Community Colleges Fill Chancellor Post

Donald G. Phelps, the head of Seattle’s three community colleges, will be the next chancellor of the Los Angeles Community College District and its nine campuses, officials announced Thursday.

Phelps was chosen over three other finalists because of his record in helping students, his commitment to decentralization of power and his charismatic personality, said Hal Garvin, president of the seven-member board of trustees that governs the Los Angeles district. Garvin and other trustees said the choice was unanimous, in sharp contrast to the previous political splits on the board, and was made sooner than expected.

“Don Phelps combines extraordinary personal qualities of sincerity, integrity and eloquence with an educational leadership capacity we found to be simply extraordinary,” said Lindsay Conner, board vice president.

The Seattle district has 20,000 students, compared to the 103,000 in Los Angeles community colleges. But, LACCD trustees stressed, Phelps presided over a system with problems very similar to the ones here, including declining enrollment, money shortages and even a controversy--strikingly reminiscent of a recent Los Angeles dispute--about headquarters that critics charged were too lavish.

Faculty leaders in Seattle on Thursday described Phelps as very congenial and politically shrewd, but added that his main weakness was in setting standards for instruction and not making enough classroom visits. A student government leader praised him for his defense of community colleges in state government and his role in aiding minority students.

In a telephone interview from Seattle, Phelps, 58, said he is awed by the size of the Los Angeles district but is eager to move here. The district, he said, “has all the ingredients for really demonstrating what community college education is supposed to be about in this country, namely, the common folks’ educations.” The media attention available in Los Angeles and the increasing role of ethnic minorities in the city appealed to him, said Phelps, who was a television and radio commentator for several years in Seattle.

Phelps said he recently visited four of the LACCD campuses and noticed that they were not well maintained, although he said he realized that the buildings are older than the ones in Seattle. “It looked to me as though there was a need for some good old preventive maintenance and some cleaning and painting,” he said. He added, however, that what goes on inside the buildings is more important.

His first task will be to become acquainted with the budget and state legislative processes which control LACCD, Phelps said.

He said he was aware that previous budget problems and disputes with the teachers’ union led to the ouster last fall of Leslie Koltai, who had been LACCD chancellor for 15 years. “I’m not naive about politics, fortunately,” he said. “But I want to be the new chancellor to a new evolving group of colleges in a dynamic city. . . . I hopefully won’t get involved in things from the past.”

The trustees debated whether Phelps’ lack of California experience hurt his candidacy, especially when compared to another finalist, John D. Randall, the acting chancellor of California’s entire community college system who is to return to his post as president of the Mt. San Antonio Community College District in Walnut next month. Finally, the trustees decided that Phelps’ other qualities overcame that possible handicap.

Other Finalists

The other two finalists were: Salvatore G. Rotella, chancellor of the City Colleges of Chicago, and Nolen M. Ellison, president of the Cuyahoga Community College District in Cleveland, Ohio, and its suburbs. Ellison said he withdrew his name from consideration Wednesday, while trustees were discussing their decision in an all-day session. However, several trustees intimated that Ellison knew he was not going to be chosen.

Phelps is expected to start his Los Angeles job Sept. 1. Details of his four-year contract remain to be worked out, but officials said they expect his salary to be about the same as that of Koltai--$103,000. In addition, Phelps is to receive $20,000 for relocation costs, helping with the higher price of real estate in Los Angeles compared to Seattle.

Rachel Levine, president of the faculty union in the Seattle district, said LACCD made a wise choice if the trustees were looking for a chancellor who would be a very good executive and who knows how to work with the Legislature and local politicians. “But if you wanted someone who is involved deeply in educational issues and is close to what is happening in the classroom, I think he moved away from that,” she said.

Garvin, the LACCD president, said he was particularly impressed with Phelps’ role in moving the Seattle district headquarters from rented facilities in a posh office building with a waterfront view to a rehabilitated garage on a campus. LACCD recently decided to move its headquarters from a rental downtown--which critics called a Taj Mahal--to a planned new building at Los Angeles City College.

Phelps has been chancellor in Seattle since 1984 and was president of one of its three campuses, Seattle Community College, for four years before that. He previously was a top manager of county government in King County, a director of a federal anti-alcoholism program in Washington, D.C., a principal of a junior high school and an elementary school in the Seattle area and an elementary school teacher. From 1968 to 1972, he was a news commentator on ABC affiliated television and radio stations.

Phelps received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in education from Seattle University and a doctorate in education from the University of Washington. He is is married and has three grown children.