Good morning and welcome to the new academic year. I am pleased to see all of you. It was wonderful to hear the conversations this morning and be part of the vitality and excitement you bring to the new year.
My name is Mike Brandy and I am serving as your interim chancellor replacing Martha Kanter while the district conducts the search for a permanent replacement.
As you know our agenda format for this year is a little different in that we will only be holding a morning session for all employees. The afternoon activities will be held at your respective colleges in your divisions. This format was developed in consultation with the colleges, the academic senates and the classified senates.
Before I share with you few thoughts, I would like to recognize some members of our college community.
(Introductions)
I would also like to recognize all of you in this audience who participate in the governance process. If you are on a college governance committee, an accreditation committee, safety committees, budget committees, academic or classified senates or other committees in our district, please stand and let us recognize your contribution to our educational community.
I would like to return now to Betsy Bechtel, president of our Board of Trustees, to give you a quick update on their search for a new chancellor.
(Remarks from Betsy Bechtel)
For those of you who do not know me, I was hired by De Anza College as vice president of finance in 1996 and retired two years ago as the vice chancellor of business services. When Martha Kanter took the position as Undersecretary of Education, the board began the search for an interim. I put my name in the ring to see if I could assist the district and the board selected me to assist all of you in the transition to a new chancellor. I am deeply committed to this district and the quality of the academic programs it offers to students. I realize that my time in the role of the chancellor is very short, but I do I hope to make positive contributions.
Each day I perform the duties of the chancellor, I develop a deeper appreciation for the contributions Martha Kanter made to this district and the education of our students. I am honored to be filling in during these few months to make sure her energy, enthusiasm and dedication can be handed off to your next chancellor. I am sure you will attract a top-notch field of candidates to assume this leadership role.
While I am sure your new chancellor will bring strong leadership to our district, I want to encourage all of you to assume leadership within your own areas of influence and to nurture leadership qualities of those around you. I am committed to building leadership capacity throughout our organization.
As we start this year, I want to relate some themes I heard in all the student stories last June during graduation ceremonies. I heard these stories during the Reconciemiento ceremony at Foothill College, Foothill’s college graduation, De Anza’s auto tech recognition event and the De Anza College graduation.
While each story was different, I heard several common themes. The students always commended the quality of our programs, and their appreciation for the faculty who taught them. But more importantly, each student told of a personal connections to a faculty or staff member at some critical point in their education at our district, which served to encourage and support the success of that student. All the students expressed gratitude for the opportunity to attend Foothill or De Anza and for that personal touch that helped them to achieve their dreams.
Each of us has that capacity to assist students with that little extra effort. In most cases, we may never hear of their appreciation, but for each student we do hear from, we know that there are many more who have benefitted from our personal touch. I encourage all of you to reach out to these students for that little extra support they might need.
Last June I was standing in line with Robert Griffin waiting for the start of the De Anza graduation ceremony. It was Robert’s last graduation ceremony as he was retiring after a long career in education, culminating with his service as vice president of student services at De Anza. He was introducing one of the scholarship recipients and had a folder with him. Inside the folder was a piece of paper with these words, which he carried with him at all times.
These are the words:
Watch your thoughts, they become words.
Watch your words, they become actions.
Watch your actions, they become habits.
Watch your habits, they become character.
Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.
We are fortunate to have so many people in this district that have these standards of integrity and commitment.
Challenges
I would now like to focus on some of our challenges and opportunities at the district this coming year.
The Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government just published a report entitled, “State Tax Decline in Early 2009 was the Sharpest on Record.” The report indicates that state tax collections for the first quarter of 2009 show a drop of 11.7 percent, the sharpest decline in the 46 years for which data are available.
We are a tax-funded institution which depends on the flow of local property taxes, state income and sales taxes to provide the revenue for our services. As these tax sources plummeted this last year, the state Legislature struggled with the competing needs to provide services to California and to raise taxes. After the defeat of the propositions last May to raise taxes, it became clear that the budget would be balanced primarily by cutting state services, including education.
I never thought I would see the day when tenured faculty at UC had to take an 8 percent pay cut and where UC and other state employees were furloughed two days every month. Major cuts were made not only to all sectors of education but to health and human services, many of these affecting the most economically and socially disadvantaged of our state. We are clearly not alone in the fiscal challenge that we face this year.
