Firing of Community College Chief Is Expected

A majority of the Los Angeles Community College District’s Board of Trustees favors firing embattled Chancellor Leslie Koltai, according to several well-informed and high-ranking district sources.

A decision could come as early as today when the seven-member board meets in closed session to discuss the renewal of the chancellor’s contract, the sources said.

Koltai, who has headed the district for 15 years, “has gotten the message that there will be no more” extensions of his contract, said one of the sources. “He has been notified.”

Reached by telephone Tuesday, the chancellor acknowledged that “there is a very slim majority of the board that holds this view” that his contract, which is due to expire June 30, should not be extended. Koltai has said he wants his contract extended until 1991, when he plans to retire.

“The board has scheduled an extra executive session at 12 (noon). The time will be devoted to what are they going to do with my contract,” said Koltai, who added that he “usually” is present at the closed-door meetings but has been asked not to attend today’s session.

Puzzled by Dissatisfaction

Koltai conceded he might lose his job, adding that he found the board’s apparent dissatisfaction puzzling because the board thus far has indicated “total satisfaction with my performance,” he said.

Board President Harold Garvin would neither affirm nor deny that a majority of the trustees oppose renewing the chancellor’s contract. “The board is in the process of trying to decide that,” he said in an interview Tuesday. He also said Koltai has received “mixed reviews in private” sessions of the board.

The sources, all of whom spoke on the condition that they not be identified, said the move to oust Koltai is being led by four trustees who received substantial campaign support from the district’s faculty union in the election last June. Koltai incurred the wrath of faculty members by recommending the unprecedented layoff of tenured instructors twice in the last two years as a means of stabilizing the financially troubled district.

Although most of the layoffs were eventually rescinded, leaders of the American Federation of Teachers Faculty Guild, which represents clerical workers and the district’s 4,000 instructors, said the planned dismissals created chaos in the district and destroyed morale, and they vowed this year to help elect trustees who would remove the chancellor from office.

If Koltai is fired, union President Hal Fox said Tuesday, “I can’t imagine any tears” will be shed by faculty members.

Fox said he has seen a dramatic improvement in the board’s approach to faculty issues since the June election, which resulted in the defeat of two incumbents who had voted for faculty layoffs and the election of three union-backed candidates.

Tentative Agreement Cited

A prime example of improved relations, the union chief said, is the tentative agreement on a new contract that would give instructors a 7% raise. The agreement was forged by district and union negotiators a few weeks ago.

Union members, who have worked without a contract for most of the last academic year, overwhelmingly approved the wage increase Monday night, and the board will vote on the new contract today. The increase, which would be retroactive to July 1, would be the faculty’s first raise in three years. Because of ailing finances, no district employees have received a pay raise since 1984.

“This was a board willing to negotiate, and the other board was not,” Fox said.

Monroe F. Richman and Marguerite Archie-Hudson, two board incumbents who had voted for faculty layoffs and were opposed by the faculty union, lost their reelection bids last June.

Union-Backed Candidates

Newly elected were union-backed candidates Wallace Knox, David Lopez-Lee and Julia Wu, who ran campaigns critical of top district administration.

Harold Garvin, a former Harbor College professor and the only incumbent to win the union’s endorsement, was handily reelected.

Knox, Lopez-Lee and Garvin each received union loans of $14,000 apiece to fuel their campaigns, as well as several thousand dollars worth of printing, mailing and consulting services, according to campaign disclosure statements filed with the office of the Los Angeles County registrar of voters. The loans were “forgiven” about a month ago, Art Forcier, a union official, said Tuesday.

Wu did not receive a union loan but did receive mailing and consulting services worth about $15,000 that was paid by the union, the documents showed.

Times urban affairs writer William Trombley contributed to this article.