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Ethics was the big topic discussed at board meeting

By Melanie Gerner

Correction: A correction was made to fix a minor grammatical error.

The four hour board of trustees meeting covering ethics, data mining, and the “Year in Review” began promptly at 5:30 p.m. in the boardroom at LAC on Wednesday, April 24, 2019, to a group of around 50 people, including a Journalism 20 news writing class, instructed by Pat McKean.

Board President, Sunny Zia introduced President-Superintendent Reagan Romali by thanking her for her leadership and announcing awards Romali has received recently, including the Khmer Parent Association Indradevi award and NAACP phenomenal woman award.

Romali opened her remarks by highlighting Career Technical Education night and sharing the list of 50 community partnerships LBCC has created and the internship and job opportunities available through these relationships.

The President-Superintendent, Reagan Romali, shared the LBCC “Year in Review” report with trustees and attendees of the meeting.

One highlight from the “Year in Review” was LBCC’s 27% increase in total number of Associate Degrees for Transfer from 2016-17 to 2017-18, this number reflects a 26% increase for Hispanic students and a 41% increase for African-American students.

The Certificated Hourly Instructors Union bargaining president was not present, Malauulu expressed disappointment and concern for a lack of representation by adjunct faculty.

“I am just really disappointed that we have not had a CHI report in several months, and that we haven’t had CHI representation at the meetings. As a former CHI member it bothers me, I do think it is important for CHI to be represented at the board meetings,” Malauulu said.

Jack Lipton, legal council for the board of trustees was present to review the first reading of board ethics policy and other administrative regulations.

According to Romali, during the college’s last accreditation there was a finding that the policies and administrative regulations had not been updated in a timely manner.

Over an hour was spent on the matters of board ethics and administrative regulations, during which time, the discussion among board members was heated and at times they included the superintendent-president.

A majority of the ethics discussion was spent on the matter of how much time is healthy for the president-superintendent and staff to spend on requests from board members.

Zia expressed an interest in the appropriate amount of time for the president-superintendent and staff to spend on trustee requests, a current estimate from Romali was 30 hours per week.

Lipton offered a pragmatic view of how to determine what a healthy amount of time is to spend on board requests.

“Ultimately, the board itself will have to determine what is an appropriate level of interchange between individual trustees and the superintendent-president,” Lipton said.

Romali delivered an abbreviated presentation on data mining and the benefits data mining can provide to drive success at LBCC, the presentation echoed much of what was in the “Year in Review” booklet.

“LBCC is on the national forefront of moving the dial for students of color,” Romali said.

“There was an equity focussed pilot where course success data, a subset of faculty in the social-science department implemented equity focused framework into redesigning their courses and teaching methods, and guess what happened? Their success rates went up by 9%.”

Curriculum Committee Chair, Wendy Koenig presented new, modified, and inactive courses as well as new programs of study and area of emphases degrees.

New certificates offered by LBCC include, English as a second language, cake decorating and library technician.

Koenig shared the progress being made on developing the upcoming ADTs in social justice and global studies and mentioned the benefits in the areas of emphasis.

“I think these are going to be a great opportunity for students who don’t necessarily want to commit to a particular major, but they know what they are interested in,” Koenig said.

McKean made a public comment on non-agenda items just before the meeting ended, McKean recognized the journalism department and recent awards they received.

Doug Otto arrived late and left early for a charity event.

The meeting ended at 9:40 p.m. to a group of eight people.

The next board of trustees meeting will be held at LAC on May 22 with the open session beginning at 5:30 p.m.

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