City College of San Francisco special trustee Bob Agrella is charged with helping the campus keep its accreditation. Credit: Kathryn Baron, EdSource Today.

City College of San Francisco special trustee Bob Agrella is working to help the campus keep its accreditation. Credit: Kathryn Businesswoman, EdSource Today

Bob Agrella, the special trustee entrusted with saving City College of San Francisco, wants to make one thing clear: City College is fully accredited and open for business, and his intention is to keep it that way.

The Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges announced early this calendar month that it would revoke Metropolis Higher's accreditation in July 2022 unless the schoolhouse meets all the required standards. After a year on "show crusade," the most astringent sanction, the commission institute that City College "had fully addressed but two of the 14 recommendations for alter," and remained out of compliance in key areas of governance, leadership and evaluating the quality of courses.

Days later, the California Customs Colleges Board of Governors approved an emergency resolution stripping all authority from the college'due south elected Lath of Trustees and handing it to Agrella. The decision elevated Agrella from special trustee with veto power over the local board to special trustee with all the legal rights, authority and controlling ability of the board.

"I couldn't recollect of a more than prepared person than Bob Agrella for that trustee position," said Tom Henry, who holds the special trustee spot at Compton Community College, which lost its accreditation in Baronial 2005. (Run into sidebar)

Not everyone feels that way. Pupil and faculty groups criticized Agrella's appointment, arguing that he couldn't save the college in his starting time year equally special trustee and should not be given another yr with broader powers.

They're also critical of his salary; Agrella will earn $22,000 a month under his one-year contract, according to the statewide chancellor'due south function. For someone who will exist running a college with nearly fourscore,000 students, the land controller'south office shows his salary is on par with other customs college presidents.

Critics have as well directed plenty of acrimony at the accrediting commission, accusing it of a conflict of interest, playing politics and overstepping its authority. It's an understandable response, said Henry, who suggested that Agrella read a dissertation comparison the volatile emotions on a campus in danger of endmost to the 5 stages of grief outlined by psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

Although he's not at Metropolis Higher, Henry said from what he's been reading, people on campus are stuck in the early stages of denial and anger. "That's problematic. They have to get through those stages and they have to get through them in a bustle or they won't recover."

City College of San Francisco is using radio, video and print ads to send the message that school is open. Source: CCSF

City Higher of San Francisco is using radio, video and print ads to send the message that school is open. Source: CCSF

Metropolis College has until July 31 to file a formal request request the committee to review its decision, and Agrella said it plans to make that deadline. The college will also file an appeal with the committee, and has launched an advertizement campaign to let the community know that classes are open up for enrollment for the fall semester.

Agrella, 69, began his career equally a high school teacher before moving into community colleges. Since the early 1970s, he'southward been founding dean of several campuses in Arizona, provost of Pima Community College Commune in Tucson, president of Cabrillo College in Santa Cruz County, and, until retiring – or so he idea – in 2011, he was president of Santa Rosa Junior Higher for more ii decades.

EdSource sabbatum down with Agrella at City College's Sea campus to talk about his new powers, challenges and game program. Despite a schedule that would test many younger people, Agrella appeared relaxed, unruffled, unwrinkled and in control.

Read on for excerpts or click here for a total transcript of the interview.

EdSource: What is the mood on campus correct now?

Bob Agrella: Information technology'southward hard to tell you precisely what the mood on campus is right at present because it is summer and there are a lot of people non around, simply I would say that the mood, in general, for those folks that I've been visiting with the final several weeks, is somber. I recall people are taking this entire accreditation business very, very seriously. … They're concerned, obviously, most what's going to happen to the establishment, and I retrieve all of that is probably to be expected.

EdSource: What has been the most difficult decision you've had to make since yous became the trustee extraordinaire? And what were the firsthand changes, going from the trustee who could veto to the trustee who is the lath?

Bob Agrella: I think the trustee who could veto worked much more backside the scenes, tried not to go either the Board of Trustees or myself in a public, embarrassing position of trying to overturn a decision of the board. And then information technology was much more behind-the-scenes, less operational than what information technology is now. Assuming the board's duties and responsibilities, I remember, takes on a much bigger role, obviously, in the establishment. The ability to, and the responsibility of making decisions is much greater than what information technology was then, and I'chiliad just much more than active now in the actual operations of the institution than I was previously.

EdSource: What is the most hard decision that you had to make or will accept to make?

