ACC president addresses PISD trustees at meeting

Alvin Community College President Dr. Rodney Allbright addressed Pearland Independent School District trustees during a regular meeting on May 26 regarding various partnerships, services and amenities available through the college to benefit Pearland students.

“Alvin Community College’s partnership with the Pearland Independent School District is 37 years old, starting with community-based education programs,” Allbright said.

College credit programs were first offered at Pearland High School through a partnership in the 1980s and PISD offered ACC an opportunity to establish a campus through the purchase of the C. J. Harris Elementary School for college-based classes in the late 1990s.

“Working with representatives from the Pearland Independent School District, plans are currently being developed to add a welding certificate program and an air conditioning and refrigeration certificate,” Allbright stated. “Advanced labs for these programs can be located at the Pearland Center through the partnership with Texas State Technical College.”

“The college is also working with school district representatives on dual credit classes in communications, specifically radio and television, which are two highly successful programs with a number of graduates at the Alvin campus,” he continued.

The presentation was made in response to an initiative led by the Northern Brazoria County Education Alliance to encourage Texas legislators to change state law to allow the San Jacinto College District to share a service area with ACC.

ACC’s service area boundaries were established by state legislators in 1995 to include the Pearland Independent School District and Danbury Independent School District. These service areas lay outside of the college’s taxing district.

According to the Texas Association of Community Colleges, service areas were created by the Texas Legislature 14 years ago to help reduce or eliminate the consequences of colleges trying to duplicate out of district territory.

Although service areas are assigned to a particular college district, many institutions, including ACC, partner with other colleges to offer programs in its own service area to better serve residents.

“Alvin Community College has partnerships with Gulf Coast community colleges and universities based on the needs of our students or on the needs at another community college or university,” Allbright said. “These include the University of Houston-Clear Lake, Wharton County Junior College, Houston Community College, San Jacinto College and College of the Mainland.”

 ACC approved San Jacinto College’s Small Business Development Center in Pearland when requested by its president. It also recently partnered with College of the Mainland to offer GIS (Geographic Information Systems) classes to Pearland high school students. UHCL has been offering classes at the ACC Pearland Center since 2004.

Partnerships with San Jacinto College to provide services to Pearland students should continue without the need for a shared service area, Allbright stated.

“The two largest school districts that Alvin Community College partners with are Alvin Independent School District, which is a part of our college district, and the Pearland Independent School District, which is in the college’s service area,” he added. “Under these conditions the college is in a position to offer and work with staff of the school district in providing academic and technical courses the school district requests either directly through the college’s course inventory system or through partnerships that have been in place with other area community colleges and universities.”

Currently, there are ACC counselors based at Pearland High School and Dawson High School to help students participating in the dual credit and dual degree programs. With both programs, teenagers are able to earn college credit while in high school that will transfer to any public college or university in Texas.

The dual degree program, which is believed to be the first of its kind in the state, provides guidance and assistance to motivated teenagers desiring to earn an associate degree while in high school. The dual degree program, which began in Alvin in 2005, was offered to Pearland students this year.

In response to Allbright’s presentation, PISD Board President Dr. Glenn Garrison and Superintendent Dr. Bonny Cain expressed their appreciation and satisfaction of ACC’s efforts, but also stated they wanted more options for the district’s students.

“We’re very pleased with that partnership (with ACC)…at the same time we want to foster new partnerships,” Garrison said.

“The things the Northern Brazoria County Education Alliance has done has helped our students tremendously,” Cain stated. “I think if we all work together, which I think we will, we’re going to make this work.” 

Several members of the ACC Board of Regents were also in attendance, including Chairman L. H. “Pete” Nash, Vice Chair James “Bart” DeWitt and regents Mike Pyburn, ‘Bel Sanchez, Brenda Brown, and Cheryl Knape.