Longstanding board member, community advocate retires

District 7 trustee Charles Conner admitted, in hindsight, that the board and district administrators could have done a better job in establishing solid communication with faculty and staff.

In a telephone interview Nov. 6, the trustee who resigned Oct. 28, praised the district colleges as educationally driven but called employee reactions mostly miscommunications on their part.

He said information supplied by the board and district was consistently met head on with nothing but incivility, unnecessary harshness and constant accusations that created chaos.

The town hall meetings being conducted at each of the colleges have been a positive factor in taking a step in the right direction for better communication, Conner said.

But the simple fact is that the board and district can talk all day long for the next six months or six years and it will not make a difference, he said, because faculty and staff are resistant to change.

Conner, who announced his intention to retire during the Oct. 20 Alamo Community College District regular board meeting, submitted a letter of resignation Oct. 28. The board officially accepted it at the Nov. 7 retreat.

Conner and his wife, former District 8 San Antonio City Councilwoman Bonnie Conner, purchased a retirement home in Corpus Christi but had not expected to relocate so quickly.

Conner announced that his retirement from the board was imminent after his San Antonio house sold two days after being put on the market.

One of the board's longest-serving members, Conner has been a trustee since June 2002.

But one of the biggest problems in the district, Conner said, is that people are adversaries of change.

"Some people accept it better or embrace it more than others," he said. "But generally, people don't like change."

People become accustomed to one operating system and then someone comes and changes it, Conner said.

Employees have worked hard for years to adapt to the system to advance, he said.

But, as he contemplates the changes coming in his own life, he said he could empathize because change is a scary thing.

Conner said board members accomplished just about everything they set out to do. Over the years, the board has advocated an increase in capacity to serve a larger, more diverse community, increasing student success, establishing a core curriculum for the district and eliminating duplication across the five colleges.

And Conner said Chancellor Bruce Leslie was hired to push those initiatives and has done that.

One of his regrets is working as a small businessman all of his life, leaving him unfamiliar with the bureaucracy of a large board where agendas are accomplished at a different pace.

Things are not accomplished overnight, and it can be very frustrating, he said.

In his first year and a half on the board, it was impossible to realize any beneficial changes for the district, Conner said.

The previous board, prior to Conner, was approving contracts to acquaintances and providing them with favorable kickbacks. Since, the board has faced a long climb to regain the public's popular opinion.

Everything works at a much slower pace where everyone had to look at proposed business decisions, Conner said. And then the tendency was not to change too much.

The board had to reorganize the way it conducted business, Conner said, because people will not always agree with their decisions. Sometimes that does not sit well with everyone.

As elected trustees of the district, Conner said their responsibility is to take care of the taxpayers' money and assure it is spent efficiently.

Conner was integral in gaining the approval of the $450 million capital improvement project, which provided property advancements in renovations and construction at the four existing colleges, and the construction of Northeast Lakeview College.

An original $450 million bond was voted down 52.83 percent to 47.17, Feb. 5, 2005, amid stunned city leaders and district administrators.

In the capital improvement projects, Conner said the board had to get maximum dollars out of the investment.

A lot of confusion resulted from accreditation talks, Conner said.

Conner said the board asked Leslie to form an accreditation committee and weigh the district's benefits of changing to a single-accreditation district or remaining separately accredited.

The colleges read too much into a supposed exclusion of the student body in the accreditation review process.

Seventy-five percent of San Antonio College's faculty and staff met July 16, in the Fiesta Room to oppose the creation of an accreditation committee, which excluded any community or student voices in the process.

Leslie appointed 17-member committee at the instruction of board Chair Denver McClendon.

Faculty Senate unanimously approved a resolution that denounced the process because of its lack of clarity, minimal amount of members appointed and no consultation with all affected stakeholders.

Then, on Aug. 5, the Student Government Association of this college met in a session with their academic advisers Christy Woodward-Kaupert and Dawn Elmore-McCrary to draw up a resolution of their own in an effort to seek inclusion on the committee after Leslie sent an e-mail stating his beliefs that students should be excluded from the committee because they would not understand accreditation issues and would not be interested.

"We never challenged their mental capacity," Conner said.

The board sought the values of those more experienced to review the possibilities of single or joint accreditation. That is what we were referring to, Conner said.

The study was meant to gather information that would enable the board to make a decision to either go forward with a more in-depth look at single accreditation or table the discussion, all together, Conner said.