Staff had not even finished the discussion, but the Pima College board made decisions regarding salary increases for all employees as described in an email that employees received this past week:

“I am pleased to announce that our Governing Board earlier tonight approved a salary increase for PCC staff, regular faculty and non-executive administrators for the 2013-14 fiscal year.  The salary increase is a reflection of the fact that our most valuable asset is our hardworking employees. You are the backbone of the College.

Here are the details of the increases:

·         Non-exempt staff will receive a 3 percent salary pool increase to fund steps for those who attain a step, with the remainder of the pool to be used to lift the schedule.

·         Exempt staff will receive a 2 percent salary schedule lift.

·         Faculty will receive a 3 percent salary pool increase to fund steps.

·         Non-executive administrators will receive a 1 percent salary schedule lift.

Under the plan approved by the Board, the College’s 12 executive administrators will not receive a salary increase. They will receive a 0.5 percent pay supplement to offset increases in retirement costs.”

Steps involve paperwork and the completion of a year with the college for any Pima College employee to receive this yearly pay raise, but this year exempt staff will not be getting the yearly pay raise.  The crux of the matter is that they have rarely gotten yearly pay raises for varying reasons.  In fact, I have been at the College for 16 years and I believe I am now on step 3 (that’s right, the concept is that you get a step increase for each year you have been at the college  if you do the paperwork).

But even more concerning is that employees thought the pay raises were still under discussion as indicated in the letter below from one of the employee groups.  Apparently employees were, once again, not part of the board’s decision-making process, which again reinforces what HLC and everyone have been saying is the problem at Pima College – the board never did, and still is not, listening.  So how are things going to be able to change under this board?

PIMA COLLEGE BOARD

The bad news at Pima College is that it has been placed on probation with the national organization who placed them on probation making it very clear that the problem is the governing board and Flores administration.  But the board is refusing to leave despite hours and hours of requests from faculty, employees, students, and community members that they leave, and I have learned to value that people do have the right to speak up rather than live or work in fear so thank you to those who did speak up.

The good news is that this behavior of the board confirms everything HLC and the College’s critics have been saying about them…….it is not always fun to be right, and such is the dilemma for the employees who had complained for years of everything HLC confirmed in their report.  And that behavior is that the Board never listened for whatever reason they chose, but they did know then as clearly as they know now.

One small matter that the HLC report did not feel it had enough data to comment on, and that many still question, but that is all too well known by the MANY employees who suffered under it all, is the massive administrative changes that went on for the 10 years under Flores, and the many highly qualified employees/administrators who were unkindly pushed out.  Regarding this matter, first, the administrative changes did not have to be approved by the Board, so the changes are hard to find in the Board meeting minutes because they are not listed under employee changes that needed to be approved by the board.  Second, after reviewing all of the minutes for several years, the average change in administration was three positions a month, with a few months having none but others having more than five.

There is a pattern to people who abuse others…

They never accept any responsibility but instead blame the victim, but saddest of all is that they believe they did nothing wrong despite the bruises and broken bones, or in the case of the mistreated Pima College employees serious bruising of self-worth and broken spirits.

This continuing pattern of abuse was proven true in the response of the college’s board and administrators to the recent HLC report in which they labeled the pain and suffering of employees as “opinion” and “perceptions”, which they “dispute”, despite vivid details in the many stories employees tell of what they experienced over the past ten years, even up til now.  But this is the same response that has been repeated over the past ten years with administration and board members’ dismissal and disregard of employee complaints including those surrounding sexual harassment.

However, the role of the board in perpetuating the abuse perhaps bears a deeper pain for employees in that it is like the mother who is supposed to protect her children, but instead allows the abuse to continue, sometimes even contributes, and so this seemingly never-ending story remains the same at Pima College.

What is needed for the college to heal is for champions to stand up and do the right thing, like the women who told their stories recently about the sexual harassment they endured so that the truth can no longer be discounted by those who abused them and the many others.    sexual harrassment at pima college

Although the origin is not clearly identified for the quote, “Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is the definition of insanity,” I offer a modification from my experiences:  ”having the same people doing the same things over and over and expecting different results is a greater definition of insanity.”

Reflecting on this quote, one must also consider that, not only is it insanity, but it is also unfair because a person cannot be expected to do what they don’t know.  The damage is done in these organizations when when we fail to identify and promote the best and the brightest, but instead provide sustenance to those who have failed.