Bob Agrella: I conceptualize some difficult decisions, coming forward, and those difficult decisions will, of class, be in the areas that were identified by the commission, where the institution savage short of meeting the standards or the sub-standards. And those decisions volition involve some finance issues.

While I call back we've adult a good plan, looking forrard and stabilizing the institution from a financial perspective, to carry that through is going to require continued sacrifice on a lot of people's part, and I think those decisions are going to be difficult. And I might say that ane of the things that is compounding our problems correct now is the loss of enrollment.

Nosotros're down in enrollment. As you know, California community colleges are enrollment-driven institutions. Y'all're paid on enrollment. And and so, as yous lose enrollment, your financial base of operations begins to become down, and that's the situation we're in correct at present. We've made considerable savings this past year. We take a budget this year that I think will sustain us, but we can't continue on this slide in enrollment that we are.

EdSource: When you were talking about some of the difficult decisions, though, there has been talk near closing some of the campuses, the centers. Is that a strong possibility?

Bob Agrella: That's a possibility, because we're looking at every aspect of the institution, so at this point in fourth dimension I've not ruled anything out. I want to, all the same, make certain that the decisions we make are fabricated on good data. We don't have all the information that we need to make some of these decisions, and that's part of the task ahead, to get the all-time information possible in order to make the best decisions possible.

EdSource: How is the search for a permanent chancellor going?

Bob Agrella: The search is actually going quite well. I received data this morning from the search house that they sent out some other e-mail blast to a niggling over 300 potential candidates across the land. They've reported to me that they've had some skillful contact with some potential candidates already. We're early on in the procedure, but I retrieve it's going well-nigh as well as it possibly could go – maybe fifty-fifty improve than I had even hoped for.

EdSource: What are the skills, strengths and traits that you need, that you have, to bring to this challenge?

Bob Agrella: A sense of humor, number ane! It'south important. I think you need to try and maintain some stability and take a sense of sense of humour. But once you go across that, the serious side of it, I think, is that you have to have some experience in running institutions. You take to have experience in observing a well-run establishment and what it takes to brand a well-run institution.

Personal strengths, I think y'all have to not exist afraid to talk to people. Not be afraid to permit people know where you're coming from. Be honest with them. Not everyone wants honesty. But over the long haul, I've institute in my career that people capeesh an honest "yes" or an honest "no," rather than a "perhaps" or never getting back to them.

I remember you have to develop a pretty thick hide, understanding that you're going to get a lot of criticism if yous practice things one way or the other. Information technology's very, very hard in a higher setting to please anybody.

EdSource: When I spoke to (Compton Customs College special trustee) Tom Henry … 1 thing he said is he would urge you to get past the anger equally shortly equally possible.

Bob Agrella:… What we have to try to do is not let those angry folks dictate the agenda of this institution. And the agenda of this institution right now, and for the foreseeable future, is to meet those accreditation standards, to get busy, continue to work on our action plans that we're developing in our "show cause" written report, and do the best possible job nosotros can so that we tin bear witness progress.

Nosotros've made considerable progress since terminal July 1. It's but that nosotros didn't make sufficient progress. The way the commission looks at your progress is pretty uncomplicated. Yous either run into the standard or you lot don't. Information technology's not one of those things where you lot're l percent there, or 60 percent there. And besides, when y'all constitute a new planning procedure, or program-review process similar we instituted in the institution, before y'all can actually say you come across that standard – it'southward really a sub-standard – you lot must accept gone through 1 consummate wheel. Nosotros will not have gone through one complete bicycle on some of these activities until October, November, Dec and January, and so forth. So we've got our task cut out for us.

EdSource: …The college (didn't) get into this situation overnight, and it tin't go out of it overnight … (Does) the accreditation process business relationship for the fact that it could take a long time to turn a school around after it'due south been and so entrenched in bad governance and financing?

Bob Agrella: I think the accreditation process takes that into account. You know, their extension to June 30, 2014, was actually a very skilful step. They could take said, "Y'all're done right now." They could have said it after a semester. They didn't. They gave u.s.a. the absolute maximum amount that they could get at this betoken in time. Our job is to try and testify the absolute all-time amount of progress in meeting those standards that we can. …

I practice know that no accrediting body wants to remove the accreditation of an institution. I really believe that. Their job is to run across that the institutions meet those standards, non take accreditation. And they will do everything in their power to try and aid u.s. practice that, I believe. They are bound by some federal guidelines, plain, simply I think if we bear witness significant progress while nosotros go through that appeals process, I think we'll be OK.

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