President’s Report

Meetings:

• Much like you would hope they would be, my meetings with Interim Superintendent/President Dr. Jensen hold few surprises in that what he says to me in a "one-on-one" he later says in Shared Governance Council, FABPAC and/or campus e-mail updates. He has made it abundantly clear that the only way we are going to get out of our current financial situation is to "grow out of it." He offers that the Senate might focus its energy and attention to retention and persistence, during Flex Cal for example. He has several ideas that I'll share below while reporting out on FABPAC and SGC about funding streams, enrollment, and growth. Also, as he mentions in his most recent campus e-mail update, there was a reporting problem with FTES and the College will have to take serious and immediate action to remedy the problem. He reports,
  

  "FTES Audit – We recently had an outside audit of our "320 Report", reviewing multiple years, and it has been determined we have FTES that will be decertified. The number is being double checked by the auditors. The final report is expected shortly. This has two major negative impacts to our budget: 1. our base apportionment funding may be reduced, and, 2. we have to pay back the funds not actually earned from prior years. We have begun negotiations with the Chancellor's office to develop a plan to address both these items, hopefully over multiple years, to reduce the impact to our budget. FABPAC will be kept updated on this issue so contact your representative for details."
  

• Accreditation: On Thursday, March 19 and Friday March 20, several of the accreditation Working Group co-chairs met with the Dr. Doug Houston, a consultant that Mr. Henry brought in from Lassen College. His comments were extremely helpful and provided for even greater focus and clarity. In my meeting with him we discussed not only the accreditation process but also the wiki (which he loved!) and the Integrated Planning Process. Then later on Friday, You were all a part of the Joint SGC/Senate meetings that occurred on Friday and then Wednesday to discuss and vote on the Show Cause and Closure Reports. I wanted to thank the Senate for its thoughtful and productive comments on the Show Cause Report. I know that the final product was more thorough because of your input. While the weekend of March 21/22 ended up being extremely busy for the Working Groups, the end product was better. I think that the wiki provided an opportunity for the campus community to have "continual and open" access to the report which I think made our vote to approve on Wednesday much easier. While I wanted to ensure that we had the opportunity to discuss any questions and concerns, I was grateful that the approval was so smooth.
  
• Chancellor's Circle Luncheon: On Thursday, March 26, I went to this luncheon at Contra Costa College. I was able to hear Chancellor Jack Scott speak, meeting with local Academic Senate Presidents, and ASCC President, Mark Wade-Lieu. Of note was that when I introduced myself to Chancellor Scott he pulled me aside and asked about Solano and let me know that if there was anything we needed that his office was available to help. The discussion with other Senate Presidents focused primarily on Accreditation.
  
• The Colton Letter: On Thursday, April 2, the Executive Board of the Senate (Past President, Gail Kropp, Treasurer, Thom Watkins, Secretary, Lisa Giambastiani, and I) was asked to meet with Dr. Jensen, Mr. Henry and the SCFA Executive Board. Even though the SCFA Executive Board declined the meeting (two SCFA representatives did come), I felt that the Senate should still go. As I'm sure most of you are aware there is a, as Tom Grube put it, the CCA and the ACCJC are having a "war of words" about SLOs, accreditation and workload. (An interesting ACCJC article on SLOs can be found here.) Regrettably, Solano College has been sucked into a statewide debate. The original Colton letter was sent on March 16^th (I have a copy but because SCFA decided not to share it with the campus community, I don't want to encroach on their decision) and since then there has been much activity about it. My first response was to speak to Gail Kropp, Past President, and then to Mark Wade-Lieu, the ASCC President. Let me share that e-mail exchange with Mark to you to give you a better picture things:
  

Mark,

I am writing to you for advice. Amid our efforts to write our show cause report (due, ironically enough, on April 1) we were blind-sided by CTA's Department of Legal Services. Their attorney, Joseph Colton, wrote a letter on March 16 to Dr. Beno as the "official counsel to Solano College Faculty Association" to "discuss and clarify various statements you [Dr. Beno] have made pertaining to…If the faculty do not adopt Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs), regardless of collective bargaining the college will lose its accreditation and close at the end of the 2009 Spring semester." As one might imagine, Dr.Beno replied that "[T]he ACCJC has not changed its expectations for institutions compliance with the standards that have to do with student learning outcomes…" This kind of State-level distraction has the potential outcome of putting Solano College in the middle of a very large conflict at a time when we are scrambling to be removed from sanctions.

What even more complicates the matter is that our Solano College Faculty Association (SCFA) President and the Executive Council of the union were not informed of the Colton letter and are equally up-in-arms. Compensation for SLOs is not even on their radar right now. I offered to sponsor a joint letter to our campus community and Dr. Beno from the SCFA and the Academic Senate denouncing the Colton letter. Our SCFA opted for a response just from his area. I have yet to see his official letter.

