GUEST OPINION
Pasadena City College (Photo – pasadena.edu)
PCC President Ericka Endrijonas has been at PCC for over four years. Her original contract was from January 22, 2019 to June 30, 2022, for a total of about 3.5 academic years. On July 21, 2021 the Board of Trustees extended her contract by a year, but it seems they skipped a year and extended the wrong year.
By Melissa Michelson
According to the contract, “Dr. Endrijonas shall be evaluated annually by the Board…” The contract states that every year any extension “shall be memorialized by a written amendment to the Agreement.” Therefore, on July 21, 2021, during a private Zoom meeting of the PCC Board of Trustees, they reportedly did the evaluation of the PCC President. In the open meeting, chair and former Trustee Berlinda Brown announced that they had extended her contract.
But rather than extend the contract to June 30, 2022 as a continuation of the original contract’s termination date of June 30, 2022,, they skipped a full year and amended her contract for the period of July 1, 2023 to June 30, 2024.
In other words, the PCC President will have been approved for the year starting July 1, 2023, but not for the year starting July 1, 2022.
Missing year
On February 15, 2023, the current Board approved a resolution with amendments made by Brown’s successor, Trustee Steve Gibson. Trustee Tammy Silver voted ‘no’ and Trustee Kristine Kwong abstained. The resolution solidified Endrijonas’ contract’s termination of June 30, 2024, but there is no mention of the missing academic year from July 1, 2022 to June 30, 2023 (effectively, the current academic year.)
The board members at the time should have (a) corrected Berlinda Brown when she reported out to the public what had happened in closed session, and (b) not unanimously approved the amended contract that had the wrong dates on it.
This is the question: Is Endrijonas working and getting paid out of contract right now?
To rectify this, the Board should complete an evaluation of the PCC President before June 30, 2023, since on July 21, 2021 the previous PCC Board skipped this current year and approved her presidency next academic year already. There is apparently no record of her evaluation for the current academic year which ends June 30.
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Well, it appears that perhaps the faculty and the management association agree on something!
As usual, Ms. Michelson fails to identify herself in her byline as a member of the PCC faculty which of course gave tens of thousands of dollars to the new trustees that Board President Lau recruited to do her bidding, which is the same as the faculty union’s bidding, in order to oust the PCC president because the faculty wants to have power over PCC. Yes, the employees want to control their employer, as that makes life better for them. They want the admin. to be directed by the faculty union. Ms. Michelson is simply one of the angry, entitled faculty members who have caused all these problems for years. The problems with governance years ago that these victorious new trustees blamed on the incumbents during the campaign last year? Caused by entitled faculty. Now we see a return of problems for the same reason. Sad but because of lazy voters who just use party endorsement to decide how to vote, we have this problem again.
Let’s assume your assessment of Ms. Michelson’s agenda is correct. Did she write anything inaccurate?