Erika Endrijonas faces new questions in LACCD fraud

Pasadena City College’s embattled President-Superintendent Dr. Erika Endrijonas is facing new questions over the role she played in the accumulation of ten’s-of-millions-of-dollars in lawsuits at her former institution Los Angeles Valley College.

Last year PCC Academic Senate and Faculty Union voted overwhelmingly that they have No Confidence in Endrijonas’s leadership. Endirjonas’s only support on campus appears to be from a small isolated Manager’s Association that according to PCC Trustee Board President Sandra Chen Lau represents about 5% of PCC stakeholders. At the April 19, 2023 meeting of the Board of Trustees, public comment raised an email received by the PCC Board questioning Endrijonas’s employment and encouraging an audit of her time at PCC, citing two lawsuits against LAVC.

On December 13, 2018, LAVC Student Newspaper Valley Star News announced Endrijonas had accepted the position at Pasadena City College, quoting then PCC Board President Anthony R. Fellow, Ph.d “Dr. Endrijonas is exactly the leader that PCC needs at this moment . . . Her exceptional record as an administrator and her service throughout her community have distinguished her as a stellar executive who will guide the college into the next chapter of its history.”

Six days later, December 19, 2018 The Los Angeles Daily News published a story revealing LAVC had just lost a jury trial for retaliation against a former employee, “LA Valley College worker awarded $2.9 million in employment lawsuit.”

Endrijonas’s crowning achievements during her time at LAVC included removing accreditation warnings and persuading the LACCD Board of Trustees in what was described as “a dramatic 6-1 vote” to finally approve the construction of the Valley Academic and Cultural Center, that had languished in development hell since the 1970s. The Los Angeles Daily News described the building as “the last jewel in a $626 million L.A. Valley College makeover of 18 new buildings spread across campus paid for by a $6.1 billion voter-approved bond building program.”

The VACC was to open in 2018, but according to LAVC Citizens Oversight Building Committee minutes only 27% complete by January 9, 2018. In the past year, multiple news outlets including an in-depth expose in The Los Angeles Times ‘Corruption and fraud beset long-delayed L.A. Valley college theater project, lawsuit alleges’ and even LAVC’s own student newspaper covered allegations that the building was a massive racketeering scheme being used by LAVC to defraud Pinner Construction and the taxpayers of tens-of-millions of dollars.

According to CBOC minutes, Endrijonas was aware early on of the issues Pinner Construction raised. CBOC Minutes Nov 7, 2017 list a report on the VACC, “There have been some issues with the reinforcing steels. The tall walls are very complex to build and the contractor is asserting that the drawings are not very clear, which has delayed the project; all of this information is being vetted out.”

All Bond projects are required to have independent oversight from a Citizen’s Building Oversight Committee as a safeguard against the type of fraud alleged, but under Endrijonas’s leadership LAVC’s CBOC appears to have little oversight and a lack of independence. CBOC Minutes show meetings were only held once every three months. At the March 7, 2017 meeting, the entire committee, except for three LAVC employees, was absent.

During the next two years of Endrijonas’s leadership at LAVC, CBOC seats for Valley Village, Sherman Oaks, Student Representative were vacant. The independence of other seats also didn’t hold up under scrutiny. NoHo was represented by Jo Ann Rivas, a student in the Media Arts Department and sometime employee of LACCD. The Valley Glen Neighborhood Association was under the control of Richard Rossi, another LAVC Media Arts student and LAVC Community Services Instructor.

Finally, on LAVC’s current website all record of LAVC’s CBOC Meetings end November 13, 2018.

More troubling – public record documents dating back to the 2000s raise questions about whether Endrijonas deceived the LACCD Board of Trustees (which then included now Congresswoman Sydney Kamlager-Dove CA-37) about the State of LAVC’s Media Arts Department and Career Technical Training in 2016 to secure the VACC's approval in the first place.

During the 2016 Spring Semester, Broadcasting faculty petitioned to separate from the Media Arts Department and join the Communications Department, citing limited student success under the Media Arts Department umbrella. The motion was approved by the Valley College Curriculum Committee and the LAVC Academic Senate over the objections of Media Arts Department Chair Eric Swelstad. The proposal went to Endrijonas’s desk where it was inexplicably and unilaterally vetoed by Endrijonas, ignoring both LAVC Governing Bodies and the Broadcasting Faculty.

