THE NOVEMBER 14 BOARD MEETING, Part I

I attended most of Monday’s board meeting, and so here’s what I saw. It’s late, and so I’m gonna make this quick.

The room filled up pretty well with red-shirted CSEA members, some of whom were gearing up to address the Board during the “public remarks” portion of the meeting. But before we got to that, Trustee Fuentes led everybody in a rousing Pledge of Allegiance, but not before he offered some seriously weird patriotic blather:

FUENTES: “…Young men and women, some members of this district, are at the battlefields around the world defending our freedom. Let’s join together in pledging our allegiance to that flag, and that nation, that they defend.”

I stared at him, trying to figure out what makes him tick. It was like trying to understand a moray eel.

Trustee Padberg invoked the Lord, but that’s the essence of invocations, I guess.

For some reason, trustees really love to hand out awards and plaques and such, and so, with the help of Student Trustee Ho, four “teacher of the year” awards were presented, followed by photo ops. Recipients included Dottie Sherling and a fella named Pearlstein—they both teach Math at IVC, I think—and Susan Hecht and Robert Parsons of Saddleback.

Fuentes, who wore his standard extravagant “master of ceremonies” persona—complete with too-loud voice and subtle but theatrical gestures—seemed a little lost when he called out the four names and only Ms Sherling showed up. Maybe the other three were sending a signal. Could be.

I know I’d show up. I’d grab the plaque and say, “well it’s really very lovely to be here, and I owe it all to—well, I sure as hell don’t owe it to these people, who can’t even be bothered to visit the college, ceptin' for Nancy over there!”

How come nobody ever does something like that?

As I said, the classified staff did a pretty good job making their case for receiving a better contract than the district is prepared to offer. One woman explained that you “can’t get excellence" if you're only willing to pay for "mediocrity.” One guy named Cherry, I think, outlined the facts about other categories of employee in the district and the sometimes surprisingly generous raises they have received. Some administrators, he said, received as much as a 30% raise! And the Chancellor! Sheesh, the fellow is the second highest paid Chancellor in the system. (2nd? Good Lord, who’s the first?)

I’ve gotta say, most of these classified employees were very articulate and they made a strong case for their having been treated most shittily. Some referred to a study done by Johnson and Associates that showed that classified employees are definitely underpaid in comparison with similar workers elsewhere. Connie Z of IVC explained that the kind of raise CSEA was asking for its 450 workers would cost much less than the raises given to administrators, a crew of 28 people.

Well, it all sounded good to me, but the Board seemed unmoved, but who can say.


During their reports, Trustees referred to their meeting two weeks ago with Accrediting officials. They kept saying that things went well, but they also seemed kinda tense about these Accreds, like maybe they’re expecting to get wacked real good up side the head. They all looked flinchy, if you ask me.

Raghu explained that he gave an address to the Kiwanis Club in Laguna Hills. I thought he was kidding, but I guess not. He yammered a bit about some study that attempted to quantify the “economic impact” of our two colleges. Evidently, we bring something like a trillion dollars—or maybe a billion, or was it a zillion?—to the county. How do they measure something like that? I bet they just make it up and hope nobody asks questions.

Trustee Marcia Milchiker talked a bit about the “academic calendar” issue. I do believe that the “District Calendar Committee” has experienced lots of disagreement, and it has decided to recommend to the Board that the two colleges adopt different calendars—IVC would adopt one that allows for a winter inter-session. I’m told that Chancellor Mathur supports this idea.

In the end, of course, it will be up to the Board, just like everything else.

Student Trustee Paul Ho told one or two classic jokes of the self-effacing variety:

HO: “…Besides teaching me math, [Professor Sherling] also taught me that there’s actually three types of math student: one that can count and one that cannot count. [Laughter.] .... I attended the veterans ceremony, and [Mathur and Roquemore] were willing to let me speak, and I told them that I will speak free of charge and I think that your audience will agree with me that I am worth every penny of it…. [Laughter.]


Paul repeated one of his themes: the need for more classes, especially science classes. He spoke about the need for wait lists and student evaluations of online classes. He seemed to be underscoring the paucity of data for measuring the success of such courses. I think he’s an Empiricist or something. The fellow wants facts. It was refreshing.

