Two positions on the Gavilan College Board of Trustees are open for San Benito County residents and three candidates have stepped forward to fill the spots.
Current Trustee Tony Ruiz announced his intent not to run for reelection in July, leaving only one incumbent in the race, current Board President Kent Child. The other two candidates are high school educator Elizabeth Dirks and retired community college instructor Lois Locci.
Child, 72, worked at Gavilan College for 45 years first as an art instructor and later as the dean of Liberal Arts and Sciences before serving nine years on the board of trustees. His goals for the college are to maintain fiscal solvency; continue to expand the services provided in the Morgan Hill and San Benito County areas; and to get “the right mix of educational programming for the students” so they can earn certificates from career orientated programs – such as nursing, aviation and police academies – if they don’t plan to earn a Gavilan degree or transfer to a four-year university.
With Measure E funds – a $108 million general obligation facilities bond passed by voters in 2004 – Child wants to see the district move forward with establishing full campuses in Morgan Hill and San Benito County.
“The challenge there is there’s not enough money to do both simultaneously,” he said, noting that he wants to make progress on the projects without ignoring one site or the other. “The long range goal is to eventually have two campuses.”
The youngest challenger for the trustee positions is Dirks, 37, who is married to San Benito High School Assistant Principal Jeremy Dirks and works as a yearbook representative for Herff Jones, teaching the art of journalism to students at public high schools in the Morgan Hill, Gilroy and San Benito County areas.
“I kind of have a front-row seat to some of the different needs and challenges that are facing a good portion of the students that Gavilan can serve,” said Dirks, who teaches yearbook design at many of the public high schools that feed into Gavilan College.
A Gavilan alumna, Dirks taught English, journalism and yearbook classes at Gilroy High School for four years prior to taking her current job with Herff Jones. Dirks does not have a set agenda yet, she said. With Measure E funds, she wants to see the district work toward building a full campus in San Benito County. Dirks also wants to preserve learning opportunities at the community college for both first-time learners and those who are returning students.
The second challenger is Locci, 69, who retired from the field of education after spending 30 years teaching at De Anza College. Locci also worked as the director of University of California College Prep Online and the chair of the education department for the University of California Santa Cruz’s University Extension. She wants the district to expand and enrich online instruction opportunities, coach high school students more so they are ready for college classes and don’t need so many remedial courses, and to have more transparency with plans for satellite campuses built with Measure E funds.
“There have been challenges around that and I believe the community feels in the dark,” she said.
Locci notes that even if the current trustees did their due diligence by making the process transparent, that doesn’t change the public’s perception.
“I’d like to see the Fairview site sold and for us to purchase the Leatherback site, which was what the community wanted,” said Locci, who wants the site of the San Benito County campus to be in a more urban place where students could walk, bus or bike to class.
