PCC Students in line at 8:00 am for COVID testing, January 24, 2022 (File Photo – R. Quan)
The PCC Faculty Association and incumbent Trustee Sandra Chen Lau have recruited three individuals to challenge three incumbent trustees in the June 2022 election.
By Scott Phelps
The union wants a majority of folks like Ms. Lau on the board to do their bidding. Don’t be fooled by the negative mailers referencing issues from 2015. These issues were resolved years ago but are being used now to smear these trustees, because this is about the union and the local Democratic party seizing power in non-partisan elected offices.
When the college was opening in the fall of 2021, the union objected, saying it wasn’t safe. When the college was opening in January for the spring 2022 semester, they did the same and have blown that up into going after the president of PCC, using the tactic of no confidence votes by the faculty. Never mind that K-12 school districts and college districts across the region were open for in-person learning without incidence of serious illness and with the out of classroom staff pitching in as substitutes for those out with Covid. Never mind that PCC students—-the restaurant workers, the grocery store workers, and the retail workers were all working their jobs in person. The PCC students were surveyed, and they wanted to go to in-person classes. Never mind that PCC had upgraded all the ventilation and had social distancing. Vaccinations had been available since the spring of 2021, boosters in the fall of 2021. The risk of serious illness if vaccinated and boosted was lower than the risk of serious injury when driving a car. The few professors leading this challenge didn’t want to go back to in-person learning, which everyone knows is much better for the students. Their perceptions of safety were more important than the students’ needs for in-person instruction. Sadly, this was the case statewide as unions resisted in-person instruction for far too long in 2021.
This is not about the students
PCC’s student results are among the best among community colleges in the state and the nation. In a recent year, PCC ranked:
- 1st in California and 5th in the Nation in minority students earning an AA/AS degree.
- 1st in California and in the Nation in the number of associate degrees awarded to Asian American students.
- 1st in California in the number of associate degrees awarded to Latinx students.
PCC was just recognized for being the first college in the state to completely move from remedial to college-level courses in English and math as required by state legislation. Enrollment in college-level math and English went up by nearly 1,000 students, and 400 more students passed each subject than they did in 2018.
These outstanding results don’t happen because the college trustees are performing badly. One of the incumbent trustees currently under attack, Linda Wah, just won a statewide award for her dedication to uplift women students. Another, Berlinda Brown, pushed to successfully establish PCC Northwest campus at Muir for the Northwest Pasadena community.
This is the local Democratic party seeking to achieve more power in non-partisan offices, and the PCC faculty union wanting control over the board. That’s all it is. It has nothing to do with what’s best for students. I hope that the voters reject this and keep these fine incumbents in office.
Scott Phelps is a Pasadena Unified School Board member. This is his opinion.
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This is little more than a parroting of President Endrijonas’ talking points. If students were so eager to return to classes on campus, then why was it that 80 percent of classes that were threatened with cancellation for Spring 2022 were on-site classes? The online classes filled quite easily. It was also the case that the majority of those online courses were taught by full-time faculty whereas the on-campus classes were largely assigned to part-time faculty who receive absolutely no health coverage from PCC. Instead of falsely blaming and scapegoating Democrats and the FA (which is lopside in that it only has one part-time faculty member in its leadership), it is much better to look at hard data which is readily available. From my perspective, Endrijonas was more interested in being the first community college campus in the area to open fully rather than being concerned with opening safely. Finally, all that the college has achieved has been done on the backs of adjuncts–over 60 percent of faculty at PCC are part-timers with no job security, little to no benefits, and quite often, no path to full-time employment. You want to make PCC a better place? Stop exploiting your teaching faculty and start treating them with respect. THAT is the first step to student success.
and FYI abstention does not count as a vote. I voted NO ENDORSEMENT.
Todd Jones, first, I believe you have blocked me on social media because I cannot see your post. I was informed and sent a copy of it;
FYI- I received no info from anyone during AD41 voting. I was dealing with a pet issue and mistakenly voted for Kwong when I realized I moved my vote to the next vote that was called, which was no endorsement as the vote for Wah had already been taken… My source, along with my own research into Kwong, was the very progressive Dr. Suzie Adjian, who sat on the South Pasadena School board and worked closely with Wah and supports her completely .. Todd Jones, we are both elected delegates to the LACDP, where you have supported Villanueva for sheriff and recently spoke on his behalf before the body of the LACDP when he was seeking our endorsement which he did not get, so your endorsement of Kwong is hardly surprising given your voting history.
