Peralta loses fourth chancellor since ’19
For the fourth time in two years, the East Bay’s troubled Peralta Community College District will lose its chancellor next month, after just eight months on the job.
Carla Stalling Walter took over the fourcollege district of 50,000 students in July, “during one of the most difficult periods in the nation’s and the district’s history,” the Peralta trustees announced Wednesday in a statement.
“I am honored to have served the students, faculty, and staff of PCCD, and the people of Alameda County,” Walter told the trustees in announcing her resignation. Walter said she was leaving for personal reasons.
The district oversees Berkeley City College, the College of Alameda, and Laney College and Merritt College in Oakland.
Walter — who had been Peralta’s vice chancellor of finance — was asked to run the district in July after the previous chancellor, Regina Stanback Stroud, announced her departure in an angry dispute with the trustees. She accused the trustees of undermining her efforts to do her job, “collusion with the unions” and “interference with fair and effective hiring practices.”
In January 2020, the district was placed on probation by accreditors, who said the colleges and district had failed to address severe fiscal and management problems — including a structural deficit, poor financial controls and growing pension obligations.
That serious sanction from the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges came just months after a state fiscal review found in July 2019 that Peralta was at high risk of insolvency after years of mismanagement that had administrators regularly breaking their own rules.
Earlier in 2019, Chancellor Jowel Laguerre resigned under pressure. He had led Peralta since 2015. He was succeeded by interim Chancellor Frances White, who left in September 2019.
Walter’s resignation is effective April 15.
The district remains on probation, but accredited. The accrediting commission will determine in June whether any change is warranted.
The trustees said they will appoint an interim chancellor — the Peralta district’s fifth leader in two years — before a new, permanent chancellor is chosen in June.