Community College Chief Quits After 16 Months

After serving just 16 months of a four-year contract, Los Angeles Community College District Chancellor Bill Segura resigned Friday, leaving the struggling system he was hired to rescue with a void at the top.

In a letter faxed to members of the Board of Trustees, Segura said he has accepted a post heading the Texas State Technical College system. The statewide system of vocational and technical colleges is headquartered in Waco.

Segura, an East Los Angeles native and the first Latino to head the city’s nine-college system, flew to Texas late Friday to meet with his new employer and could not be reached for comment.

His executive assistant, Blair Sillers, said Segura’s departure is a blow to the community college district, the nation’s largest.

“We’re losing the best chancellor we’ve had in the 20 years I’ve been with the district,” Sillers said.

Board members generally viewed the move to Texas as a promotion for Segura, a resident of Marina del Rey. Trustee Gloria Romero said he is “destined to be a star nationally.”

“He’s one of the most innovative, creative and courageous persons to walk into a Los Angeles school system,” Romero said.

Romero said she understood the compensation package offered to Segura by the Texas system to be more lucrative than the $140,000 a year he earns in Los Angeles.

Yet despite their view that Segura’s new post is a step up for him, Romero and board member Kelly G. Candaele said they believe Segura’s decision also may have been colored by disappointment that his efforts to solve the district’s problems were not proceeding as quickly as he had hoped.

“I sensed there was some frustration there,” Candaele said.

Romero said California law governing community colleges puts more constraints on a chancellor than Texas law.

“From the CEO’s perspective, he has a lot more control in Texas,” she said.

Board member Elizabeth Garfield congratulated Segura on his new job but said, “The district will certainly be fine.”

Segura, 50, returned to his native California in 1996 from Austin, Texas, where he ran a seven-campus community college district.

When he was hired, Segura, who described himself as experienced in “organizational transformation,” took over the helm of a district beset by declining enrollment, budget constraints and a run-down infrastructure.

Romero said Segura had made strides in increasing enrollment and started the district on a path toward living within its budget and requiring greater accountability of its campus presidents.

For example, during Segura’s brief tenure campuses began deep cuts of classes and extracurricular programs in order to meet a Board of Trustees mandate to close budget deficits that had been building for years.

No timetable has been set for his departure, Sillers said. The trustees are expected to discuss plans for finding a replacement at their next meeting in January.