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Summary of the November 5, 2024 Board of Trustees Meeting
Nov 6 2024I want to share a summary of the November 5, 2024 Board of Trustee meeting. I refer you to the minutes of the meeting if you want to know the details of each of the meeting’s agenda items.
- The Ad Hoc Committee on Board officers (Trustees Biggin and Pedrotti) presented a slate of trustees for consideration as Board Officers for 2025-26. The slate includes Trustee Dr. Mullery as President, Trustee Mathews as Vice President, and Trustee Dorn as Clerk. The Board will vote on the slate and consider nominations from the floor at the December 17, 2024 meeting.
- The Board approved Leah Lancaster as a new Early Childhood Education II and ratified the hiring of Lucas Bailor as an Instructional Support Specialist II. The Trustees also ratified my acceptance of the resignations of Daisy Ceja from an Early Childhood Assistant II position (last day of employment was October 10, 2024) and William Oliveria, Student Services Specialist III, effective November 22, 2024.
- The Board approved the creation of one new degree (Certificate of Recognition related to Forestry) effective Fall 2026 and the revision of one degree and twenty-nine courses. They also approved the inactivation of three courses (English 32 Creative Writing-Poetry, English 33 Creative Writing-Prose, and Biology 9 Plants and People).
- The Trustees approved my recommendation for Common Course Numbering (CNN) name changes
for prerequisites and advisories. For many of you, this may be the first time hearing
about CNN, so allow me to provide a little background.
In 2006, the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges responded to legislative calls for a common course numbering system through the implementation of the Course Identification Numbering System (C-ID). Subsequent to the creation of the C-ID system, Education Code Sections 66725-66725.5 [via Assembly Bill No. 1111 (Berman)] called on the California Community Colleges to adopt a student facing CCN system to streamline transfer from two- to four-year postsecondary educational institutions and reduce excess credit (unit) accumulation. CCN presents a historic opportunity to make our colleges easier to navigate and finally address a long-recognized barrier that impedes countless students. The California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office formed the AB 1111 CCN Task Force (CCN Task Force) to make recommendations for a systemwide plan.
The CCN Task Force published their final report and, in doing so, proposed a phased approach to meet the mandates of AB 1111. In Phase I, which must be completed in 2024, faculty will work in collaboration with intersegmental leadership teams to develop CCN descriptors for an initial set of high-enrollment courses to generate an initial set of CCN-aligned courses for fall 2025. So, to meet the 2024 Phase I deadline, the Board approved our CCN name changes.
During Phase II, a second cluster of courses will be used to evaluate and refine the development processes and templates, test technology-based implementation, test-drive convening practices and validate intersegmental collaboration. In Phase III, we have to implement technology solutions and roll out the remaining transfer courses.
It is important to acknowledge the outstanding leadership of Dr. George Potamianos, Chair of the Curriculum Committee, in getting the District moving forward on the complex and challenging CNN initiative. While we have a lot of challenging work still to do in the coming year, we could not have gotten this far without him. I also want to recognize Dr. Crystal Morse for her guidance in the curriculum process and the outstanding work of our admissions and curriculum for their support of the process.
- This month's financial status report, which the Board approved, showed that the 2024-25 Beginning Fund Balance was adjusted to reflect the actual Ending Fund Balance from 2023-24 based on our annual financial audit. It also showed that the District’s Salaries and Benefits are tracking slightly higher than this time last year, as are fixed expense, our overall expenditures are tracking lower than last year, and our monthly financial status report shows a projected 2024-25 Unrestricted General Fund ending fund balance of $6,742,842, or 14.8%.
- I recognized several of our colleagues for their work—Professor Michelle Haggerty for implementing the “You are not alone” walk on October 10, 2024, Jencie Smith for her phenomenal leadership in organizing the resurrected Science Night Program, and Professor Kyle Shamp for opening his welding lab and the fab lab to McKinleyville students on October 16, 2024. I also recognized was Brian Van Pelt, Jonathan Webster, and Molly Blakemore for their efforts in launching the new CR website.
- I informed the Board that our Automotive Technology training program received ASE Training Program accreditation by the ASE Education Foundation thanks to the magnificent leadership of Professor Anibal Florez and Assistant Professor Ernest Shull.
- Our administrative reports included some of the below information:
- After conducting a national search, the Dean of Del Norte/Pelican Bay screening committee identified three highly qualified finalists to interview this week (November 6 and 8) on the Del Norte Campus. I sent an email to all District employees providing the interview schedule and a brief synopsis of the finalist’s background.
- The strategic review of the Del Norte Campus is underway. The task force began its work on Tuesday, October 29, 2024 with a second meeting scheduled for November 19. The focus of the review process is on identifying actions we can operationalize to strengthen the long-term sustainability and success of the Del Norte Educational Center, including the Pelican Bay Scholars Program. The review is not intended to signal the shuttering of our mission critical Del Norte Campus. I will include the task forces’ final report in the January Board workshop for discussion.
- Our Fall 2024 full-time faculty compliance number is 51.2 while the total full-time equivalent faculty we have on staff is 72.3. This means that we have 21.1 more fulltime faculty than we are obligated to have on staff. In comparison, our Fall 2023 compliance number was 57.2 with a total full-time equivalent faculty number of 76.5, or 19.3 above the number required. While this is good news in terms of compliance with Education Code and Chancellor’s Office requirements, we are committed to hiring faculty in mission critical areas to ensure student success/completion, enrollment growth, and our ability to meet our community’s workforce demands. I attached the FON compliance document to this summary in case you want to look at it.
- We know that fraudulent applications have been on the rise in California Community
Colleges. The goal is to walk off with financial aid. We also know that fake enrollments
crowd out legitimate students and create a significant amount of work for colleges
trying to weed out “ghost students.” What is not common knowledge is that colleges
who disburse federal financial aid to fake students are accountable for those disbursements
and must repay the federal government.
Through the diligent efforts of our amazing Admissions and Financial Aid staff, CR is actively engaged in manual intervention and fraud prevention processes. On average, our staff is identifying 75% of daily applications as fraudulent, though this percentage has been as high as 92%. Our fraud prevention and intervention efforts include: screening every application after the CCC Apply spam filter has already filtered out a high number of applications; participating in the Chancellor’s Office Spam Committee and regularly attends webinars specific to fraud; discussing best practices for handling fraudulent students who have already enrolled and received financial aid with the Federal Department of Education; creating a comprehensive fraud process that addresses all aspects of identifying and managing fraudulent accounts, from new applications to currently enrolled students; reporting fraudulent activity for new fraudulent applications to CCC Apply; and reporting students who fraudulently received financial aid are reported to the Office of Inspector General.
- The Foundation is working closely with the Athletic Department to develop a Rodeo Booster Club to raise funds for our new Rodeo Program.
- I tasked Crystal Morse to create a student run news organization linked to instruction and one that will take advantage of our partnership with Access Humboldt.
- I want to acknowledge Assistant Professor Shannon Mondor’s public comment regarding associate faculty health insurance. Shannon very eloquently framed the problem that our associate faculty face in their everyday lives while also serving our students. The Board of Trustees and I recognize that many of our associate faculty—faculty that we depend on to ensure that the College meets students’ needs and who we rely on to help us meet our enrollment targets and mission—cannot afford health insurance. The Board and I believe that we must do better for our associate faculty colleagues while maintaining fiscal solvency.
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