Attention Austin playwrights: If your latest opus requires a Greek chorus, consider the five candidates for three open spots on the Austin Community College board of trustees. In the drama “How I Would Lead ACC to Greatness if Given the Chance,” all five would-be trustees highlight the same priorities, at times in creepily near-verbatim terminology. Still, the monotony does reflect a welcome stability after a tumultuous few years of accreditation scandals, abrupt turnover in the president’s seat, and butterfingered facilities management. With the president’s chair filled and ACC finally satisfying its accrediting body, which put the college on probation because of concerns about faculty credentials and board of trustees misbehavior, ACC can now focus on growth and maturity, rather than bailing leaks and putting out fires. “I think we have a very stable leadership under [ACC President Steve] Kinslow, and in general we feel we’re moving forward on all of our goals,” said Linda Welsh, president-elect of the faculty senate. “It makes it easier when you don’t have all the drama.”
ACC still simmers in a pot of declining state funding and a pressure to churn more students through the community college gullet as a means to ensure the economic vitality of Central Texas. In the last five years, ACC’s student body has grown 18%, with the numbers of black and Hispanic students up more than 30% each. Many of these students come from parts of ACC’s eight-county service district that do not pay ACC property taxes, and tuition and fees for these out-of-district students are more than double what an in-district student pays – $348 for a three-credit course, rather than $159 – but ACC still subsidizes these students at about $50 per credit hour. A constant refrain from the ACC chorus, then, is the need to “educate” (not advocate, which is illegal) communities outside of Austin, Leander, Manor, and Del Valle (the four ACC tax-paying districts) about the benefits of anteing up for ACC. The new buzzword to describe this effort is that ACC should be a “regional college.”
ACC could take a strong step in that direction if on May 13 San Marcos voters decide to join the district. A successful annexation vote would bring money to ACC, but also more students, which means ACC must find a place to put them in already overcrowded facilities. If San Marcos joins ACC, a local donor will provide space for a campus, but ACC will still have to build a building, which would increase pressure to call a bond election, the first since 2003. Even as ACC is working to attract new students, it must also hang onto the ones it already has – completion rates for community college students are notoriously low.
If nothing else, that means that whichever candidates survive the battle of May 13 will inevitably face a new series of challenges, dramatic and pragmatic, if the college is to keep proceeding in its evolution from beleaguered local community college to embattled regional educational institution.
This article appears in March 31 • 2006.