My concern is term limits. Just how long should someone be in one of these seats? It’s not the Supreme Court, although I wish that weren’t the case there either.
I think three terms, 12 years, is plenty. Brown, Wah and others not up for election this cycle should step down and do something else. Some appear to want to die in this role they’ve been in it so long. And some haven’t made major contributions in a long while. Their attitudes towards faculty have led to poor choices in presidents and have contributed to our factious environment..
They’ve become entrenched and self-serving. They are taking advantage of the fact that the average citizen doesn’t understand and/or doesn’t care about this very important role. This allows people like Wah to take credit for projects that were created and led by faculty—take the Pathways program for example. I was one of the faculty that worked very hard to make that program happen. No board member was involved.
Back in 2018, most of this board tried to install the president of a predominantly white, 500-student college from the Ozarks. Our math department is larger. The various groups on campus rallied together to make the board back down. At the time, the board used a search business that knew nothing about higher ed. Why? They had to fly the position again and use a California-based higher ed savvy search team.
I encourage people to bring in new energy, new points of view, and certainly new skills for working with the whole campus. I encourage a vote for either Steven Gibson, Kristine Kwong (who is NOT a Trumpster by any means) or Alton Wong. The college and the students deserve that.
As a Dem who taught adult immigrants English for years, I had a lot of students who were headed for PCC after completing some or all ESL classes in the school’s ESL program. Many were from China, some were wealthy, and some had advanced degrees there. Sometimes they had a problem with the curricula our classes offered because they were used to more rigorous study. The point is that there was a pipeline between our campuses and PCC, even for wealthy students who could well afford Stanford, Berkeley, Harvard, etc. They wanted to improve their English before enrolling in those schools. My point is, and I could very well be talking out of my hat, is that a push to repopulate the board could reflect a desire by some to fill board positions with supporters of a more rigorous educational approach. Prior to retirement, I took multiple ESL classes on guided tours of the campus. I also took a foreign language course a couple of years ago. What stood out was a more tolerant more lenient approach than was true when I was a student there during the 1970s. That might not sit well with some cultures and communities; it certainly didn’t among many of my Asian adult ESL students who objected to less disciplined individuals from different cultures who behaved in ways that they (and I) weren’t used to- tardiness, speaking out of turn, absenteeism,failure to buy the textbook, etc.- the list was long. All I’m saying is this board feud might reflect a culture clash that exists in the community outside the school as well.
What did you THINK would happen when incumbents aren’t doing their job correctly?! It’s the natural consequence.
The only “power grab” is that of these inefficient and power hungry incumbents who don’t want to give up these positions because it feeds their egos.
Another fact that you neglected to mention, is that the objection to return to campus was not about the faculty, it was due to the students that did not want to return yet. Of course your friends on the board did not tell you about the change.org student petition and numerous emails, begging to delay the return to campus a couple more weeks.
This article reeks of the desperation of the incumbents asking their friends for favors as a last ditch attempt to hang on to the power. Nice try!
How can it be about the “Democratic Party seizing power” by trying to oust the too-long incumbents (since 2009), when they themselves are Democrats? Linda Wah was a Hillary Clinton delegate in 2016 to the Democratic National Convention; Anthony Fellow ran on a Dem. Party political-establishment slate in 2019 to be Assembly District 49 delegate for the Democratic Party, and Berlinda Brown attempted to get the endorsement of the LA County Democratic Party but failed. This is a non-partisan race, but since you bring it up: every single person running whether incumbent or newcomer is or has been a registered Democrat.
Why don’t you vet candidates you support better? Kristine Kwong appears Trumpian in her views on Affirmative Action, being a partner in a law firm representing charter schools, and addressing their 25th Annual convention in San Diego in 2018. How can she be running for a Board of Trustees of a public college?? The law firm she represents also represents hospitals and other employers against their employees. When she called me to endorse her, she didn’t even know there was a nursing dept. or culinary dept!!! Why is she running!! I guess you just want the incumbents out and will support anyone running against them. I support Steven Gibson and Alton Wang but NEVER Kristine Kwong.
In their bid to have the endorsement of the LA County Democratic Party you as a delegate who would decide the recipient of that endorsement voted for Kristine Kwong initially. Upon hearing the result that Kristine Kwong earned just enough votes to win the endorsement you changed your vote to “Abstention” which took the LACDP endorsement away from Kwong. Please explain what it was that you learned in those few seconds that took you away from giving your vote to Kwong? One minute you endorsed Kwong and the next minute you don’t. Why did you not give your endorsement vote the Kwong’s opposition?