Chancellor Goldsmith's Remarks - December 16, 2025 Board of Trustees Meeting

Earlier today and at previous board meetings, we have heard from faculty regarding concerns with the Canvas Pilot, as well as the use of the two software platforms-  Grammarly and Turn-it-in.  Once these concerns were raised, I asked Deputy Chancellor Holt-McDonald to review the operational issue, and we paused to assess and course-correct.

As a learning institution, we try new approaches, new projects, new technology.  Most of the time things go well. Sometimes they do not.  This is not the first time that I said this did not go well. When they don’t, we pause, assess and adapt.  That is what has occurred here.  We tried something new and it didn’t work out as well as anyone hoped.  The Canvas permissions for instructional designers were restored, and throughout this semester Dr. Holt has met with faculty. I have also met with faculty at Reedley and Clovis and other stakeholders involved in the project.

Earlier this month, faculty received a joint communication from all of the colleges Vice President of Instruction confirming  that “Turnitin will remain available throughout the Spring 2026 semester as we monitor the ADA compliance, as required by the state.   and that Grammarly remains paused for general access as pilot testing and local review continue because there are some faculty who like to use it and we heard tonight that there are some faculty who do not. Dr. Holt for the last month or so, has been and will serve as the primary point of contact for Academic and Classified Senate leadership, with appropriate vice chancellors and myself, joining her when policy or regulatory matters arise.

This course correction reflects our commitment to listening, learning and improving.  

At a time when many institutions are laying off employees, our District continues to invest in its people. Over the past five years, we have added more than 110 faculty, 60 classified professionals, and 17 managers to support instruction, student services, enrollment growth, and expanding programs. This month, additional positions have been forwarded to the colleges to begin the recruitment process.

After a thorough review process, including the College’s staffing prioritization process and dialogue at Chancellor’s Cabinet regarding established goals and existing and emerging needs and Following the recommendation of the Taskforce on Protecting Vulnerable Population, each college will be provided with 1 Program Assistant or some type of classified professional  to provide support to the Dream Center, LGBTQ Center and/or Welcome Center as deemed appropriate by the College President.    We have also identified in Phase 1 we will be an additional 26 new faculty positions and 27 new classified professional positions.

This latest round will make for a total new faculty of 136 and 88 classified Professionals in the last five years.

While concerns have been raised about student access, I want to note that we are currently serving more than 10,000 students for whom we receive no state reimbursement. We will continue to advocate aggressively at the state level for growth funding and building on last year’s success when myself and other Chancellors across the state went to Sacramento numerous times to help move the legislature from only 0.5% growth to 2.5%.During the Spring not only will continue to work with state legislators to improve our fiscal support of our instructional and student services programs, we will also begin Phase 2 of the Staffing Process.

We have started to conduct a comprehensive review of Strong Workforce-funded positions to determine how best to protect these roles in light of federal funding uncertainty. Where appropriate, Phase 2 will focus on transitioning critical positions from grant funding to the General Fund to ensure continuity of instruction and student services. We want to safeguard these positions, similar to what we did when the federal government withheld our money and grant funding for our Migrant Programs, Hispanic Designation Grants, and other federal grants. Thank you to this Board for approving the recommendation that they move forward that we set aside funds to ensure that the employees, both classified professionals and faculty, would still remain employed and serve our students. Despite what other colleges did Throughout the state. I am proud of that work. The reason we do this is because we want to make sure everyone can continue to do the work we all love, that is helping our students.

Tonight, I am also happy to see, that we are bringing forth our initial bargaining proposal for CSEA and we look forward to working with them in the coming months.

Similarly, our SCFT partners and administrators are at the negotiating table now, while I can not comment on the current process, I can say we are actively engaged in a successor contract in good faith with SCFT.

As we move forward into the Spring, we will continue advancing major initiatives that strengthen our colleges and serve our students, expand community partnerships to benefit our colleges, implement a new budget allocation models that have been developed with and in consultation with faculty, classified professionals, and administrators over a number of months. We are also working on a new participatory decision-making model for the Districtwide Communications Council again which has been going on for a number of months, we’ve made great progress on voter-approved construction and modernization projects across the District – all while staying focused on our students and employees.

With that, I wish you all a restful and joyous Winter Break.