Board OKs Proposal to Decentralize Community Colleges

Over the rancorous protests of dozens of speakers, the Los Angeles Community College District board Monday approved a sweeping decentralization plan aimed at solving its financial troubles by ceding power to the nine campuses.

The 5-1 vote followed a tense five-hour board session marked by name-calling, finger-pointing, charges of racism and even a promise that God would punish the “wicked” trustees who favored the changes.

Emotions ran so high in the stuffy, overcrowded boardroom that even as the board members tried to vote on the proposal, they had to outshout a district instructor who repeatedly took over the speaker’s microphone to protest.

Trustee Althea Baker, recently ousted as president of the board because she was perceived by her board colleagues as balking at major changes, cast the lone vote against the plan.

Baker said she objected to the proposal as a “back-room deal. . . . The method used to jam things down throats has created a division in this district.”

Speaking for the first time about her ouster three months before her term ended, Baker dismissed the coup as “politics, pure and simple.”

The stormy board session Monday followed months of pressure on the board to get the district’s financial house in order.

The pressure came from the disclosure of a looming $13.1-million debt this fiscal year, much of which has since been covered by various cost-cutting methods, including downsizing the district office, displacing 14 clerical workers.

In separate letters, the regional accreditation agency and the state chancellor for community colleges warned of impending fiscal disaster if the district did not act swiftly to staunch the short-term debt and get on more solid fiscal ground.

The five board members who voted to end Baker’s presidency--and for the plan--were attacked Monday as power-mad pawns of the faculty union, as well as a “cabal,” “a gang of five” and “a junta.”

As the new president who succeeded Baker, trustee Beth Garfield was compared to Adolf Hitler and Napoleon.

Responding to the attacks before the vote, Garfield said, “When board members are personally threatened, when we are analogized to Nazi Germany, it is no surprise board members have not [previously] had the courage to step forward to make these changes.”

Board members who favor decentralization say it will make the district solvent by placing responsibility and accountability on campuses so they can respond to student need and help the district grow. Currently, the campus budgets are decreed from district headquarters.

Opposition from the majority of the 150 or so who attended the meeting came from all sides--Academic Senate leaders who represent faculty members, clerical employees who are being displaced at the district office, officials from smaller colleges afraid their campuses will wither and a contingent of African American employees and community leaders.

The removal of Baker, who is black, as president was viewed by some African Americans in the district as a call to arms and is being challenged in court by the district’s black employee group.

Other black speakers said they viewed the plan as the death knell for the smaller colleges, especially the one that is in the heart of their community--Southwest College.

The concern is that Southwest, Mission College in Sylmar and West Los Angeles College, all smaller campuses, would lack the clout of the larger colleges.

“This is aimed at limiting our educational opportunities,” said Southwest student Michelle Spence.

Faculty members who spoke protested especially against the board’s launching of the proposal without consultation with the district’s constituency groups, which they said is required by state law.

The leaders of the districtwide Academic Senate, buttressed by testimony from the head of the statewide Senate, contended that the board plan violates the legal mandate that the Senate must be consulted.

As it stands now, the district Senate makes curriculum decisions; under the decentralization plan, that authority would go to each campus’ Senate chapter.

“You are crossing the line,” said Bill Scroggins, president of the statewide Academic Senate.

Board members responded that their resolution set a policy direction that would lead to Senate consultation as the details evolve.

As to their alleged disregard of the process, board member Kelly Candaele said that the district is in trouble precisely because it has placed more importance on process than action.

“We’re suffering from death by process,” Candaele said. “The main process I’m concerned about is getting students back we’ve lost” to adjoining districts.