Teachers File Suit Against College

By Oliver Lukacs
Staff Writer

June 25 -- Eight former full-time teachers filed a lawsuit against Santa Monica College this week claiming the decision to hand them walking papers and shut down several programs was “arbitrary” and violated college, as well as state, procedural codes.

The teachers -- likely the first full-time professors to be terminated in the college’s history -- were laid off in May when the school shut down the Transportation Technology, Architecture and Public Safety programs to help bridge a $9.5 million budget gap

The suit alleges that the decision was not supported by evidence, that some of the teachers were competent to teach in other areas and were denied transfers and that the decision to shut down the automotive department was “arbitrary” because the administration “exaggerated” the budget problem to justify the move.

“We don’t believe that the budget problem is as bad as they say it is, and if it’s not, we don’t believe there is a fiscal need to eliminate the program,” said Lantz Simpson, the president of the college’s faculty association.

But college officials countered hat the suit filed in Superior Court has “no merit.”

The charges, said Robert Sammis, vice-president of human resources for SMC, essentially echo the accusations the faculty association made at a hearing with school administrators in May before the pink slips were handed out. The faculty association, he added, is essentially appealing that decision to a higher court.

“I’m not surprised,” Sammis said. “It was expected. This is kind of the normal process that these things go through.”

The layoffs and program cuts, which will save the school $632,575, targeted teachers, specifically the five in the automotive department, who did not have transferable skills, and denied those who did the chance to transfer, Simpson said.

“It’s easier to get rid of them, it’s more convenient, but from the faculty association’s perspective that’s a very poor reason to discontinue the program,” said Simpson, adding that the automotive program put 50 students into “good auto tech jobs” in Santa Monica and West Los Angeles every year.

“It’s interesting that the only programs being eliminated are vocational,” said Simpson. “No programs eliminated were academic, so you have to draw your own conclusions if that’s elitist or not.”

Simpson said the college broke state education codes and SMC’s administrative regulations by never identifying all the faculty service areas the laid off teachers could have transferred to, and the college never published in writing “a final determination” of “why they’re laying these people off,” said Simpson.

The suit also alleged that the community college administration also violated legal procedure by cutting out of the loop the coordinating council -- consisting of 25 members representing faculty, staff, and students -- who make final recommendations to SMC’s superintendent. Instead, the suit charges, the administration made the sweeping decision unilaterally.