According to the August 10, 2016 LACCD Board of Trustees Meeting minutes where Endrijonas persuaded the Board to approve the Building’s Construction, multiple faculty from LAVC’s Media Arts Department appeared in support of approval, but not a single faculty member from the Broadcasting Discipline appeared to testify in it’s favor.

Two months before the August Board Meeting, LAVC was the respondent in two separate Accreditation Complaints filed by current LAVC Media Arts Students alleging fraud, deception, non-training, lack of access to school equipment and labs, failure to schedule required courses preventing graduation, as well payroll and labor fraud within the Department.

Evidence supporting the first complaint included an email thread of a dozen student narratives regarding how the LAVC Media Arts Department had obstructed students from successfully graduating with its scheduling processes that included student petitions sent to Department Chair Eric Swelstad’s LACCD email swelstej [at] lavc.edu in 2015, and an additional complaint cc’d to every member of the LAVC Academic Senate in April 2016, before being forwarded too Endrijonas’s LACCD email endrijea [at] lavc.edu.

In her response to Accreditation, Endrijonas acknowledged that the Department Instructional assistant had undergone job performance counseling to ensure lab access in the future, that LAVC’s Media Arts website was out of date and replete with inaccurate information, that courses required for graduation had not been offered, while claiming that alleged labor fraud committed against LAVC students in the Media Arts department was the result of “a mis-communication” but then contradictorily stated the college would “adhere to the policies of the Personnel Commission going forward” and that Media Arts Dept policies dissatisfactory to the student had been in place since the 1970s.

The second complaint was based on an email citing Department Chair Eric Swelstad and CTE Dean Laurie Nalepa refusing to schedule the capstone class required for graduation in the Cinema Department for another two years and included a petition of 24 currently enrolled LAVC students demanding it be made available, also submitted to endrijea [at] lavc.edu and threatening to take the matter to Accreditation if a resolution could not be found on campus.

There is no mention of these complaints being raised or acknowledged at the LACCD Board Meeting in August 2016. Additional public records raise further questions about Endrijonas’s honesty with the Accrediting Commission.

Emails from Student 1 directed to LACCD Board President Scott Svonkin and Chancellor Francisco Rodrigues show that problems were raised in 2014 and again in 2016. Both emails specifically request that the LACCD Board of Trustees refuse to approve construction of the Valley Academic and Cultural Center until existing issues within the Department were corrected.
An email by LAVC Professor Emeritus Joseph Dacursso generated from LACCD email daccurja [at] lavc.edu dated August 7, 2016, to Student 1, refuted a number of the claims made in Endrijonas’s response to the Accreditation Commission. Dacursso denied policies had been created by him and was unaware there had been a fact-finding mission into the Accreditation Complaint. Further Dacursso specifically stated “Since stepping down as Chair by 2007, I have disagreed with several important decisions the Dept. and its Chairmen since have made...as I thought those decisions would eventually weaken our curricula programs (particularly our production course offerings). Though the senior-most member of my Dept., my admonitions, suggestions, and teaching philosophy were pretty-much ignored by my colleagues.”

In 2009, a lawsuit was filed at the Van Nuys Courthouse by a Media Arts student who had attended LAVC since 2004, pursuing a Motion Picture Production Technician Certificate. The declaration filed with the Court included complaints mirroring the Accreditation Complaints in 2016, specifically “The Valley College literature states that instructors are required to provide a lab during class time in film production classes. However, Swelstad and Rodriguez refused to do so. Swelstad and Rodriguez would often lecture during the entire class period, despite the fact that Valley College literature states a lab should be offered during class. As a result, plaintiff had to find time outside of class to do the work he should have done during lab time.”

The lawsuit further alleges that the student informed LAVC’s then President, Vice-President of Academic Affairs, Vice President of Student Services, Dean of Fine, Performing and Media Arts, and the entire Los Angeles Community College District Board of Trustees of multiple complaints without resolution. Further this student was retaliated against by Department Chair Eric Swelstad and Dean of Fine, Performing and Media Arts, Dennis Reed.

According to LACCD Board of Trustees Minutes May 23, 2012 – Dennis Reed also was involved in aggressively lobbying for the approval of the VACC (then called ‘Performing and Media Arts Center Facility’) for years prior to its final approval in 2016.

