For SBCC Trustee Challengers
I recently retired from SBCC Adult Ed, having supervised many programs including the Parent Child Workshops and the Mind and Supermind series. I’ve been asked if I have impressions about the votes for the SBCC Board of Trustees candidates. Yes I do – and they are strong! The board has not guided the new president and administration in ways to honor and protect many programs, and has caused unnecessary harm with many of their decisions and interactions. Knowing what is behind the scenes I can tell you they have not responded to community distress in transparent and respectful ways. I have been concerned enough that I’ve been working on the campaign for the new board challengers.
I appreciate what the board has done in the past, but these are new times and they have not responded to real issues being brought forward. My votes are going to all of the new people. I think the four candidates are outstanding and we will be fortunate to have them.
Out with the old and in with the new. That will still leave three incumbents on the board, whose terms don’t expire for a couple more years. I am voting for Haslund, Croninger, Blum and Macker.—Anne Cameron Wiley, SBCC Dean/Director Emerita
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You are fired!
After Tea Fire burned 210 houses and made 5,400 homes and 15,000 residents to evacuate, SBCC President Andreea Serban and the current board members refused to issue a public apology for their students’ hideous crime. They didn’t organize their students to join other volunteers to help the clean up. They didn’t give a public forum to address community’s concern and anguish. They showed no accountability and responsibility. The ghost of the Tea Fire will always haunt Dr. Serban and the current board members. It is time to fire them all and vote in the new members.—Justin Wayard
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Supporters of incumbent SBCC Trustees cite the College’s recent outstanding accreditation, yet SBCC has a long history of stellar accreditations, more the result of exemplary work by dedicated faculty and staff than trustees. For example, accreditation cited the “Partnership of Student Success”, a faculty initiative that has significantly improved to the success of at-risk students. Yet, while the accreditation team was reviewing SBCC, the budget for this innovative, low-cost program, was cut by over 50%.
Similarly, there have been top-down cuts in Continuing Education, Parent-Child Workshops, the Center for Sustainability, and the Music Department’s celebrated, credit/non-credit performance ensembles.
SBCC has weathered many funding crises using established collegial processes. But institutional decision making, once a pursuit of instructional excellence, now seems guided by fear: fear of getting “dinged” by Accreditation, fear of State curriculum audits, and fear of cash-flow emergencies.
SBCC faculty and staff are distinguished in our service to students and community. We have long been an integral part of college governance in a shared collaboration on decision making. Yet recently we find ourselves, along with the community, invited to “participate” in decisions already prescribed from above. This is a recipe for mediocrity.
Change is needed that will provide leadership willing to renew a genuine process of shared governance that in my thirty-six years experience has been key to the College’s record of excellence. For these reasons I urge support of candidates of change: Peter Haslund, Marsha Croninger, Marty Blum, and Lisa Macker.—Tom Garey (professor and past president of the SBCC Academic Senate)
