Close to Home: Status quo isn’t enough for SRJC

Leadership starts at the top. As two award-winning teachers seeking election to the Board of Trustees of Santa Rosa Junior College, our combined experience will enhance the solid foundation that the junior college has provided to the community over the past 100 years

W e are each running in separate districts of the county. Maggie Fishman in the district that includes Petaluma and Penngrove; Dorothy Battenfeld in the district that includes Santa Rosa, Rohnert Park and Cotati. Our campaigns have generated robust and overdue conversations throughout the county about the vital role of the junior college and the role of its board. Each of us is endorsed and supported by a wide range of civic and educational organizations, individuals and elected officials.

We’ve both been on the front lines of education in Sonoma County for many years, working as high school teachers and being involved in numerous efforts to improve educational opportunities in our schools. We’ve taught many of your children over those years and have had to deal with the myriad challenges that our public schools have faced. The incumbents have no such experience.

We’ve welcomed and incorporated new technologies into our classrooms and curriculums. We’ve faced the grim impacts of the economic recession that continues to affect our students, their families and our schools. We’ve experienced the ongoing shift in demographics of the students we educate. Put simply, the tools and techniques of education will have to change and adapt to support the students of tomorrow. The junior college needs to lead, not lag in adapting to these changes.

Accepting the status quo, as The Press Democrat recommended in its editorial about the Nov. 4 election for the junior college board, is unfair to the students and faculty of the college.

The Press Democrat also erred in asserting the SRJC board’s focus should be on the “mundane.” We, as educators, parents, students and voters, want the college to provide the highest quality education it can possibly provide at an affordable cost. The board has a duty to carry out this mandate, which is in no way mundane. As educators and as candidates , we have promised to strengthen and expand access to quality higher education; to strengthen community, school and business partnerships with the junior college; to expand and improve career programs at SRJC; and to promote sustainable environmental and economic solutions.

Our county is fortunate to have a great junior college, but the college has been hampered in recent years by huge cuts in state funding and by the impacts of the recession. Enrollment has not fully recovered. Some career programs at the college are only able to accept a small fraction of the students seeking admission. Many students drop out before completing their degrees. So accepting the status quo is not a strategy for success. The college must grow, adapt and innovate.

Finally, if the SRJC bond, Measure H, is approved by voters on Nov. 4, as we hope it will be, a higher standard than the status quo is needed to maximize the return on the community’s investment. This election is about far more than the bond, or about union priorities as The Press Democrat has falsely alleged. It’s about the future students of Santa Rosa Junior College and ensuring that access, programs and quality education for all are the driving principles for the board of the junior college.

Dorothy Battenfeld is a Montgomery High School teacher. Maggie Fishman is a retired educator.