Photo: Sustainable Peralta
Peralta Colleges Chancellor Elihu Harris will leave the community college district after his contract expires this June.
Trustees opted not to renew Harris’ contract at Tuesday night's Board meeting and announced the search for a new chancellor. Abel Guillen, the Board’s new president, declined to discuss the decision further.
The decision follows a series of damaging reports by the Bay Area News Group (BANG) last summer that led to increased scrutiny of Harris -- and the Peralta Board. The Oakland Tribune later ran a front page article calling for Harris to be fired, but has not criticized the Board since.
The Board was scheduled to approve its annual budget Tuesday, but pulled the item from the agenda prior to the meeting. At the Peralta Board's December 17 meeting – when the approval of the budget was postponed due to inaccuracies and public complaints – students demanded Trustees wait until the January 26 meeting to vote on the budget. Students' rationale was that the spring semester begins January 21, and approving the budget while students and staff were on winter break would not be transparent.
In addition to all managers being placed on one-year contracts at Tuesday's Peralta Board meeting, Vice-Chancellor of Finance Tom Smith was placed on administrative leave and escorted off the Peralta premises by Peralta Police Services (Alameda County Sheriff’s Deputies).
Harris is a former Mayor of Oakland, a state assembly member, and has been the Chancellor of the four-campus Peralta Colleges since 2003.Read the complete report by The Black Hour Radio Show.
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