In a unanimous decision, the Board of Trustees decided to postpone the reallocation of $550,000 from the Measure G fund toward paying PeopleSoft.

The board made its decision at the Nov. 15 meeting at the Garfield Campus.

Both President Anthony Tartaglia and board member Vahe Peroomian described PeopleSoft as a “black hole.” Tartaglia also said he wanted to see a timeline of just how the money has been spent.

PeopleSoft is the software company that Glendale College contracted to use for services including the student registration. There have been many problems with the software thus far.

Measure G is a $98-million facilities bond measure used for projects such as: upgrading electrical and technology infrastructure, campus buildings, structures, walkways and road safety.

There was a consensus among the board members that they did not want to simply throw good money at the problem.

Superintendent/President Dawn Lindsay said she plans to have an accountability audit done by an outside company. The audit will show who is not doing their job, and in the end, whether that is PeopleSoft or the Glendale administration.

Michael Scott, president of the Academic Senate, raised the question of how much will be spent on the audit. Lindsay said that she would be able to conduct an audit for under $15,000 without board approval.

The board decided to postpone any decision on the matter until the Jan. 24 meeting.
Scott Wilk of Anchor Consulting gave a presentation on the projects that the college seeks to fund.

Projects that are priorities for the college are a campus shuttle from the Garfield campus to the main campus, a retaining wall for the laboratory college services building, funding for the Verdugo Water and Power Academy and improved campus safety.

Wilk said that the funding for the Power Academy was likely to happen in the short term. The amount of money will be less than the college has asked for. The college asked for $600,000 and they will likely receive $180,000.

After Wilk spoke, Edward Karpp, an associate dean of Institutional Research & Planning, gave a presentation on how Glendale fared on the Accountability Recording for Community Colleges (ARCC).

ARCC was created after the bill AB1417 was passed. This bill has established annual evaluations of community college performances in meeting statewide educational outcome standards.

There are eight different standards that are used in the ARCC progress rates: students that complete 30 or more units, persistence rates, success in vocational courses, basic skills course completion, basic skills improvement, ESL improvement and CDCP (certificate) non-credit competition.

Glendale ranks well in many of the categories. The two that Glendale struggles with are basic skills competition and basic skills improvement.

Peroomian took issue with the persistence rate of Glendale College. The persistence rate measures the percentage of first-time students who return to the college the next year. Glendale’s persistence rate is 73.1 percent, but has been going down for four years.

“One or two years don’t make a trend, but four years is,” Peroomian said. “It is easier for us to keep the students we have than to go out and recruit new ones.”
Vice President of Student Services Ricardo Perez, talked about the successes of the Glendale athletics program. He said both the men and women’s cross country teams won conference titles.

Perez also said that women’s golfer Tammy Panich won the first conference title in school history for that sport.

Perez said that this semester there were more than 800 applicants for the scholarships that Glendale College offers. A total of 1,000 students applied all of last year. Perez said he expects the final number of applicants for this year to be between 1,400 and 1,600.

Executive Vice President Ron Nakasone gave an overview of the college’s financial outlook. “The budget is basically balanced,” Nakasone said. He said that this was possible due to an increase in growth revenues, a rebate from Blue Shield, the health insurance company that covers most employees, and money from Cal Works.

The next meeting will be held Dec. 13.