Tom Fuentes and the SOCCCD's accreditation crisis

(A local political blogger asked me for some background on our district’s accreditation situation. I provided him with some notes and sources. I’ve provided an edited version of those notes below:) 

     What follows is a brief account of the accreditation situation of the South Orange County Community College District—SOCCCD, which comprises Saddleback College in Mission Viejo, Irvine Valley College in Irvine, and the ATEP facility at the old Tustin helicopter station (this money pit has yet to fully launch). 

     To avoid confusion, I should mention that districts are not accredited; rather, individual colleges are. Nevertheless, individual colleges can run afoul of the Accrediting Agency’s standards owing to problems or misconduct at the district level. (Compton College’s recent loss of accreditation largely concerned trustee and administrator misconduct.) 

OUR BOARD 

     Our board is dominated by right-wing political ideologues—Tom Fuentes and Don Wagner—who, to differing degrees, buy into right-wing stereotypes regarding state employees and unions—especially “teachers unions.” You know: college faculty are lazy and overpaid and they teach students atheism and homosexuality. Fuentes is more extreme, more ideological, and craftier than Wagner. Wagner, however, does sit on the board of Education Alliance, a group whose roots are in the early 90s effort to reduce faculty unions’ political muscle in California and whose original funding came from Christian Reconstructionist Howard Ahmanson, Jr. The following is a TV interview that illustrates the contempt with which Fuentes holds district faculty (he makes false claims 

about faculty workloads and pay): Fuentes’ (and to a lesser extent, Wagner’s) prejudices re faculty help explain why the board has stood by their man, the stunningly unpopular Chancellor Raghu Mathur, a conniving and ambitious incompetent, whose chief qualification is his willingness to do the board’s bidding. (Ironically, Mathur became an administrator when he was a member of a corrupt clique that controlled the faculty union in the 90s. In 1996, using the union’s political war chest, the clique paid for deceptive and homophobic fliers to secure the election of a “board majority.” In exchange for this support, the board maintained high faculty salaries, settled the clique’s scores, and promoted the administrative wannabes among them, including Mathur, who was made President of IVC. All of this is fairly well documented. See, for instance, the OC Weekly’s Adventures in advertising.) If you know anything about former OC GOP chair Tom Fuentes, then you know that he pursues politics strategically, maintaining and adjusting a networks of friends, allies, patrons, and prospects. Fuentes clearly regards Mathur as a member of Team Fuentes and Fuentes’ multi-faceted, endlessly creeping machine. That machine meshes with the machinations and agenda of OC "Republican Mafia" chief Mike Schroeder, who counts among his advisees OC DA Tony Rackauckas and former OC Sheriff Mike Carona (who nowadays awaits trial for corruption). Both Rackauckas and (especially) Carona have made appearances at the colleges, apparently at Fuentes' request.

     Mathur and Fuentes have a history that goes back to before Fuentes’ entry onto the board in 2000.

ACCREDITATION: 

     I won’t review our district’s chronic troubles with the accrediting agency, which trace back to 1997 or so. I’ll stick with recent events. In 2004, each college underwent the usual accreditation review process, which involves the filing of a report (by each college) followed by receipt of an Accreditation action letter. That time, unsurprisingly, the Accreds (ACCJC/WASC) tagged the colleges essentially for 

• Trustee micromanagement 

• A continued plague of fear and despair at the colleges (caused largely by Mathur’s reliance on fear and his unremitting micromanagement) 

• Unclearness about roles and responsibilities (of groups such as trustees, faculty, et al.) 

     Now, in truth, the Accreds (I mean our particular agency, ACCJC) have been all bark and no bite for quite some time. And so it is understandable that some denizens of the community college scene are skeptical of Accred threats and concerns. Such skepticism combined with the board majority’s dismissive attitude toward the Accreds and the Accreds' standards set the stage for ongoing trustee shenanigans and game-playing, especially by Fuentes, yielding the demand for further “progress” reports. (This story is told in the documents listed below.) Fuentes routinely expresses contempt for faculty; but, at least until 2008, he also routinely and openly expressed contempt for the accrediting agency (ACCJC/WASC) and the accrediting process, apparently even adopting the wacky notion that the system is fixed and that, in reality, “the faculty” write everything, including the agency’s findings. (I overheard him say this myself. Others will report similar Fuentean comments.) The following 9-minute video from 2006 presents Fuentes as open contemner of the ACCJC and its charge that SOCCCD trustees engage in micromanagement: Mathur, a man who knows little but who knows how to exploit others' prejudices, by all accounts has for years worked to portray faculty leaders (to largely clueless and absentee trustees) as seeking to “control" the colleges and the district. And so we should not be surprised that Fuentes—in the above scene and elsewhere—has asserted, contrary to the Accreds, that the problem with the district is not so much board micromanagement as it is “the macromanagement of others,” namely, faculty. At bottom, Fuentes is a conspiracy theorist, and like most of that ilk, evidence to the contrary of his view is invisible to him. (I’ll mention only in passing that, since December of ’96, members of the board majority, none of whom are educators or intellectuals, have embraced a “top-down” model of management and have often applied the language of business to our colleges. Meanwhile, the Ed Code and statutes are meant to give to faculty considerable authority over such matters as hiring, course development, and program development.) Unfortunately, during the writing of our last “progress” reports in 2007, trustees meddled with the process, violating various standards and guidelines. Wagner insisted on inserting incompetent and defensive language into the report, to which the faculty senates objected mightily on grounds of accuracy and professionalism. Nevertheless, Wagner (and Mathur and Fuentes) had their way, and so, late in ’07, the reports were submitted, complete with undocumented and poorly written elements. In January of ’08, the colleges received the harshest Accred action letters to date. 