This insanity produces great damage to the profession of education, to the good teachers who are in education for the right reasons, to the students who are too often shunned for what they don’t know by educators who were supposed to teach them what they didn’t know,  and to this community which desperately needs selfless servants, which includes educators and politicians., who are willing to serve their public rather than themselves and their cronies, but which Tucson has seen too little of at all levels of politics and education.

As the saying goes, it all began….when I felt as though I had been raped again.

I had gone to a Pima College board meeting about a year ago when the turmoil over Flores inappropriate behavior with employees surfaced, a story long told by hundreds of Pima employees to me over his many years, one that I intimately shared with them because I, like them, had been subjected to it.

But it was while I sat there listening at that meeting that I felt as if I was being raped again as I listened to Scott Stewart on the board dismiss and denigrate in a seemingly ridiculing fashion the serious complaints and pain of good employees, many who had left and few who had remained.

But now a real document exists and real action has been proposed that testifies to the pain, and as HLC described it, scarring (a term I wholeheartedly concur with) that many good, dedicated employees have suffered for these many years aggravated by their undying hope that they could overcome what was wrong with the system and persist in making the lives of their students better.

HLC letter

findings

Regardless of this outcome, I remain grievously sorry because I know too well the many great employees, but also students, who have suffered from what transpired over the years at the college, and the many great friends and coworkers I miss when they left because of it all.  But this is the legacy Flores and the board now must wrestle with, and most hopefully will see the sense in passing it on now to those who will show their responsible actions that they care about their community, their employees, and their students.

1987’s Raising Arizona was an excellent, cult movie that has endured the test of time.  It helped launch the highly successful careers of  Nicolas Cage, Holly Hunter, William Forsythe, John Goodman, Frances McDormand and Randall “Tex” Cobb.  The film ranked #31 on the American Film Institute’s 100 Years… 100 Laughs and #45 on Bravo’s “100 Funniest Movies.”  The overall tone of the story was upbeat and optimistic, despite the fact that most of the characters in the story demonstrated fairly low IQ scores.

Real life’s Raising Arizona seems to be incorporated into many real-life examples in Arizona today, perhaps more accurately meaning  Raising Arizona’s Budget and Taxes to pay more and more for some of the most sub-standard education systems in the entire USA.

It is abundantly clear that the low levels of management acumen within the ranks of our educators—including professors and instructors who are supposed to teach subjects such as Accounting, IT Management Systems, and Organizational Behavior—are sub-standard when compared to the real-life talents required for operating a local Dairy Queen or Papa John’s franchise.

The current announcement about closing down the Wildcat Charter School is a sad-but-true example.  When the school was opened in 2006, it was heralded to be a winner, due to its affiliation with the crown jewel of Arizona’s educations institutions, the U of A, itself.  To quote the Arizona Daily Star, “When it opened it was lauded as the first charter school to have an affiliation with a state university.  Its goal was to provide an academically rigorous math- and science-focused education for low income students.”

 It would appear that the 2013 version of the comedic reality show, Raising Arizona, has produced more belly-laughs than the original 1987 movie.  Here’s what the judges decided about the school’s act:

 Performance Results:  the school received a score of “D” for the last two years in a row from the Arizona Department of Education.

Conclusive Actions:  close it down.

The decision itself would appear to indicate that even our State Board of Education would prefer to see the school shut its doors than to have to bet that the U of A could make a realistic commitment to achieve better results.  What??????

It would seem that the U of A should be showing devastating embarrassment with some sort of public proclamation that it has the intellectual and practical human resources available to run a first-rate charter school.  If it can’t even do that, then what should we surmise about how it runs itself?

And what is the outcome for such a failure – pay raises for administrators and no culpability attributed with no consequences for anyone at the university, the same as with any governmental entity., and once again the taxpayer is left paying for an empty bag. Just how much more patience do our politicians and educators believe we tax-payers and residents have?

Perhaps we should try for a whole new scenario.  We obviously can’t compete very well with the goal of Raising Arizona, so perhaps we should simply re-title our educational saga to be The Sinking of the Arizona from Pearl Harbor.

 A. Wright

Sad to say, two days before HLC came to visit Pima College and Tucson, I received an anonymous letter that is, to say the least, not nice.  Everyone else who read it described it as threatening and hostile.  For me, it made me terribly sad because it clearly validated everything that I have said….

