SBCC Trustees Approve Search Committee for New President, Keep Mum on Commission Report

» lou segal on 02.10.12 @ 01:11 AM

Dean Nevins ran for the Santa Barbara School Board as a union endorsed, hyper-liberal status quo candidate. It is comforting to know that our highly partisan SBCC Board chose to make a political appointment to head this selection committee. I wonder if this report from the state commission, which has something in there they don’t want to see the light of day, was critical of the highly politicized decision-making of the SBCC Board.

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» Dean Nevins on 02.10.12 @ 02:05 PM

A correction: I am the former Chair of the Computer Science Department at SBCC; the current Chair is Associate Professor Jacqueline Kuehn.

@lou Although you try to make it seem that my appointment as a co-chair on the selection committee by a unanimous vote of the board was some nefarious political plot, I suspect that my position as the academic senate president probably had more to do with it than a two-year old run for the Santa Barbara board.

@youngat85 Thank you very much for your support of the selection committee. I hope that you can attend the Candidate forums to help vet the candidates. It’s important that the community is involved in the process.

I just wanted to mention that the unfortunate thing about fee increases, other than the obvious burden it places on students, is that the state just deducts the increased fees from what they give us, so we see no additional money.

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» publius on 02.10.12 @ 03:55 PM

Rather than start a pissing contest into a stiff public breeze, can’t we focus on the larger issues?

The issues of college and continuing education funding and priority focus that
were articulated by the old board majority and the former president have been
reconfirmed by the new president, the statewide chancellor, and the governor.

State subsidies for many continuing education classes are about to vanish.

The “make a few phone calls and knock on some doors in Sacramento” to dodge these realities, as promised by trustee Marty Blum, has failed to happen. The cavalry is not riding to the rescue.

It’s essential for all community factions to pull together, to help find new, local funding to protect the best parts of Continuing Education, to make them affordable for most residents into the future, to rebuild trust among trustees.

As Dr. Friedlander seems to be doing a good enough job at crisis management, and since the new board majority’s understanding and acumen on issues like restructuring and expanding funding seem suspect, why not cancel the “search”, and give Friedlander a two-year contract to show community and trustees what he could do as SBCC president?

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» Dean Nevins on 02.10.12 @ 09:56 PM

@lou Well technically you are correct since the co-chairs were appointed by the Board and all of the Trustees are politicians. Therefore, everything they do is political. I also noted in my original response that my appointment was by a unanimous vote of the entire board. Could you please elaborate on what you mean when you say “political appointment”?

The Academic Senate President is elected by the full-time faculty to represent them in matters dealing with the administration (among other duties). My membership on the hiring committee is quite normal. It actually would have been odd if I wasn’t on the committee. By the way, the co-chairs only run the meetings and co-ordinate with the hiring firm. That’s pretty much it.

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» Sy Prey on 02.11.12 @ 06:20 PM

Several tests required to exempt disclosure a public document under California Public Records Act:

1. Is it labeled preliminary draft?
2. Are the documents pre-decisional notes or memoranda?
3. Is the document retained in the ordinary course of business?
4. Does it contain facts?
5. Are the facts tightly intertwined with opinion?
6. What public interest is served by disclosure?
7. What public interest is clearly served by non-disclosure
8. Will the fundamental and necessary right of every person to have access to information concerning the conduct of the people’s business chill candor and robust debate if this document is disclosed this stage in the final process?
9. Is the exemption narrowly or broadly construed?

Citizens for a Better Environment v. Department of Food and Agriculture (1985)
171 Cal App 3d 704

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» youngat85 on 02.16.12 @ 01:09 AM

I believe the school you are thinking of is the school of selfish interests and it is taught by Gullible individuals who honestly believe their own rhetoric.

They have never been taught that personal responsibility is the cheapest price anyone can pay for freedom and they honestly believe that they can legislate others to pay for their freedom. They never want to hear that they are personally responsible for everything they want and they have a jaundiced opinion of reality based upon their own thinking.
I truly would not want to be in their position of running a school without experience and trying to please a vocal faculty.

We have lost some wonderful citizens who have proven themselves by having the schools best interest at heart and they were blindsided by a group of individuals more progressive than themselves who thought they could legislate more benefits for the faculty in truly hard times Without any feedback.

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