College District Reformer Tells Why He Left

Bill Segura spent less time at the helm of the Los Angeles Community College District than it takes a student to graduate from one of its schools.

But on Tuesday, the system’s chancellor said he was ready to leave the nation’s largest community college district after only 16 months--in part because the bureaucracy made it difficult to enact change.

“I tend to be impatient,” said Segura, who resigned Friday and plans to take the helm of the Texas State Technical College system. “I like to lay down plans and then get after it. And probably in some respects, it wasn’t that good a match.”

Segura, who had previously led a seven-campus system in Austin, Texas, said he was viewed by some in the Los Angeles district as “too pushy, too eager, too much in a hurry.” When the district’s board meets in January to begin seeking his replacement, he suggested, it might “look for someone who’s a moderate.”

The 50-year-old Segura was hired in the summer of 1996. A native of East Los Angeles who had served as a community college administrator in Oregon as well as Texas, Segura was brought in to turn around a 100,000-student district that had been struggling with financial as well as academic problems for several years.

When he arrived, the California economy was rapidly picking up, voters had approved a $3-billion bond measure--$1 billion of which was dedicated to higher education--and the governor had passed the most robust higher education budget in years.

But one year later, as the 1997 fall semester began, it had become clear that improvements would be much slower in coming than Segura and others had hoped in the system that includes schools such as East Los Angeles, Harbor, Pierce and Mission colleges.

After years of deficit spending, eight of the district’s nine campuses were operating in the red--a situation Segura decided had gone on too long. So, despite the healthy economy, the Board of Trustees ordered the colleges to cut back. Class schedules were trimmed, sports programs eliminated and library hours shortened.

Many union contracts also expired during--or shortly before--Segura’s tenure. Employees ranging from part-time secretaries to full-time faculty demanded raises and threatened to strike.

During a telephone interview Tuesday, Segura said union negotiations, as with other district business, were often more difficult than they needed to be because of distrust that had built up over many years between the board, unions and administrators. During some negotiations, he said, it was impossible to agree on how much money was available for raises, with union officials holding up one set of numbers, some board members going with another figure and Segura and his staff insisting neither was correct.

“You have a lack of faith in the administration by the unions and the board,” he said. “It’s odd. They like us. They hired us. But there’s this belief that sort of ripples through [the district] that says, ‘Well, they’re good folks, but they might not be really on top of things.’ ”

Comparing the district’s organizational structure to the weak-mayor system in the city of Los Angeles, Segura said he found that he could make few decisions on his own, or together with the board, without first accepting input from numerous others with varied interests, from the faculty Senate to the presidents of individual colleges.

“When you’re trying to turn a system around . . . you don’t have time for that,” he said. “You’ve already missed the boat, and you’re swimming to catch it.

“Both in Oregon and in Texas, I was allowed a lot more latitude,” he said.

While critical of the district’s bureaucracy, Segura--who earned $140,000 in Los Angeles--had nothing but praise for its employees, saying, “Los Angeles really has the talent to take it a lot further.”

The Waco-based Texas State Technical College system, which has three main campuses and five satellite campuses across the state, should allow him more control, Segura said, and provide an intriguing challenge: fostering growth in an area of education that has foundered in recent years.

Expensive to operate, technical colleges have become a “dying breed” as public higher education systems have struggled for funding in recent years, Segura said.

Although he enjoyed Los Angeles, Segura is looking forward to enjoying another home on the range.

Even after moving to Los Angeles, he kept a horse--in Austin.