One of the myths about a place like City College of San Francisco is that students graduate from high school, spend two years at City College in preparation to transfer to a four-year institution, and then complete their bachelor's degree in the next two years at San Francisco State University. While that may be true for some students in California's community colleges, the unfortunate reality is that many students spend far more time at a community college, some as many as 5 years before transferring.
A number of factors contribute to a lengthier stay at a community college including needing to work to earn enough income, having family responsibilities that take up time, and being unable to register for every class in a timely way due to reductions in class offerings.
All community colleges have financial aid offices and use colleges websites to inform students about financial aid opportunities (see City College's Financial Aid Office's webpage at http://tinyurl.com/yjx5zs4); however, students have other resources where they can access financial aid, including these two websites
http://www.fafsa.ed.gov/and http://www.icanaffordcollege.com/
Given President Obama's recognition of community colleges as a major economic force in this country, the whole debate about how to make community college more affordable has become a topic of increasing coverage in the press. Just today, the San Francisco Chronicle ran a story entitled, "Community college students miss out on student aid" detailing how far too many students do not take advantage of all of the financial aid opportunities that they could. http://tinyurl.com/y9akd3j (The article resulted from the release of a report from the Project on Student Debt (an initiative of the Institute for College Access & Success) on lost student aid opportunities http://ticas.org/pub_view.php?idx=583 and http://projectonstudentdebt.org/pub_view.php?idx=584
I found another report, this one from the California Public Interest Research Group (known as CALPIRG), that look at the economic demand on most community college students to work while attending school. The report noted that 80% of community college students work an average of 32 hours per week, and that students who had jobs on top of their course work do not do as well as students who have fewer obligations outside of the classroom. While the report (Working Too Hard to Make the Grade) acknowledge that students who have jobs requiring fewer hours per week actually have a higher retention rate, the unfortunate reality is that too many community college students have a much lower level of academic achievement than they would if they could reduce their work hours and depend more on financial aid. http://tinyurl.com/yabaqtk
As I write this, the House of Representatives is considering health care reform legislation, a major legislative undertaking. In the effort to win over some Democrats who have not yet committed to supporting health care reform, the reconciliation process in the House has now attached reforms to student financial aid to the bill. While the past few days have brought significant hope to community college advocates that college could become more affordable, a late story tonight reported that the reforms have been scaled back. http://tinyurl.com/yef8vlh
During a time in education with a heavy focus on accountability and standards -- sometimes using terms like "student success" and "student learning outcomes" -- finding ways to make college as affordable as possible for as many students as possible will increase the ability of community colleges to improve lives not only of their students, but of their families as well.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Friday, March 12, 2010
Community College Athletes
I listened to this story on The California Report tonight, and thought it was well done. The report lasts for five minutes.
http://www.californiareport.org/archive/R201003121630/c
The one thing that startled me was the statistic reported that athletes who go to Division I four year schools after high school get their BA, while 65% of two year transfers get theirs.
The reporter, April Dembosky, didn't explain the stark difference. I asked her to give me the background information on which she depended in her report. She wrote to me that "These numbers come from the research department at the NCAA. The NCAA is still analyzing data and won't offer possible explanations for the difference until they've finished."
http://www.californiareport.org/archive/R201003121630/c
The one thing that startled me was the statistic reported that athletes who go to Division I four year schools after high school get their BA, while 65% of two year transfers get theirs.
The reporter, April Dembosky, didn't explain the stark difference. I asked her to give me the background information on which she depended in her report. She wrote to me that "These numbers come from the research department at the NCAA. The NCAA is still analyzing data and won't offer possible explanations for the difference until they've finished."
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Monday, February 15, 2010
Budget reform now at City College
For most of my three terms on the Board of City College, I have been advocating for a more open process for budgeting. Related to the transparency of creating the budget is a clearer way of understanding what is contained within the budget. While the materials the College Board receives in approving the budget for the District have become better since I joined the Board in 2001, they are still inadequate if the Board is going to do our job properly in representing the public interest at City College.
Unfortunately, just as I have argued for a better budget process and documentation, for most of the time I have served on the Board of City College, others have argued against my reforms. The arguments of the majority of the Board (until now) have been that any changes to how City College creates and manages its budget would mean that the College Board is micromanaging, mistrustful of the College's Administration, ignorant that there is limited opportunity for changes to the budget with 92% of the budget going to salaries, etc, etc.
