March 18, 2025

Attendance, Voting Members:

Sam Bliss, Sushini Chand, Nazy Galoyan, Lydia Hearn, Michelle Hernandez, Adrienne Hypolite, Simon Kang’a,  Kyle Krawez, Eric Mendoza, Mallory Newell, Elvin Ramos, Aditya Sharma, Tim Shively, Martin Varela, Erik Woodbury, Christina Wright

Absent: Mahder Aklilu, Alicia De Toro, Garrett King, Alan Ma,Andre Meggerson, Rob Mieso, Matsuko Estrada Nakamatsu

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Welcome 

Agenda 

Mallory Newell: The committee will review feedback from the annual program review updates that was referred back to the full committee

Collect feedback on the Annual Program Review Update process to improve it for the next round. Next year the committee will be doing another Annual Program Review Update similar to one they just finished. ​​In the following year RAPP will conduct the full Comprehensive
Program Review similar to the one last year.

Lydia Hearn will provide an update on the resource request process. The resource requests were due last Friday

Lydia will conclude the meeting with an update on administrative and classified positions.

Minutes

Approval of Minutes (March 11; March 4; February 25; February 18; February 11; February 4)

The committee has been going directly to small group work for the last 6 weeks. They have not reviewed and approved these minutes. 

Tim Shively requested deferring the approval until the next meeting. This will give committee members time to review and approve all these minutes.

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Review programs to be referred back to full committee

The committee went over the Referrals to Full Committee document. 

Resubmission

Office of Equity. Their review was sent back with a deadline of April 14 to resubmit. They were still waiting for the resubmission.

VIDA. Their form was incomplete with everything missing after question #3. They will submit an updated update in the next month. The resubmissions will go back for small group review.

EPS, English Performance Success. Sent back for resubmission. Resubmitted on 3/18. It was distributed back to the small group.

EOPS. Referred back to the department.

Visual Arts & Design. Submitted their responses today, 3/18.

Honors. Sent back for resubmission.

Special Note. The Honors Coordinator is new, the Dean is new, the AVPI is new, the VPI is new. They will hold off having the new coordinator try to respond to the feedback on the annual program review for this year. The new team may complete the comprehensive program review next year. 

Depending on the RAPP timeline, the resubmissions and new submission  will either go back to the small group or to the full committee to review.

Recommendation to full RAPP for commendation.

Spanish. Very thorough, all questions were fully answered with rationale. Well written. Clear understanding of where they are going. 

Umoja

Auto Tech

They were just really well done, fully fleshed out. Clear understanding of the direction they are going. Very clear goals and the progress on their goals.

The small groups shared that they appreciated the process of reading, reviewing and understanding the direction for these programs.

Someone suggested including some of these commendations in future training.

College Operations

RAPP highlighted the resource needs that College Operations outlined in their program review. 

Summary of their needs and situation

The Custodial Supervisor position was not approved. The Manager of Operations oversaw 30 custodial and grounds crew with shifts 6 am through 12:30 am. (18.5 hours per day), with additional staff working weekends (7 days per week).

The Manager of Operations retired December 2024. The Director of College Operations now oversees the crew until the Manager position is filled.

Their request to restore 8 custodian positions was not approved, bringing their custodial quality APPA levels below Level 5, that is considered “Unkempt Neglect.”

They requested 13 new electric carts that are on order through the district.

Their funding request to the district for a tractor, exterior pressure washers, ride-on lawn mower and storage shed was not approved.

Their funding allocation for ongoing annual maintenance agreements for two sets of washers and dryers was not approved.

Funding for training for the use of equipment, safety protocols, etc. that is in addition to or not covered by district central service/risk management and hazardous materials was not approved.

Funding for replacing natural gas-powered equipment (such as grounds/landscape maintenance leaf blowers) with electric/battery powered equipment to align with district sustainability was not approved.

There were questions and discussion about funding for college operations.

RAPP makes recommendations for personnel, instructional and non-instructional positions. There is no separate allocation to fund administrative and classified positions. That comes from the general fund. There's not enough resources in the B budget to cover for all these maintenance expenses. RAPP has the lottery, instructional equipment, and the strong workforce funds. None of those cover the college operations needs. The unkempt neglect is an issue of concern on the functionality and safety of the campus.  

RAPP lifted up some other areas of concern.

An area like geography where the only full time faculty has retired and a replacement position was not approved. This will impact their program needs and program review.

Admission and Record has been heavily impacted, with a lot of Assembly bills and Senate bills, as well as fraudulent students. In their program review, they talked about all these external impacts and the need for more personnel to maintain the same service levels.

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Feedback on Annual Program Review process and discuss improvements

Mission Statement 

RAPP needs more training on mission statements in order to provide useful feedback and not create greater confusion.

Provide templates on writing the mission statement.

Some departments did a great job, while others seemed to just have filled the form without a lot of reflection. More training on how to fill the form better. Provide examples of well-written reviews. Restating the goals before providing updates on goals is also helpful. Make it clear that it is not a restatement of the mission but how the area is implementing their mission. 

More Trainings

Learning Outcomes: SLO, SSLO, AUO vs Program Learning Outcomes

Training on how best to write and review student learning outcomes. 

More training for RAPP members on how to peer review the submissions. Develop a more extensive rubric to review the submissions - in more detail than the feedback form. 

More training on goal setting for RAPP and submitters

Form Update

Add the name of the person(s) writing the form. Add the name of the dean/manager submitting it. 

Add a field to the RAPP review form for the dean's comments as an opportunity to review and provide feedback.

