KIKO ELECTED CHAIRMAN OF TSC BOARD; JULIET HEARS FOOTSTEPS

By Juan Montoya

A unanimous board sent the Texas Southmost College district a message loud and clear when it elected Kiko Rendon as its new chairman: "We're off on a new direction."
At the first meeting held with the new board Thursday, the trustees elected Rendon as their chairman and he minced no words afterward when he was asked about the campaign promises he had made to the residents in the district.
'We're off on a new direction," he said. "We will move carefully, but we will keep all the promises we made during the campaign."
Rendon handily defeated the administration's candidate, incumbent Rosemary Breedove in the runoff election. The first meeting of the new board was held Thursday.
Left unsaid was the new board majority's consensus on the fate of UTB-TSC president Juliet Garcia. Rendon said the new board would work with the administration, but remained firmly committed to the proposition that the administration and staff at the university-community college hybrid would have to follow the directives of the board, and not the other way around.
To parents in the district who are now paying the highest tuition of any other community college in the district, the news that some form of the traditional lower rates for in-district students may be reinstated could not have come soon enough.
"I've just paid more than $1,000 in tuition for my kid and I'm waiting for the check for the other $650 check to clear that I paid for books," said a visibly angered parent. "They have to do something about these high rates."
Local industrialist and business leader Mario Villarreal said the tuition costs at the college were too much for the average community students of their parents to bear.
"We have always looked at education to lift up our people," he said. "But these costs are way beyond the resources of may of our local residents to bear. They have to turn this thing around." During the runoff election, we learned that minutes from the September 26, 2007 meeting indicate that on a motion by David Oliveira and a second by Rosemary Breedlove, the board followed the recommendations of David E. Pearson(Agenda Item #6), vice-president for UTB-TSC Partnership Affairs to "convert the current tuition subsidy (in-district) into a TSC Trustees Scholarship" explicitly designed to "facilitate students' movement toward a Associate Baccalaureate of Arts degree."
In the following item (#7), Breedlove seconded the resolution on a motion by Dolly Zimmerman to allow the college to "consider possible alternative uses for approximately $3.2 million" of its operating budget..to best enhance academic success for in-district students..."
In one fell swoop and under the guise of creating a scholarship to be administered by the trustees, the board members raised tuition costs by 39 percent for in-district students.
And the "scholarships" that average only $258 are to be administered according to the rules set by the college. In other words, while everyone who lived in the TSC district received lower tuition rates, under the new scheme they would all pay the higher rates without any guarantee that they would receive a "trustee scholarship."
As a result of this maneuver, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board reported in its 2009-2010 report that the average community college students in Texas pays $1,870 per year in tuition and fees while our fortunate local residents pay $5,498.
In fact, TSC's rates are higher than all 53 community colleges surveyed in the state of Texas
And what results do we get from these high tuition and student fees?
We have just learned that nearly half of the students entering TSC leave school after their first year. Of those left, the Education Trust found that what Breedlove called one of the "Finest Community Universities in America" graduated a whopping 16 percent of students over a six-year period.
There is no doubt that the task of undoing some of their administration and former boards' handiwork will take some time and effort. But Rendon said he is confident that the new united board will move to address these issues.
"We are going to keep our campaign promises and act as a united board to improve the educational opportunities for our students," he said. "We will continue to seek everyone's support and ask for a little patience from our residents as we set about accomplishing our goals."

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