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Published on 7/7/2020.

Comments/Board Business

General Public Comments:

Professor Gary Sokolow— Professor Sokolow commented on the use of the terms “systemic and institutional racism” in the joint Board/Administration statement Dr. Mullery read at the June board meeting.

Professor John Johnston—President of the Board Dr. Mullery read Professor Johnston’s public comment on his behalf.  I am including his entire statement in this article with his permission.  

Good afternoon, President Mullery, Trustees, and President Flamer.

I’d like to share with you some thoughts about how we can work together as a college community to confront the very serious challenges we are facing as a college, as a culture, and as a country right now.

In my ethics class, I teach students that in order to effectively address a problem, we first have to understand the specific nature of the problem. To do this, we have to speak with extraordinary precision about the problem. Failure to do so leads to ineffective solutions, the creation of even more problems, and ultimately frustration and desperation.

As I listen to our cultural conversation these days, I hear lots of vague abstractions and few specifics.

I hear lots of talk of “privilege,” “systemic racism,” and “structural racism.” But I hear very few specifics. And why there are few specifics offered makes sense: these are extremely complicated concepts. “Privilege,” for example, is a contextual phenomenon: in one context a particular individual may have advantages that he or she does not have in other contexts. “Privilege” is extremely difficult to quantify, so it is also extremely difficult to effectively mitigate its impacts.

When we use terms such as these without offering accompanying specifics, we make it difficult for those listening to us—like our students—to know exactly what to do. This can lead to two very undesirable outcomes. One outcome is the belief that those using those terms are doing so to “virtue signal” to their in-group that they are worthy of inclusion in that group. This kind of “performative outrage” leads to cynicism and disengagement. After all, why rally behind someone you’ve come to believe is appropriating an issue you care deeply about in order to advance their own self-interest? Another outcome is falling into despair and desperation. Without a clear sense of what to do and how to do it, one can become hopeless and conclude that the entire system is so corrupt and beyond salvage that the only thing we can do is tear everything apart and start over. We would do well here to take lessons from the French Revolution and Lenin’s and Stalin’s attempts to build Marxist utopias. 

But we can do better. When we reference “systemic or structural racism,” we can talk very precisely about where exactly in the system the racism exists. This allows us to work together to address an injustice, something we are all committed to doing. When we speak of “privilege,” we can precisely identify the nature of the privilege in its given context and the ways that privilege may or may not be impacting others. When we look at inequalities of outcome, we can resist the urge to conclude that they must necessarily result from flaws in our systems or structures and, instead, carefully and dispassionately analyze all of the causes.

And we must do this together. We must work together. It is our only option. Fortunately, we’ve proven we can solve tough problems. We’ve done this before. But now more than ever we have to speak very precisely, very carefully. We need to show our students and our community that we understand what is happening (and be honest when we don’t), and we must offer specific solutions. And we can do this only if we speak very precisely and concretely about the problems we’re addressing and how we are addressing them.

Thank you.

Member Comments: Trustee Biggin encouraged the trustees to participate in CCLC webinars.

Board Committee Reports: Trustee Dorn commented that the Board Self-Evaluation Ad Hoc Committee discussed the results of the self-evaluation survey.

Board Member Stipends for the 2020-21 Fiscal Year: The Trustees by unanimously approved giving up their stipends this year to help us deal with our budget challenges.

Consent Calendar Action Items

Approve/Ratify Personnel Actions: The Trustees took the following personnel related actions:

• Employment of Manager: Juliet Maestas, Instructional Site Manager – Klamath/Trinity Instructional Site (.125 FTE) effective July 8, 2020.
• Pre-Retirement Workload Reduction: Deanna Herrera, Professor, Psychology - effective 2020 – 2021 academic year at 60 percent.
• New Associate Faculty: Levi Basist – Biology—Eureka; Rebecca Gillette – Social Work & Human Services – Eureka; Meerae Park – Agriculture – Eureka; Alan Rodriguez – Agriculture – Eureka; and John Wegis – Computer Information Systems – Eureka.

Action/Discussion Items

Monthly Financial Status Report: This report covered our unrestricted general fund revenue and expenditures from July 1, 2019 to May 30, 2020. The report noted the following.

1) Salary costs are slightly high due to the annual payment of faculty overload amounts.

2) Salary amounts to date are at 95% of the budgeted amount.

3) Total expenses are lower than this point last year.

