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Peralta Trustee Mailing Stirs Political Tensions By J. DOUGLAS ALLEN-TAYLOR

Tuesday November 01, 2005

Peralta Community College District Trustee Marcie Hodge stepped up two campaigns last week—one against Peralta’s Office of International and Global Education, the other for the 6th District Oakland City Council seat currently held by Desley Brooks. 

Hodg e sent out a mass mailing of a four-page political campaign-looking “This has got to stop!” brochure last week announcing that “Waste and frivolous spending in the Peralta Community College District has gone on for too long. Help me clean house.” 

The cha rges were aimed at the district’s international student recruitment office that came under intense scrutiny several years ago under the administration of former Chancellor Ronald Temple. At that time, the Alameda County Civil Grand Jury conducted an inves tigation into charges that Temple and several trustees made numerous unnecessary trips abroad under the office’s budget. As a result of that controversy, international travel by Peralta trustees was curtailed. 

Hodge’s brochure was sent to residents in he r Area 2 trustee district as well as to residents of the Oakland City Council 6th District who do not live in Hodge’s trustee district. While both districts are in East Oakland, Hodge’s trustee district is further towards the San Leandro border than the 6th District, and there is only a small area near Seminary Avenue where the two districts overlap. 

Money for the brochures was reportedly provided by a $1,000 a head fund-raiser sponsored for Hodge by Oakland City Council President Ignacio De La Fuente. 

Responding to the same charges listed in the brochure made by Hodge at a trustee meeting last September, fellow Peralta trustee Linda Handy said, “I recognize that Trustee Hodge is campaigning for office, and unfortunately it’s going to be on the backs of our employees.” 

Hodge and her brother, former Oakland School Board member Jason Hodge, could not be reached for comment for this article. Jason Hodge’s residence telephone number is listed as the contact number on the “This has got to stop!” brochures. 

The brochures include a letter from Hodge addressed to “dear neighbors,” which charges that staff from Peralta’s International and Global Education department “spends lavishly, traveling the world while tuition for students rises. ... Help me demand an e nd to this shameful waste.” 

The brochure reproduces several receipts from international locations made out by International Studies Director Jacob Ng and charged to the Peralta Community College District. All of the receipts reproduced appear to have 200 3 dates. 

The brochure also includes a petition supporting Hodge’s campaign to establish “strict controls on all travel and related spending” for the department, which Hodge asks residents to sign and mail to Peralta Chancellor Elihu Harris.  

Part of the job of Peralta’s international office is to recruit students to the district from other countries. International students pay a higher tuition to the district than students who live in Peralta’s service area, and the money obtained from international stu dents goes directly to the district. In-district student tuition is funneled through the state, which withholds some of the amount before sending it to Peralta. 

Responding to Hodge’s charges, Peralta Public Information Officer Jeff Heyman said that “we f eel that these are events that happened in the past. They were looked into, and worked on. We’ve done our duty. The issue isn’t relevant any longer.” 

And Peralta Federation of Teachers President Michael Mills said that “we think that the travel element o f this office has been thoroughly reviewed.” Mills said the PFT is working with the district on a “review of the content of the program to determine how we can maximize its potential.” 

The information contained in the Hodge brochure are a reprisal of charges the first-term trustee originally made at a September 13 Peralta Trustee meeting, which ended in a virtual shouting match between Hodge and Trustee President William Riley when he tried to limit her remarks. Trustees later rejected Hodge’s motion to eliminate the International and Global Education Department outright. 

Hodge’s sister Nichole, an Oakland attorney, told trustees that she had made a written request to Chancellor Harris last spring “asking for records of foreign students who actually came to the Peralta Colleges as a direct result of the recruiting efforts” by the International and Global Education Department. Nichole Hodge said she received a letter from the district in June stating that “Peralta does not have such records.” 

Hodge had requested that Ng attend that Sept. 13 meeting to answer her concerns about the department, and was visibly angered when Ng did not show up. Instead, Ng’s report was given by his supervisor—Peralta Vice Chancellor Margaret Haig—who had only been on the jo b four days before the meeting. 

Hodge said that she had directed her sister to send the letter to Harris concerning what she called “this so-called office,” and charged that Ng “has racked up thousands of dollars traveling around the world and nobody can tell me how many students have been recruited. How can we justify cutting classes and salaries and then send this man around the world?” 

And after Riley cautioned Hodge about making personal attacks against an employee, Hodge said that she would ask Ng himself the questions, but he was not at the meeting as she had requested. 

“Is there some kind of coverup or something illegal going on?” she asked. 

In her report to the Sept. 13 meeting, Vice Chancellor Haig said that it was her intention to “conduct a review of the international education office, including the finances and the mission of the office,” but that she hadn’t been on the job long enough to be able to answer questions. 

Trustees Cy Gulassa and Bill Withrow both agreed with Hodge’s concerns a bout the International and Global Education Department, but specifically rejected her call to abolish it. 

Criticizing a report sent in by Ng through Vice Chancellor Haig as “unacceptable to someone who’s trying to understand what’s going on in this progr am,” Gulassa said “we need to learn the plain facts. If you’ve gone to Bangkok, let us know how many students later came to Peralta from Bangkok. And if you can’t answer that, maybe you shouldn’t be going to Bangkok.” 

Gulassa added that “I’m not advocati ng any closure of this office. We just want an accurate accounting.” 

Withrow, one of the trustees who has demanded increased fiscal accountability from the district in other areas, said that “while there is concern about this program in the community; it’s been shrouded in secrecy and there has been a lack of data.” He noted that the international office was bringing in a net of $2.2 million to the district while operating on a $470,000 budget. 

“Whether or not the program money is being spent efficientl y, if we do away with this program, we are going to have to identify $2.2 million in the budget that we will have to cut,” he said. “This is not a game. We need to take a look at this program, but we need to approach it from a focused, business standpoint.” 

Hodge has said she will not think about any plans to run for the City Council against first-term Councilmember Brooks, but De La Fuente said that he was approached earlier this year by Hodge and her brother, asking for De La Fuente’s support in a run for the 6th District Council seat. 

Last month, the Oakland Tribune reported that De La Fuente sponsored a fund-raiser for Hodge in Oakland’s Fruitvale District, with the newspaper indicating that Hodge would use the proceeds “to send newsletters to her constituents to keep them updated on issues she’s facing as a trustee.” 

“In fact,” the Tribune article concluded, “Hodge said her first letter would continue to demand answers to questions about the way Peralta’s international student program is operated.”›