Correction: Some corrections have been made fixing minor grammatical and punctuation issues.
Long Beach City College’s board of trustees meeting covered spotlight athletes, a proposal for student communications, community workforce relationships, citywide equity, the latest campus safety report and continued employee contracts, on March 27 at LAC.
The meeting began with sophomore basketball player, Jeremiah Sadler and freshman swimmer, Karissa Qualley being recognized as Viking Spotlight Athletes for their exceptional performance in their sports.
Superintendent-President Reagan Romali opened her remarks with a video that focused on Career and Technical Education at LBCC, followed by an LBCC year in review 1.0 report, which was prepared three months early for delivery during a recent visit by the board of governors.
The chancellor’s “vision for success” has only seen a 1% increase in Associates Degrees for Transfers statewide, Romali stated that is not the case at LBCC and addressed the faculty directly.
“At LBCC you increased graduation AD-Ts by 27%. That beats the state average of under 1%, so be proud of the work that you have done. In that 27% we moved the dial dramatically for students of color. DSPS students increased 91%, African-American students increased 25%, Pacific Islander students increased 44% and Hispanic students increased 21%,” Romali said.
“For the first time in many years we’re bringing our salary and benefits trend down below 90%, that’s very responsible of this board. This board has made excellent decisions. We’ve reduced the $11,000,000 deficit down to zero, that’s fantastic work on the part of everyone at the college.”
Public comments on agenda items, brought three community workforce partners to the podium in support of expanding the existing community workforce participation agreement for future projects.
Council Representative for the Los Angeles and Orange Counties Building and Construction Trades Council, Chris Hannan, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers business manager, Tommy Faavae and the executive director Playa Vista Job opportunities and Business Services, Erik Miller.
“We’d like to see a pipeline, a pipeline to help out students that may not, you know, may not become an engineer or may not become a lawyer or may not become a teacher, uh, but wanna come into a trade that will be, a long lasting career,” Faavae said.
The board announced their support of middle college at Browning High School, allowing high school students to graduate with an associates degree as well as a high school diploma and creating an AD-T in Hospitality in addition to certificates in related areas of focus.
Prompted by reports of some students receiving up to 80 emails per day, Executive Director of Public Affairs and marketing, Joshua Castellanos, presented a proposal for student communication; which included allowing some groups like EOPS and DSPS to contact students directly, a weekly student e-newsletter, restricting messages and setting up physical locations for students to get information.
There were two presentations on the agenda, discussing equity and one reporting on campus safety and student discipline.
First, an equitable growth profile of Long Beach was presented by organization development director, for the USC program for environmental and regional equity, Dr. Kim Marie Tabari, offering recommendations for LBCC to reduce the disparity in graduation and associates degrees earned by students.
Doug Otto commented how presentations like this one on equity are the beginning of conversations that lead to action being taken.
“It’s really important that meeting together, talking together about these things be done on an ongoing basis and that needs to be shouted from the rooftops,” Otto said.
Tabari agreed and offered responses in relationship to equity on the LBCC campuses.
“Equity has become the new buzzword, the new word for diversity is equity,” Tabari said.
“Dismantling racial barriers and ensuring equitable development, like, that’s not something that’s easy to do, and it’s something we have to be doing every single day. I know that y’all are doing a plethora of programs and so I’m sure that this is happening, but it’s also a good reminder to me to see where you fall in the scale, and what the numbers look like, and what the data is telling you. If you feel like you are doing something super well, then maybe have someone else take a look at it and see like, what’s missing here? Who else could I be collaborating with?”
The next topic of discussion, Vice President of business services, Marlene Drinkwine, Lt. Omar Martinez and Interim Dean of student affairs Alicia Kirkwood, delivered a presentation on campus safety.
Martinez showed numbers that show LBCC campuses are generally safer than the surrounding neighborhoods, except for one instance in the Spring 2018 at the LAC campus.
Martinez focused on the reduction of bike theft by addressing the problem in a number of ways, including changing the location of bikes, installing cameras and displaying best practices for locking bikes on campus.
Kirkwood stated the majority of discipline was low level and had no disparity in data across ethnicity or gender lines.
“There are no indicators that there is disproportionate representation based on race or gender in our conduct numbers,” Kirkwood said.
Kirkwood shared about trainings that cover mental health versus mental illness and helping staff recognize the difference, also the school received a competitive mental health grant that will help hire an additional part time mental health clinician.
Drinkwine closed with information about additional safety trainings, an emergency text message program and an upcoming bi-annual safety newsletter.
The board approved employee contracts for three deans an associate dean and an interim athletic director.
The meeting closed with a moment of silence for three recently deceased LBCC retirees, Priscilla Remeta, Leticia Suarez and Mary Welsh.
The next board of trustees meeting will be held at the LAC on April 24, 2019 with the open session beginning at 5:30 p.m.