Minutes 09/09/1997

A work session of the Maricopa County Community College District Governing Board was scheduled to be held at 6:30 p.m. at the District Support Services Center, 2411 West 14th Street, Tempe, Arizona, pursuant to A.R.S. §38-431.02, notice having been duly given.

PRESENT

GOVERNING BOARD
Nancy Stein, President, Ed Contreras, Secretary, Linda B. Rosenthal, Member, Donald Campbell, Member, Gene Eastin, Member

ADMINISTRATION
Paul A. Elsner, William Waechter, Ron Bleed, Marilyn Anderson for Rufus Glasper, Alfredo G. de los Santos Jr., Janice Bradshaw, Larry Christiansen, John Cordova, Herman Walker for Art DeCabooter, Stan Grossman, Homero Lopez, Tessa Martinez Pollack, Linda Thor, Arnette Ward, Phil Randolph, J. Marie Pepicello, Gina Kranitz for Raul Cardenas

CALL TO ORDER
The meeting was called to order at 6:30 p.m. by President Nancy Stein.

EXECUTIVE SESSION
There was no executive session. Mrs. Stein asked for a moment of silence in memorial for Princess Diana and Mother Theresa.

WORK SESSION DISCUSSION OF MONITORING AND MEASURING ISSUES PERTAINING TO THE ENDS STATEMENTS ADOPTED AS PRIORITY ENDS FOR FISCAL YEAR 1997-98

Donna Schober welcomed the group, read the ground rules, and provided the meeting purposes for the meeting.

OUTCOMES FOR UNIVERSITIES The Universities will receive competent, qualified students who completed 24 or more credit hours at Maricopa Colleges.

Discussion on the End was as follows: It was noted that this end had been monitored in the previous year and was selected again for this fiscal year to establish trend data. Discussion was held on the definition of "competent, qualified" students. It would be unwise to have one, narrow model to define "competent, qualified" as students follow many different paths to achieve their goals. The campuses pursue the issues under this end under their institutional effectiveness programs and should play a key role in this area.

1. What should be measured?

- The percentage of graduates from universities have completed 24 credits at Maricopa.

- Native and transfer students - how do students compare? Do they finish in same time frame?

- Evaluate successful student's programs, courses, and study habits to help others.

- Does student achieve his/her goal?

- Do students maintain their GPA at the university, as they had at the community college?

- Do they need to take more than 120 credits for bachelor's degree?

- Was student accepted into his/her desired program?

- It was noted that the District has been offering quality education for the past 35 years. Don't start from scratch. Find what has been and is being done right and build on those qualities.

- Retention of our students. 2. How should it be monitored?

- Use Mary Day's data.

- Written reports to the Board. Oral reports to the Board. Annual report to the Board. Compile the data in way with meaning to it. Possible sampling. Remember students attend more than one Maricopa college. Colleges collect the data. Coordinate at District level. Enlist Mary Day - build up office if necessary. Dr. Elsner will place issue on CEC agenda and may come back with sample technique. Possibly sampling of information.

- Support common goals for success. One arm to deal with universities is easier. College can set goals thru accreditation. Don't give up research - continue to coordinate and build up - the foundation is there. Receiving college/university holds the data - have them help determine success.

- Universities have different data - work to get it. ASU is the best model for good data. Find how to get data from others. May need to spend time and resources with other universities, such as University of Phoenix.

- Investigate using a private firm that collects from colleges, such BYU.

- Come up with a format to collect data.

- Go back and evaluate the courses, grades, and study habits of successful transfer students.

OUTCOMES FOR ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY SCHOOLS The Elementary and Secondary Schools will enjoy cooperative partnerships with Maricopa Colleges, designed for successful retention and articulation.

Recommendations for changes in this end statements were 1) "of students" be inserted at the end of this end, 2) replace "enjoy" with "participate in," and 3) it would be more appropriate to use the word "matriculate" rather than "articulate." Gene Eastin and Linda Rosenthal offered to work together on rewording the end statement.

1. What should be measured? The following points were made during discussion:

- Measure what keeps the seamless webs from elementary and secondary schools to the community colleges.

- Measure what we do to assist schools, students, and parents. How successful in retention/articulation?

- Measure what we are doing now and look at the possibilities that could be put in place.

- Do we build a lot of partnerships or build partnerships relating to retention.

- Retention is an important issue. It is unclear as to retention of what students - students completing high school and going on to community college?

- Charter schools should be included in the measurement.

- Look at different high school systems - be careful at how we define success - challenges differ.

- Get the opinion of the schools regarding the cooperative partnerships. What is their opinion? Are our partnerships successful?

- Ways to measure: Is there a partnership? What is the quality of the partnership? Get feedback, design a phone survey, have focus groups.

- Elementary and Secondary schools will define for us what they need regarding partnerships.

- Discussion was held on whether or not to lump elementary schools and secondary schools together - they plus charter schools may have different needs.

- Find an area of focus. What is the problem in the area? For example, perhaps we could implement a charter school that is needed, such as the GateWay Charter High School.

- Start early to brace the young tree to keep it straight.

- We must be proactive and reactive. If not proactive with elementary students in math, they may not be ready to enter programs such as the allied health program in the community colleges.

- Suggestion was made that the community colleges mission is to deal with adults and the focus should be on that population. Budget concerns were expressed.

- An elementary schools issue in some schools is the high percentage of minority, poor people in the district, students move frequently, and a cultural message is given "don't worry, drop out ."

- There is a shortage of workers in the workplace, so companies are recruiting workers directly out of high school.

- How to measure the success? Difficult to get outcome data. Identify the data sources. Alfredo de los Santos has USI data. Accurate data is difficult, due to the movement of the students.

- How to work toward this end within dollar resource constraints and do so in a meaningful way.

- Parents want healthy and ready-to-learn kids. Extend efforts to the parents of the elementary and school students. Have to add element of getting to the parents. Support family resources at some schools.

- This is a great issue to deal with and a central issue to Maricopa. There are programs available to offer, such as Arnette Ward's service learning program. Students are more likely to succeed in life when given opportunities. Another example is Chandler's alternative high school. Half of the students take courses at Chandler Gilbert Community College and many get college degrees.

- We should measure where we are at now and then look at creative possibilities.

- This is a primary issue - to ignore it can be detrimental to the community colleges. Elementary and secondary school students are part of the community college mainstream of students. What happens with these students directly affects the community colleges.

- Find out what is currently being done and revisit the issue.

- Have to get input from the elementary and secondary schools.

- Where the resource dollars are spent on this issue is important. Suggestion was made for position description to be submitted for a coordinator in this area.

Next steps - Meet with the boards of K-12 schools and invite them and members of the Think Tank to a special work session. Dr. Elsner suggested that the Board invite three of the elementary school boards to meet with them to hear from them their concerns for their students and discuss partnerships with the community colleges. Also, invite some of the school boards to meetings such as this one.

Debbie Thompson presented the early thinking and preliminary work that has been done to align the budget to the Ends Statements. Mrs. Thompson provided an overview of a handout given to the Board which reflected information regarding the 1997-98 adopted budget and a sample matrix reflecting how the funds in the budget are allocated to the Ends Statements. In the future, the budget may be presented in a different way to coincide more closely with the wording of policy governance. CFAC will be addressing the issue of linking the 1998-99 budget with policy governance. Timing is a factor, as the budget is developed by December.

Plus
One of the best discussions held
Set up of the room
Excellent facilitation
Very good presentation by Debbie Thompson
Discovered a couple of issues that were felt strongly about
Good candies

Delta
No popcorn

ADJOURNMENT
The meeting adjourned at 8:50 p.m.