In 2013, Los Angeles Valley College was the recipient of the Deputy Sector Navigator – Information Communications Technology (ICT)/Digital Media Sector Grant. The Grant application specifically cited the need to provide training in Photoshop, After Effects, Maya, Pro Tools, and Avid Media Composer, obtain operating licenses for these software programs and creation of new courses specifically mentioning “Business of Entertainment.”

In the following two and a half-years under Endrijonas leadership between being awarded the Grant and the LACCD Board approving Construction of the VACC, the LAVC Media Arts Department did the opposite of what was submitted in the Grant Application. The Valley College Curriculum Committee minutes of September 11, 2013 included approval of archiving Media Arts 132 ‘The Business of Entertainment’ and Media Arts 121 ‘Advanced Digital Editing.’ After Effects and Photoshop were scheduled in one section, once a semester, once an academic school year. According to the Valley College Curriculum Committee minutes March 3, 2016, a proposal to remove Photoshop and After Effects from required courses for the Media Arts Post-Production Degree was submitted by the Media Arts Department.

Months later, Minutes from LAVC Career Technical Education Committee Meeting October 11, 2016 cite the CTE Dean discussing finally expending money to outfit the Media Arts Labs, “Laurie talked about the equipment in the Media Arts lab which was upgraded with $104,000 from the LA Hi-Tech Grant,” demonstrating that no money had been expended on the labs in the previous three years. The following semester Photoshop was converted to an online format not requiring the use of physical labs.

A year later, the Valley College Curriculum Committee minutes of May 24, 2017, show that the faculty of the Media Arts Department vigorously opposed the creation of new Broadcasting courses over Broadcasting faculty arguments that the new courses would allow students to utilize new TV studio in the Media Arts Building under construction.

The Media Arts/Photography Viability Report of October 26, 2018, stated that from 2008 – 2018, only 100 students had graduated with an AA or Certificate in Broadcasting, 84 in Media Arts, 48 in Journalism, and 38 in Cinema.

In the years following the VACC’s approval, the only evidence of LAVC Media Arts Department providing career technical education it advertised for over a decade and a half was the creation of a new degree in visual effects at the end of 2018, by a new full-time probationary faculty member. According to minutes of LAVC Media Arts Department Advisory Meeting May 18, 2018, the faculty member also revised all the Department degrees and certificates again “to meet the current needs of the industry.”

Articles published in LAVC’s student newspaper raise additional questions about the necessity of LAVC’s Media Arts Department at all. An article published May 31, 2020, quotes Department Chair Eric Swelstad that only ten students had signed up for the Cinema capstone class Cinema 125. This past Spring Semester 2023, two capstone classes Cinema 125 and Media Arts 113 were cancelled due to low-enrollment.

Later in 2020, a burst pipe in Campus Center flooded the existing Media Arts labs and rendered the building inaccessible. In an article published December 29, 2021, Dept Chair Eric Swelstad was quoted as stating “We have not been able to use any of that equipment,” said Media Arts Department Chair Eric Swelstad. “Our students have been denied the use of the equipment and our ability to have them do their projects with school equipment is limited. We have cameras, tripods and lights that we can’t get to because it’s locked up . . . We’re scattered all over campus. We’re in the library, we’re in the motion picture studio . . . the problem is that we lost our computer lab so we haven’t been able to access the Adobe software that we need.”

Yet during this time without access to school equipment or the Media Arts Labs, LAVC continued to schedule production classes, again raising the question of the need for the Valley Academic and Cultural Center’s construction in the first place.

This wouldn’t be the first time Endrijonas was accused of allowing LAVC to undergo a construction project that then sat empty and inaccessible to the community. In 2017, Randy Mac and NBC Los Angeles ran an investigation “LA College Gets Flak Over Public Use of Taxpayer-Funded Track.” Taxpayers paid $4 million dollars to fund the building of a new track, despite the fact that LAVC did not have a track team and its college use was limited to Football season and a couple of PE classes. Following its construction Endrijonas removed public access to the track except for Saturday mornings, resulting in only three members of the community using the track. Endrijonas’s inexplicable refusal also didn’t line up with the public use granted by other campuses such as California State Universities and the Los Angeles Unified School District.

According to the Citizens Building Oversight Committee minutes of January 9, 2018, the subject was raised and per the transcript Endrijonas’s responded with her trademark dismissiveness of the community member and then blamed NBC for failing to cover the entire story.