I want to share some of the highlights of the November 1 meeting.

Several informational reports were presented to the Board:

In my Interim President/Superintendent report, I let the Board know that the District took a significant step forward in satisfying its annual planning goals relative to student equity when the administration approved resource requests asking for a larger space for the Veterans Resource Center (VRC) and for development of a new Multicultural Center. 

Interim Vice President Hill updated the Trustees on the status of our accreditation self-study work.   In her report she noted that all of Standard II is being reviewed in batches by the Accreditation Oversight Committee and other groups and the subcommittees are busy drafting Standard I and Standard IV.

The Board also reviewed and discussed a report analyzing the percentage of students meeting or exceeding student learning expectations in online and face-to-face instruction.

Besides using this data to make improve student success and achievement, collecting and analyzing the student learning outcomes across modalities is further evidence that the District meets the accreditation standard related to evaluating and improving the quality of instructional programs, regardless of modality (Standard 1.B.1 and Standard II.A.1)

The Trustees took action on quite a few items of note: 

The Board Meeting Dates, Times, Locations for 2017 were approved.

Several personnel actions were approved or ratified.  Included in the recommendation was the employment of two Student Services Specialist II classified staff—one position funded through the general fund and one via EOPS categorical funds. It’s important to point out that the general funded position was reduced from 1.0 FTE to .50 FTE to help reduce personnel costs.

The Trustees ratified John Short’s resignation as the Farm Manager effective    October             24^th and the resignation of Marla Gleave as the Dean of CTE.  Marla will go back into the faculty next fall.  I want to thank both of these colleagues for their service to the District.

The recommendations to declare the Garberville Instruction Site as surplus and to accept the tentative agreement to sell the Garberville property to the Southern Humboldt Community Healthcare District for $1,100,000 were also approved.  The healthcare district agreed to make a $50,000 initial deposit and pay all of the closing costs.

The proposed sale price is less than the amount the District paid for, and has invested in, the site.  However, the enrollment and fiscal data for the site indicates that there has been and continues to be poor enrollment at the site, resulting in annual operating losses that have a persistent negative impact on the CR district budget.

The sale of the property would benefit to both organizations. Selling it would eliminate the on-going budget deficit for College of the Redwoods regarding the site, while making property available to the healthcare district that can be used for a new hospital.  We will reinvest the $1.1 million into renovating the dorms on the Eureka main campus.

Moving forward, the tentative agreement will be published in the newspaper and the District thereafter must hold a public hearing to consider public comment regarding the agreement.  I anticipate forwarding a recommendation to the Board in December asking for final approval to sell the Garberville property to the healthcare district.