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>> [Background voices] We are at Item G, The Report and Update,
College Operations and Initiatives.
Dr. Rocha.
>> Yeah, thank you, President Martin, Board of Trustees.
I do have a brief -- brief comments, because I wanted
to be respectful of the colleagues and individuals
who made comments tonight, and I know the press is here tonight,
and I'll be glad to make myself available to the press
so that they can get this story right.
So -- but I want to make comments.
I invited all my friends and family here tonight,
but somehow they got the address wrong.
We must have [inaudible] [laughter] moved the meeting.
But I'm going to ask all of you, the few of you who stay,
what we did tonight, in my opinion,
is drive-by consultation.
You say what you say, and we respect it deeply.
Okay? And then you get up and go.
So until the college is able
to have a meaningful conversation -- and I'm not --
with the exception of Simon, who I met with today,
and we had a perfectly reasonable meeting,
I'm not aware of perhaps any of the individuals
who spoke tonight coming through my open door.
And those of you who have come through it know
that it's always open.
But let me say a couple of things for the record
since there were some things -- and in this case,
I am not in any way defending myself,
but I want to say some things for the record
to defend this Board of Trustees, and my colleagues,
who are sitting over there, who do the very,
very difficult work -- some of them sitting over here --
who do the very, very difficult work
of helping me to run the college.
Before I do that, though, I did want to have an introduction
because I see over there on the right --
I wanted to introduce one of the Board Members
of our PCC Foundation, Shirley Burke,
who has been here all night.
So I'd ask us to give her a big hand.
[Audience applause] Shirley is a PCC nurse.
And also, sitting with Shirley earlier was Dolores Higginbotham
who is the Chair
of the President's African American Advisory Committee,
and I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to thank Dolores,
Bob Bell, all of the many people in the college who contributed
to what was a glorious Black History Month.
Okay. But let me, let me just say a couple of things
if you wouldn't mind, and I hope that they'll be salve and balm.
But if you've ever had the experience of serving
on a jury, some of you may have.
You see they -- you know, there's one trial,
one defendant, and the prosecution gets up
and presents the case and the evidence
and you're sitting there in the jury box and you say, well,
I don't even know why we're having a trial.
We should just send the guy right straight to jail.
[Laughter] Okay?
And then, okay.
And the defense gets up and says, okay,
this is the same evidence.
This is the same stuff, all right?
And you're sitting in the jury box --
if you've ever had that experience --
and saying, they must have the wrong guy, okay?
My point simply is this.
And for those of you --
and I know all of you are of good will --
since many of the people who I had hoped to talk to left --
that if you can admit tonight the possibility
that human beings see things through different points
of view, let that be the beginning of a conversation,
the continuation of a conversation
that will move us forward.
For a moment I'm asking -- since I listened respectfully to all
of the comment -- and you can imagine what it feels
like to hear it.
I just ask if there's a teeny -- a few of you --
a teeny part of you, okay, that would be willing to say, okay,
let's take a look at this another way,
because I know we are.
A couple of things.
First of all, I do want to let everyone know --
and the Board clearly knows.
I don't need to remind the Board that I serve
at the pleasure of the Board.
Okay. And there's nothing that I do that I do not clear
in advance with the Board; and I have complete guidance
from the Board in terms of the decisions.
So I want to make that clear.
And the Board, you know, knows that better than anybody.
But I also want to make clear that given that when I came
to PCC so that we don't have, you know,
to have a healthy conversation, you want to try and move
out of magical thinking,
that somehow the present got all bundled up and there was a past,
okay, that was somehow this kind of --
just everything was wonderful.
PCC has been here since 1924.
It was founded long before any of us got here.
Had a long reputation
of excellence before any of us got here, okay?
We're stewards of that reputation.
But I would say when I took
over I was the fourth Superintendent/President
in four years.
Okay. I'm not responsible for what happened before that time.
All I know is I picked it up from
where I was given it by this Board.
And when I did pick it up, just to remind, especially students
who may not have been here, some of you may have, at the time.
When we began our work together, this college was not accredited.
It had been placed on warning by the ACCJC for,
among other things, not having proper shared governance
for years, okay?
You need to read the report.
This college, among the citations
by the accreditor before I arrived,
the college had no Educational Master Plan, okay?
We've since -- since have one.
We did not have a self report card that reported outcomes.
Some people cited statistics.
The statistics of our student outcomes are on our webpage,
on our own self report card.
And the State of California issues an Accountability Report
for the Community Colleges, and one of the things
that the Trustees took a look at -- look at the August 29th --
was that the student outcomes,
while not poor, were not improving.
Those are facts, okay?
There was no IT.
There's no information system.
The current information system that we're still limping along
with was installed in 1984, so we had had that to do.
The contract with my colleagues
and the Faculty Association [noise],
when I took over it had been expired for over a year.
And I came to agreement with the Faculty Association
by January of that year.
That contract has again expired by almost a year and we are
at impasse, as well you know.
And so we need to factor in that in the difficult times we are,
that sometimes labor/management relations will be strained
because we don't agree.
But we're moving through that in a perfectly open, legal process
that the Faculty Association understands.
