Education: Spending Tax Dollars on Schools

I wish to respond to the current public outcry, and El Camino College faculty voting no confidence in the Board of Trustees of El Camino College and President Sam Schauerman (May 26).

I have taught full time as a professor of business administration at El Camino College for more than 14 years. Like most faculty, out of necessity, I spend a lot of my own money to improve the classes that I instruct.

El Camino faculty and students are being denied the basic resources to teach in our classrooms. Faculty understand the cutbacks on the state level, but not the insensitive priorities of El Camino College upper-management administrators.

For example, El Camino administrators recently allocated over $250,000 to expand even further an already bloated bureaucracy, adding new administrator positions; while district management is simultaneously and unilaterally cutting over 275 class sections in the fall! Anyone who knows even a little bit about the current El Camino College curriculum understands that current programs have already been decimated in recent years.

Faculty do not accept, nor do we agree to, the lack of respect afforded us by Sam Schauerman’s administration. It is well known that Sam Schauerman controls a well-meaning, but ill-informed Board of Trustees who basically rubber-stamp anything Schauerman wants. The out-of-touch Board of Trustees previously met twice a month. However, now, with “nothing to do,” they only meet monthly.

Faculty are fighting for much more than compensation. The issue is respect! Barely 50 cents of your education tax dollar is spent on the cost of instruction at El Camino College; the rest is spent on administration.

Faculty are right to be concerned for our students, for without the proper allocation of resources, or the respect of the administration, competent instruction is impossible. It is just plain wrong to spend 50 cents of every education tax dollar on administration!

BURTON FLETCHER

Torrance