Fuentes greets Perry in Newport Beach

     Apimages.com reports today that SOCCCD trustee Tom Fuentes attended a rally for Republican presidential candidate Texas Gov. Rick Perry. The GOP rally was at Roger's Gardens in Newport Beach.
     Check out the photo and report here.
     See also Perry Launches Presidential Bid – Gets Rousing OC Reception:

A very warm reception was also provided to former OC Republican Party Chairman Tom Fuentes who literally left his death bed to do the invocation.

Tom Fuentes' deceptive candidate statement

Have you read Tom Fuentes’ candidate statement? (He’s running for reelection as SOCCCD board member, Area 6.)

Since the SOCCCD is, after all, a college district, I thought it would be appropriate to subject Tom’s little essay to some close reading and analysis—you know, like we do at the colleges!

Tom starts off by invoking the memory of Ronald Reagan:

Ronald Reagan broke ground for the South Orange County Community College District, forty years ago. As your Trustee, I have sought to utilize his conservative values and principles to guide our District. ¶ As a result, our District is financially solvent and our campuses are safe for our students.

We critical thinking instructors discourage this “brownie points by association” tactic, of course, since it amounts to the ringing of a Pavlovian bell. In this case, drool is replaced with the voting-for-Tom reflex.

Also, Tom here states that his (allegedly Reaganesque) guidance has resulted in campus safety and financial solvency. In logic, we call this sort of statement, um, a "statement." Statements that are not obviously true need support, but Tom offers none. In fact, our campuses were very safe before Tom arrived. Our district is financially solvent largely owing to our being a “basic aid” district—a district that receives a portion of local property taxes, and, as you know, the value of local property has been very high. Tom is no more responsible for our basic aid funding than any other trustee.

Modern classroom technology and instructional equipment have been implemented by the prudent expenditure of limited funds. Enrollment has increased and the renovation and construction of college buildings have been achieved without new taxpayer burdens of bond measures.

Oops! One doesn’t “implement” equipment, does one? Still, we know what Tom meant.

Tom implies that the district has “limited funds,” but, in truth, our district is nearly unique in the state in that, owing to its basic aid funding, it has been swimming in dough for years—a circumstances that yields much resentment throughout the state’s community college system.

It is true, of course, that the district has not pursued bond measures, but that is because its basic aid funding makes such measures unnecessary. In truth, SOCCCD is a relatively rich district, and thus it spends an unusually large amount of taxpayer money. Tom is trying to pull a fast one here.

Course offerings for students have grown tremendously with online classes. A Master Plan for education and facilities is in place. Faculty and staff are held accountable for student success. As a consequence, our District has achieved high transfer and job placement rates for our students.

The claim about course offerings seems a little confused (# of course offerings and # of students [FTES] are distinct). In fact, in recent years, our colleges have seen zero growth except for online classes, which are growing faster in many other districts. (And are online courses always a good idea? That’s hard to say.)

Yes, we have a Master Plan, but is it any good? Chancellor Mathur’s fingerprints are all over it.

Is Tom implying that, under his guidance, faculty and staff are held more accountable for student success? How so? What has changed re accountability during the Fuentes era? Nothing that I can see. ("Student Learning Outcomes" are mandated by the state and by the accreditors, not by trustees. Besides, there is no evidence that they have yielded anything beyond annoyance.)

In any case, Tom asserts specifically that our colleges’ high transfer rates are the “consequence” of his holding faculty and staff accountable. But, again, how has Tom or the board affected accountability? What is supposed to be the mechanism? I am completely at a loss to explain why Tom thinks that he is responsible for our high transfer rates.

And why does Tom repeatedly imply that he is the leader of the board? With the exception of newbie Bill Jay, Tom Fuentes is the only trustee who has not served as President of the board (at one time or another).

(Now, in fact, I do think that, owing to his political stature as the former chair of the OC GOP, Tom does wield unusual influence among our Republican trustees, some of whom are politically ambitious. But one can easily argue that such "leadership" is a species of corruption.)

Well, there you are. I give 'im a C-

Fuentes trumpets

Jubal over on OC Blog notes a brief mention of Tom Fuentes’ recent campaign event (Rick Rieff On Fuentes Campaign Event) in this week’s OC Business Journal:

It was almost like old times—a couple of hundred loyalists enjoying drinks and cigars at the Balboa Bay Club, conservative stalwart Bruce Herschensohn signing books and Tom Fuentes at the center of it all. The event launched Fuentes' re-election campaign for trustee of the South Orange County Community College District, job enough these days for the once-powerful chairman of OC's Republican Party. The old lion held court, told stories, trumpeted the college district's fiscal conservatism and blamed the GOP's woes on power brokers who value "money" more than "people" or "ideas." But a slowed Fuentes was gracious, and more philosophical than combative. He did not partake of the libations, a small price to pay, he said, for his new liver: An encounter with cancer "makes you realize what's really important."

For some reason, Tom chose not to trumpet our district's equally outstanding "accreditation brinksmanship" or its "50% Law cluelessness." And then there's its remarkably persistent "hostility, fear, and despair."

