Federal Panel Approves Draft Report on Community-College Academic Measures

I agree 100% with R.O.P. I taught 11 years at a community college where I won many teaching awards and earned 10 years of satisfactory teaching evaluations while earning tenure after 5 years. Then I was fired because I stood up for students who were having 1/3 rd of their hours of a course cancelled because a professor was too lazy to teach them; this professor consistently lost their graded papers and never returned them to justify their final course grades: He forced students into taking incompletes as final grades because he lost the papers over and over which violates college policy of obtaining an incomplete (need medical or mental excuse from doctor) And the administration refused to sanction this non-tenured professor or grant the students a remedy. The students filed proper academic grievances all the way up the chain of command (dean, vp, president, bot members) with proof of missing 18 hours of a 45 hour course and so on ….NO ONE held the professor accountable for his incompetent teaching methods.The students’ grievances were dismissed as if they had to just accept this below par learning environment.  Instead, the administration got mad at me and attempted to build a case against me (I am the younger female only tenured professor in the dept) claiming that I encouraged the students to file the complaints, thus, damaging the reputation of the department. Did I mention I was an eyewitness to this professor sitting in his faculty office playing solitaire on his computer when he was suppose to be in class lecturing the students. Then they fired me…now we are in a nasty legal battle where tenure is under attack and this community college has spent over $325,000 in legal bills defending this illegal termination. NO ONE has held this Board of Trustees accountable for spending this amount of money fighting a case that is still a year or two away from even going  to trial. The President of the College cut a deal with the board and is long gone into retirement. This College could spend close to a half a million dollars in legal fees before it can really try to defend a tenure firing where adequate cause was not proven. Did I mention, I am an attorney and I am going all the way and I will win this —no thanks to the news media who refuse to order the legal bills under the freedom of information act  and cover this story and expose these college trustees for their overspending. No one cares because this is not a big name University only a low level public community college wasting taxpayer monies on legal fees instead of using this extra money for scholarships. Do you know how many scholarships could be given out for $325,000.  America needs to know that some colleges are corrupt, and some don’t care about the quality of education of the students.  Because the financial audits are not really open to the public thus making the trustees accountable these colleges will just continue to go unchecked.   In fact, this college has allowed the he local newspaper to quote a trustee as saying the college’s finances are in superior shape. Yet, they just spent over $325,000 in legal fees. By the way, the college offered me peanuts to settle the case after I spent thousands of dollars in legal fees and their lawyer has already made $325,000 on this one case. So I should just take less than the lawyers on the case. Yeah, right…good thing I am an insider in the legal profession. However, a community in my state just got exposed in an article in the news media (they got coverage because they are located in the legislative district) where the president is retiring in August 2012 and was making $140,000 annually but cut a retirement deal that would have paid her $703,000 for three years of consulting post retirement. So let me get this straight we are going to spend taxpayer dollars to pay a retired President more than $100,00 a year than what she was making while fully employed as President to consult with the new President 20 hours per week. Hopefully, that deal will get canned. When is this going to stop?