Ventura College Academic Senate
Thursday, 15 September 2011
MCW-312

I.	Meeting called to order at 1:31 p.m. The following Senate members were present:
Algiers, Kammy—Math and Sciences
Arquilevich, Gabe—English and Learning Resources
Chen, Albert—Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities
Forde, Richard—Career and Technical Education
Gardner, Ty—Math and Sciences
Haines, Robbie—Senate Secretary
Hendricks, Bill—Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities
Lange, Cari—Senate Vice President
Mitchell, Nancy—Career and Technical Education
Muñoz, Paula—Student Services
Parker, Jennifer—Career and Technical Education
Pauley, Mark—Senate Treasurer, Curriculum Co-chair
Sezzi, Peter—Senate President
The following guests were present:
Anderson, Mike—Career and Technical Education 
Calote, Robin—President, VC
Sanchez, Ramiro—EVP, Student Learning
Tovar, Antonio—Vice President, ASVC

II.	Public Comments
No public comments were made.

III.	Acknowledgement of Guests
College President Robin Calote spoke to Senate, confirming that Chancellor will retire in June 2013 and that District will take same percentage cut as campuses. Due to the way that the allocation model works, Ventura College may end up having more money because our campus productivity has not been at maximum. Given that in a worst case scenario of a District budget shortfall next academic year of $11-13 million dollars, which would translate into a $4 million dollar shortfall at Ventura College,  it is important to remember that the programs proposed for discontinuance will not sum up our campus’ anticipated $4 million budget shortfall but that we’ll still need to make other cuts. However, those cuts can’t be to contract faculty because our District must maintain our full-time faculty obligation number (FON).  Calote additionally mentioned we don’t know the exact dollar amount of our shortfall yet but some preliminary work has been done but there’s more to go. By the end of this semester we should have a better idea of what next year’s proposed California, District and college budgets may be.  Responding to a question form the Senate, Calote mentioned that some cuts may come from athletics but that these programs will be generating a higher percentage of their revenue in the future. 

IV.	Approval of minutes
a.	Pauley moved to approve minutes from 1 September Senate meeting, Arquilevich seconded, minutes approved unanimously.
b.	Gardner moved to approve minutes from 7 September Senate meeting, Parker seconded. Discussion: Muñoz requested that her comments from that meeting, regarding the inclusion of the District in discussions of discontinuance, cuts, etc., and including District cuts in college planning parameters, be included. Motion carried with 4 abstentions.

V.	Report on Goal Setting for 2010-2011
Senate goals compiled and distributed by Lange. Some discussion centered on if there has been any report on new registration payment rules. After some further discussion, Sezzi recommended inviting Registrar Susan Bricker to a future meeting for further discussion. Discussion ensued about what to do with these goals. Gardner noted that SLOOG changes are already in progress. Senate agreed by consent to keep list available and revisit it periodically (possibly monthly), focusing first on goals that were identified by multiple senators. Sezzi introduced a list developed with Calote and most campus committees and their makeup, schedules, etc., compared with the college’s Making Decisions document and the Senate by-laws to identify redundancies and/or vacancies on said committees; some inconsistencies and inaccuracies were identified. Senate agreed to examine this at next meeting. Sezzi agreed to get the word out to all faculty about serving on committees, especially where vacancies presently exist. 

Study Session: VCCCD Participatory Governance Manual
Sezzi noted that at last consultation council meeting, Chancellor Mezneck asked for all constituency groups to review this 75-page document how is district-college communication is reflected in this document. Chancellor wanted us to review it for communication issues. Sezzi solicited comments from the Senate on this matter. Examples provided included:
Registration issues decided without even informing us
Many decisions made without our input or notice, attitude too top-down, not collegial. 
Feedback about things that are not our purview never requested even when we need to know about proposed changes in order to do our jobs.
District-College communication is not collegial and works against, not with, not providing or sharing information or guidance. 
Our District PG Manual  discusses roles, but not processes; a document like this should discuss processes, perhaps even provide flow-charts on ‘if you want to do this, first do this step, then that, etc.’. 
Policies and procedures once implemented, are often imperfect because our feedback never requested, we’re left to deal with consequences and clean up resulting messes. 
It is functionally impossible to track things that are working through the process (e.g. priority registration for athletes working through system, old version still on Board docs, but someone new to the District would never know a BP or AP is actually being edited and changed; other times, BPs or APs that are being edited are removed from Broad docs so that no one knows what our current policy or procedure is)
We should have regular district updates (perhaps monthly?) similar to Calote’s weekly e-mail campus updates. 
Lastly, Sezzi noted that if anyone else has further comments on this topic, please send them to him no later than the end of this month so he can address this at Consultation Council.