4) Our planned transfers out are $90,000 to the Child Development Center, $86,177 to Shively Farm, and $520,000 to the OPEB fund.

Approve the 2020-21 Tentative Budget: The Board approved our Tentative Budget. In order to ensure that we have the financial resources to meet operational needs, we based the 2020-21 Tentative Budget on the revenue level we expect to receive in 2020-21 (2019-20 revenue with an estimated 8% deficit). However, determining what the appropriate available 2019-20 revenue should be is extremely challenging given the uncertainty of the state’s budget situation.  

There is a lot of confusion and uncertainty about the state’s budget. Several of our college community colleagues think that our budget is fine since the state’s compromised budget was approved a week or so ago. I understand why someone would see it that way. However, it is important to remember that the budget outlook since the initial release of the Governor’s Budget on January 10 deteriorated precipitously due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing recession. In January, the administration projected a $5.6 billion surplus for 2020-21 and $21 billion in reserves, including $18 billion in the state’s Rainy Day Fund. Following three quarters of strong economic growth, the state’s economy entered a deep and unexpected recession in the fourth quarter. The recession, combined with $5.7 billion in new spending related to the state’s COVID-19 response, transformed the projected surplus to a $54.3 billion deficit.

To address the deficit at a state government level, the approved compromised budget omits most new spending that is unrelated to the COVID-19 pandemic, reduces funding for several ongoing programs including universities, delays payments to schools and community colleges, and reduces employee compensation through collective bargaining agreements and furloughs. It also raises new revenue from temporary changes to corporate taxes and uses budget reserves and federal relief funds to mitigate reductions. The result is a decline in overall state General Fund spending of approximately 9% compared to 2019-20. 

The compromised budget attempts to:

• Maintain apportionment at 2019-20 levels with no COLA, but includes $662 million in apportionment deferrals from fiscal year 2020-21 to 2021-22 (rather than cuts to funding). This means Districts will not receive all of their revenue until future years. 
• Provide a new $120 million block grant to help districts cover costs related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Defer payments to community colleges from one fiscal year into the next for both 2019-20 and 2020-21.   
• Continue implementation of the Student Centered Funding Formula but provides no enrollment growth funding or cost-of living adjustment (COLA) for apportionments. For reference only, the statutory COLA rate for 2020-21 is 2.31%.
• Extend the formula’s existing hold harmless (minimum revenue) provision by two years, through 2023-24. Under this provision, districts will earn at least their 2017-18 total computational revenue, adjusted by COLA each year, in years without base reductions.
• Include additional trigger deferrals of $791 million that may be rescinded if the state receives sufficient additional federal relief. 

State leaders hope to receive federal aid to rescind a portion of the deferrals—$791 million of the $1.5 billion total. However, federal aid is not assured, and the state has limited options for addressing these funding shifts absent federal aid. To afford previous deferral repayments, the state typically has rolled deferrals forward. This budget deal, for example, includes repayment of the 2019-20 CCC deferral in 2020-21, and a new and much larger deferral of 2020-21 payments into 2021-22. It is important to note that undoing these deferrals in a future budget would require “doubling up” on payments in a fiscal year, which state leaders have found difficult to achieve. For example, the 2019 Budget Act reversed a rolling state payroll deferral (which deferred the June state payroll into early July) that was first implemented a full decade earlier.

Deferred payments will cause cash flow problems for CR, requiring us to deplete reserves or use internal and external short-term borrowing to meet ongoing obligations. Moreover, deferrals can permit the state to authorize—and CR to maintain—programmatic levels we can only afford by creating ongoing out-year obligations. These obligations can make future program reductions more likely and more profound.

We will present our final budget for approval once the Governor and the Legislature approve a final state budget.

First Read of Board Policies and Administrative Procedures: The Trustees executed a first reading of BP 1200 and AP 2715.

Second Read of Board Policies and Administrative Procedures: The Trustees executed a second reading of several BPs and APs including: AP 2710, AP 2712, AP 2740, AP 3830, BP 2200, BP 2310, BP 2315, BP 2410, BP 2310, BP 2315, BP 2410, BP 2710, BP 2730, BP 2740, BP 2750, BP 2716, AP 2515, BP 2515, BP 2715, and BP 2735.

RFQ for Capital Outlay Construction Management: We are about to move into the construction phase of both the Creative Arts Drop and Replace and Physical Education Replacement capital projects. The Board approved our request to publish a RFQ to identify firms who could manage these two important capital projects.

