School honored Pierce granted Leader College status

Seth Perlstein News Editor

Pierce College added a feather to its cap when it earned Leader College status from community college success initiative Achieving the Dream.

This year’s crop of Leader Colleges totaled 16 schools from 10 states. They obtained the rating because of successful firstyear experience programs. Two other LACCD schools, East Los Angeles College (ELAC) and LA Harbor College, also received the distinction. No other California community colleges secured the title of Leader College in 2014.

“It shows that Pierce, Harbor and ELAC are all doing well by our students,” LACCD Board of Trustees president Scott Svonkin said. “But it is not the end of anything. It’s just a piece of it.”

Pierce, ELAC and Harbor earned the Leader College title after they each showed statistical improvement in their first-year success programs.

Pierce earned the honor because it increased the ratio of its successful credit-hours completion from 66.3 percent in 2009-2010 to 69.5 percent in 2012-2013, according to Achieving the Dream.

ELAC increased developmentaleducation English success rates for first-time college students from 21.8 percent in 2007 to 34.1 percent in 2010. Harbor increased springto-fall persistence rates for all students from 64.6 percent in 20092010 to 69.6 percent in 2012-2013, according to Achieving the Dream.

“All of our students are my heroes,” Harbor president Otto Lee

While running the Chatsworth show, McBroom met Rocky Young, the president of Pierce College at that time. Eventually, McBroom could no longer host the Halloween show at the Chatsworth location, but Young offered him the chance to organize an event at Pierce.

“It started with giving us a chance. We looked at it as an opportunity to continue our Halloween production,” McBroom said.

According to McBroom, the first Harvest Festival at Pierce in 2005 was actually an effort to raise money for an “Agricultural Education Center”, which McBroom had been contracted to develop. The festival was so successful that McBroom’s contract was changed to focus on farming year-round.

“The college wanted to make sure that the sustainability of this project was there from the get-go,” McBroom said. “And boy, was it there.”

McBroom said that since then, the Farm Center has been a fiscally successful operation that has stressed the importance of educating students and the community on the processes of farming and agriculture.

[See HARVEST, pg. 6]

“Put pressure on your dean to communicate with IT,” Goodman said. “Make sure that IT is aware of these issues.”

Computer applications and office technologies professor and Academic Senate treasurer Joe Perret was less inclined toward Goodman’s “peaceful fight for connectivity.” Instead, he urged people to express their frustration to get a resolution.

Senators were not much happier about the state of the Library/ Learning Crossroads cafeteria. However, they didn’t have a solution for the cafeteria which has had one vendor since it opened.

“There was a study done one year ago with a possibility of a single provider district-wide,” Perret said. “They have to come back to the president with recommendations this semester.”

A single, district-wide vendor could spell trouble for some of the Los Angeles Community College District (LACCD) schools, academic senate president Kathy Oborn said.

“If they do bring in this vendor then there’s too much competition,” Oborn said. “And then the schools that have the program will lose the revenue from selling food to the students. Therefore, they will die.” said. The three schools attended workshops and went through extensive training with Achieving the Dream before they even implemented their programs.

Oborn was not optimistic that the cafeteria would be filled with new vendors in the near future.

“So yes, our new, beautiful cafeteria will probably be sitting there for some years until we get to a different place,” Oborn said.

Profitability has been an issue in sourcing new cafeteria vendors, Perret said.

“It’s been a long process,” Svonkin said.

The catalyst for Pierce’s success was GO Days.

[See DREAM, pg. 3]

“I think it is one of those insolvable problems,” Perret said. “The difficulty in solving the problem is that nobody can come in here and provide the service and make money.”

The next Academic Senate meeting is on Monday, Nov. 3, at 2:15 p.m. in the Great Hall.

I first arrived at Pierce College in the fall of 1968. I was running cross country for my high school. We ran through the college farm which, at that time, consisted of 450 head of cattle including five breeding bulls. We had a yearly rodeo, and farm tours giving 20,000 inner city kids a taste of farm life for a day (“Day on the farm” program). Two hundred fifty high school FFA (Future Farmers of America) students visited our farm yearly. We had lots of farm machinery, horses, and other “dangers” present on the farm. No one sued and the college was not worried about lawsuits.

None of these visitors required the extensive paper work now mandated by our college district prior to entering our campus. I am not faulting our college administration. They are trying to protect us from expensive lawsuits. The courts have ruled that schools have a duty to protect, a responsibility to anticipate potential dangers and to take precautions to prevent injury from these dangers.

According to my research, however, we have not had an increase in the frequency of lawsuits during the past two decades, nationally. In the Education Law Yearbook (2006) school districts won conclusively in two thirds of cases filed for simple negligence involving student injury. California is a breed by itself. People here feel obligated to sue (more than entitled). I will not debate tort reform here. However, the simple threat of a lawsuit has created our current climate.

For a scout troop or school (public or private) to arrange a farm tour requires an extensive book of papers to be completed and filed with our district. It takes a minimum of 45 days (and more likely two months) to approve of a farm tour. Each student must have his/ her parents sign a “hold harmless” paper, the school must file their respective insurance policies with our district, and the school must complete a vendor contract form, W9 form and a permit to use our facilities form.

My department no longer has secretary staff and thus this extensive paperwork has been relegated to already overworked faculty. Recently, I met with the college’s administration. They are interested in streamlining the application process and providing assistance in submitting the forms.

I love seeing the excitement in a young child’s eyes the first time they see a green or blue egg, or milk coming out of a cow. I would like to provide future generations of Angelenos the opportunities given to me more than 40 years ago. I am happy that the college administration is actively working to help preserve this unique opportunity.

Leland Shapiro Department chair of Agriculture and Natural Resource