TSC COMPLAINT: CUT OUR NOSE TO SPITE OUR FACE

(The Brownsville Herald has run two front-page articles on the complaint filed against the board of trustees of Texas Southmost College with the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools' Commission on Colleges. In neither of the articles did the newspaper identify the complainers. Unless you have the actual documents, you would never have learned reading the paper that it was current board member Dr. Reynaldo Garcia and former TSC trustee Rene Torres. The duo wants the COC to sanction the board and quite possibly, remove TSC's accreditation. The post below gives one of their reasons why. You be the judge.)  

By Juan Montoya
We still remember the campaign push cards local attorney Ruben Herrera handed out when he ran a successful race for trustee of Texas Southmost College.
Herrera – the top vote getter in the 2016 election – handily beat Daniel Pizaña with 73 percent of the vote.

His cards emphasized that he was the product of TSC's policy to provide accessible and affordable second chances to non-traditional students. He recalled that when he was working on  apolitical campaign, he met an attorney from San Antonio who encouraged him to go to school and perhaps even try to get a law degree.

It took me six years attending TSC in the evenings, but I did and then I went to law school," he recalled recently.
During the campaign for trustee, Herrera promised he would make every effort to provide non-traditional students a rung up on the education ladder.

We say this because of the recent complaint filed with SACS-COC, the college's accreditation agency, by current trustee Dr. Reynaldo Garcia and former trustee Rene Torres. They claimed, among other things, that Herrera was getting involved in the administration of the college and blurring the lines between governance and administrative functions.

And what was this crime that Torres and Garcia claim Herrera committed?
The two transcribed the minutes of the June 22, 2016 board meeting where Herrera made a motion that then-TSC president Lily Tercero "implement a CCD plan to accommodate non-traditional students by the Fall semester. What does this mean? This means that we are going to accommodate a class or two in the Fall semester and a class or two in the Spring semester and two for the summer for the non-traditional students. It's not a cohort, it's not a new program. It's the same program you have, just at hours non-traditional students can attend. That is what I'm asking for sand this is the motion on the table."

This infuriated Garcia, who chided Herrera for "stepping outside our (board's) boundaries as far as our duties as a board member to administer. We are supposed to set policy, accept the budget anbd hire the president. But we are dictating curriculum here?"

In the discussion that followed, with Garcia argued with vice-chair Trey Mendez and TSC attorney Frak Perez. Medez countered tnat the way he heard it "I don't think we're dictating curriculum. I think it's just an addition of another class."

Garcia, who appointed himself the role of Tercero's gallant defender, called on Perez to give his legal opinion on whether the motion was appropriate and he thought it infringed on the purview of the president. He then tried to lecture Herrera, who was attending his first TSC board meeting.

"Ok?" Get this straight, please. The administration is supposed to advise what to do. We hire them to do that. Run the curriculum and run the instruction program. Not you or I,  Ok? This is not your duty. You need to understand that as a new board member, before you request things from the administration. Ok?...I think you are coming on too strong in your first meeting personally."

Perez, always the diplomat, said that what he heard gave him the impression that "the idea, now the direction, the policy direction, should also be geared toward the non-traditional students...We want to, if the board wants to direct the policy to also gear towards non-traditional students, that's a tremendous thing, Ok?

"Always keeping in mind what the function of the board is, which is to direct policy, versus to direct the function of the administration, which is to implement the policy. So, I don;t think there is anything wrong with the discussion we're having here. I think it's a very good discussion. I think it's legally appropriate for for us to have. I think it is something that will allow the college to grow. And I think that the discussion that we just had is appropriate."

Torres and Garcia, apparently not satisfied that Tercero got a fair shake from the board when she was terminated, opted for filing the complaint against their fellow board members, and TSC, with the agency responsible for its accreditation. Their aim? If taken to its logical conclusion, that would be the removal of accreditation from the college, a task that took Tercero and boards of trustees three years to achieve.

As we said at the top, that is like cutting your nose to spite your face. Can these two gents actually prefer to remove TSC's accreditation over a difference of opinion because things didn't go their way? What about the students, staff and faculty, and most of all, the taxpayers of the community college district? Is it worth harming them for your capricho?