College Board Weighs President’s Resignation Offer : Education: Trustees balk at keeping Warren A. Washington on the faculty. They have said they intend to fire him for failing to make sure that federal funds were properly spent.

Compton College’s embattled President Warren A. Washington offered to resign this week, but the college’s trustees delayed action because of a disagreement over terms of his departure.

Washington and other administrators have been under fire since auditors found that the college apparently misspent hundreds of thousands of dollars of federal funds. Trustees placed Washington on paid administrative leave Feb. 23 and notified him that they intended to dismiss him for “failing to fulfill (his) obligation to oversee the day-to-day operation of the (college) district.

Washington’s resignation offer Tuesday contained a dozen demands, including $44,000 severance pay, use of his district automobile for 30 days and a stipulation that Washington be allowed to teach at the college this fall as a tenured faculty member. Washington taught psychology for more than a decade before becoming the president in 1989 and is teaching a class this semester.

The trustees accepted the severance proposal but balked at Washington’s request to resume teaching. They also rejected his proposal to use the automobile.

When the two sides failed to resolve the issue, the trustees decided to delay further action until their meeting Tuesday.

Washington came under fire in January, when an audit found that about $500,000 had been improperly spent at the college since 1989. The funds had been earmarked for tutoring and counseling programs for low-income and first-generation college students, but auditors found that the funds had been spent instead on such items as clothing, carpets and building improvements.

Last month, a large majority of faculty members approved a no-confidence resolution against Washington.

On Wednesday, a financial team from the state community college chancellor’s office arrived on campus to investigate whether state funds may have been misspent. The state provides 75% of the college’s $12-million budget, state officials said.

The investigators have asked campus administrators to provide volumes of information, including the financial reports of all state-funded programs on campus since 1989.