Fortunately, there is now a solid majority of College Board Trustees who reject the arguments of the past. We are prepared to open up budget planning, to create a culture that embraces widespread communication about the budget, and to establish timely and accurate assessment of the past fiscal year's achievements and challenges in setting out the priorities and parameters for the next budget. Those are all things that a fiscally-responsible College Board should have been insisting upon a long time ago.
As President of the Board of Trustees, I have appointed Chris Jackson to serve this year as Chair of the Board's Planning and Budgeting Council. I am recommending to Chris that he look for models of better community college budgets as he sets out to reform how City College does its budgets.
One such model can be found at Lane Community College in Eugene, OR. Lane received awards from the Government Finance Officers Association for a number of years for the way in which it presents its budget. You can see for yourself that Lane's Board and Administration understand the importance of clarity, a transparent schedule, and priorities and assumptions guiding the process from early in the calendar. While there are some things I would change, such as a link to a more highly detailed budget beyond what Lane's Board approves, they have it right in many aspects.
Here's the link to Lane's Budget Office site:
http://lanecc.edu/budget/index.htm
City College is a leader in community colleges and higher education in general. Our Board should lead the way to budget reform at City College that will be recognized in the way that Lane Community College has been. Given the state of the economy and City College's budget, our obligation to the people who elected us to represent them is even greater this year. Let's not let them down.
Unfortunately, just as I have argued for a better budget process and documentation, for most of the time I have served on the Board of City College, others have argued against my reforms. The arguments of the majority of the Board (until now) have been that any changes to how City College creates and manages its budget would mean that the College Board is micromanaging, mistrustful of the College's Administration, ignorant that there is limited opportunity for changes to the budget with 92% of the budget going to salaries, etc, etc.
Fortunately, there is now a solid majority of College Board Trustees who reject the arguments of the past. We are prepared to open up budget planning, to create a culture that embraces widespread communication about the budget, and to establish timely and accurate assessment of the past fiscal year's achievements and challenges in setting out the priorities and parameters for the next budget. Those are all things that a fiscally-responsible College Board should have been insisting upon a long time ago.
As President of the Board of Trustees, I have appointed Chris Jackson to serve this year as Chair of the Board's Planning and Budgeting Council. I am recommending to Chris that he look for models of better community college budgets as he sets out to reform how City College does its budgets.
One such model can be found at Lane Community College in Eugene, OR. Lane received awards from the Government Finance Officers Association for a number of years for the way in which it presents its budget. You can see for yourself that Lane's Board and Administration understand the importance of clarity, a transparent schedule, and priorities and assumptions guiding the process from early in the calendar. While there are some things I would change, such as a link to a more highly detailed budget beyond what Lane's Board approves, they have it right in many aspects.
Here's the link to Lane's Budget Office site:
http://lanecc.edu/budget/index.htm
City College is a leader in community colleges and higher education in general. Our Board should lead the way to budget reform at City College that will be recognized in the way that Lane Community College has been. Given the state of the economy and City College's budget, our obligation to the people who elected us to represent them is even greater this year. Let's not let them down.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Performance Management at City College
The Board of Trustees continues to refine -- and, hopefully, improve -- the Chancellor's Evaluation process. Using valuable feedback from various constituent groups and the Board's experience with past evaluations, the new process will be established in time for the 2009-2010 evaluation of Chancellor Griffin. Under the contract the Chancellor has with the Board, we must complete his evaluation by the end of June.
While the Board manages and evaluates a single employee, Chancellor Griffin, we have an overarching responsibility to make certain that similar processes are functioning efficiently and effectively throughout the District. Every year, usually at our June meeting just before the start of the new fiscal year, the Chancellor presents the Board with a resolution notifying the Board that all Administrators have received at least a satisfactory annual review and recommending an additional year of employment for each. We are not given -- nor do we ask -- for any more information either on individual Administrators or on the process itself.
As this Board continues our efforts to bring reform and change to City College, we remain committed to improving systems and processes that impact the lives of people who work and study at City College. We know that the best performance management system will help both those being evaluated and the larger community at the College.
My colleagues, Steve Ngo and John Rizzo, and I have introduced the following resolution regarding evaluations of Administrators. I expect that we will have at least one committee meeting on this resolution before it is brought to our Board for action, and I hope that it receives a thorough vetting through Shared Governance and a universal acceptance as a good thing to do for the College.