VI.	President’s Report
a.	DTRW
Sezzi reported this was first meeting with Gaither Lowenstein (District Consultant/Co-chair of DCSL, DTRW) present. VC’s AA for transfer in sociology discussed. At the meeting, Lowenstein presented the Sociology Department’s program-level SLOs to the body and wondered aloud why these were not presented along with the new degree. Sezzi recounted that after some discussion at DCSL, the body agreed that SLOs should be attached to degrees. 

b.	DCSL
Sezzi told Senate that he went on record at both DTRW and DCSL these participatory governance committee should be chaired by staff or faculty, as described in the Participatory Governance Manual, rather than by an outside consultant. Sezzi recounted that at that meeting there was contentious discussion over enrollment priorities. Sezzi  noted that that no formal proposal on enrollment priorities was presented at DCSL but expect both more data and a proposal to be forthcoming soon. Sezzi further noted that legislation has passed which gives enrollment priority to foster/emancipated foster youth. Sanchez: Data on this for VC not yet available. Lastly, the Senate reached consensus that we should go back to separate enrollment periods for each semester and move away from multi-term registration. 

c.	DCAS
Sezzi distributed a document that explained how much the District office pays for its Stanley Avenue lease (approx. $450,000 per year). Sezzi also explained that DCAS is continuing to work on refining the wording but not the intent of the structural deficit model that our Senate has previously adopted. 
 
d.	Board of Trustees Meeting report
Sezzi requested at the last Board meeting that we not have an outside consultant chair District participatory governance committees. Sezzi asked for the consent agenda item that detailed the consultant’s $45,000 (with each college paying $15,000 to this amount) personal services contact be pulled and reviewed by the Board. Sezzi publicly thanked Trustee Perez at the Senate meeting for having moved at the Board meeting that this consent agenda item be this  discussed by the full board. Some discussion occurred but in the end, the Board voted to approve having outside consultant.  At the Board meeting there were also 20 public speakers who provided about one hour’s worth of testimony, primarily about proposed programmatic cuts at Oxnard College. Chair Blum was absent due to recent surgery but Vice-Chair Hernandez ran the meeting and expressed some concern at comparisons made between our current team of managers and a previous Chancellor. 

VII.	 AP 4021–Program Discontinuance (First Reading)
Haines motioned to move this item farther up agenda in the interest of time, Pauley seconded, motion carried unanimously. In the context of this draft AP, the College Planning Council serves as the “alternative recommending group.” Concerns were also raised about program discontinuance being triggered by “projected” operating budget shortfalls.  Some discussion centered on the state-mandated 5% reserves. It was noted that many of the proposed metrics listed on this draft are pedagogical, only a few are budgetary, but either can trigger discontinuance. It was recommended that the draft specifically identify if a program is being cut for budgetary reasons or for philosophical or pedagogical reasons. Some questions then centered on what is the Statewide Academic Senate’s policy on program discontinuance. Sezzi mentioned that Statewide Academic Senate’s  policy is that all colleges should have a program discontinuance procedure in writing and that the Statewide Senate’s most up-to-date report on the topic is over ten years old.
In response to questions about the genesis of this document, Sezzi noted that the comments in red are from the consultant/presidents/chancellor’s meeting in August. The wording in black is from the written version that our Senate approved over two years ago. Some questions centered on if we want Senate to play the central role as outlined in this latest draft or if that role is that of CPC.

Overall, short and vague language seems better, because it would be open to interpretation, less proscriptive. Discussion then centered on if we wanted such specific metrics present in the AP. It was decided that colleges should use metrics and data of their own to make these decisions and the  “laundry list” of items in this document should be struck. Sezzi questioned what provisions should be included about when our decisions affect other colleges. Sezzi suggests this for striking a balance between maintaining local authority and respecting impacts on other colleges—when program discontinuance would affect multiple colleges within the District, discipline faculty within district will meet to address resulting issues. Those involved should be required to meet to alleviate impacts, encourage meetings to discuss metrics by which discontinuance was decided. 

Muñoz noted that is important to say that all cuts outside direct student access must be exhausted before programs be considered for cutting. It was also noted that cuts that don’t save money are distracters, as other cuts will still need to be made. Sezzi noted that is exactly why cuts should be justified as pedagogical vs. budgetary. Lastly, even though we are presently talking about discontinuance, we need to keep in mind that growth and development in the future is still necessary and we need to build in capacity for this. Sezzi noted that the structural deficit model takes care of that in a small way by providing seed monies to each campus for new program development or existing program innovation. Pauley motioned to advance this to second reading at next meeting, Arquilevich seconds, motion carries unanimously.

VIII.	Senate Subcommittee reports
By consent, these items were skipped in the interest of time except Sezzi reported that all faculty who requested professional development funding received it. Our new system for this appears to be working well. 

IX.	Action Items
a.	District & College Committee Appointments
More people running for CPC positions than positions available. Candidates’ statements from the five (5) faculty running for the two (2) CTE faculty slots on the CPC were passed out. Ballots were distributed and a vote taken, with Ralph Fernandez and Sandy Melton elected, Mike Anderson agreed to act as second. 

Overview of committees distributed, discrepancies in Senate representation discussed and deemed sensible. Haines moved to suspend rules for this academic year’s Academic Senate representation to allow both the English and LRC and PE/Athletics/Foreign Language/ESL/Communication Studies divisions each to have two (2) Senate representatives apiece. Algiers seconded, motion carried unanimously.

b.	Resolution on Following the VCCCD Participatory Governance Manual (First Reading)
Lange motions to advance this to second reading at next meeting, Mitchell seconds, motion carries unanimously.

X.	Information/Discussion Items 
District budget passed out and discussed. Why do they get 6.64% off top? This legacy goes back to about 1997, about 6% required to pay for District management salaries. Certain costs formerly absorbed by campuses are now covered by District (e.g. HR technicians, IT centralization). It was noted that while our campus lists of potential cuts are out, where is District’s list? Sezzi noted that most of the District’s part of the allocation model goes to salaries so a cut to the general fund will lower the amount that their 6% sums up to. In other words, in the $11-13 million dollar projected budget shortfall for next Fiscal Year, the District office is facing the elimination of 6–7 positions.

XI.	Adjournment
Meeting adjourned at 3:40 p.m.