Ratification of the President's Executive Order: Our Board Policy 3505 provides that the President/Superintendent shall establish procedures that ensure that the District implements a plan to be activated in the event of an emergency. Further, on March 16, 2020, the Board passed Resolution No. 757 declaring an emergency and delegating to the President/Superintendent authority to take any and all actions necessary to ensure the continuation of public education, and the health and safety of the students and staff at the District Sites.

The Board ratified my decision to promulgate an Executive Order relative to student participation in face-to-face instruction related activities in the fall.

Organizational Reports

CRFO: Below is President Haggerty’s written report:

Dear Board Members,

Thank you for the opportunity to continue to communicate during these changing times. I would like to share a few things with you.

This summer is a very busy one for faculty. All faculty are working on modifying their classes to deliver online. As you are aware, this takes a significant amount of work. The “CR Keep Teaching” Canvas page is very active every day with material being presented and faculty interacting with each other.

CRFO has been busy working on MOUs and revisions to the Contract as a result of the modified teaching environment. We meet with the district’s Chief Negotiator and the CIO once a week to discuss the above items and to problem solve any other pressing issues.

The new relationship that we have established with FACCC includes a seat on their board. I attended a board retreat, virtually, this last weekend to begin that role. FACCC has another budget forum that I will attend on 6/1/20. This formalized affiliation is allowing CRFO to have more direct information from the state groups that are making decisions. The budget process was discussed at the retreat, revealing the unique challenges of our college in handling the deferrals.

I would like to point out here how impressed I am with how our college is responding to the changing needs of our community. This includes offering a class to K-12 teachers on remote teaching, developing a task force to advise the police academy and all the work being done in the CE area to respond to the community. CR is really important to our community!

Again, be assured that the district and CRFO are working together closely to deal with the ever-changing landscape of this pandemic and economic crisis. Thank you all for your commitment to our college.

Respectfully,

Michelle Woods Haggerty, CRFO President

Professor of Psychology

CSEA: President Engman’s report said:

The July 2020 report to the Board of Trustees is a compilation of statements made by our amazing, hardworking and dedicated classified staff.
We are the classified staff. We are frustrated. We are angry. We are confused. We are sad. We’re losing our jobs, our health insurance, and our “second family” of co-workers and students. Every day of work these past few months have been a roller coaster of worry, rumors and inaccurate or incomplete information about our own livelihoods and the college’s future. These decisions have ripped our hearts out!

We’re frustrated and confused about the layoffs. We feel like the District has jumped the gun. The Governor hadn’t even finalized the 2020-21 budget and CR has eliminated positions. The positions being laid off are positions that directly interact with our student population on a daily basis. Who will be their advisor? Who will help them with lab time, or homework? Who will be their go-to person and confidant that they’ve built relationships with since they started attending CR? We’re talking about decades of work tossed out and a perception that it has been deemed no longer important to student success or the college’s mission. To take away any resources from them now seems like not only an unwise and callous decision, it seems like a betrayal of our mission statement “student success first”.

We have seen first-hand how the resources we have made available to our students matter. Whether it is a scholarship, fee-waiver, a Welcome Center where questions can be answered and minds eased, or having a place to pick up their books and supplies, every resource matters and makes a difference! We have stories from students about how “they contacted me for help to drop their classes for the summer. I was also contacted by a member of the faculty who shared their concern for the student. At one point, while crying the student stated, “The only thing that isn’t messed up in my life right now is school. I don’t know what I’d do without it”. It pains me that this student had to drop summer classes. This student is not sure how online classes will go and needs the help of staff that has been laid off because they utilize different student services.” Another student “had decided to stay in school after I gave them information about resources and the steps the college is taking to help students continue to pursue their education. This student is lucky to have a staff member who wasn’t laid off and with whom they feel comfortable enough to ask for advice.”

When is our “plan” going to be in place for return to work, and return of students? We have instruction in different counties, with different county health officers. Are we collaborating to make the best plan for all of us (staff, faculty, students)? If Del Norte County is opening things up – then shouldn’t the Del Norte campus open? Please make sure that our plan(s) are comprehensive, detailed and inclusive of our diverse work areas. “Who” is the EOC? Where are their agendas, meeting minutes, and how are they getting input from constituent groups?