RAPP Attendance

The personnel prioritization process had almost full attendance. The program review process was missing roughly half of the committee. 

How to ensure optimize attendance to review the forms.

Making it clear to RAPP members that attendance is essential, as these are important to the overall planning process. Program needs should be aligned with decisions on position and resources requests.

Review Retreat - proposed to move to a retreat model, one or two day retreat,  to review the forms at the same time. 

Post Review Summary

Add 300 word summary of program review that gets reviewed by full RAPP committee at the end of the review cycle

Reiterating the importance of these responses may affect the mindset around this process. The different ways in which some program reviews were written indicates there is no clear agreement on why this process is important and necessary.

Reiterating the importance of these forms not only for accreditation purposes but also for program planning, programming improvement, setting goals towards the ultimate purpose of improving student learning outcomes.

Align program review with personnel request

Ensure that the personnel request form is aligned with the APR form so they can refer back to that as well. Add a question to the RAPP review form for positions to note if the position was requested. 

RAPP needs to ensure they are going back to the program review when additional requests are made. 

Make sure all areas are aware that they can submit additional details if needed.

Post Review Survey

Send a survey out to those that participated in the annual program review process. RAPP members and those who participated.

The tri-chairs will incorporate the feedback to improve the process.

The chairs thanked the committee members for all their work on the reviews.

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Proposed changes to Lottery allocations (Presentation)

Lydia Hearn: All the areas should have submitted their resource requests. The resource funding comes from lottery, instructional equipment, and strong workforce allocations. The instructional equipment allocation comes from the state. 

Instructional equipment. Lydia will be working with the deans and the managers to determine the budget once she gets the available amount. As a reminder, instructional equipment is not necessarily allocated every year.

Strong workforce has submitted a proposal that was approved by RAPP for recommendation to the college council.

Lottery materials funding. Lydia gave a Presentation to propose a new process to streamline the allocation process.

The presentation started with the origin and history of Lottery Funding. Proposition 37 (1984), the California State Lottery Act allocated a percentage of the lottery resources toward funding education. Proposition 20 (2000), the Cardenas Textbook Act directed more lottery resources to K-12 and community colleges. SB 820 and AB 2884 (2020) expanded uses for the lottery fund. (slide 1)

Lydia explained some challenges with the current process and the reasons for the proposed changes. (slide 2) The current process is time intensive, diverting staff and faculty from their core educational duties, expenses are frequently miscategorized, and has too many different accounts to track efficiently. Also, divisions and areas need a stable and predictable budget for planning purposes.

She went over the definition of lottery materials, the typical qualifying expenditures and the prohibited uses of the funds like construction and real property acquisition. (slides 3-4)

After reviewing the history and predicted trend for the De Anza allocation over the last decade (slide 5) Lydia shared the proposal for a new model for allocation (slide 6).

The proposed new model  (slide 7)

1. Base Annual Allocation: $1,000,000. Based on expected minimum State allocation from the last years. 
2. Contingency Fund-Any amount received from the State over base allocation goes to the VPI contingency fund to cover additional needs or shortfalls.
3. Regular Review. At the end of the two years, they will sweep any unspent amount. Each area will still get their allocated amount. They have never spent over their allocation.

They will revisit and evaluate the new process after two years of implementation.

Lydia presented a proposed allocation of the $1,000,000 based on a 3-year average division spending and discussions with division deans. (slide 8)

She went over the rationale for some of the increased amount. 

Academic Services gets a higher amount for campuswide software licenses. 

Enrollment Services had previous one-time allocation out of surplus money to supplement basic needs, especially for food, right after the pandemic.

Equity and Engagement, never had any allocation, was added to cover instructional materials like textbooks for their learning communities. 

IIS received an increased amount to address their expansion.

The rest of the divisions get close to their 3-year average.

Counseling/DSPS does offer some classes that fall under instruction. That qualifies some of their needs under the lottery funds.

The presentation concluded with an Implementation Guide (slide 9) on Training for employees to distinguish between types of funding, Online Resources that include a decision tree for less common expenses, and an Evaluation Process.

Lydia explained that this new model with predictable amounts will bring more budget stability. This is baseline, not maximum allocation. Should the division exceed their amount, there is still an opportunity to request more from the contingency fund. 

There is a concern over transparency like an annual report on how the lottery money was spent. Also, a way to identify patterns of any particular program was underfunded or overlooked.

This proposal will be back for approval. Representatives should bring back to the committee any questions, concerns and feedback.

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Update on administrative and classified position replacements (spreadsheet)

Lydia Hearn: RAPP makes decisions on faculty positions. There are administrative and classified positions that the senior leadership team just goes ahead to vet, approve, and refill. These administrative and classified professional positions were considered vital and will cause a problem to the operation in their areas if they must go through the annual approval cycle.

The spreadsheet shows all the positions that have been approved in the fall and winter quarters. This report was being shared for overall transparency in hiring across campus.

The positions are listed under Fund 14, Categorical, and Self Sustaining.

Fund 14 is the most unrestricted. Categorical has restricted parameters and can be automatically refilled once they are approved. Self Sustaining has to generate enough revenue to fund the positions.

Under Fund 14, a nursing faculty position was approved. The automatic approval and filling of vacant nursing positions was established under the previous IPBT with t the need for accreditation. RAPP also has the provision under emergency requests like what was done with the hiring of the articulation officer. 

After some questions and discussions, it was explained that vacant existing administrative and classified positions may be automatically rehired unless the position is eliminated for budgetary, reorganization, or operational reasons.

RAPP will have a recess over the break and will resume its meeting on April 15 when they will review the new lottery fund allocation model for approval.