THE D.O.E. 

     In recent years, the Bush Department of Education has pursued its peculiar reforms, and this eventually led to, among other things, a harsh review of ACCJC/WASC, much of it deserved. In particular, the DoE tagged the Accreds for failing to enforce their own standards, allowing institutions to write progress report after progress report. The Accreds clearly failed to enforce in particular the “two year” rule, according to which problems (e.g., board micromanagement) are to be “addressed” (i.e., fixed) by a college within two years. Or else. (See Community colleges in California feel the heat and The two-year rule.) Thus the action letters received in January (this is the last we’ve heard from the Accreds) stated in no uncertain terms that all problems must be “addressed” or else accreditation would cease. Final reports from the colleges are due (to the Accreds) in October (i.e., in two months). The Accreds will make their decisions in January . 

DOCUMENTS: 

     All of the relevant documents (including the colleges’ “progress” reports, the Accreds’ “action letters,” etc.) are readily available at the two colleges’ websites: Saddleback College: accreditation Irvine Valley College: accreditation For each site above, the first document listed is the crucial Accred action letter of January ’08: January 31, 2008 ACCJC letter to Saddleback College (pdf) January 31, 2008 ACCJC letter to Irvine Valley College (pdf) I quote from the Saddleback Accred letter (page 2): I also wish to inform you that … institutions out of compliance with standards or on sanction are expected to correct deficiencies within a two-year period or the Commission must take action to terminate accreditation. …[T]he college has lapsed significantly beyond the … two-year rule and needs to ensure that these recommendations are completed resolved at the time of the October 2008 report. Essentially, the “recommendations” (i.e., problems cited) are: • The college needs to complete writing of “student learning outcomes.” (SLOs are absurd requirements born of educationist twaddle and conservative “performance” demands. Saddleback failed to take care of the requirements on time.) • The board must cease its micromanagement. (Examples of micromanagement include the board's ending the colleges' memberships in the American Library Association because the AAA are a bunch of "liberal busybodies" and the Fuentes-led action of denying approval of a Study Abroad trip to Spain on the grounds that Spain had withdrawn its troops from Iraq and had thereby "abandoned our fighting men and women." After a public outcry, the board reversed its decision.) • All groups must come together to overcome “hostility, cynicism, despair, and fear….” (The hostility, etc., of course, is largely created by Mathur, who rules with fear, as various recent actions illustrate.) The “recommendations” listed in the IVC letter are similar, though they do not include mention of “student learning outcomes.” 

THE ACCREDS SEEM TO MEAN BUSINESS 

     There are indications that, in the last year or so, the ACCJC is more stringent in its demands and much less tolerant of college foot-dragging re accreditation “recommendations.” See, for instance, this recent LA times article: Los Angeles Southwest College is put on probation: District officials call the move by the regional accrediting agency 'an overreaction' and 'completely unprecedented.'. I should add that, upon receipt of the ’08 Accred letters, the politically ambitious Wagner apparently saw that the board’s (and especially his own) arrogance had now placed the colleges in danger of losing their accreditation. Since early ’08, Wagner, now president of the board, has worked hard to deal with this crisis. In the spring of ’08, each college formed a “task force” to address the crisis and to write the report. Wagner joined the IVC “task force,” and, by all accounts, he has worked hard and in good faith with faculty (and administrators, et al.). They’ve done great work. (See "All college meeting" video, Part 1 and Part 2.) Owing to his task force experience, which has stretched for many months, Wagner seems to have gained considerable respect for the faculty he has been compelled to work with. During board meetings, he now refers to their excellence and dedication. It would seem that he no longer embraces the daft notion that faculty leaders seek to “take over” the district or its colleges, whatever that was supposed to mean. Meanwhile, as near as I can tell, Fuentes remains an unrepentant demonizer of faculty. If, in the end, our colleges are reaccredited, it will be in spite of Tom Fuentes.