"Resolution directing evaluation and possible changes to the Administrators’ Evaluation process"
City College of San Francisco functions with a significant workforce, serving 100,000 students annually. Whether as classified staff, administrators, or faculty, each person contributes to the success of the college.
As an educational institution, City College is especially mindful of the importance of supporting the entire workforce and assisting each person in growing professionally. The Board of Trustees believes that a sound performance management system is one based on support and assistance for each member of the staff at City College, and should never be characterized as punitive.
The Board of Trustees is undertaking a review of its evaluation process for the Chancellor, and expects to institute a revised process in the upcoming evaluation scheduled to finish by the end of June 2010. The Board is committed to improving the Chancellor’s evaluation and to modeling what it expects for useful evaluation processes at every level of the institution.
The District’s administrators are the next level of staff for which the Board would like to see a review of the evaluation process and outcomes last updated in 2004 (see http://www.ccsf.edu/Offices/Research_Planning/pdf/admeval.pdf.)
RESOLVED that the Board of Trustees directs the Chancellor to report on the progress to date of any review of the evaluation process for administrators during the past year; and,
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Board of Trustees directs the Chancellor to prepare and deliver to the Board of Trustees an accounting of each administrators’ numerical rating for the past 3 years for administrators who have served as administrators for this number of years. This accounting will identify each administrator by a number rather than by name, and whose order will be randomized to prevent any identification of any administrator and his/her rating; and,
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Board of Trustees directs the Chancellor to engage either the College’s Office of Research and Planning or the Association of Community College Trustees to assess the efficacy of the administrators’ evaluation process both in terms of how well City College is served by the current system and how well administrators are supported in their professional functions; and,
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that this assessment shall be completed no later than April 1, 2010, and delivered to the Board of Trustees in open session no later than April 15, 2010; and,
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that this assessment will include recommendations for improvements, if any, to the process for evaluating administers, and that, in concert with the Administrators Association and any other pertinent Shared Governance entity, the Chancellor will present a revised evaluation process for administrators by June 30, 2010 for adoption by the Board of Trustees and implementation for the 2010-2011 academic year.
Milton Marks
Steve Ngo
John Rizzo
Submitted February 2, 2010
While the Board manages and evaluates a single employee, Chancellor Griffin, we have an overarching responsibility to make certain that similar processes are functioning efficiently and effectively throughout the District. Every year, usually at our June meeting just before the start of the new fiscal year, the Chancellor presents the Board with a resolution notifying the Board that all Administrators have received at least a satisfactory annual review and recommending an additional year of employment for each. We are not given -- nor do we ask -- for any more information either on individual Administrators or on the process itself.
As this Board continues our efforts to bring reform and change to City College, we remain committed to improving systems and processes that impact the lives of people who work and study at City College. We know that the best performance management system will help both those being evaluated and the larger community at the College.
My colleagues, Steve Ngo and John Rizzo, and I have introduced the following resolution regarding evaluations of Administrators. I expect that we will have at least one committee meeting on this resolution before it is brought to our Board for action, and I hope that it receives a thorough vetting through Shared Governance and a universal acceptance as a good thing to do for the College.
"Resolution directing evaluation and possible changes to the Administrators’ Evaluation process"
City College of San Francisco functions with a significant workforce, serving 100,000 students annually. Whether as classified staff, administrators, or faculty, each person contributes to the success of the college.
As an educational institution, City College is especially mindful of the importance of supporting the entire workforce and assisting each person in growing professionally. The Board of Trustees believes that a sound performance management system is one based on support and assistance for each member of the staff at City College, and should never be characterized as punitive.
The Board of Trustees is undertaking a review of its evaluation process for the Chancellor, and expects to institute a revised process in the upcoming evaluation scheduled to finish by the end of June 2010. The Board is committed to improving the Chancellor’s evaluation and to modeling what it expects for useful evaluation processes at every level of the institution.
The District’s administrators are the next level of staff for which the Board would like to see a review of the evaluation process and outcomes last updated in 2004 (see http://www.ccsf.edu/Offices/Research_Planning/pdf/admeval.pdf.)
