Trustee Battles Union Label

Mona Field has been called many things: a Vietnam war protester, a Sandinista supporter, a liberal, a feminist and a union die-hard. She denies none of these labels. But until she ran for a Los Angeles Community College District trusteeship, the 15-year Glendale Community College professor had never thought of herself as an obstacle to ethnic diversity.

That was what members of the American Federation of Teachers and the Los Angeles County Democratic Party said about Field last spring as they debated whether to support her candidacy over that of Jules Bagneris, a popular African Methodist Episcopal minister from Los Angeles, or Julia Wu, a 12-year incumbent favored by the city’s Asian establishment.

Field defeated her two minority opponents in the April primary, then took pains to reach out to her critics--even to Bagneris, who ultimately endorsed her in the runoff against Wu.

He now discounts the race issue but remains concerned “about whether she’s going to maintain her independence from the unions.” Field is president of the Glendale Community College faculty union and a vice president of the California Federation of Teachers.

Still, Bagneris acknowledged that Field’s “activism on a statewide level could be brought to bear on our community colleges in a very positive way.”

It is Field’s ability to build consensus between unlikely allies that supporters say will serve the political science teacher well as she helps run the problem-plagued Los Angeles Community College District. Field, along with two other new trustees, Sylvia Scott-Hayes and Warren Furutani, were sworn in Friday to four-year terms on the seven-member board.

All the new trustees received strong union backing during the election, and they join a group of incumbents--such as labor lawyer Beth Garfield and labor historian Kelly Candaele--with strong union affiliations.

In recent years, the LACCD’s powerful faculty union has been criticized by former chancellors, college presidents and even some teachers for blocking personnel changes, demanding outrageous wages and benefits and generally putting labor’s interests before students’. Much of the $40,000 Field raised for the campaign came from unions--and the figure doesn’t include the cost of union slate mailers.

During the runoff, Wu dispatched her own mailers featuring a picture of Field on a “Union Maid” milk carton. “Have you seen me?” read the carton, which accused Field of spending more time working for union members than for students.

Field denied Wu’s accusations. Wu could not be reached for comment.

Still, as union critics dogged Field, some LACCD union members questioned her loyalty after they discovered an essay she wrote critiquing one of academia’s most sacred cows: faculty tenure.

“Is there any reform that would protect academic freedom yet make it easier to get rid of bad teachers?” she asks in the article. Field, herself a tenured professor, suggested alternatives to tenure such as five-year renewable contracts.

The paper was less an expression of Field’s strongly held views than an intellectual exercise, she said. Nevertheless she says the issue deserves debate.

“I’m not a stereotypical union person,” Field says. “I’m willing to look at controversial ideas.”

Field’s outsider status could cut both ways, says Candaele, the newly elected board president.

“Her biggest challenge is probably going to be getting a handle on a district that is much larger and much more complicated in terms of the range of issues and challenges we face as a district--and she doesn’t know this district as well as she knows Glendale,” he said. “There are institutional complexities in a multicollege district that you might not have in a single college district.”

Sitting under snapshots of the Rev. Jesse Jackson and U.S. Rep. James Rogan (R-Glendale) in her Glendale office, the former anti-nuclear protester said she hopes to help bridge the communication gap between teachers and administrators within the contentious LACCD.

“It’s possible to shift the tone with people who don’t have axes to grind or big political agendas,” she said, adding that keeping communication lines open comes naturally to a single mother who still celebrates holidays with her two ex-husbands.

“I don’t take anything personally,” she said. “I usually just see everyone as a colleague.”

Field’s longtime boss, Glendale Community College Supt. John Davitt, agreed.

“Under her leadership, the union has always had the interest of the college and its students at heart,” he said. “Whether it’s dealing with under-performing faculty members, the academic calendar or the teaching load--she’s an educational leader, not just a union leader.”

Although her opponents used her Glendale affiliation to cast her as an outsider, Field was raised in Hollywood by her screenwriter father and celebrity correspondent mother. But Field was less interested in the stars her mother interviewed (Marilyn Monroe, for one) than in her friends’ parents.

“They taught at a community college,” Field said. “I thought that was so great--[community colleges] were free, open opportunities. Anybody could go if they worked hard enough.”

By age 19, Field had earned her bachelor’s degree with honors from Immaculate Heart College in Los Angeles. By 20, she was teaching English as a second language at now-defunct Evans College. She earned her master’s in social sciences from Cal State Los Angeles a year later.

Now Field has more community college teaching experience than anyone else on the board.

“I was in a big hurry,” Field said. “I’m always in a big hurry.”

A wiry 45-year-old with tousled hair, Field has fingernails gnawed to the nubs. She always seems to be flipping through papers, checking her pager and racing from one meeting to another. That’s not to say that Field--who is obsessive about time--is anything less than punctual.

After briskly walking her youngest daughter to school from their Eagle Rock house, Field often races to work to grade papers and plan her classes--all the while fielding dozens of phone calls from union colleagues or the LACCD chancellor.

Field acknowledges she does not yet have any bold, specific plans to reform the district, except to say it needs to be focused on the needs of the students. She also expressed concern about the LACCD’s negative image.

“We need to reach out and let people know that our community colleges are working,” she said.

Field’s supporters say that with her network of Sacramento political allies, she will have a unique ability to make state power brokers aware of the LACCD’s successes. As a vice president of the California Federation of Teachers since 1997, Field organized several lobbying days for union members. Her association with liberal heavyweights like Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa and state Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Los Angeles) go back to her activist days, when she worked in Sandinista schools in Nicaragua and organized communities in Echo Park.

“Mona is well-respected around the state,” said Patrick McCallum, the district’s state lobbyist and an old acquaintance. “She expands our political clout and could make it easier to get resources for the district.”

Villaraigosa, who met Field almost 20 years ago when he was in law school, called her a consensus-builder with a “demonstrated commitment to improving the world around her.”

Still to be determined, Villaraigosa said, is whether Field will try to parlay her new position into a run for a higher office.

“We’ll see after a few years as a trustee what she decides to do,” he said.

Traditionally, an LACCD trusteeship has been used as a political launching pad for the likes of Assemblyman Wally Knox (D-Los Angeles) and Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown, but Field says she’s right where she wants to be.

“I just want to be the best trustee I can be,” she says. “The others can just climb right over me.”