SMC meets new superintendent candidate
On Tuesday, Sept. 22, SMC hosted a forum to meet superintendent candidate Candace Jones. Jones became the sole candidate to replace Kathryn Jeffery, who is retiring at the end of the year, after the other candidate withdrew their application for reasons that SMC has not publicly disclosed.
After the forum, Jones went before the board of trustees for her final interview. According to SMC’s Vice President of Human Resources, Tre’Shawn Hall-Baker, the board could announce a decision as soon as this week or wait until the next board meeting on Oct. 6.
If Jones is hired, she faces a structural deficit of nearly $5 million left unresolved by Jeffery, ongoing contract negotiations with the faculty union and the college’s recent placement on enhanced financial monitoring by accreditors.
Despite these challenges, Jones has a positive outlook of SMC’s future. Since being confirmed as vice president of administrative and business services in January 2025 at Long Beach City College, Jones says she’s leveraged her background in IT and systems management and claims to have to closed LBCC’s $7 million structural deficit without laying anyone off. Jones said she was cautious about confirming whether further layoffs would be needed to address SMC’s fiscal problems but incorporating emerging technologies such as AI for modeling expenses could help the college plan its expenses, she said.
“There’s only so much funding; if we were going to lose that funding, how do we do it strategically, intentionally, with a lot of thought rather than in the moment when those funds disappear,” Jones said.
Describing her thought process when facing difficult decisions, Jones said she asks herself three important questions: Who does the decision benefit, who bears the burden of the decision, and how to mitigate harm. She used changing a financial aid disbursement date as an example of a seemingly small decision that greatly impacts the community; murmurs of agreement were heard from the audience.
Bridgette B. Robinson, assistant chair of the English Department and senior adviser of the Pan African Alliance of Faculty and Staff, contrasted the environment at the college Jones would face with the one Jeffery came into in 2016.
“There was a bright shiny future for education, we didn’t have a pandemic,” Robison said. “The growth of the college was so exponential in such a short period, I think that was a lot of Dr. Jeffery’s focus then, whereas now we are in a maintenance period.”
Robinson said she appreciates Jones’ business-oriented mindset and grounded vision. “She didn’t present a rainbow vision of the future,” Robinson said.
Jones promised to build community trust through transparency by consistently being present on campus and listening to all perspectives.
“We’ve got to have students at the table. We’ve got to have faculty, staff and administrators at the table,” Jones said. “Where trust starts to be built, is when you see your input reflected in those decisions.”
Karen Gunn, former chair and professor of the SMC psychology department, described some of her current concerns.
“With some of the things that have occurred here on campus, everybody hasn’t brought the real. They keep things underground until it gets too difficult, and then they come out in bad ways,” Gunn said. “It’s like when the tea pot is boiling, you’ve got a couple of choices. You can turn the fire off, you can take the top off and let the steam go.”