Tom Fuentes and the accreditation crisis at the South Orange County Community College District

Today, at Red County/OC Blog, contributor tylerh will be posting about the accreditation of our two colleges. He has graciously offered to include a link to this post, which offers the "faculty perspective" on this matter.

No doubt tylerh has opined that the South Orange County Community College District’s colleges will likely be reaccredited (early in 2009).

He is probably right.

But why has the question arisen in the first place? It has arisen because, back in January, the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC) sent letters to the two colleges of the district—Saddleback and Irvine Valley)—advising them that if they did not finally resolve long-standing difficulties, they would lose their accreditation.

Back in 2004, the accreditors dinged the colleges essentially for trustee micromanagement and a “plague of despair”—the latter largely engendered by the authoritarian, repellent, and incompetent “leadership” of the conservative Board Majority’s man, Chancellor Raghu P. Mathur.

Back in 2004, instead of canning Mathur and ceasing their micromanagement, the board gave Mathur a new contract and a generous salary (he makes about $300,000), and it continued to throw its weight around inappropriately—for instance, imposing incompetent and irregular elements in follow-up reports to the ACCJC.

During all of these years of accreditation difficulty, the most consistently defiant trustee has been Tom Fuentes, the former chair of the OC GOP, who is now up for reelection in November. He has displayed open contempt for the accreditors, even declaring, during board meetings, that, contrary to the ACCJC, it is not trustee micromanagement but rather the “macromanagement” of “others” that burdens our colleges. The others, of course, are the faculty, whom he routinely demonizes.

Unfortunately for Mr. Fuentes and the district, circumstances have changed on the accreditation front, for, not long ago, the Department of Education, in the course of pursuing its peculiar reforms, took ACCJC/WASC to task for its failure to enforce standards.

Thus it was that, in January, the colleges were informed that “institutions out of compliance with standards…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.”

This has placed the colleges in a difficult situation, for how, after these many years of “hostility, cynicism, despair, and fear,” are the colleges supposed to emerge with the requisite chirpiness, idealism, and hope? Mathur is still the Chancellor, depressing morale and causing an alarming administrative turnover. The board remains defiantly behind their man, despite his manifest incompetence and unpopularity. (In December, it was revealed that, for many years, Mathur had allowed the district to drift toward noncompliance with the 50% law, a situation that recently forced the district to engage in a hasty and disruptive faculty hiring initiative.)

The conservative readership of OC Blog will no doubt be receptive to Fuentes’ efforts to blame the situation on a recalcitrant and "overpaid" faculty that refuses to be led by Mathur and that pursues only power. But I do hope that they will listen to Board President (and Fuentes ally) Don Wagner, who, for five months now, has been working with faculty (and others) to address our accreditation difficulties and draft the accreditation report on behalf of Irvine Valley College. Since he’s begun to work closely with faculty, he has expressed only praise and admiration for their excellence and hard work. I do hope that you will ask him whether the problem with the district is its faculty.

In the end, owing to the hard work and dedication of such groups, the colleges will likely avoid accreditation disaster. But if they do so, it will be despite Mr. Tom Fuentes.

In the Area 6 trustee race, Fuentes is running against Bob Bliss, a retired Saddleback College professor. Like Fuentes, Bliss is a conservative. But, unlike Fuentes, he will not place our beloved colleges in jeopardy.

For a more detailed account of our accreditation predicament and how we came to it, please see Tom Fuentes and SOCCCD's accreditation crisis.

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.

Neanderthals were slicker than I thought

• I’m as guilty as anybody of using the term “Neanderthal” to suggest coarseness and loutishness. In fact, back when Tom Fuentes replaced Steve Frogue on our board in 2000, I was quoted as saying, “We’ve gotten rid of a crude Neanderthal but replaced him with a slick one” (OC Register, July 13, 2000). I now realize how horribly I maligned Neanderthals with that remark.

According to a piece that appeared in the Guardian over the weekend (In praise of ... Neanderthals), we've grossly underestimated our hairy brethren. Recent research suggests that Neanderthals likely could speak (they sang). Plus their brains were bigger than ours.

Here’s an interesting factoid: there were never more than 10,000 Neandos, or so new genome evidence suggests.

I have no doubt that just one Tom Fuentes can stink up things better than all the Neandos who ever lived rolled together into one hairy ball.

• Amanda Parsons of the OC Weekly updates us on the Democratic protest of Dick Cheney and today’s San Clemente “GOP hobnobery.” Evidently, we’re all invited:

If interested, bring a sign and join the OC Democratic party and friends today at 2:15 p.m. at Trestles State Beach parking lot (5 South to Christianitos Rd.; Left at stop sign and go over the freeway. Make a left at the next stop sign and the parking lot is on your right-hand side). At 3:00 p.m. the group will march to La Casa Pacifica [aka Nixon's "Western Whitehouse"].

