December Board Meeting: New Student Trustee, New Board President, and Raises

The Peralta Community College District Board of Trustees held their last meeting of the year on Tuesday, December 12, 2023.

The meeting began with the swearing in of new Student Trustee Naomi Vasquez by Board President Dyana Delfín Polk.

Student Trustee Naomi Vasquez (left) is sworn in by Board President Dyana Delfín Polk

Vasquez is a Laney College student who is also taking classes from Berkeley City College. She is is a first-generation Latina student studying Business Administration. She is passionate about building community and creating positive change in her hometown of Oakland. For more information about Student Trustee Vasquez and fellow Student Trustee Natasha Masand, visit the "Meet the Board" page of the Peralta website.

Congratulations New President Gonzalez-Brito

The Trustees then held their annual organizational meeting, electing Trustee Paulina Gonzalez-Brito from Area 2 as the new Board President and re-electing Trustee Louis Quindlen from Area 3 as Board Vice President. The newly elected board leaders will serve in these roles for the next year.

Newly Elected Board of Trustees President Paulina Gonzales-Brito

Our gratitude to 2023 Board President Dyana Delfín Polk and Vice President Quindlen for their leadership over the past 12 months.

In the interest of time, Interim Chancellor Dr. Jannett N. Jackson passed on providing a verbal Chancellor's Report - so no Chancellor Report video this month. The Presidents' reports were provided to the Trustees as part of the agenda, and are available in BoardDocs and also via Peralta Gems:

Presentations

Interim Vice Chancellor of General Service Atheria Smith, provided a detailed presentation on the status of short term facilities projects (previously known as the 90-Day Priority list). Slides are available here while the video of her presentation is available via YouTube here.

Mr. Ben Leavitt of CWDL Certified Public Accountants presented the results of his firm's Fiscal Year 2022-23 Audit of the Peralta Community College District. His slides and the full audit report are available on our website at: https://www.peralta.edu/finance/annualreports. The great news is that we continued to make great progress in our accounting and fiscal control processes, for the third year earning an unmodified opinion, the highest standard of confidence in a fiscal audit. The number of findings continue to decline from four in FY2021-22 to two in FY2022-23, and progress has been made to correct both of those findings. You can watch Mr. Leavitt's presentation on YouTube here.

Interim Vice Chancellor of Finance and Administration Dr. Nathaniel Jones III, provided a budget revision for Fiscal Year 2023-24. The Board of Trustees previously approved the budget for FY2023-24 in September as required by law, but it was noted at that time that the budget had a six million dollar gap that needed to be addressed in order to provide cost of living adjustments for employees. Dr. Jones presented the updated budget after taking it through the participatory governance process at the colleges and across the district - slides are available here while the video recording is available on YouTube here. The board unanimously approved this this revision to the Adopted Budget for FY2023-24.

Salary Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA)

The Trustees approved all items on the agenda, and we'd like to call out attention to Action 10.5 which was to approve a Cost-of-Living Adjustment (COLA) for both represented and unrepresented PCCD employees, effective July 1, 2023, equal to 85% of the COLA funds the district receives from the state. So what does that mean? It means thanks to your strong support for unions and their "me too" clauses, every employee in the district, whether represented by a collective bargaining unit or not, will receive the COLA (a modest raise) that will be retroactive back to the start of this fiscal year on July 1, 2023. Hooray! Thank you Trustees, Union Leaders, Chancellor Jackson, and Vice Chancellor McKinley!