Bill Seeks End to At-Large Selection of College Board

As the newest campus in the community college district, and one of the few that is expanding, Mission College has had more than its share of trouble in making ends meet in recent years.

So when the board of trustees shut off the funding spigot and called in the campus’ debt this year, Mission was especially hard hit.

But should the board of trustees have treated Mission College differently from the more settled campuses because of its growth?

That will never be known, contends Assemblyman Tony Cardenas (D-Sylmar), because Mission had no local representative on the Los Angeles Community College District board to advocate its interests.

Neither did the San Fernando Valley’s other two community colleges, Pierce and Valley. And the Valley is not alone. There is no trustee from the Harbor College area either, or from East Los Angeles.

Of the seven college district board members, all but one live east of Fairfax Boulevard.

Most of the others are clustered within 20 minutes of downtown in Eagle Rock, El Sereno, Silver Lake and Hancock Park.

Saying the lack of a geographic connection to the people they serve is a problem that must be addressed, Cardenas is sponsoring legislation to change the way community college trustees are elected to make the decision makers accountable to the communities where the campuses are located, rather than to the sprawling district at-large.

If the bill passes and is signed by the governor, it would bring the board of trustees into line with the way members of the Assembly, city councils and other governing bodies, including most community college districts in California, are elected.

The majority of trustees on the board oppose the measure, which will be discussed at an Assembly Higher Education Committee hearing at Mission College on Wednesday.

“When I was first elected to the board, I thought districting was a good idea because it would enable board members to concentrate on a few colleges instead of the whole district,” said trustee Elizabeth Garfield.

Garfield said she changed her mind after seeing “the commitment of the board to the district as a whole, that looked at the district as a whole and cared about the district as a whole. . . . The difference with district elections is you would have only one person who you could hold accountable and now you have the whole board.”

But Cardenas said that when he attended a trustees meeting to protest cuts at Mission College he was struck by how removed the board members were from the people their decisions affect.

Board members are “seldom in this community, running into people at the local supermarket or park,” Cardenas said. “They have to reach out to as many people as the mayor does.”

The relative anonymity of the board of trustees means that getting elected usually requires a catchy or well-known name or the support of organizations, such as the employee unions in the district that can afford to send out campaign literature, Cardenas said.

“You have to ask where the board is getting their input,” Cardenas said.

The president of one of those influential groups said district elections would lead to a dysfunctional board.

“It’s going to be region against region,” warned teachers’ union president Carl Friedlander at a recent hearing.

But Gloria Romero, who won election without the support of the district employee unions, agrees with Cardenas.

“Something is wrong,” Romero said. “I represent 4 million people, some 2 million voters. What happens is there is no way an average constituent has access to a board member who represents 2 million people.”

That doesn’t mean the needs of the individual campuses are not heard, Garfield said.

In deference to the large debts of Mission and Pierce colleges, and at Garfield’s behest, the board recently decided it would be too onerous to ask the two schools to pay off their debts this year.

The board postponed part of the debt repayment and is giving Mission an extra $300,000 to tide the school over through the difficult year.