Eventually, they got to items 27 and 28: goals. As you know, thanks in part to the help of a pricey consultant, the board has written some “district” and “trustee” goals. They're crap. The Saddleback College Academic Senate responded to this crapulence by editing and rewriting the goals with a big red pen. The IVC Academic Senate has endorsed the Saddleback red-ink editing effort. But, on this night, there was no mention of the two senates. Maybe that’s because Raghu and Co. actually incorporated some of the senate suggestions. Does anybody know?

As we’ve reported elsewhere, the Board has not made public the “Chancellor” goals. They remain a secret. Recently, one of the senate presidents asked Mr. Kinsler, the district’s lawyer, about the Board’s refusal to reveal the Chancellor’s goals, and Kinsler reportedly said that the Board takes the position that, legally, those goals “are not a public document.” Jeez. I seem to recall that the IVC Academic Senate has resolved to ask the Board to come clean with these goals. I mean, if taxpayers are gonna give a guy a quarter million dollars each year, shouldn’t they be told what he’s trying to do?

Chancellor Mathur explained that they’ve added a goal that says something about engaging faculty, staff, et al., in shared governance, but Trustee Fuentes, using that overly-deliberate televangelist delivery of his, got weird again and insisted that the phrase “to best serve the taxpayer” be added. I think that Raghu counter-suggested the phrase “students and taxpayers.” Yes, that's it!

They were pleased as punch. Everybody else just stared.

Trustee Bill Jay focused on a “goal” that concerned the expansion of distance ed, but he was concerned that it seemed to be focused on “just technology” and not “general education” courses. Lapsing into incorrectness (and 1952), he launched into a mini-lecture about the value of engineering degrees: “You can give a young man” an engineering degree, he said, and he’s set. How come we can’t put together a good engineering program?

Item 30 concerned “additional funding for colleges’ marketing, outreach and recruitment strategies.” Tracy Daly and her crew were requesting $229,830 of basic aid money for that purpose.

Right away, Don Wagner adopted a sour look, as though he'd just entered an IVC restroom. He does that.

This item produced the most interesting discussion of the evening, I think. [I'LL TRY TO POST TRANSCRIPTS OF THESE REMARKS TOMORROW.] Fuentes and Wagner have some kinda right-wing take: that you need to let the marketplace decide where students go. Somehow, Fuentes was put off by the idea of spending money to get students to go to our colleges. I seem to recall Fuentes saying, at a previous meeting, that if some kid in South County wanted to drive all the way up to OCC, then “God bless him.”


Well, Mathur and the rest of the board seemed to take the contrary view, that we are now in a “competitive environment,” and the other districts of Orange county are spending big money to get to our students. The days of “we will build it, and they will come” are over, said Raghu. If we don’t attract students, we will lose enrollment and we’ll have to lay people off.

Someone screamed.

There was some discussion about outreach. Raghu alluded to faculty “resistance” to participating in outreach at the high schools, but, he added, they now see the need for that. (I think he was trying real hard not to piss anybody off.) He said that we need to ask ourselves whether we want to grow or not. If we don’t compete for our share of students, we won’t grow, and we’ll have to “reduce staff.”

There was some speculation about the drop in enrollments experienced across the state. Chancellor Mathur guessed that the phenomenon has to do with the availability of “distance education,” which is growing by 10-25% yearly. So we have to provide that, too, he said.


Tracy Daly presented an overview of the fall marketing campaign, which, it seems, was viewed as a success by most trustees. Evidently, the campaign targeted “18 to 22 year olds.” Its theme was “the next step,” i.e., the step after summer.

Huh? I thought they meant that step off of the surf board and into the drink!

Tracy explained that her efforts are paying off: IVC had exactly 1 fewer students than last year—which means that the decline has been reversed or stopped. Saddleback headcount was up by 151.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc!

Bill Jay climbed on one of his hobbyhorses: that the best marketing is offering classes at local high schools. High Schools! High Schools! High Schools!, he seemed to say.

Fuentes used the term “cancer” to refer to the phenomenon of districts luring students from outside their own area. He looked pretty sour too.

Wagner seemed to express skepticism about the inference that the fall marketing campaign worked. How can we know that it did any good at all? How do we know it wasn’t something else that changed the numbers? He looked peeved again.

Well, that’s about when I had to leave, at about 9:30. I’ll try to find out what else happened, but nobody tells me anything.

Jack the cat says "Hey." --CW