We are seeing in inequities of services available to students, by the shuttering of the Del Norte Library. We have students that truly depend on our special programs like EOPS, TRiO and DSPS and their support is hard to deliver remotely. The shelter in place may be saving us from COVID-19, but it is effectively separating those who lack the skills, social support, and fiscal means to soldier on in a remote learning and working environment.

Change is hard. Not all of us can adapt to change. But, when we’re included in conversations we tend to understand the reason or need. When we were asked to change the way we conduct business for the spring, we jumped in feet first, in an effort to help our students get thru the spring semester. When it came to layoffs, things went silent. Faculty were already gone for the summer and staff were working from home. We feel like we have been left in the dark and without collegial and collaborative conversations and decisions. We are left without any understanding of what the plan will be to support students in the future. We are unsure how these actions are going to aid in student enrollment or persistence because no one seems to be talking to us.

Please – let’s get back to communicating. Stop leaving us in the dark. Don’t use COVID-19 as an excuse to bury your heads or sweep things under the rug. The classified staff are some of the most dedicated workers you will ever find.

In solidarity –

Tami Engman

Management Council: President Waters reported the following:

Management Council met on June 25 and wanted to express our appreciation to the Administration for the organized response to the COVID-19 situation. One member remarked that after talking with colleagues at different colleges, it was apparent that all places are not as organized and transparent as CR.

MC members are adjusting to working from home and still doing our best to help students be successful. Students have been very understanding and for the most part very cooperative while working with our membership.

This is my last report to the Board as my term has expired. The new officers for MC are President Jordan Hamill, Vice-President Alia Dunphy, and Secretary Joselle Wagner. I want to express my thanks to the Board of Trustees for their support and encouragement during my tenure.

Administrative Reports

President/Superintendent's Report:  My written report included the below:

Remembering Who We Are

We are having hard conversations about racial justice in business and higher education right now. Several corporations have put out statements supporting the Black Lives Matter movement. California community colleges, including College of the Redwoods, have heeded Chancellor Oakley’s call to action to address structural racism in academia. Community colleges have an opportunity right now, as Chancellor Oakley said, “to deal with the reality even if it makes [us] uncomfortable because [we] all share in the responsibility [as educators.]”

Tsedale Melaku and Agnie Beeman, argued in a June 25, 2020 Harvard Business Review article, that “although there is a perception that academia is a safe haven for these kinds of honest conversations, it is often the opposite.”

While many higher education institutions are moved to action because of the recent events playing out across the nation, it is important that we not get caught up in the emotion of the moment. As educators, we must remain committed to defining problems before taking action, having honest discussions, supporting open inquiry, respecting all viewpoints, and constructively disagreeing.

In our discussions, we must guarantee that all members of the college community have the latitude to speak, challenge, and learn. Further, we must not erect barriers to protect individuals from ideas and opinions they may find unwelcome, disagreeable, or offensive.

In the July 3 Times Standard article I wrote that our faculty constantly model and teach students how to have calm, balanced conversations about controversial issues. They ask our students to be extraordinary—to do something that many people appear unable or unwilling to do in our fractured present—to look deeply at a problem, listen and strive to understand all sides of an argument, and to discuss it together to see what solutions might work. It’s important that the college use the example set by our faculty as we address the myriad difficult and complex problems the institution will face.

Management Council Officers

The Management Council has new officers effective immediately. Jordan Hamill will serve as President, Alia Dunphy as Vice President, and Joselle Wagner as Secretary.

District Operations in the Fall and the Spring

Michelle Haggerty, Tami Engman, Ron Waters and the College President cosigned an email that was sent to all employees on June 23, 2020 outlining the plan for district operations for fall semester.

Although there are many uncertainties related to when another spike in COVID-19 infections will occur and how a second wave will affect the district, it is important that the Administration develop a plan for how the district will respond. To that end, the Expanded Cabinet begin discussing a plan for spring semester on September 24, 2020.

What follows is the language contained in the June 23 email.

By all indications, COVID-19 will be with us for at least through next spring, even once we find a vaccine. We made the decision to conduct our fall semester instruction primarily online and via correspondence education with the possible exceptions of a limited number of “impossible-to-convert” courses and programs. We also decided to open our campuses and sites this coming fall semester with some significant changes to how we operate to keep the coronavirus at bay.