The writer identified themselves as an administrator and criticized me for lacking strength and courage, yet they chose to be anonymous.  They chastised me for speaking  up about the wrongs, yet I did so because they did not when others were wronged, for if they had I wouldn’t have had to.

But perhaps what was saddest in the letter was the administrator’s lack of any knowledge or value of my good works, which I know from many other employees, has been the same for them.

Despite the obvious lack of acknowledgement and subsequent administrative support that I most often have experienced, as verified by this letter, I feel greatly blessed to have had the opportunity to work at Pima College because I have been a part of thousands of amazing endeavors and outcomes that have transformed thousands and thousands of lives for the better, even for the most disadvantaged and hopeless of students.  It is this, that no matter how unfairly I may have been treated or overlooked at the college, I can look beyond what others say and continue to do good because education is truly about the betterment of students, and this gives a much greater reward than anything else.

As no surprise, there are people who comment on my blog but apparently don’t read it.  Let me reiterate for them, if they read it this time, that this blog, as well as my previous ones, do not specifically attack anyone or any place although it certainly could, but I refrain from it because it is too embarrassing for me to mention what I have seen; if others can’t know shame for what they have done and the people they have hurt, rest assured there are others who do know.  Again, it is very apparent that what I write about is education as a whole in this country for what is happening at Pima College is happening in many other schools, and it is a crying shame for students.

Finally, I found an article that sees the brokenness  I see happening in our schools, it just missed the finer points.

For Poor, Leap to College Often Ends in  Hard Fall:   “With little guidance from family or school officials, college became a leap that they braved without a safety net…Only one is still studying full time, and two have crushing debts. Angelica, who left Emory owing more than $60,000, is a clerk in a Galveston furniture store… the costs of attending a public university have risen 60 percent in the past two decades. Many low-income students, feeling the need to help out at home, are deterred by the thought of years of lost wages and piles of debt… gap in scores of high- and low-income students has grown by 40 percent, even as the difference between blacks and whites has narrowed… while the presence of fathers in low-income homes has declined… These are students who have already overcome significant obstacles to score above average on this test,” Mr. Chingos said. “To see how few earn college degrees is really disturbing.”  poor-students-struggle-as-class-plays-a-greater-role-in-success.html

But there are two more serious faults in our educational system that are missed in this article, and which are ripping our schools even more apart.

First, teaching cannot occur where there is no positive contact between teacher and student.  Courses where teachers have negative, minimal or no contact with student are incapable of the virtue known as teaching.

Second, I have noticed that when people mistreat others, they then blame the victim, and then wonder what is wrong when the victim reacts by action or inaction, which in education usually translates into students giving up on themselves and their schooling.

What the article got right is that  money is the problem, but what the article got wrong is that money is causing the problem.  Within education money has pushed out the real values of teaching which are caring and commitment, leadership and motivation, inspiring and guidance.  This greater value of money is evidenced in soaring tuition and book costs, as well as salaries, and diminishing positive interaction between teachers and students.

At a time when our students need us educators more than ever, the effect of all of the above is, that without the virtues of teaching, we educators are losing them.  From many years of experience of working with many of the most disadvantaged students, I can tell you that the truth is that there is nothing that can stop a good teacher from caring to do the right thing for their students.

I found amongst other things, two things that were disturbing tonight at the Pima College board meeting.
First, a gentleman flew in from Massachusetts to reprimand the College for not giving enough consideration to his organization’s request to Pima College to demonstrate the validity of using the Compass test as the sole determinant whether a student could enter the college or not; otherwise, his organization had requested that the College stop using the test as the test was not designed to determine who could and could not enter college.  He stated that the College did not fully respond to these requests and, as we know, has been continuing to use the test in what he claimed is an improper way.  It is disappointing that someone had to fly in from so far away to tell Pima College administrators what most any person in education, or perhaps anywhere for that matter, know – tests are designed differently for different purposes and you cannot use an assessment test as a placement test because they are designed quite differently.

