As previously promised, the Austin Community College president, Dr. Richard Fonté, will be stepping down next year, but he’ll be doing it almost a year earlier than expected. Fonté announced at Monday’s ACC board of trustees meeting that he will resign effective Jan. 5 to accept a White House appointment as the national director of the We the People initiative of the National Endowment for the Humanities in Washington, D.C., a project “aimed at helping both school-age and adult Americans gain a better understanding of American History,” according to an ACC press release.
Fonté announced last year that he would be stepping down when his contract expired in December 2004 and last month asked the ACC board to consider buying out his contract so it could move forward to replace him. Board Chairman Rafael Quintanilla said the board will appoint an interim president later this month. The board began a nationwide search for Fonté’s replacement during the summer.
In other ACC news on Tuesday, the board chose to leave open the seat vacated by Beverly Watts Davis in September. They interviewed seven candidates for the position (10 applied), but none got the five-vote majority needed to win the appointment. The candidates were urged to run for the three board seats up for re-election in May 2004. And residents in Del Valle ISD have successfully petitioned for an election (probably also in May) to join ACC, a move supported by the board of trustees. “For years now, we as trustees have been concerned that Del Valle residents are paying higher out-of-district fees even though they live just minutes from the College’s Riverside Campus,” said ACC trustee John Hernandez in a press release. In a campaign organized by the Rev. John Korscmar of Dolores Catholic Church in Montopolis, 5% of Del Valle ISD residents signed the petition calling for an ACC vote.
This article appears in November 21 • 2003.