We will begin the 2020-21 academic year in a modified hybrid operational model. The majority of our administrative work will be conducted remotely. Some mission critical operations, that cannot be conducted remotely, will be conducted on site. Although our campuses and sites will remain open, we must be flexible in supporting members of our community who wish to engage in social distancing practices, which will mitigate the spread of the disease. For anyone who may have underlying medical conditions that heighten their risk of getting very sick from the virus, we will make accommodations to ensure a safe space for work or study.

This is an important decision for our CR family, one that aligns with our ongoing and collaborative decision-making process throughout this public health crisis. The Back to Work protocol will prioritize the health and safety of our college and local communities and give us the flexibility we need to respond to the changing COVID-19 pandemic situation. It will also follow our COVID-19 Reentry Evaluation protocol.

Our thinking around opening fall semester in a limited in-person way was informed by recommendations from the CDC, CDPH, and Humboldt County Public Health. To help CR work in unison as we move toward the next academic year, I charged the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) with ensuring that the below Back to Work protocols and the appropriate health and safety guidelines are incorporated into all aspects of our college operations.

Our back to work protocol will include the following:

College Operations

• Phase the return of employees based on county health department guidelines and the operational needs of the department.
• All department heads will identify mission-critical functions or services that require people to report to our campus or sites.
• Stagger work shifts to reduce the number of employees in the workplace at the same time.
• Limit those with increased risk of severe illness or over the age of 65 to continue working remotely and avoid gatherings of greater than 10 or other situations of potential exposures, including travel.
• Allow those who can work effectively from home to be the last to return, delay their return to the campus, and/or continue working from home.
• Avoid office gatherings and unnecessary visitors in the workplace.
• Encourage faculty, staff, and students to continue to self-monitor for COVID- 19 symptoms.
• Stay home (or leave the workplace) and notify the supervisor if symptoms develop.
• Require all faculty, staff, and students participating in activities on property controlled by the District to wear a cloth face covering in accordance with state and federal recommendations while in contact with other members of the campus community, including inside District buildings and on College of the Redwoods grounds.
• Conduct meetings electronically and if meetings cannot be conducted virtually, keep participation to fewer than 10 participants and enforce appropriate physical distancing and wearing of face coverings.
• Post prevention strategies including frequent hand washing and appropriate physical distancing.
• Extend restrictions on non-essential travel outside the district unless authorized by President Flamer, Vice President Hill, or Vice President Morrison.
• All campus events that include external visitors from the community will continue to be suspended.
• As a condition of authorized presence on District property for participation in a limited offering of instructional activities, have students acknowledge the risks associated with participating in traditional instructional activities and those inherent risks associated with public exposure as a result of the viral pandemic.
• In the event that a student, faculty, or staff member is identified who has symptoms of COVID-19 we will:
  • Separate the individual from others as much as possible and arrange for the individual to go home. If residing in a dormitory, we will make arrangements for the student to be placed into a single room with a private bathroom.
  • Contact our local health department.

Academic and Administrative Buildings and Spaces

• Maintain physical distancing between workstations/workers.
• Remove chairs and desks to ensure proper physical distancing in conference rooms and classrooms.
• Make face coverings available throughout campus.
• Post maximum occupancy in common break areas and configure to accommodate appropriate physical distancing.
• Provide sanitizing supplies for individuals to clean their areas before and after use.
• Eliminate reusable kitchen items (flatware, dishes, and cups) and cleaning tools (sponges, brushes, towels) and replace with single use options.
• The majority of buildings will remain locked with the exception of the residence halls and the AT, AJ, Humanities and Science buildings.

Residential Halls

• We will reduce the residential hall capacity from 155 spaces to 68.
• Thirty-four quads will house 65 residents, 3 RAs, and 6 isolation spaces for students who might test positive for COVID-19.
• All students will be required to follow face-to-face expectations (i.e. covering a cough with a tissue or sleeve, maintaining social distancing, wearing a facemask or face covering, washing their hands frequently, and routinely cleaning surfaces) and health department guidelines.
• All students must have: a) self-isolated at least two weeks prior to start of classes; or b) have been certified through a health screening process then strictly self-isolated at least two weeks in CR housing in order to participate in face-to-face and/or to reside on campus.
• Students will only have access to open areas and buildings.

Dining

• Depending on the whether the current COVID-19 restrictions are in effect in fall semester, the dining facility will allow takeout orders only, adhere to social distancing requirements, and require the wearing of masks or face coverings.
• The dining facility will limit hours of operation.

We want to continue to do what is best for students, employees, and community. We are grateful for your collegiality and patience during this time.

