Quality teachers should be primary priority

In a Community Commentary column Sept. 17, “Ethnic diversity a

no-show in OCC faculty,” Humberto Caspa expressed concern that while

there have been major increases of minority students at OCC, “in a

period of 15 years, only a handful of minority professors were

hired.”

That’s the least of OCC faculty problems.

First, over the past 15 years, OCC has hardly hired any faculty.

In fact, by not replacing retirees, they’ve allowed the full-time

faculty to diminish in an alarming fashion. For instance, in 1980,

the OCC music department was serving about 1,700 students with 13

full-time and about 10 part-time faculty. Today, with similar

enrollment figures, that department has just five full-time and about

seven part-time faculty. In four-semester programs, students in

semesters two, three and four are jammed into the same classroom to

satisfy enrollment minimums.

So, while the student pays for (and needs) three hours per week of

instruction, he or she receives only a single weekly hour. In the

15-week semester, that student, instead of 45 hours of instruction,

only gets 15 (actually, with midterm and final exam, it’s only about

13 hours).

Second, and equally important, is the need for top quality in the

faculty. During the same period, equal-opportunity hiring standards

and practices often took precedence over academic qualities in hiring

committees -- because the committees almost always acquiesced to the

administrator in charge of equal-opportunity hiring. The most

qualified teachers were sometimes not even interviewed because of

those practices.

Caspa should be concerned about sending his kids to a school that,

facing hard times, increased its administrative staff while cutting

more than 1,000 classes and letting more than 400 teachers go. Those

are some genuine concerns -- that your tax dollars are paying for

teachers and classes rather than for excessive administrative

bureaucracy, and that the school is hiring the most qualified

teachers to educate our kids -- regardless of race, gender or

ethnicity.

ALAN REMINGTON

Costa Mesa