My question is what should I do as local Senate President? What kind of response should I make? I have copies of the letters I reference above and e-mails between our SCFA President and our College President and our Special Trustee if you'd like more precise details. This seems to have become a bit of a "pissing contest" at a state-wide level.
Best,
Jeff Lamb
Academic Senate President
Solano Community College.

Here is his response:

From: Mark Wade Lieu[mailto:mwlieu@asccc.org] Sent: Wednesday, March 25, 2009 11:09 AM
To: Jeffrey Lamb
Subject: Re: Solano College
I will be honest and tell you that I am not really sure what the best course of action is.

With the incredibly tight deadlines of the accrediting commission imposed on addressing sanction recommendations, colleges are incredibly tense, and this tension been detrimental to thoughtful and collegial discussion and responses to the recommendations. The involvement of the statewide unions (CFT and CTA) complicates the issue further. The situation is incredibly complicated for everyone, and getting embroiled in this situation with Mr. Colton's letter is not only a serious distraction but can disrupt the ability of the academic senate to provide leadership in your college's efforts to get off of show cause. So, reiterating my disclaimer in my first sentence, I think that you should allow SCFA to take this on by itself. That will allow you to focus on addressing the accreditation recommendations themselves and distance yourself from the more problematic discussion of whether or not accreditation standards are interfering with collective bargaining. I'm not sure that you need to issue any formal response - the fact is that Mr. Colton does not speak for your senate and did not do so.

That is my inconclusive reply. I have incredible empathy for what you are going through, and I'm sorry I don't have something more concrete or definitive to guide you in this difficult situation. However, I am always available should you need a sounding board to bounce ideas off of.
Take care.
Mark Wade Lieu, President
Academic Senate for California Community Colleges mwlieu@asccc.org

In Thursday's meeting Dr. Jensen and Mr. Henry expressed their concerns and shared the March 24, 2009 letter (page 1 and page 2) that Dr. Beno wrote to Solano College in response to Mr. Colton. In addition, while SCFA has asked Colton to clarify that he was not writing on our behalf, Jensen and Henry feel that there should be a direct response from SCFA to Dr. Beno. I know that SCFA Executive Board is considering this possibility. (You've all received the e-mail that Tom Grube sent to Faculty today, April 6^th, 2009).

Because one of the eligibility requirements for accreditation is maintaining a healthy relationship between institutions and ACCJC, I've asked for copies of Colton's "clarification letter" and any letter that SCFA might send to ACCJC. My recommendation is that the Academic Senate should let the Executive Board of SCFA handle this matter. All communication on this issue needs to come from them.

FABPAC and SGC:

For the most part, what has been said in SGC is being repeated in FABPAC. There is quite a lot of information so I'll cover it in bullet points:

• ACCJC visit will be on April 27^th. This will be a four person team.
  
  • Dr. Jensen's recommendation is that we "put our best foot forward"
    
  • For him, this means don't complain unnecessarily and to take down union Coalition signs.
    
• Dr. Jensen put forward a modified Budget Development Calendar because FABPAC is so far behind. Here are the original and the modified calendars.
  
• There is a private auditor firm coming to SCC. Their report should be ready by the end of April. They will help to ensure the credibility of reporting docs from Banner and will do a Management Development Analysis. Based on the work they'll do the audit cycle should be easier.
  
• Dr. Jensen also reported on the FTES issue he mentioned in his College update. The number attached to the over-estimate of revenue 2 million dollars. As he mentions he is in dialogue with the Chancellor's Office looking for "mortgage approach" solutions.
  
• Also, he mentioned again the need for SCC to grow its way out of financial problems. Yet, he added that because there is a "culture of conflict" on campus we all need to "own the problem". Some ideas for growth included:
  
  • Competency based Basic Skills
    
  • High Tech/ Soft Touch approach to teaching
    
  • Staggering Basic Skills to non-Basic Skills courses
    
  • Checking Pre-requisites and pre-screening for success
    
  • Centralizing BSI services to save time and money
    
  • We need to engage our students in on campus activities and jobs so they stay here and take more units.
    
  • He mentions the Ventura Promise as one model for us.
    

Learning Communities Conference:

We should all be proud to work with such wonderful colleagues as Brad Paschal and those who contributed to the success of the Learning Communities Conference 2009. I had the opportunity to be there for the first session on Thursday and was reminded, in these times of difficulty, just what a great place Solano is. Brad commented to me that he was worried that people might think that he was simply "rearranging the chairs on the deck of the Titanic" with this conference. I think that he has nothing to worry about. It is BECAUSE of efforts like this that we will not sink!