• The OC Reg also reports on the protests ( Vice President Cheney's visit draws differing views), noting that things sure have changed since 2001:

The Bush administration’s approval ratings are near the lowest of his presidency, at about 30 percent, according to the Real Clear Politics Website. ¶ And Cheney’s rating is at its lowest in a June Harris poll. After peaking at 69 percent at one point in 2001, only 18 percent now approve of the way the vice president is doing his job, with 74 percent disapproving.

• The Times has a story about Pastor Rick Warren’s “prominence.” (See Visits by McCain, Obama to Orange County church underscore Pastor Rick Warren's prominence.) Too bad they don’t have a story about Warren's dishonesty—or whatever it is. After weeks of telling the public that tickets for the “civil forum” would soon become available, yesterday, he announced, just four days before the event, that no tickets will be made available to the public after all. They’ve been distributed to congregants, at from $500 to $2000 a pop. —It’s a fundraiser, folks, and it's raising millions.

Red County whistles in the dark

TODAY, on the popular Red County (OC) blog, Tyler H (one of RC’s stable of conservative bloggers) reports on the upcoming SOCCCD trustee races.

According to Tyler, “the Tom Fuentes' [sic] led majority seems well-positioned to deliver another victory this year.” He is referring, I suppose, to the block comprising Fuentes, Don Wagner, John Williams—and Dave Lang.

No doubt Don Wagner, the president of the board, will be pleased to hear that Tom is the leader.

C’mon Don. Don’t that piss you off? Not even a little?

Tyler refers to “Tom Fuentes ally and Area #1 Trustee David Lang.” It pleases me to have Lang’s sympathies stated so clearly and publicly. For many years, Lang had strong faculty support (especially at Irvine Valley College), owing to his distaste for board majority toady (President, then Chancellor) Raghu P. Mathur. But then visions of "OC Treasurer" danced in Dave's head—no doubt he figured that Fuentes would be helpful there—and so he suddenly became Mathur's big supporter. Why? Cuz Fuentes just loves Mathur. Why? Cuz Mathur will do anything Fuentes tells him to do.

Lang is the Benedict Arnold of the SOCCCD. We’ll never forget you, Dave.

Tyler thinks that, judging by Lang’s challenger’s (viz., Carolyn Inmon’s) recent political history, he is likely to hold onto his seat.

Incumbent Bill Jay (area 3: Aliso Viejo, Laguna Beach and Dana Point) is seeking reelection. According to Tyler, he faces real estate investor Randall Johnson. Tyler tags Jay as the enemy, cuz he's a unionist:

Bill Jay has not been supportive of Tom Fuente's [sic] efforts to maintain fiscal sanity and is regarded as a "Union Guy", so it is unsurprising that the pro-Faculty website Save the socccd is supporting Bill Jay. Randell Johnson is a new face.

Fiscal sanity? Like our huge problem complying with the 50% law, caused by Fuentes’ man Mathur? Like the ATEP black hole, promoted by Fuentes' man Mathur?

And what about Accredular sanity? Thanks to the Fuentes board and their toady Mathur, for the first time in the district's history, its two colleges face the possibility of losing their accreditation (in January). The Accreds are not impressed with endless trustee micromanagement and the pall of despair created mostly by the ruthless and conniving Mathur.

BTW: gosh, Tyler, thanks for the mention. I didn’t think anybody read that little website (Save the SOCCCD). As soon as I created it several months ago, I couldn’t get anybody in the union leadership to visit it (I wanted feedback so that it would be OK with the PAC). I pretty much had to abandon it.

Well, at least this Tyler fella reads it.

Tyler seems wary of trustee John Williams, who is the incumbent in area 7 (Mission Viejo, Rancho Santa Margarita):

Area 7 … is the most curious race. Sixteen-year incumbent John Williams faces "Retired Educator" Carl Christensen. Tom Fuentes ally … Don Wagner considers John Williams a solid Republican, a fiscal conservative, and a helpful ally on the board. However the Save the SOCCCD website is also currently endorsing John Williams. Perhaps Carl Christensen is so focused on his favorite issue (he is a history teacher who recently spoke to the board about the need for more history classes) that he hasn't noticed that both opposing factions are supporting his opponent?

••••

On Friday, Red County’s Jubal (aka Matt Cunningham) posted about Tom Fuentes’ race against Bob Bliss (Tom Fuentes' Community College Re-Election Campaign Off To Powerful Start).

Fuentes, said Jubal, is “off to a powerful start” in his re-election efforts. The union, says the Jube, “might as well save their money, because Tom Fuentes will run over Bliss like a freight train.”

How come?

Well, first, Fuentes is the incumbent. Second, Fuentes has made lots of friends over the years, and they’ll pony up some big money. Then there’s Tom’s impressive list of endorsements (Jubal presents a list of 81—the usual suspects).

Jubal speculates that this is a case of a union leadership supporting candidates it knows will lose—to placate the rank and file.

Well, we’ll just see about that.

P.S.: At Red County, I've commented on both the Tyler and Jubal posts, indicating to each writer the error of his ways! I do hope they'll try to respond. Probably not. We're small potatoes.