College District to Vote on Sweeping Reforms

Think of district headquarters as the sun around which the nine Los Angeles Community College campuses orbit obediently, going around in circles but not getting anywhere.

That comfortable dependency, many district officials agree, has led to stagnation. The time has come, so to speak, to set the campuses off on their own courses.

Today the Board of Trustees is expected to approve a top-to-bottom reform plan that is being sold by the district chancellor, the college presidents, the teachers union and the board itself as the cure for the ills of the Los Angeles Community College District.

The reform plan, produced in a summer of soul-searching regarding the way the district operates, comes after the system barely survived a year of financial crisis and the sting of blunt criticism from the state chancellor and the community college accreditation body.

It is the first time in a quarter century, maybe ever, that the district has dissected each of its functions with an eye toward efficiency and more autonomy for the campuses. The result may be to encourage them to create the programs and classes that will draw students.

“The district has never in the 25 years I’ve been here looked at how we do things,” Chancellor James Heinselman said.

As a result of recent travails, detailed in a series of Times articles in August, the district is the “laughingstock of the state,” one college president said.

Enrollment is off 5% this fall.

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In the weeks leading up to consideration of the reform plan, the district has taken steps to address several problems:

* Talks have been opened with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department to take over the district’s police force, which now sets its own schedule, including overtime that doubles some officers’ yearly pay. The district would contract with the sheriff for protection.

* Board secretaries, who are two years behind on preparing minutes of meetings, were told to provide more streamlined reports so they can be current.

* To minimize losses from bonds issued for a bad real estate investment, the district has agreed to a complex derivative investment deal that could be risky.

* A new lobbyist has been hired for $158,000 plus expenses to push for additional funding in Sacramento and Washington.

But West Los Angeles College President Evelyn Wong, the chancellor’s representative on reform, said the task of reviving the district is more fundamental than solving individual problems.

“It’s changing the way everybody thinks,” Wong said.

District officials originally billed it as a “decentralization” plan that would transfer as many operations as possible from district headquarters to individual campuses, but have since rejected that label as inaccurate.

Some functions should be transferred to the colleges, officials have found. But others not.

“We shouldn’t start with whether to decentralize, but ask: ‘What are we doing? How can we do it better?’ ” Wong said.

More than 30 committees have been combing through district functions, recommending, for example, that legal services and student loan collections be centralized, while student services and student loan applications be handled on campus.

Three campuses--Pierce, Valley and Mission--are located in the San Fernando Valley.

Naysayers say the decentralization plan is sleight of hand aimed at showing legislators, the state chancellor and the public that the board is trying to reform the district--needed spin to repair the tarnished image.

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District Academic Senate President Winston Butler said his group favors decentralization, but has not found the plan to be well thought-out.

For one thing, the reform does not, at least in the short term, address the district’s No. 1 problem--lack of money--which will be the same no matter where decisions are made.

Also, as long as the board sticks with its unofficial, but firm, policy of no layoffs, cutting expenses will be difficult.

For example, Pierce College President E. Bing Inocencio heads a committee on the district’s information technology department, which has 60 positions and uses 25% of the district headquarters’ budget.

Its workers lack current computer skills. But if the committee recommends cutting some positions, Inocencio said, the workers would have to be absorbed elsewhere in the district.

The reform plan to be considered today, however, does contain a key financial element, Board President Elizabeth Garfield said: The colleges’ debts to the district will be erased and, in the long run, the colleges will be able to generate more revenue if they can attract more students.

The faculty union and the college presidents are high on the plan. They say it will free the colleges to be more creative and move more quickly to devise niche programs and classes for their “customers.” Plus, each campus, after several years, would get to keep what it earns, a key incentive to be innovative and beat the bushes for new students.

Now, the colleges turn over money to the district, for redistribution among the nine colleges. Although concerns have been raised that the three smaller schools--Mission, Southwest and West Los Angeles colleges--may not be able to be self-sustaining, their presidents say it must be done.

Mission College President William Norlund told the board this summer that after a few years of major retrenching in the wake of severe financial problems: “For the first time I can recall, we’re coming in . . . on budget and expecting a significant growth. It can be done.”