by Eva Hannan/Co-Editor
The Laney Faculty Senate overwhelmingly approved a resolution of no confidence in Peralta Community Colleges Chancellor Jowel C. Laguerre on Feb. 12, officially signalling its displeasure with his performance as the head of the PCCD.
The measure passed by a vote of 20-to-1 and calls “for Chancellor Laguerre to resign immediately or have his contract terminated with cause by the PCCD Board of Trustees.”
The language of the resolution details the perceived faults of Laguerre’s administration tactics, budgetary decisions, hiring practices and much more, and concludes that “the Laney College Faculty Senate affirm that it has no confidence in Chancellor Laguerre’s leadership of the four-college District.”
The resolution has been shared with the faculty senates at Merritt College, Berkeley City College and College of Alameda, and the Laney senate hopes that a similar resolutions will be passed at faculty senates at the other campuses before the next general meeting of the District Academic Senate on March 5. There, three representatives from each campus will decide whether to draft a similar resolution at the district level.
The issue will also be brought to the attention of the Board of Trustees at the next board meeting on Tuesday, Feb. 26. The vote of no confidence is the strongest signal the faculty senate can send to the other governing bodies that they desire a change in leadership.
Laguerre has held the position of chancellor, a title with an annual salary of over $300,000, since July, 2015. His tenure at Peralta includes the management of over $850 million voter-approved bonds and parcel taxes, as well as the bargaining for a contested A’s stadium on district land.
Also during this time, the former Peralta District communications director, Jeff Heyman, resigned and filed a whistleblower’s complaint against the administration. In 2018, The Mercury News reported that the bond rating firm Moody’s had dropped the district’s rating from “stable” to “negative.”
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, “After the chancellor arrived in 2015… an audit of the parcel tax showed that tax money devoted to faculty salaries plunged by nearly two-thirds, and spending on books and supplies dropped by 25 percent… whereas it had nearly doubled in the first two years of the tax [before Laguerre].”
This is not the first time Laguerre has been involved in alleged mismanagement of funds. A grand jury report on the misleading nature of the language of the voter-approved, $348 million bond Measure Q in Solano County led to Laguerre’s resignation.
“Solano College Superintendent-President Jowel Laguerre was blasted in the report for ignoring the law,” said a Fairfield Daily Republic story from 2015.
The Republic said that the grand jury report found that Measure Q was “a bond that was not properly presented, and was arguably misleading at best,” and states that the administration had failed to follow laws and regulatory guidelines concerning the wording and implementation of the bond funds.
Laguerre has consistently maintained that “there has been no mismanagement of the funds.”