The heat is being turned up on the State Center Community College District Board of Trustees, who are feeling pressure to dismiss Chancellor Carole Goldsmith immediately because of last month’s no-confidence vote by 250 faculty members.

However, trustees faced pressure from the other side Tuesday evening at a hastily scheduled special meeting that included agenda item 3.03, “Public Employee Performance Evaluation — Chancellor; Discussion of Chancellor Goals Until Retirement.”

Prior to their two-hour closed session, the trustees heard from a cavalcade of local community leaders representing West Fresno, the Maddy Institute, local nonprofits, the business community, and the Hispanic, Black, the LGBTQ+ communities, all in unanimous agreement that the trustees need to gird their loins and reject suggestions that Goldsmith needs to go sooner rather than later.

Goldsmith, who became State Center chancellor in 2022 after serving as president of Fresno City College, announced last month that she planned to retire in September 2026. Her announcement at a news conference came on the same day as the faculty’s no-confidence vote.

Goldsmith Pushed for West Fresno’s Long-Awaited College

Debbie Darden, chair for the Golden Westside Planning Committee, was among several community representatives who told the trustees Tuesday evening that the new West Fresno campus would not have been built except for Goldsmith’s advocacy and support.

“We believe if it had not been for her leadership, the fight to bring a junior college to West Fresno would still be just another conversation,” Darden said.

Carolyn Drake, the former dean of Health Sciences at Fresno City College, noted that Goldsmith’s support helped the college develop the largest nursing program west of the Mississippi.

To get there, the college had to overcome critics, develop pathways for the LN to RN program, and strengthen partnerships with hospitals, Drake said.

“This is the kind of leadership that rarely comes without resistance. Anyone who has ever sat in administration knows when you make decisions for the future, you carry the weight of every disagreement today. That pressure is not failure. It is the cost of moving an institution forward,” she said.

Trustees Feeling Pressure from Unions?

Nonprofit advocate Stetler Brown voiced what others left unsaid — that trustees are under pressure by the faculty union as well as other unions to dump Goldsmith ASAP.

“Some of you are on the election run right now, some of you are gonna run for re-election in a couple years, and unions are part of the support that people think about when trying to run a campaign,” he said. “I hope that any decision here does not come down to what that future may look like for some of you. I hope it comes out to how do we best serve the district and the students, the faculty, and the staff.”

While some of the trustees are seeking re-election to the SCCCD board in 2026 (Magdalena Gomez and board secretary, Destiny Rodriguez,) others are seeking other elected posts: Board President Danielle Parra has declared her candidacy for Fresno City Council District 5 (after initially saying she was running for Fresno County Board of Supervisors), and Board Vice President Robert Fuentes is seeking election to Fresno City Council District 1, although he hasn’t yet submitted a campaign intention statement that’s posted online.

Not all the speakers were in Goldsmith’s corner. Keith Ford, president of the State Center Faculty Association, used his allotted speaking time to read a portion of the union’s no-confidence resolution, and then handed it over to Karla Kirk, head of the Faculty Senate, to complete.

In that resolution the union cited the district’s mounting legal costs, an allegation of nepotism involving Goldsmith and a woman she has identified as her “goddaughter” who was awarded a district contract, and what the faculty calls a culture of fear and retaliation under Goldsmith, as among the reasons why she should be dismissed.

Deja Vu for Former Faculty Member

Former State Center faculty member Erin Heasley said she was unimpressed by the number of community members who turned out to support Goldsmith at Tuesday’s meeting.

According to the anonymous blog SCCCD Insiders, Heasley was denied tenure after serving on the Madera Community College Academic Senate Executive Committee “despite stellar evaluations and glowing performance reviews throughout her tenure-track cycle.”

The executive committee had issued no-confidence votes against Madera President Angel Reyna and Dean Justin Garcia. Heasley reportedly was the only non-tenured committee member.

Heasley urged trustees not to be swayed by Goldsmith’s supporters but instead to listen to the faculty.

“I wish I could say that I had never seen this happen before, but each time there has been a no-confidence vote in this district, the subsequent board meeting goes like this: Dignitaries, government officials, business people, and even friends come forward to share startlingly similar talking points regarding the administrator in question, almost as if they had been asked and invited to do so,” she said.

“I hope that this meeting was not called merely as an opportunity to have people come forward to invalidate the union and faculty voices. I hope that the board will take these numerous NOCOs (no confidence votes) seriously. I hope that this is the time that the board will show up for their faculty and their community and their students. … The students and the faculty of State Center Community College deserve better. The students and faculty deserve new leadership, and they deserve it now, not in September.”

At least for now, however, the trustees haven’t taken any action to shorten Goldsmith’s tenure. After the closed session, the board returned with the announcement that no “reportable” action had been taken during the closed session.