Forty Years Ago

2000

we convened an invited one-day seminar for community college presidents and chancellors. The invitation list included the chancellors from Los Angeles and Orange County as well as all of the campus presidents from Los Angeles, Orange County, and San Bernardino County. The purpose of the day was to discuss the future of community colleges in southern California and to share ideas, concerns, and best practices. The following provides the minutes and conclusions from the one-day seminar attended by 18 Southern California Community College leaders. Speaker 1: California Assemblyman Jack Scott After a welcome from USC's Chair of the Community College Leadership Program, the first speaker was introduced. Assemblyman Jack Scott from California's 44 th District opened up his talk with a listing of his extensive involvement with the California community colleges including serving as a Dean of Instruction at Orange Coast College in 1973 and President at both Cypress (1978) and Pasadena City Colleges (1987). Scott's talk touched upon many topics pertinent to the audience. First, he addressed the needs of colleges and the implications of Tidal Wave II (the expected increase of more than ½ million students to the California Community Colleges within the present decade). He emphasized the growing needs for adult and community education, which will also impact space and facilities shortages. There is the need to investigate a joint use of facilities as well as institute year-round calendars. The use of distance education is also a possible reliever of the space problems destined for the near future. Confidently, Dr. Scott explained that community colleges have maintained a positive image with the legislature, but there are just not enough resources to meet every need. Community colleges are promoted by both Democrats and Republicans. While Democrats appreciate the open door policies of the colleges and the thrust to educate the general citizenry of California, Republicans emphasize the economic advantages of community colleges in providing education in the least expensive mode. Scott urged all in attendance to invite their legislaters to their campuses. In his words "nothing works better-keep telling the story and sell yourselves. If you want more money you are going to have to fight for it." Scott predicted a growing need for accountability. He felt that the University of California system was operating at too rich a level, and that the campuses should be held more accountable for the use of their state funds.

Journal of San Diego History , 2025

Institutions increasingly reckon with histories that do not hold up to the moral light of our times. Reckoning work falls to those currently working within these institutions, whether or not they participated in these wrongdoings or how long ago they occurred. Some resent this obligation; others embrace the opportunity to right the wrongs of the past. This article first offers a summary of published histories about the University of San Diego’s founding, drawing from both books and university-produced sources. In the second half, we supplement the official narratives with findings from transcripts of interviews and our own interviews. This expanded historical account, while not comprehensive, offers a richer view of the school’s origins and its founding members. We track the university’s reckoning with its history amid shifting social norms and expectations, focusing on which adaptive changes became part of the official record, which did not, and the contemporary implications of those choices. We hope these findings—and the provocative questions raised at the end—inspire others to continue this work. There is always more to uncover.

Espacio, Tiempo y Educación, 2020

In United States conversations about progressive pedagogy and alternative forms of education, the longstanding models that scholars used were predominantly white. African-American historians of education have problematized this narrative. More recently, the interdisciplinary field of Black Power studies has increased investigation into Afrocentric pedagogy and Black politically-engaged education after World War II (Rickford, 2016). While much attention has been paid to the freedom schools, educational sites run by Black revolutionary nationalists have received less attention. One particular site is the Oakland Community School (OCS), the Black Panther Party's full-time day school. Initially a combined day-care and home school known as the Children's House in 1970, the school changed to become the Intercommunal Youth Institute in 1971. It then operated as the Oakland Community School from 1974 until 1982, earning acclaim from the California Department of Education and the governor of California (Gore, Theoharis & Woodard, 2009). While multiple historical studies detail the pedagogical contours of the school and its community engagement, very few elicit the voices of former students. This work incorporates such voices, in conjunction with traditional archives and digital archival material, as a means of contextualizing the OCS within the Black Panther Party's politics of the period and the school's implications for contemporary education.

Journal of Latinos and Education, 2020

Los Angeles County, the group developed intentionally and horizontally to address the disenfranchisement of the working-class communities of La Puente and Valinda using the California Voting Rights Act. Drawing from a praxis-oriented approach, ¡Juntos Podemos! explores the process of organizing and its connection to theory and practice. This approach builds from the experiences of members to see how different positionalities influence their participation in the struggle for school transformation. First, we highlight the politics of the school district and history of community-based school organizing from which ¡Juntos Podemos! emerges. Second, we present narratives of two collective members who grew up in different areas of the district at distinct time periods to illustrate how their experiences were shaped by dominant ideologies of schooling and why they became involved in ¡Juntos Podemos! Third, we discuss how our efforts to change the ways school board members are elected as a first step in shifting the composition of the school board. We conclude with a discussion of transformation as an ongoing process that draws on multiple approaches and strategies. KEYWORDS Community organizing; California Voting Rights Act (CVRA); narrative; school board; history of activism; Latino/a families and community On a Wednesday afternoon in October 2019 at the Marie Callender's restaurant in the City of Industry, long-time community activists met with attorney Carlos Perez and demographer Jesús Garcia to discuss the possibility of using the California Voting Rights Act (CVRA) to address inequalities in the Hacienda-La Puente Unified School District (HLPUSD). Perez had read an opinion article that two of the activists published critiquing class and racial inequities in the district and that ended with a call to move away from at-large trustee voting (Ochoa & Ochoa, 2019). Over a mid-afternoon snack of soup and pie, Perez and Garcia detailed how they have forced school districts in several California communities from Whittier to Bakersfield to address racially polarized voting patterns that disenfranchise working-class communities of color. Perez explained that he could write a demand letter to the district arguing that they were in violation of the CVRA and that the district would have 45 days to either begin the process of moving to trustee areas or fight it through litigation. Garcia, the demographer, graduated from La Puente High School in 1972 and knew the area well. Perez and Garcia enthusiastically listened to the La Puente activists in attendance to discuss the fruits of their decades of community organizing. At the end of the discussion, Perez and Garcia offered to work with the group to develop a demand letter and draft a map with proposed trustee districts.