Community college faculty blast proposal about tenure
Dozens of faculty members from across Florida gathered at Seminole State College on Thursday to oppose a state plan that would make it harder for community-college professors to earn and keep their tenure.
For more than two hours, faculty and representatives from the Association of Florida Colleges took turns pointing out what they saw as problems with the proposal, on which the State Board of Education will vote in early 2013.
Many stressed that changes are not needed because colleges already have strong procedures to determine which professors earn and maintain tenure.
State officials, seeking more accountability for public educators, want professors to wait an extra two years to request tenure and to meet performance measurements of such things as student success and employer feedback. Tenured professors could be reviewed every three years.
“This rule seeks to disrupt a high-performing college system,” said EdMitchell, executive director of the statewide faculty union. “This rule change seeks to fix a problem that does not exist.”
Some professors argued the plan would scare off talented faculty when community colleges are building bachelor’s degree programs. Someraised concern about evaluations based on student success, considering that many factors affect how well students perform in classes and what jobs they get after graduating.
A federal trial is under way in Orlando for a local car- dealership owner suspected of being an associate of the Gulf Cartel and helping that criminal enterprise establish a marijuana- distribution hub in Central Florida.
Joel Torres, owner of JM2 Auto Sales in Apopka, is accused of laundering marijuana sales proceeds for the Gulf Cartel and sending vehicles back to members of the group in Texas.
The Gulf Cartel is one of the seven main Mexican criminal organizations that traffic drugs in the United States.
Federal authorities say that for the past three years, associates of the Gulf Cartel trucked in thousands of pounds of marijuana to Apopka and other Orlando-area communities, bringing in millions of dollars.
Marijuana was shipped in bulk from McAllen, Texas, to Panama City and then picked up and taken to the Orlando or Jacksonville areas for distribution.
The group stored its drugs in open areas such as garden nurseries; buried millions of dollars on properties in Central Florida; and hid assault rifles and ballistic vests in Apopka.
Several members of t he Central Florida group have been arrested on federal charges this year.
Some of them already have been sentenced to prison.
Torres and JM2 employee Eladio Marroquin- Medina were named in a separate indictment charging the duo with multiple crimes, including money laundering.
Marroquin- Medina has pleaded guilty, admitting that Torres came up with the plan to send vehicles to members of the Gulf Cartel.
Marroquin- Medina said he was aware that if the Gulf Cartel members in Texas didn’t like the vehicles the Central Florida men purchased for them, the cars would be shipped to Cartel associates in Mexico for “further drug-trafficking purposes.”
The government rested its case Wednesday, and on Thursday, the defense began presenting its case.