Every qualified candidate for Long Beach’s April 12 election was in attendance, including those campaigning for three city council seats, two Long Beach City College Board of Trustees positions and two Long Beach Unified School District Governing Board spots. Also included was Dee Andrews, the termed-out 6th District city councilmember who is pursuing a write-in campaign. Even Daryl Supernaw, the current 4th District councilmember who was unopposed in seeking a second term but was recently granted that seat by the city council, was at Wednesday’s event and given a chance to speak to those in attendance.
Moderator John Glaza, a graduate of Leadership Long Beach, officiated the event, which was also organized by the Long Beach Public Library, Long Beach Community Action Partnership, Public Access Digital Network and Palacio Magazine.
LBCC Trustees Area 2
Glaza began the forum by asking the candidates for Long Beach City College Board of Trustees Area 2 to choose one of the traits that Leadership Long Beach embraces and explain why they think it is important. Those characteristics are integrity, teamwork, respect, values, compassion, accountability, vision, personal responsibility, ethics, commitment, courage, congruence, service and trusteeship.
Vivian Malauulu, a community college teacher, spoke first and chose the trait of service, saying that elected officials are public servants.
“Everything that you do has to have the integrity of the office and also the interest of the public you were elected to represent,” Malauulu said. “Hopefully, the voters of west Long Beach will choose me to represent them on the board, and, in so doing, I will commit to serving them to the best of my ability— not only as a trustee, but also as a partner, as their neighbor, as their representative on the board, from the bottom of my heart, completely, head and heart, in service.”
Irma Archuleta, the incumbent LBCC trustee for Area 2 who was appointed after Roberto Urange left the seat to become 7th District Long Beach councilmember, chose the trait of vision.
[aesop_image imgwidth=”500px” img=”http://www.signaltribunenewspaper.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Screen-Shot-2016-03-04-at-11.56.26-AM.png” align=”right” lightbox=”on” caption=”Candidates for Long Beach City College Board of Trustees Districts 2 and 4 participate in the March 2 citywide forum sponsored by the community-improvement organization Leadership Long Beach. Pictured from left are Vivian Malauulu, Irma Archuleta, Davina Keiser and Doug Otto.” captionposition=”right”] “I think, as a trustee, as well as an educator, we have to keep in mind the future of our youth,” Archuleta said. “We have to be able to focus and plan, not for the present, but plan for the future. It is critical that we invest in our young people.”
The next question was, “What role can Long Beach Community College play in providing or supporting A-through-G requirements for high school students?”
Archuleta said the college plays a vital role in working in collaboration with LBUSD in that those students not eligible right out of high school to go directly to a university are eligible to attend LBCC.
“Students who are taking their A-through-G courses who complete their courses by the time they get to their senior year are eligible to go directly into the university,” Archuleta said. “The students, however, who, for whatever reasons— and there are various reasons why students sometimes don’t complete the A-through-G requirements— then have the option to go to community college. So, Long Beach City College plays a vital role in ensuring these individuals have the opportunity to go to college as well [and] have an opportunity to complete their education and then transfer to a university.”
Malauulu began her response to that question by clarifying what A-through-G courses are.
“They are set forth by the UC and CSU systems, and a lot of other universities have adopted them so that incoming students meet a certain number of requirements: four years of math, four years of English, two years of foreign language,” she said.
“That question is particularly relevant to my household. I have a current 10th-grader, I have a current 8th-grader, and we talk about A-through-G requirements quite a bit. As a professor at Long Beach City College, I work with students every day who are somewhere on their journey to meeting those requirements, and it’s very important to understand that the community-college population is very unique. They’re not all straight out of high school. Some of these students are adults transitioning [into] different programs, and some of them are also returning veterans who would like to pursue a four-year degree but haven’t met their A-through-G requirements. So, Long Beach City College is definitely a place that needs to address the needs of every student, regardless of where they are in their educational journey.”
LBCC Trustees Area 4
Long Beach City College Board of Trustees Area 4 candidates were also asked to select one of Leadership Long Beach’s listed traits and tell why it’s important.
Doug Otto, the incumbent trustee for Area 4, picked accountability.
“In the end, I think it’s important for elected officials to be accountable to the people that elect them,” Otto said. “At Long Beach City College, we take that very, very seriously. Since I’ve been on the board at Long Beach City College, we’ve adopted public goals, we give reports on how we’re doing on those goals, [and] we’ve initiated programs like the Long Beach College Promise, Promise Pathways and other programs that we expect to be held accountable for, and how it is that they’re doing.”
Davina Keiser, a high-school math teacher, chose the trait of teamwork.
“As educators, as board members, as community members, we all have to work together to make the best educational experience for our community, for all students, and there is no ‘I’ in teamwork,” Keiser said. “So, it’s not about me. It’s about Long Beach. It’s about having a community college that serves everyone in the city, not just in Long Beach, but Signal Hill, Catalina and surrounding areas, because we do get others as well.”
Glaza also posed the question, “What is your perspective on career and technical education versus transfer education?”
“I think that both have a place,” Keiser said. “It is important to be able to use Long Beach City College to save some money, for students that need to do so, in order to satisfy their general-education requirements to transfer to a four-year. But I also believe that it’s equally important to provide pathways of certification for those that aren’t going to go to a four-year institution and that are going to need to get the skills so that they can get a job that they can support themselves with, not a minimum-wage job that was never meant to support a family.”
Otto said career-technical education is very important and that it is taken seriously at LBCC.
“We have 38 career and technical education programs, and we’re adding new programs all the time,” he said. “In fact, we got a $2.75-million Trade Adjustment Act for community college training just this last year, and we’ve started programs in alternative fuels and cyber security, and we’ve worked really hard with industry to say, ‘What do you need in the future?’ We’ve gone to the ports and said, ‘I know that we’ve got to teach welding and sheet metal, and things like that, but there are things that come together, and how would you like to see us do that?’ I think that the best thing is to work with industries out there.”
The Signal Tribune will publish the second part of this story in the March 11 issue.
