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FALL RIVER — Bristol Community College President Dr. John Sbrega isn’t hesitant about showing his irritation with Gov. Deval Patrick and his plan to centralize the governance of the state’s 15 community colleges.
Sbrega smells a power play by Boston interests, despite the fact that he likes and admires Patrick.
“We weren’t consulted. They didn’t use community college experts” in compiling the Boston Foundation report that partly drove the governor’s decision, Sbrega contended.
The governor has proposed a central administration of the colleges to better train and educate residents to meet the job skill requirements of employers, and do it more uniformly across the commonwealth. In his state of the state address, Patrick said that the colleges need to align themselves with the statewide workforce development plan.
“They must be aligned with employers, voc-tech schools and workforce investment boards in the regions where they operate, aligned with each other in core course offerings, and aligned with the commonwealth’s job growth strategy,” Patrick said.
He added, “We can’t do that if 15 different campuses have 15 different strategies. We need to do this together. We need a unified community college system in Massachusetts.”
Education Secretary Paul Reville told The Standard-Times that the proposal puts community colleges in the driver‘s seat of an effort that not only will identify and meet local needs, but makes it possible for statewide employers to draw talent from a number of community colleges, if not all of them.
But Sbrega said that the state hasn’t taken the time to really look at what BCC, at least, is accomplishing.
If the three performance benchmarks in the governor’s proposal are applied, BCC is doing very well, he said. Enrollment is up 76 percent over a decade. Academically, “BCC by any objective standard excels.”
As for partnerships, BCC is part of the SouthCoast Partnership, Connect, the regional public higher education collaborative, and a number of businesses.
Sbrega said that he would welcome an objective analysis. “But nothing’s ever objective. This is Massachusetts,” he said.
A red flag for some was the November release of a report by the Boston Foundation, which looked at the community college system. The report lists all of the people interviewed, and there are precious few from outside Greater Boston.
Sbrega said that some of the college presidents listed in the report were never contacted by the Boston Foundation that they can recall. And asked whether centralization was the predetermined conclusion, Sbrega said, “Yup.”
Reville said, however, that the governor examined a number of reports, including some from other parts of the nation, and in the end didn’t propose what the Boston Foundation suggested, which was the abandonment of academics in favor of workforce training.
Kenneth Fiola, director of Fall River’s Office of Economic Development, said he is still undecided about the issue but he believes BCC is doing a fine job.
The fact that the proposal relocates budget and curriculum power to Boston is in itself a concern, Fiola said.
The fact that the college presidents weren’t a central part of the process is another worry, he said.
“You would think that before this type of thing is suggested there would be input from all the community college presidents directly with the secretary of education and others first-hand,” Fiola said.
Reville countered by saying that the Patrick adminstration did indeed meet with the college presidents to explore the possibilities, even if they didn’t always come to terms.
Fiola said he also is concerned about shifting control to a centralized administration.
“I think when you go into a situation where you sort of concentrate all the power on an independent board located in Boston with just a couple of reps from each area I think you lose something. The BCC board is diverse,” he said.
He also is concerned about money. “The funding allocations, everything else will be changed,” he said. “To me, I would hate to see the system lose its local flavor.”
As far as money goes, BCC might actually benefit from a fresh look if done objectively, Sbrega said. Yet for years BCC has struggled to escape from last place in the state’s per-pupil funding. This year it is second to last among the 15 colleges.
“If they want to expand workforce responsibility, I welcome that,” Sbrega said. I don’t want to be seen as obstructive. But it’s got to be an equitable system.”
Reville said that rather than being a reform of the community colleges, Patrick’s proposal puts them at the center of a solution to a pressing problem. “This is not a reform proposal, it’s a community college response to a jobs crisis,” he said.
“We want them to do more of what they have been doing,” he said. “We haven’t changed that at all.”
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