity is the work of a few disgruntled teachers motivated by the desire to grab political power and to improve their position in current contract negotiations. They also said that the campaign is being led by the teachers union.

Asked about the vote of no confidence by Mesa’s faculty senate, Grady said, “I think it is somebody trying to make a political ploy and making an issue in a campaign when there are no issues.”

Peed claims that the attacks are the work of a teacher frightened by the possibility of losing jobs in an era of declining enrollment at community colleges across the state and nation. In Los Angeles, for example, teachers were laid off and the state was forced to bail out the district because of a sharp dip in enrollment.

“This is not a phenomenon exclusive to San Diego,” Peed said. “But everybody’s shook up. And the faculty’s scared. They’re scared about their jobs.”

Their opponents argue that bitter opposition would have surfaced regardless of whether an election was approaching. But whatever the reasons for the unprecedented level of conflict, faculty members are spicing this election with a list of complaints that they say have gone unaddressed for years. They include:

- The trustees’ decision last spring to double the salary for their part-time posts to $18,000 a year, a few months after the San Diego Unified School District board raised its pay to that rate.

The law that separated the community colleges from the unified district in 1973 apparently requires salaries of the two boards to remain equal. But that does not mollify teachers, whose full-time salaries start as low as $19,000--even for professors with doctorates.

- The five trustees’ decision to give themselves and the district’s administrators lifetime health, dental and vision benefits upon retirement after just eight years service, despite a county counsel’s opinion that they are not eligible until they serve 12 years.

“As far as I’m concerned, it’s only an opinion,” said Lewis Acord, policy procedure analyst for the district.

Retired faculty members, some of whom have spent decades teaching in the district, receive only paid health benefits. Those benefits end at age 65.

- The cancellation of 220 classes when the new semester started in August, after trustees had added $900,000 to the City College budget last spring to cover an unexpected deficit.

Most classes had an average of just six students enrolled, far fewer than the number needed to break even under the state funding mechanism that governs the community colleges, said Marvin Burdg, dean of instruction at City College.

At the root of the problem were the terms of last spring’s bailout, Burdg said. Trustees ordered schedulers to offer the classes this fall, even though administrators knew there would not be enough student interest to fill the classes.

But Kacey Wiles, a student member of the New City Committee, which was established to propose solutions to declining enrollment, said that the college closed at least 52 classes that had 10 or more students. Had the closed classes been left open even a few days, enough returning students might have signed up to make the classes profitable, she said.

Instead, more than 1,600 City College students were forced to find alternative classes, and the part-time teachers who lost jobs when the classes were canceled suffered pay cuts, students and teachers said.

Some teachers and students consider the class cuts another step in the deterioration of the quality of education at City, which they say began with class cuts in 1983.

The trustees contend they are trying to attract students. Wiles, however, said, “They say one thing and they do something else. There’s certainly no trust in the trustees.”

Classes also were cut at Mesa and Miramar colleges, and teachers are predicting another round of cuts during the spring semester.

- A report from the California Postsecondary Education Commission showing that the district’s faculty salaries have consistently ranked among the 10 lowest in the state over the past decade. In 1985-86 the faculty earned an average of $31,174, 67th out of the state’s 70 community college districts. The San Diego district is the state’s second largest.

The district contends that the actual average salary of the 475 contract teachers is $33,470, said spokesman Barry Garron. The salaries range up to $53,813 for one faculty member who taught extra courses, he said.

- A perceived lack of access to four board members--Grady, Dyer, Eugene French and Richard Johnston--because of their long tenure as trustees. Only Charles Reid, who is running unopposed this November, is considered attentive to teachers and students. Every trustee except Dyer has been on the board since it was formed in 1973. Dyer was elected in 1981.

Many teachers complain that it is time for a change, primarily because all of the trustees except Reid listen only to Peed and his administrators.

“There’s a sense of alienation, (a feeling) that the board and Peed are not concerned with quality education,” said Larry Schwartz, president of the American Federation of Teachers local chapter. “Every year, each new piece of information builds on the last piece of information. The faculty is very tired. They’re frustrated.”

Dyer bristles at the accusation. “I think I am open and always have been,” she said. “It’s something I campaigned on when I was elected five years ago. . . . There’s never a time when they can’t call me on the phone or meet with me. I pride myself on it.”

A $30,000 marketing study released last month listed “ineffective communication at all levels” as a major problem at City College. Poor communication between students and faculty, students and staff, faculty and administrators and administrators and the district is leading to “indifferent attitudes among faculty and staff, and low morale,” according to the report by Nuffer, Smith Tucker Inc.

- Stalled contract negotiations between the faculty and the district. The talks are at an impasse.

- The belief that the district is stashing money in a private foundation and elsewhere in the budget instead of spending it on replacements for outdated equipment and faculty salaries. The faculty is also angry that the board has failed to spend all of the California lottery revenue it has received.

The incumbents say they will run on their records of maintaining a financially healthy district considered around the state as a model of how a community college system should be operated.

District officials are proud of a poll they released last month showing that 96% of the students who attended Mesa, City and Miramar colleges enjoyed the experience and 91% would do it again.

To combat the three colleges’ primary problem, declining enrollment that results in declining revenues from the state, trustees are considering a proposal to fund a $200,000 marketing program to bring in new students.

Their opposition comes from Zounes, a 43-year-old biochemist from Ocean Beach, and Abrahams, a 70-year-old psychiatrist from La Jolla. Both have incorporated most of the complaints in their platforms.

Teachers hope that if Zounes and Abrahams both won, they could fashion a new majority with Reid and re-direct board policy.

Zounes, who captured 39% of the vote in a two-person district primary won by Dyer, and Abrahams, who received 29% of the vote in a four-person contest won by Grady, are optimistic that they can win citywide despite the fact that neither has held political office.

But even Corum, who heads the district employees’ political action committee, admits that their chances of a victory are a long shot.

“I think most people are pretty much defeatist,” he said. “They realize it’s uphill and our chances are less than 50-50. But they’re so fed up. They feel that for personal feeling or personal pride, it’s time to maybe stand up and take a stand in opposition.”