Second, Mary Cortez gave a little speech about how everyone agrees on everything and that is the success of the student, although I don’t think we can necessarily say that about everyone although it feels good to say so.   She then proceeded to say that the reality was that the students, who had been required to take remedial courses because of their low scores on the Compass test previous to the closure of open admissions at the College, were not being successful.   It was a great welcomed relief when new board member, Dr. Sylvia Lee, said she respectfully disagreed and that there are many people in the community and the college who know of the many great successes of people who had to take the remedial courses and went on to be highly successful in college, even earning their masters and doctorate degrees.  Marty Cortez then respectfully clarified saying that she meant the remedial courses were not being “successful enough.”  I am not clear how to measure “not successful enough”, but I can say that regardless, it simply isn’t true.

What is true is that I have witnessed Pima College having the most amazing track record of successes with highly disadvantaged students who have to take remedial courses; I know because I have been a part of those successes for thousands and thousands of students – in fact, College administrators  have told me that my students were nothing but loser welfare people, yet, with almost 100% success rate, these loser students went on to complete their college program and have now been working very successfully for over 10 years  or more with salaries ranging up into the high $70,000.

What is also true is that I have witnessed many outstanding administrators, faculty, and staff being passed over, ignored, and pushed out of the College, and how the Board has not seen this is beyond my comprehension because it has been very obvious, even to many people in the community.

What is also true is that I have witnessed that following the leaving of many outstanding administrators, faculty, and staff, they were replaced oftentimes by people with little to no experience or knowledge in College programs, and subsequently I have watched the programs they oversaw fail.

What is also true is that I have watched as College administration eliminated most of the programs which were highly successful with disadvantaged students .

What Marty served to do  tonight was to validate the criticism that community colleges are a waste of time and money which has haunted community colleges from their origins as illustrated in books such as “Diverting the Dream” by Brint and Karabel.

No, Marty Cortez, I disagree with you strongly, as did Dr. Lee, for I am extremely proud of Pima College  and have become an avid supporter of what it has been able to accomplish for I have never in my life ever seen anything more influential and powerful in its ability to transform even the most desperate of lives into glowing successes, and I will never be able to thank Pima College enough for the more than 15 years I have worked there because it gave me the opportunity to be a far greater and powerful  agent of change for the better in the lives of all types of students, more so than I had ever imagined could be possible by any means, and my great hope is that we can one day restore the magnificence that I came to know Pima as firsthand and which proved that it could confound all of its critics by successes that surpassed all others.

In my last blog, I wrote about how the worlds of educators and students are continuously growing further apart with educators seemingly more and more unable, or unwilling, to comprehend their students’ world, which has resulted in an educational system that is continuously worsening and ever-increasingly unable to serve their students.

Educators pride themselves greatly on how caring they are about their students and communities, but that leaves me greatly puzzled because if they are, then why do they believe it is okay for them to:

(1) Raise tuition at many colleges and universities at a pace far outpacing anything else, especially  the paychecks of those they are supposed to serve?

(2) Raising tuition so high that students end up with debt ranging up into $100,000 to even a quarter of a million?

(3) Provide college programs in which students will graduate and only get an $8/hr job (and still have huge student debt)?

(4) Require students to purchase paperback textbooks, and oftentimes not that big, for $200 to $300 each?

(5) Require students to purchase NEW textbooks because a few exercises were changed or the student needs the computer access codes so they can’t buy used?

(6) Hire and promote people who have none to little experience in teaching or education at all, over highly qualified people who have many years experience and advanced degrees?

(7) Hire and promote people whose work history and performance have been poor including destruction of many programs and mistreatment of students?

(8) Being proud of themselves when they fail their students, rather than being proud when they have helped even the most disadvantaged of students to succeed even when it was thought to be impossible?

(9) Give themselves raises so many of them make six-figure salaries, even up to half a million or more while many of their working  students earn around $15,000 to $20,000/yr?

(10) Call it teaching when they have little to no contact with students including online as well as regular classes, such as when teachers show up for 15 minutes for a 3-hour course and then leave or online courses where teachers have no contact with students?

(11) Bully their students and talk poorly about their students?

(12) Mistreating students under the auspice that students have no rights or recourse, but instead blaming students for everything that is wrong, even things that the educators are responsible for and then expecting students to fix what educators broke?

Come on educators, have a heart…for your students….or else leave and make room for those who do have a heart for their students because teaching is a too important life-changing opportunity that should be taken seriously and should be deeply respected which is being greatly jeopardized by those “educators” who don’t care.