"Gang of Five" Forces Mertes To Resign
David Mertes' recent resignation as chancellor of the California Community Colleges was forced by a faction on the system's Board of Governors known as the "Gang of Five."
Efforts to get rid of Mertes, spearheaded by board member Alice Petrossian, have been underway for about two years, several current and former board members said in interviews. But not until last November did Petrossian and the other members of the Gang of Five--Vishwas More, Yvonne Bodle, Joseph M. Dolphin and Larry Toy--have enough votes to oust him.
More, an engineer, has retired from the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory at UC Berkeley; Dolphin is a retired San Diego business executive and a candidate for the State Senate; Bodle and Toy are community college instructors--Bodle at Ventura College, Toy at Chabot College in Hayward. All 12 members of the Board of Governors are Republicans, appointed by Governor Pete Wilson. There are four vacancies.
Before last November's board meeting, Mertes, who has held the top state community college job for eight years, told aides that if More and Petrossian were elected chair and vice chair of the board, he would resign. They were and he did.
Mertes' critics on the board, who spoke for the most part only on condition that they not be identified, faulted him for poor leadership and for not communicating well with board members. They also objected to his handling of "EdNet," which links the business community to local community college districts.
But board member Shirley Ralston, a Mertes supporter, said the Petrossian group "wants to micromanage" the 71 community college districts. "They have no idea what the role of a board member should be," said Ralston, who has been a member of the Board of Governors since 1990 and has served on the Rancho Santiago community college board for 15 years. "They want to be administrators. They want to go to the local campuses and offer their expertise."
"I tend to laugh at that," replied Petrossian, who is an official in the Glendale public school system. "I serve as a high-level school administrator. I'm no more interested in micromanaging than I am in being micromanaged."
But, she added, "this is an activist board. It is very much a caring, hands-on board. We will not act as a rubber stamp, and if that is called micromanagement, so be it."
Another member of the Gang of Five said, "to some degree we have to micromanage because the previous board was so passive, so hands-off, that they didn't keep track of anything. Now, when we ask the chancellor something and nothing happens, we ask why. And then we're blamed for trying to 'micromanage.'"
Tim Haidinger, a San Diego real estate investor who was a member of the Board of Governors from 1987 to 1995, called the Mertes resignation a "terrible shame" that "reflects the divisiveness of the board in recent years."
Haidinger singled out Petrossian, who, he said, has carried on an anti-Mertes crusade since joining the board three years ago. He said some of Petrossian's "comments about the chancellor," expressed in closed-door meetings, were "inexcusable."
Members of the Gang of Five were able to persuade Governor Pete Wilson's office not to approve any Washington, D.C. trips for Mertes last year, even though the chancellor serves on several national committees, and expenses for some of these trips would not have been charged to the state.
Petty disagreements of this kind were "draining so much time and energy that I wasn't able to do much else," said Mertes, 65, who otherwise declined to discuss the events leading up to his resignation.
Mertes aides said the chancellor approached each meeting of the Board of Governors with increasing dread. His wife Barbara, a vice chancellor of the Chabot-Las Positas Community College District, sat in the front row at recent meetings, offering her husband moral support. Mertes, a low-key personality who is not given to shouting or banging the table, was seen by his critics on the board as lacking leadership qualities. "I was very disappointed with his lack of vision," one said.
But the chancellor's supporters pointed out that Mertes supervised and promoted the work of the community colleges' Commission on Innovation, which was perhaps the most "visionary" work undertaken in recent years by any of California's three public higher education systems. Others noted that the chancellor of the community colleges does not have the authority vested in the president of the University of California or the chancellor of the California State University system.
Mertes "has been the right person at the right time" for the two-year colleges, said David Viar, executive director of the Community College League of California, an umbrella group of trustees and administrators. "The chancellor's office now does a much better job of serving the colleges, rather than acting as bureaucrats who are out to find fault." One of the Gang of Five critics said Mertes "had total disrespect for the board--when he was given direction, he just didn't respond."
But a veteran community college administrator offered another view. "Dave was the first chancellor to come from the community college system (Mertes had run both the Santa Barbara and Sacramento community college districts) and he built a strong working relationship with many of the presidents and superintendents," this person said. "Some board members couldn't stand the fact that he had a direct line to the CEOs."
