On the Record: Community College Board Candidates

Speaking in a rapid-fire cadence, incumbent Dave Mandelkern details the pounding community colleges have taken over the past three years -- and the gymnastics required to minimize the impact on students.

“We’ve lost $25 million over the last three years,” he said. “We will lose many more million over the next few.”

At no time has experience played a more critical role in steering the San Mateo County Community College District, said Mandelkern, 52, a seven-year board veteran. The district encompasses three campuses: Skyline College, Canada College, and College of San Mateo.

In recent weeks, the board has excised classes and programs, carefully paring around classes required for transfer. A decision to shut down the horticulture program drew criticism – and a lawsuit.

“There are people whose passions are in these programs,” he said. “The latest example is the horticulture program. Last year, it was Mandarin,” inarguably a vital language skill for the global marketplace. “There are no easy choices.”

He also voted to sell College of San Mateo TV station KCSM, which consumed $800,000 a year. A two-year trial at breaking even failed.

“That amount of money could pay for 130-140 classes,” he said. “I find it hard to justify. We have students standing in line waiting to get into classes.”

Once the glory of California’s prized public education system, community colleges today are turning away hundreds of thousands of students. Just as layoffs drove workers back to school to acquire skills for a new job market, state budget cuts forced campuses to slice course offerings.

“It is incredibly short-sighted of the state,” Mandelkern said. “The way out of a recession and into recovery is job creation. Investment in education brought us Silicon Valley, biotech, film -- in Southern California, the aerospace industry.”

Those who govern community colleges today say they must reconcile exploding demands with vaporizing resources. As enrollment has swelled, the schools’ budget has shrunk statewide by $800 million over the past three years. 

The state’s 112 campuses have turned away 670,000 students for lack of space after cutting course sections by 5 percent.

Yet Mandelkern says he loves his work on the board, which requires deft lobbying and fundraising skills, acquired and honed over time.

U.S. Reps. Jackie Speier and Anna Eshoo have been working to retrieve the district’s $25 million investment that vanished with the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy in 2008.

“Not having those relationships is a real drawback,” he said.

Likewise, an established relationship enabled the board to tell lawmakers they “just didn’t get it” when they proposed hiking student fees in mid-semester. The proposal disappeared from the table.

“It’s frustrating,” he said. “If we had the resources, we could make every student successful. That comes at a very high cost. But every single student could become a contributor, and not a drag on society.”

Mandelkern grew up in Tallahassee and attended a public high school with a student body of 87, He headed west in 1977 to go to Stanford University and stayed.

An electrical engineer, his 25-year career as an entrepreneur has encompassed six Silicon Valley start-ups. He took his software company public with a billion-dollar market capitalization. In 2004, he founded the profitable QuickHealth, Inc., seven-day-a-week, affordable, drop-in primary care clinics for people without health insurance.

A volunteer since his student days, he is vice-chair of the California State Parks Foundation and board member of the Silicon Valley/Monterey Bay chapter of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

In his spare time – his own improbable words – he competes in such endurance events as an Ironman triathlon and the Boston Marathon to raise money for charitable causes.

He served on the Skyline President’s Council before joining the community college board, where he said he has enjoyed a productive relationship with his fellow trustees, overseeing a $100 million balanced budget and a capital improvement fund of more than $500 million.

“We haven’t done anything that warrants changing horses in midstream," he said.

“I love what I do. It’s incredibly valuable and also fairly complex. It has taken me time to learn that."