Locally Elected Officials Are Key to SMC's High Standards

September 25, 2003

Dear Editor,

Ryan Flegal, a former student at Santa Monica College, recently wrote in this space to offer his opinion on how Santa Monica College should be governed. ("OPINION: Time to Govern SMC Democratically," Sept. 24, 2003) In presenting his opinion, he seriously erred in describing how California community colleges are currently governed.

There is no such term as “shared governance” in State law. Governance for community colleges is defined at the state level in California’s Education and Government Codes and in Title V of the Code of Regulations. At the local level, governance is regulated by collective bargaining agreements, Board of Trustees policies, and administrative regulations.

The term “shared governance” is used by community college administrators, faculty, and staff to mean “participatory governance,” which is an effort to seek out all the wisdom of the institution in order to make effective and well-informed decisions. All community colleges make liberal use of this principle in their day to day operations. The participatory governance process leads to recommendations to the Superintendent/President and to decisions by the Board of Trustees.

The authority to make decisions rests exclusively with the Board of Trustees, who are elected locally by Santa Monica and Malibu voters to serve a term of four years. As a matter of policy, the Board delegates the day to day operations to the Superintendent/President, who administers these operations in well-defined ways: through a management structure; through a department chair structure that is exclusively faculty; and through various campus committees made up of representatives from each of the College’s constituent groups, including students, the Academic Senate, the Classified Senate, administration, and the collective bargaining groups.

Here are a number of practices at Santa Monica College that speak to the routine adherence to participatory governance:

• All decisions on the hiring of part-time faculty are made by College faculty, and historically have been accepted by the administration without change. The Board of Trustees routinely approves these decisions each semester.
  
• All recommendations on the hiring of full-time faculty are made by the Academic Senate and reviewed by a Coordinating Council, which is made up of all College constituencies, primarily faculty. The administration routinely accepts these recommendations without change and presents them to the Board of Trustees for approval.
  
• All recommendations on new courses and prerequisites are made by the Curriculum Committee of the Academic Senate and reviewed by the Coordinating Council. The administration routinely accepts these recommendations without change, and modifies them only when there is a lack of internal consensus, and presents them to the Board of Trustees for approval.
  

During difficult budget times like the present, the College also forms a Budget Committee, made up of all the campus constituent groups, whose task is to make recommendations on achieving a balanced budget. Understandably, in the present instance, many of these recommendations included “borrowing” funds from one place or another to preserve the status quo. The Board of Trustees has the responsibility and the duty to make the final decisions on adopting a balanced budget.

In several areas, the Board of Trustees rejected budget recommendations that were proposed by a joint Academic Senate and Faculty Association ad hoc committee and subsequently endorsed in May 2003 by the Budget Committee:

• We did not budget some proposed revenues that we have no possibility of receiving.
  
• We rejected the Budget Committee recommendation to impose $2,000,000 in wage and hour reductions for our classified employees. Our adopted budget reduced this figure to $842,000.

Our final adopted budget included the loss of 14 percent of our administrative staff, 2 percent of our full-time faculty, 5 percent of our classified staff, and about 35 percent of our part-time teaching staff. I understand the pain these reductions bring to our employees and their families.

These reductions are required to meet an impossible State budget shortfall. At Santa Monica College, we will receive less funding for each student, zero funding for growth and basic skills, and reduced income from our International Education program. We must also meet increased costs in health and retirement benefits, and salary increases for our faculty as required by their contract.

As a long-time member of this community, I have seen many ups and downs for our schools and for the College. This past spring, our community came together to provide over $9 million in new funding for the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District, saving 93 teaching positions. At the College, our savings must come from reductions. Historically, that is how the College has always operated. We live within our means, and reduce operations when we must.

As a result of this philosophy, we have perhaps the best community college in the nation in a community that is among the most involved of all. Thank you for the opportunity to report on these matters to you.

Sincerely,

Herbert E. Roney, Chair
Board of Trustees
Santa Monica Community College District