If Mertes' relations with his fellow administrators were generally good, they were much shakier with faculty members on the state's 106 two-year campuses. Complaints about lack of consultation led the statewide Academic Senate to vote "no confidence" in Mertes in 1994. After that, the chancellor was more careful about consulting faculty representatives on important policy matters, said Bill Scroggins, a chemistry instructor at Chabot College and vice president of the Academic Senate. But, Scroggins added, "he has problems with the whole concept of 'shared governance' and he freely admits that."
One experienced community college official said Mertes "probably should have spent more time stroking board members. He didn't do that and the 'activist' group was able to slowly build enough support to force him out."
But others doubt that any amount of "stroking" would have helped. "There were no issues," Shirley Ralston said. A Mertes critic on the board said last year's evaluation gave Mertes "no better than a C plus," but Ralston said, "His annual evaluations were exemplary. They (the Gang of Five) just wanted him out." --William Trombley
New Executive Director
Ralph Wolff, who has been associate executive director of the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) since 1981, has been appointed executive director. WASC is the accrediting agency for colleges and universities in California, Hawaii and Guam. Wolff will take over on July 1 from Stephen S. Weiner, who has been executive director since 1988.
Penalizing High Schools for Remedial Students
Republicans in the State Assembly are considering legislation to penalize school districts whose graduates later need to take remedial courses at either the University of California or the California State University.
The proposed bill would "fine" offending school districts for each student who needed brush-up courses in English or Mathematics, and the money would be turned over to UC and Cal State.
"Taxpayers have been footing the bill for KŠ12's deficiencies and we don't think that' s fair," said Roger Magyar, education consultant to the Assembly Republicans. "We're saying to the high schools, 'if you're graduating students with As and Bs and they can't do college work, then you're committing consumer fraud."
Magyar said the legislation would affect only students who spend at least two years at the same high school and who graduate with grade-point averages of 2.8 or higher. Tentatively, the fines for offending school districts have been set at $20 per hour of remedial instruction. The consultant said he did not know how much revenue would be generated annually but that the money would be used to offset remedial costs in the two university systems. At Cal State, these are said to be about $10 million per year.
Magyar expressed confidence that Assembly Republicans would adopt this policy as a caucus position and that a bill implementing the plan would be introduced soon. A similar bill was carried by former Republican Assemblyman Paul Horcher in 1993 but never emerged from committee.
The Cal State Board of Trustees has been wrestling with problems created by a growing demand for remedial instruction on the system's 22 campuses, but first reactions to the notion of fining high schools for turning out poorly-prepared students were negative. "We're trying to establish partnerships with KŠ12, not punish them," said Scott Plotkin, Cal State director of governmental affairs.
Bob Wells, spokesman for the Association of California School Administrators, said the idea probably would run afoul of Proposition 98, which guarantees approximately 40 percent of the state General Fund for public schools and community colleges and makes it difficult to transfer money from those schools to senior universities.
"Beyond that, the policy statement this makes is really troubling," Wells added. "Instead of working with the schools to solve problems of poor preparation, this punishes them." Jock Fischer, assistant superintendent of the Anaheim Union High School District, said such a policy would be unfair to a school district like his, which has changed from 65 percent white to 68 percent minority in the last decade, and where 48 percent of the students have special language needs.
Fischer also noted that there is uncertainty about the standards on which UC and Cal State proficiency tests--the tests that determine whether or not students are assigned to remedial classes--are based. "If they're going to adopt such a policy, they're going to have to let us know what standards are being used to determine remedial need," he said. --William Trombley
A New Partnership
Santa Monica College, a community college, has teamed up with Cal State Northridge to offer bachelor of science degrees in business administration. The partnership, among the first of its kind in California, allows students who are enrolled in the Northridge business program to take "core curriculum" classes in Santa Monica, 20 miles away.
Forty-six students currently are enrolled in the joint program, which began last fall. Geared to older students, who often have to juggle school, family and full-time jobs, the classes are offered one night a week.
Cal State Northridge receives the fee revenue from students enrolled in the classes and pays the faculty, while Santa Monica College provides classroom space, textbooks and other necessary support.
"We're trying to help students who live on the West Side (of Los Angeles) complete their degrees," said Norma Camp, associate dean for academic support at Santa Monica College. A campus survey found that many students dropped out of higher education after completing two years at Santa Monica because they could not take the time to drive congested freeways between the two campuses. --Douglas Alexander