Law Enforcement Academy Advisory Committee

Director Ron Waters held a meeting of the Law Enforcement Academy Advisory Committee, augmented by representatives from several committee constituent groups, on June 30. The conversation was respectful and very fruitful.  It was clear from the dialogue that the instruction provided by the CR Basic Academy is very good and includes learning modules taught in other academies. The Law Enforcement Academy does its best to prepare cadets to be equipped emotionally, physically and with the right skills to meet the herculean challenges of today’s police force.

CR will remain committed to working with the advisory committee to identify topics that should be inserted into the current learning domains and curriculum suggestions for POST's consideration. 

It was clear from the dialogue that police agencies bear responsibility to provide professional development to officers in order to better serve local communities. The College of the Redwoods Foundation committed to work other the community to meet this need.

Director Waters committed to arrange a few follow-up meetings.

Vice President of Instruction Report: Angelina’s written report noted that:

Distance Education (DE) and Correspondence Blanket Addendums for fall 2020

The fall 2020 blanket DE addendum is due to the Chancellor's Office on July 10, 2020. The deadline was extended to ensure quality. With the help of a variety of faculty and staff, the College's addendum will be submitted prior to the July 10 deadline. 

New Textbook Adoption Tool 

Faculty and staff will learn to use Barnes & Noble's new online textbook adoption tool this summer. The beta version of this tool is innovative and should help make the bookstore adoption process more effective for faculty and students. 

Professional Development through CR's Keep Teaching 

The following message comes courtesy of Molly Blakemore in coordination with CR administration:

In March, when it became clear that face-to-face instruction was no longer safe or practical due to the dangers of COVID-19, College of the Redwoods was forced to move the remainder of the semester online. Converting all of our classes to an online modality was not easy, especially given the rapid onset of shelter-in-place orders. For the majority of our faculty, this was their first experience with online teaching, and, as anyone who has taught an online class can tell you, preparing for an online class, even under the best circumstances, is a tremendous amount of work and can take weeks or even months.

Of course, last spring we did not have weeks or months; what we did have was faculty and staff who were experienced in online teaching, or what we call more generally “Distance Education”, who were ready and willing to go out of their way to support their colleagues and, ultimately, students. Two such people are Biology Professor Wendy Riggs and Instructional Technologist Reno Giovannetti.

Both Riggs and Giovannetti served on the Distance Education Planning Committee before COVID-19 and since then, they have been working tirelessly to help prepare faculty who will be teaching online for the fall. In addition to their standard workload, they are taking very visible leadership roles, meeting with academic departments to have difficult pedagogical discussions, and leading multiple professional development sessions each week on Keep Teaching, an innovative platform they have developed using the college’s learning management system, Canvas.

They have made the Keep Teaching site a robust repository of “train the trainer” information, examples, exercises and advice. Activities on the site include a weekly discussion with topics ranging from the nuts and bolts of the Canvas system to course design and delivery to issues of student equity and accessibility.

All CR instructors are invited to use the site, which is set up in the same way any online course at the college is. They can join live discussions, watch videos of previous trainings or peruse the online content at their convenience. Abigail Queen, who teaches history for CR, finds the site helpful saying, “I've taught online for a while, but I've learned SO much this summer with Wendy's material and everyone's examples and thoughts and resources. I hope we keep this site open and keep sharing ideas and new information in the future. We learn more each time we teach online and that learning process is amplified and enriched so much by this course.”

The site also ensures faculty are in compliance with state regulations and academic standards regarding distance education, which are more rigorous for the upcoming academic year than during the Spring 2020 semester when the state governing boards made a number of exceptions due to the emergency nature of the pandemic. All instructors must pass a short quiz, also developed by Riggs and Giovannetti, regarding online education legal requirements in order to be certified to teach online for CR.

Additionally, Del Norte Campus English instructor Ashley Knowlton has also been working long hours on the Keep Teaching site helping our faculty who teach in Pelican Bay State Prison and in the county jails convert their courses into a correspondence modality. This is essential work if we are to keep our incarcerated students engaged and actively learning when they do not have access to the internet. 

We believe the Keep Teaching site they have developed is exceptional and unrivaled in the California Community College system and that Riggs and Giovannetti are leading the way for the state. As CR President Dr. Keith Flamer says, “Because of their hard work, we are confident that students will have a more satisfying and comprehensive experience in their online classes in the next academic year and that the entirety of our faculty will benefit from the lessons provided on the Keep Teaching site, whether in or out of the classroom.”