So there was no contract in place when I arrived.
There was a violation of AB 1725 because --
I know AB 1725, and one of the things that you're supposed
to do is to rely primarily
on the Faculty Senate for faculty hiring.
That didn't exist when I came.
I corrected that, and I returned the faculty hiring priority's
process to the Academic Senate.
They do all the hiring.
The young woman -- and I agree a hundred percent that we need
to hire more Latina faculty.
That's in the hands of the Senate.
And so -- and on my watch,
we have approved 60 new faculty despite budget constraints --
and 10 new ones just this year.
In addition, there was no --
we were cited by the ACCJC for no Ethics Statements,
no policies for distance education.
Sandra Haines won the award, won the award
for Board of Governors.
Now I'm saying this, not in any way to be defensive,
but I know some of my colleagues are new,
who do this hard work every day.
And I just wanted to make sure, since the press is here,
[chuckles] that we kind of said, look, there's a reason
for differing points of view.
We listened respectfully.
So there was quite a bit of stuff here, when I picked it up
and the Board gave me the privilege of serving them, okay?
I will continue to do so until the Board asks me not to.
But let me tell you what we've accomplished, all right?
I hear very well, the Board has heard,
the input about the calendar,
and I won't speak to that right now.
But I said one of the things
that this Board should be congratulated for is
that this college, this year, at this moment,
has added more classes to our 12/13 schedule
than any other college or district in the State
of California -- more colleges serving more students, faster.
There is not a single student in this college, not one,
who presents themself or herself to Dr. Bell
who has been shut out of a class.
We have opened sections specifically for three
or four students so that they could have the courses they
needed, and that's what the spring semester enabled us
to do.
Instead of putting 200 or 300 sections out, we were able
to put 2500 sections out, so that all of the students --
and most of our entering students are basic skills --
who English and Math in the fall
in our amazing Pathways Program were --
be able to start right up after the holiday and go back
into English and Math.
Now the results will be proven over time, but certainly
that was a reasonable basis even if you disagree.
But the Board went one better.
As well you know, we had a flaming budget crisis every
moment that I've been Superintendent/President.
We instituted budget discipline;
we balanced the budget every year; and we added classes;
and we added -- in a difficult budget environment,
besides hiring those faculty, we added research and development.
But this Board took a risk and funded one million dollars
for Student Access and Success Initiative.
Because of that investment, which wasn't even thought
of three years ago, we have the Design/Technology Pathways.
We have the Math Jam Pathways, which is now on steroids;
has grown from 150 to almost a thousand students.
And for all that work which didn't exist three years ago,
the State Chancellor's Office awarded this year,
Pasadena City College the Award for Student Success.
So -- and, you know, I'm looking over at Shirley.
Thanks to Shirley and the devoted alumni,
PCC in the last three years has been number one in fund-raising
in the state, number one.
PCC has been in the top five in grants:
$26 million in new grants from the State, every dollar
of which is going out to help students, okay?
So, I just wanted to -- oh, and one just note and --
and to give you a point
of personal privilege here -- the Safe Zone, okay?
I stood up Prop 187, okay?
I couldn't agree more.
There's no one in my administration
who is not a dream actor, a dream act, AB 540.
We have to be a Safe Zone for every human being,
since there are no illegal human beings who come
to our campus for help.
That is the law of this campus.
So -- and I fought for that early in my career
and I won't bore you with that.
The last thing the Board did is we don't have the money
from Prop 30.
I asked the Board, and the Board had to go some.
They went right to the ledge [chuckle] on this recommendation
when I asked them to borrow $10 million this year to fund what?
Classes for students.
More classes than any other college
in the State of California, okay?
We are funding those classes and all the things that I've talked
about on money the Board agreed to borrow.
Now, yes, we will get that money.
At least it's promised.
We have an I.O.U. from Jerry Brown, you know, June 15th,
that we'll get that money, okay?
Great. But most colleges in the State did not add those classes
because they had drained their reserves,
which this Board did not, and were not able to use
that borrowed money for the benefit of students.
Now I recognize better than anybody in my long career
that people won't agree with the decisions of an administration,
and clearly, we heard that tonight.
But, at least -- and these are the things that I have time
for -- some of the things that I've mentioned tonight ought
to purchase us a conversation, not a tsu-tsu and boom, okay?
Purchase us a conversation because -- how to move forward.
Because if in the wisdom of this Board of Trustees that you want
to have a fifth Superintendent/President
in seven years, all of those problems will still be there.
The need to have all of that conversation
in difficult circumstances -- and I couldn't agree more --
then you need to come together, okay?
We need to come together, okay.
But I wanted to say what I wanted to say
and thank you for the privilege.
That's my report for tonight because I wanted to make sure
that the Board heard this from me and that my colleagues,
with whom I'm honored to serve, heard it from me.
And hopefully we can get my friends and family back
in the room and we can, you know, [inaudible]...
>> [Whispering] This will take a moment [inaudible].
>> ...and keep that conversation going.
Thank you, President Martin.
That's my report.
>> Thank you, Dr. Rocha.
[ Silence ]