By David Morris
By David Morris
The political face of America changed on Nov. 7 with Democrats taking Congress. Closer to home, however, marked a change in the face of the Riverside Community College District Board of Trustees.
Janet Green and Virginia Blumenthal were elected into two open spots, which were vacant from Kathleen Daley and Grace Slocum choosing not to run for re-election. Incumbent Jose Medina was re-elected.
Blumenthal is an attorney in Riverside, an RCC alumnus and was an instructor at RCC. This was her first time running, coming in at second with 33,299 votes.
She is hoping to fill a leadership void on the Board with the retiring of two current board members.
She is also looking forward to working on many developing programs at RCC, getting the Fine Arts and Ben Clark Training Center developed further.
Blumenthal said she would run two to three more times, but would like to stay for as long as she is capable of making a difference as an effective Board member.
Green is a member of other boards in California and ran for the RCC Board of Trustees because she has been in the education system for 30 years. Green ran before in 2004, but lost, and won this year with 33,050 votes.
Her ambitions are to get the Board to work together and work towards improving RCC through more counselors, getting the community to come to board meetings, getting state of the art equipment and looking into better scheduling so classes don’t get canceled.
She is also looking forward to working with students and staff.
The only incumbent running, Medina, was re-elected with 39,052 votes placing him on top. He is looking forward to improving cordiality and civility among Board members.
Medina wants to see many programs at RCC such as the Riverside School of the Arts and the School of Nursing developed further.
This will be Medina’s third term. He has already served on the Board of Trustees for nine years.
The new Board of Trustees members will be sworn in on Dec. 5 and are slated to begin their term at that meeting.
