What Happened to the Community in Santa Monica Community College?

"The truth shall make you angry." Aldous Huxley

An old cliché asserts that what you see depends on where you stand.

As an adjunct English as a Second Language instructor at Santa Monica College, I see the ground level injustice of proposed cuts to ESL classes and vocational programs. Students who get up at 5:30 AM, work one – and often two - lousy jobs, and attend practical English classes in evening are being sacrificed. The nannies who care for our babies, the valets who park our cars, the busboys who clear our tables, and maids who make our beds are being locked out of Santa Monica College. Many immigrants and refugees already have very difficult lives, and this action adds more burdens and takes away education opportunities from hundreds, probably thousands of people.

The Santa Monica Board of Trustees, who seldom visit classes and perceive themselves as looking down from the mountain, claim these actions are necessary and wise. They are wrong. Perhaps they miss the big picture because they are cushioned by privilege, abstract language, and a lack of imagination. Perhaps they also lack sympathy since they have chosen to protect administrator’s jobs, often at over $100,000 per year, instead of keeping classes open.

I know those words sound harsh, but those are the simple consequences of their decisions. Once again, the few and powerful are making a “tough” decision to protect other powerful and well-paid associates from salary cuts and reassignments into classroom while laying off classified workers, dumping adjunct faculty by dozens and dozens, eliminating hundreds of classes and shutting the doors to thousands of students. Oh, yeah, they are also spending more money on a new Arts center and continuing expensive remodeling of buildings. Does that sound fair, reasonable, or wise?

Let me rephrase the question. Why does Santa Monica Community College need so many administrators? Why does SMC have one of the worst ratios of administrators to fulltime faculty in the state?  Why not just be an average California community college and reassign several administrators to the classroom?

The rejection of this option seems particularly insulting since all these great administrative minds have come up with no ideas except cutting services to working class students and other vulnerable members of the community. How exactly are these administrators earning their salary? Why should 10,000 other students lose educational opportunities to keep surplus administrators in very high-paying jobs? How is that fair?

Of course, SMC faces a terrible budget crisis. Whose fault is that? It’s not the students, classified staff, or adjunct faculty’s fault. Yet we are being asked to pay the price.

Please allow me to explore some other taboo questions.

1. Some boardmembers are fond of using the family metaphor for the Community College. Families share sacrifices, across the board, during a crisis. What is President Robertson sacrificing? What is Vice-President Mr. Donner giving up? What is Assistant Dean Lupita Tannatt, the nominal head of the non-credit ESL department being abolished without a formal board vote, giving up? Almost nothing.

Many people - teachers, union officials, and even a few administrators – have suggested that a 10% percent reduction in paid salaries across the campus would make sense. Such a shared sacrifice would save around $7.5 million - and that is half of the worst-case scenario. The reality is that the May revised budget will probably mandate even smaller cuts for community colleges.

Of course, I really believe that both fairness and simple math indicate that the top-level college employees should take a larger cut and janitors a smaller cut. Yet we’ve been cautioned by union leaders to have modest, reasonable expectations.

2. These brutal cutbacks abolish entire departments – from automotive and art to fashion design and non-credit ESL.  Is that due to the budget crisis or an addiction to a longtime fantasy of transforming SMC into a four-year university? Why are they attacking the working class students? Why are low income, disadvantaged, immigrant, refugee, and vocational students bearing almost all the sacrifice?

Santa Monica Community College is chartered, legally, as a community college. Shouldn’t the Board of Trustees first meet their obligations as a community college before trying to position SMCC for some four-year university future? Shouldn’t the Board keep its commitment to current students? Transfer students are not more important than students who learn a skill and make a living! Everyone in the community, including busboys, maids, mechanics, nannies, and sales people - everyone - deserves a chance to take classes and develop their skills!

3. It’s impossible to ignore the fact that 10 vocational programs, minority programs, and the non-credit ESL program - all serving less privileged students/outsiders - are being abolished while more academic programs are being trimmed. What criteria were really used by the administration?

Sometimes administrators sound like they have no choices. It’s utterly false and disingenuous. Here’s a simple alternative. Why not just reduce all departments by a set ratio? Or, again, we could just cut salaries – across the board – by a set ratio to minimize layoffs and class closures.

4. Here’s another wild suggestion. Why not charge more for students who already have a BA? Or exclude classes that mostly attract students with a BA if some courses must be cut? Of course, they really don't have to cut so many classes.

5. Many student presentations at the last Board meeting were eloquent, potent, and on target in their criticisms of these proposed cuts. They combined a tone of anger and betrayal at the Board of Trustees’ proposed actions - and the lame attempts to hide behind the deservedly unpopular Governor Gray Davis. Yet the Board of Trustee must take responsibility for its decisions and their consequences.

The Board of Trustees, not Governor Davis, has made critical decisions that were both short-sighted and negative for Santa Monica College. They are maintaining high reserve levels for a rainy day. If cutting $15 million isn't a rainy day, then what would a rainy day look like? This is one of the most peculiar aspects of the budget crisis. Several informed observers have looked at the numbers have made this simple point. The Academic Senate’s sensible suggestion to prepare three budgets – worse, bad, and tolerable – have consistently been ignored. Why does the Board seem to be in such a rush to assume the worst and make unequal cuts?

6. Let’s be also honest about those Proposition U funds. The Board asked the Santa Monica voters for a tax themselves $160 million over a decade to improve the quality of education at SMC. The local voters chose to tax themselves because they believed in this community college and the value of education. Yet the Board evidently didn't measures educational progress by buildings remodeled or purchased, not by classes taught. So the Prop U bond issue mandates that the money only go to capital projects. Evidently, we can't use that money now to keep classes open.

What administrative genius decided to only spend the money on buildings? Wasn't that really stupid? When will the board take responsibility for the consequences of its decisions?

Perhaps I missed it, but has anybody in SMC administration or boardmember apologized for not even setting aside 10% of the bond for other educational needs? That mere 10% would cover the entire budget crisis for next year! This board's decisions have directly helped create this crisis - and students, classified workers, or adjunct faculty shouldn't have to pay for their failures!

The local SM taxpayers deserve to know this fact. Santa Monica Community College doesn't need more buildings, new art centers, or more prestige; it needs to maintain classes for as many community college students as possible.

Perhaps there are no victories to be won on Monday’s Board of Trustees meeting. There are certainly points to be made. Rumors have it that there is a profound split at the highest levels of the college about the size and shape of these cuts. Let’s hope the advocates of fairer, gentler, and more reasonable cuts prevail. An articulate, large, and determined crowd might help Boardmembers focus on keeping the word community in Santa Monica Community College.

Eric H. Roth 
Adjunct ESL Instructor





Non-credit ESL is for people who need to learn English for work, school, survival, but don't really care about getting a piece of paper. They just want the information so they can go from busboys and maids to waiters and salespeople. I wouldn't even object so loudly if they were combining the program with the for-credit ESL - but they are just cutting these folks out and cutting the other program by a third.
Again, it's putting the greed of a comfortable few ahead of the needs of the struggling many. A community college, like a society, can be judged by how it treats the least advantaged not the most privileged. Just as Bush's tax cuts favor the very wealthy and Davis' budget has a special sensitivity to campaign donors, the SMC Board of Trustees seems to be a bit blind or tone deaf to the pleas of working class and immigrant students and far, far too sensitive to the pleas of overpaid administrators.

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