Angelina verbally mentioned that faculty are working very hard to get their classes ready for the start of fall, we are reimagining student services to function in our COVID19 situation, our Work 201 class has 32 enrollees, and Dean George Potamianos is working with faculty to develop a Hupa language course.

Vice President of Administrative Services Report:  Julia’s written report summarized the work of the Budget Advisory Committee (BAC).

• The charge of the BAC is to review and analyze available data to formulate and recommend annual and long-term budget priorities.  The BAC also plays a role in monitoring the alignment of the annual budget and multi-year forecast with the Annual and Education Master plans.
• For the first year, the BAC members were: Co-Chair – VPAS Julia Morrison, Co-Chair – Peter Blakemore, President CRFO – John Johnston, President CSEA or designee – Courtney Sousa, IR/IEC Chair – Paul Chown, EMC Chair – Angelina Hill, Faculty member from Transfer – Mike Haley, and Faculty member from CE/non-transfer/non-teaching – Derek Glavich.
• The BAC began meeting in May of 2019, and held the last meeting June of 2020. Over that time, following a tentative calendar created last spring, the committee developed its regular working order. In its first year, the BAC identified a variety of data to be used in measuring academic programs in order to assist the CBO and the institution in making budgeting decisions across the institution. The BAC also finalized budget priority recommendations that were shared with the President and Executive Cabinet that tie into the Annual and Education Master Plans. Several valuable documents were produced, including an Annual Budget Outlook Statement, Budget Program Recommendations Form, and a Program Audit Form.
• The BAC Budget Priority Recommendations for 2020-21 are to make funds available to support streamlining financial reporting to allow for greater flexibility and transparency for the business office to engage more actively in producing financial data; to improve data-recovery and data integration into planning processes to improve the college’s overall ability to conceive and integrate effective, workable plans; and to provide valuable and innovative professional development across constituencies, especially for pedagogical advancement in both face-to-face and online curriculum, and to foster a unified sense of community and progress among staff, students, and community members. 
• Due to the unknowns of the state's budget situation as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, I tasked the BAC with recommending revenue-contingent spending priorities in the event the District realizes more revenue than is anticipated in the District's budget.  The members put forth the following revenue-contingent spending priorities:
• Unrestricted General Fund Reserve
• Other Post Employment Benefits Fund
• Mission Critical Needs of the District - To be determined by established internal allocation processes, including Program Review

Executive Director of Foundation Report: Marty’s report included:

• The CR Foundation and Cooperation Humboldt co-hosted a nonviolent communications workshop on June 24, from 5:30 to 7pm.
• The CR Foundation and Prudence Ratliff are collaborating to develop a series of CR Workforce & Community Education De-escalation & Assertiveness trainings for targeted industry groups including childcare, retail, grocery, hospitality, and city/county frontline employees. The trainings will take place in July.
• The CR Foundation is discussing the President's Innovation Initiative with various community leaders. The Executive Director met with Alanna Powell, Executive Director of Humboldt Made, to create a conceptual framework to pilot. The next steps include involving the leadership of the SBDC and other vested organizations in the development of the framework.
• The CR Foundation is underwriting a new Innovative Policing Program that will be dedicated to identifying new approaches to resource allocation and behavioral change in law enforcement. The Foundation's strategic plan includes a project concept of bringing experts to our community for forums on the modernization of policing and working with diverse communities.

Closed Session

Draft President/Superintendent 2020-21 Goals and Objectives: The Board reviewed my draft goals and objectives for this year. The goals will be approved in open session at the August meeting.

Public Employment:The Board took action in closed session to reemploy member(s) of the classified service in the following positions consistent with those rights provided in the Education Code and the collective bargaining agreement.

Instructional Support Specialist II        12-month / .25 FTE

Purchasing Specialist                          12-month / .50 FTE

Scholarship Program Coordinator       12-month / .47 FTE

Shipping and Receiving Clerk             12-month / .50 FTE 

             Student Services Specialist I               12-month / .25 FTE 

             Web Specialist                                     12-month / .50 FTE 

            Student Development Advisor             12-month / 1.0 FTE 

            Student Development Advisor             12-month / 1.0 FTE 

The Board also took action in closed session to rescind the layoff notices issued to two (2) Student Development Advisor positions.