The community college system did not escape these budget reductions. Our district received a $14 million cut to our programs, including very deep cuts to our categorical programs such as EOPS, DSS and matriculation. The state decreased our funded classes by about 4 percent, causing a reduction of about 500 sections of classes.
On Monday night, Judy Miner and Brian Murphy reported to the Board of Trustees that we had about 15,000 entries on waiting lists, representing an estimated 3,000 individual students trying to get into our classes from waiting lists. These are students who are ready for and willing to take our classes, and we are the last chance they have to register for fall classes in the entire region. This is absolutely inconsistent with the California Master Plan for Higher Education.
Meantime, the state increased enrollment fees from $13 to $17 per unit for our students.
Given these state cuts, we are making the necessary adjustments in our budget while at the same time preparing for the 2010-11 year. I want to share with you a few slides representing the adjustments we have had to make in our budget for 09-10 and what our two year plan is to weather this storm:
(See http://business.fhda.edu/budget/budget_update
for budget slides)
This two-year plan should get us through this year without any more disruptions to our staff and programs, and give us some buffer against additional state cuts in 2010-11.
We will still have to make difficult choices about our health benefit programs. A dedicated group of employees has worked throughout the summer to identify options for containing the costs of our health benefits.
We have to identify how we will reduce the budget next year by at least $8 million dollars.
We may still have to make additional cuts before 2010-11 if we receive news of more than $7 million in cuts slated for next year or additional cuts for this year.
Opportunities
We also have many opportunities ahead.
We are starting the final phase of capital construction through our bond program. Let me share with you some of the recent activity on both campuses.
(Construction slides)
Thanks to all of you who are involved in the many phases of these bond projects. You are leaving a lasting legacy to the district with your effort.
Another important step in us moving forward is the installation of our new Educational Information System, Banner. This project was also made possible through our bond money and has been years in planning. The first of our three modules, the financial system, went live on July 1. The next module, human resources and payroll, will go live in January.
We owe a special thanks to all of the staff in ETS and each of the departments involved in designing and implementing this new Banner software. It has taken extraordinary dedication and time to install the first module on time and on budget. Thanks to all of you involved in this project.
We are also continuing all of our planning efforts in preparation for our accreditation visit in 2011. You will hear a lot about this topic in a few minutes. These planning efforts are even more critical during times of economic volatility since we must focus on core mission as we face budget cuts.
Despite the budget challenges of 2009-10, I would like to take a minute to reflect on what we still have.
We have good community support for the role of community colleges.
We will have more than $200 million in revenue this year in our General Fund to support our educational mission. Waiting outside of our door are more than 44,000 students anticipating the start of our quarter.
I can speak for the leadership of the district when I say that we refuse to sit idly on the sidelines or to be frozen in our capacity to serve. Here are a few examples of moving forward:
• We have already received an increase in grants, including $1.5 million from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to extend the online textbook project, and a $500,000 National Science Foundation (NSF) grant directed at nanotechnology partnerships. We are now exploring the creation of a grants office to better take advantage of the new funding that has become available.
• We have met with our Foothill-De Anza Foundation and will focus fundraising efforts on replacing some of the critical program funding we lost this year.
• We are in conversations with Stanford and UC Santa Cruz about establishing professional development opportunities for our faculty and internship programs for some of our students.
• We are in the very early exploration stages to see if a parcel tax might be a feasible way for the district to bridge these funding cuts for the next four or five years.
• We are committed to informing our national and state legislators, as well as our local community, about the nees of our students, the consequences of budget cuts to our community colleges and the role we can play in economic recovery.
Advocacy is everyone’s job.
It is you.
It is your neighbors, friends and family who will influence the decisions about the future of California, and they need to hear our story.
I have confidence in who we are as a community with your intellectual capacity and your legacy of leadership and commitment to students.
My granddaughter, Piper, started kindergarten this year. She is at the opposite end of the educational spectrum than those students we deal with in higher education. So, I called Piper after her first day of kindergarten to see how her day was, and she said,
“Poppa, it was AWESOME.”
There was something magic in the way she described her very first day of formal education. Don’t we wish for that same enthusiasm could extend through elementary school, junior high and high school!
I am looking forward to the student stories of success waiting to unfold this year. I cannot wait to hear these stories at graduation at the end of this year. I know that you will provide an AWESOME experience for our students.
Thank you and have a great year.
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