College Board Casts Vote of Confidence for President

By Oliver Lukacs
Staff Writer

July 15 -- One month after the faculty association gave Santa Monica College President Piedad F. Robertson a vote of no confidence, the College Board of Trustees last week unanimously declared its support for her leadership in the face of record budget cuts.

The resolution approved July 7 also called upon the college’s faculty and employee organizations -- which have heavily criticized both Robertson and the trustee’s handling of a $15 million budget deficit -- to “collaborate in good faith and mutual respect.”

"We are blessed with an outstanding College and an extraordinary culture of commitment to student success," Board of Trustees Chair Herbert Roney said in a statement issued after the vote. "We will need to make a number of choices to protect the institutional stability of Santa Monica College.”

The split over how to bridge the budget gap, which is due an historic State budget shortfall, has spurred a lawsuit by eight former full-time teachers, who claim the decision to lay them off and shut down six programs was “arbitrary” and violated the school’s and the state’s procedural codes.

"This vote (of no confidence by the faculty) should not be seen as a final word, but as a first call toward building collegial governance at SMC," said Lesley Kawaguchi, the incoming President of the Academic Senate. The senate -- along with the Classified Senate, the Faculty Association and the Classified State Employees Association -- has been critical of the administration.

The Trustee’s vote of confidence was a also a response to complaints that the school’s leadership has been acting unilaterally, contrary to promises of a shared-governance approach to solving the gaping budget problem.

“By tonight's action, we are also saying that we value the opinions, recommendations, and collaborations of the College's representative organizations,” Roney said in his statement.

Cuts at Santa Monica College have included the elimination of administrative positions, reductions in student services, cuts in the number of offerings, and the closure of several academic programs.

For Summer of 2003, the Chancellor of the California Community Colleges, Tom Nussbaum, reports that college courses have been reduced 29 percent statewide.

The unprecedented budget crisis has resulted in the release of 4,800 part-time instructors for Summer and Fall of 2003 and in the elimination of 385 full-time faculty positions for the full year, Nussbaum said.