CMC President's Board of Trustees recap and news for January 2026

Hi folks, Darren Otten, Superintendent/President at Copper Mountain College. This is your follow up report from last week’s board meeting of Thursday, January 8, 2026.

Coming out of closed session, the board did announce that they had settled a pending litigation item associated with a former employee, and that particular item is being managed by our insurance company. The board did publicly acknowledge that there’s a $10,000 deductible that the district must absorb, but that is the only financial exposure to the district in this particular case.

So moving into regular session, there were all the standing reports and those sort of things. But I did want to highlight kind of two items that came out of my particular report. First and foremost, last week, Friday, the day after the board meeting, Governor Newsom released his January budget proposal. This is always an exciting time of year for policy and budget wonks in Sacramento as they start to get ready for the next budget season.

Overall, I will say that the proposed budget is actually very positive for California community colleges. But I’m also going to acknowledge a little bit of a grain of salt associated with this. Part of it is, is that the budget was developed very much with incomplete data, as it always is. In January this year was a little additionally challenging, primarily because of some delayed tax receipts associated with the Los Angeles County fires about a year ago.

Now, an additional kind of unsettled economic indicators associated with everything from AI to certain sectors of the economy really going hot, while other sectors of the economy struggling a little bit. And so ultimately, the good news is, right now, the governor’s budget’s relatively positive. The devil’s in the details. There’s a lot of work to flesh out between now and the May revise, and I will tell you that that effort is already going forward to try to educate, understand and try to influence the trailer bill language to ensure that community colleges and ultimately Copper Mountain College benefit from the governor’s proposed budget.

Additionally, I want to share that on January 22, Chancellor Sonya Christian, along with members of her cabinet, including Chris Ferguson, who is the Vice Chancellor for Budget and Finance, as well as some of the Board of Governors members are all going to be visiting Copper Mountain College. Now, this particular visit is really just part of their barnstorming tour around the state, looking at primarily rural colleges, as we have been trying to make sure that the Board of Governors and folks in Sacramento understand the challenges and opportunities that come with being in a rural community and specifically being a rural California community college.

This is an exciting opportunity for us, and I’m looking forward to sharing some of the Copper Mountain College story with Chancellor Christian, because I think that, again, everybody who’s here knows how proud we are of this institution. But I think one of the things that’s always important to remember is we are truly unique on the students that we serve, the communities we serve, and just the history of how we got here. So I’m excited to do that with Chancellor Christian and her team.

A couple of other things. The board did their annual mission statement review and has concluded at this time they are not interested in reviewing it while we’re still going through the accreditation process. But they have indicated that they want to revisit our mission statement probably in July, and I suspect that’ll be in pair with kind of the annual goal setting discussions that they have every July. And it’ll be interesting to see exactly what that looks like. But what I would just suggest is that it would kick off a constituent informed review process of our goals and ultimately our mission statement, really starting when everybody gets back in August of 2026. And so I just want to give kind of a precursor heads up that I do expect that that will come through from the board of trustees this summer. And, you know, I don’t necessarily know that means everything is going to change or anything’s going to change, but it does give us an opportunity for a timeline to make sure that we are meeting the board’s expectations around that in relation to accreditation.

At the February board meeting, Doctor Reese and ultimately LeeAnne Christensen will be providing some training and some updates for the board in preparation of the February accreditation visit. And I’m excited as we kind of wrap up this process just from the standpoint of kind of where things happen from here.

The visiting team comes in late February. They will make a recommendation on our accreditation status to ACCJC at their June meeting, at which point the ACCJC board will take action on Copper Mountain College’s accreditation. We’re not expecting anything that is concerning at this particular point. I think the devil in the details will just be how long, what level of follow up report, etc. will they expect? And so, some of those things are pretty exciting as we move forward.

And then finally, just a couple of last-minute things. The board did support a slate of candidates associated with the San Bernardino County School Boards Association. This is an association that represents all K-12 and community colleges in the San Bernardino County. And all the members of the district boards were actually running unopposed, and our board chose to support that slate. So that was really the last action that took place.

As we kind of prepare for February and the rest of the term, I look forward to seeing all of you at All Staff Day here later this month.