Board of Governors meet at City College

I had a chance today to welcome the Board of Governors for the California Community College System to City College. The Board is holding meetings at the College as part of its effort to travel to different community colleges around the state rather than meeting only in San Francisco. It's good exposure for the System and also for City College.

During my remarks at the luncheon, I told the Board members that they honored City College by choosing to hold meetings in San Francisco. I expressed my hope that they would have productive sessions.

Since I had the microphone (and no one was going to take it away from me!), I took the opportunity to let the members of the Board of Governors -- as well as Chancellor Jack Scott and members of his staff -- know about our recent garage sale. I said that there were three purposes to the garage sale: to raise funds to replace classes, to bring the community together in support of City College, and to make a point about chronic underfunding of public education in California. We achieved all three goals.

I also wanted to make certain that everyone in the room understood that, without full-funding for public education, we are going to continue to lag behind other states in academic achievement. While some members of the Board of Governors may feel that they are not "advocates" in the way that some of us want them to be, I felt I had to make a strong argument for the revision of Proposition 13. Eliminating the commercial property component of Prop 13 would provide a significant boost in public funds, much of which should go to public education.

Chancellor Jack Scott presented Governor Schwarzenneger with the first "Community Colleges Governor" award at the recent Association of Community College Trustees Annual Leadership Congress in San Francisco. Let's use the close relationship between Chancellor Scott and the Governor to advocate for proper funding for public education. The Governor continues to talk about his experience at Santa Monica City College as the reason for his success. It's time for the Governor to "give back" to the community colleges. City College should take a lead in showing him the best way to do that.