RESOLVED that the Board of Trustees directs the Chancellor to report on the progress to date of any review of the evaluation process for administrators during the past year; and,
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Board of Trustees directs the Chancellor to prepare and deliver to the Board of Trustees an accounting of each administrators’ numerical rating for the past 3 years for administrators who have served as administrators for this number of years. This accounting will identify each administrator by a number rather than by name, and whose order will be randomized to prevent any identification of any administrator and his/her rating; and,
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Board of Trustees directs the Chancellor to engage either the College’s Office of Research and Planning or the Association of Community College Trustees to assess the efficacy of the administrators’ evaluation process both in terms of how well City College is served by the current system and how well administrators are supported in their professional functions; and,
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that this assessment shall be completed no later than April 1, 2010, and delivered to the Board of Trustees in open session no later than April 15, 2010; and,
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that this assessment will include recommendations for improvements, if any, to the process for evaluating administers, and that, in concert with the Administrators Association and any other pertinent Shared Governance entity, the Chancellor will present a revised evaluation process for administrators by June 30, 2010 for adoption by the Board of Trustees and implementation for the 2010-2011 academic year.
Milton Marks
Steve Ngo
John Rizzo
Submitted February 2, 2010
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Student (non)-involvement in budgeting
At our meeting last October when we adopted the final City College budget for 2009-2010, a number of students spoke to our Board about how eliminating the summer session would be harmful to their educational plans. In addition to the reality of facing another semester or two at City College before being able to transfer, many of these students complained that they had been unaware that the Administration had proposed cutting summer classes as a budget saving measure.
There are three or so student representatives to the College's Planning and Budgeting Council ("PBC"), the Shared Governance entity responsible for developing, approving, and recommending the budget to the Board of Trustees. How -- or if -- these students confer with student leaders and the Associated Students is unclear. Is there a robust exchange of information within the student body about the College's budget, the result of which is a true integration of student needs and desires into what the College offers in its educational and support programs? It would seem unlikely that this happens in any more that a scattered way, and that's unfortunate.
While we were listening to students complain about their lack of involvement in planning and budgeting at City College, I felt frustrated that these students were finally showing up to a College Board meeting to talk to us. Where had they been all year? With an enrollment of over 100,000 students each year, surely there are 100 or so who have the time, interest, and passion to challenge the Board of Trustees -- the elected representatives of the public -- to have a clear understanding of how the College fulfills its mission and to be able to document how they, as the Board, are serving the needs of students.
Yet, extraordinarily few students come to the College Board meetings, almost no students advocate for anything in front of the Board, and shared governance spots reserved for students often remain unfilled. I know that hearing from students would be a powerful and effective way to create change at City College; however, either by design or by history, students and the Board of Trustees have a pretty much non-existent relationship. That is a wasted opportunity for both.
At our monthly meeting last week, Chancellor Griffin noted that students want to have more involvement in the budget process and pledged to making that happen. He did not get into specifics, however. Student leaders should seize the opportunity to develop a structure for student involvement in planning and budgeting, and should present this to the College Board at our next meeting in February.
There are three or so student representatives to the College's Planning and Budgeting Council ("PBC"), the Shared Governance entity responsible for developing, approving, and recommending the budget to the Board of Trustees. How -- or if -- these students confer with student leaders and the Associated Students is unclear. Is there a robust exchange of information within the student body about the College's budget, the result of which is a true integration of student needs and desires into what the College offers in its educational and support programs? It would seem unlikely that this happens in any more that a scattered way, and that's unfortunate.
While we were listening to students complain about their lack of involvement in planning and budgeting at City College, I felt frustrated that these students were finally showing up to a College Board meeting to talk to us. Where had they been all year? With an enrollment of over 100,000 students each year, surely there are 100 or so who have the time, interest, and passion to challenge the Board of Trustees -- the elected representatives of the public -- to have a clear understanding of how the College fulfills its mission and to be able to document how they, as the Board, are serving the needs of students.
Yet, extraordinarily few students come to the College Board meetings, almost no students advocate for anything in front of the Board, and shared governance spots reserved for students often remain unfilled. I know that hearing from students would be a powerful and effective way to create change at City College; however, either by design or by history, students and the Board of Trustees have a pretty much non-existent relationship. That is a wasted opportunity for both.
At our monthly meeting last week, Chancellor Griffin noted that students want to have more involvement in the budget process and pledged to making that happen. He did not get into specifics, however. Student leaders should seize the opportunity to develop a structure for student involvement in planning and budgeting, and should present this to the College Board at our next meeting in February.
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