Los Angeles Community College District

The Los Angeles Community College District had launched a $5.7-billion campaign to modernize its nine campuses, and district leaders wanted the world to know. They hired marketing consultant Joan Marshall to help spread the word. She worked closely with Larry Eisenberg, the official in charge of the building program, booking speeches for him and seeking construction industry awards. Billions to Spend: Complete Coverage But on paper, Marshall did not work for the district.

Community college has helped Art and Michelle Gastelum get ahead. Way ahead. The father and daughter own two of the companies that have profited from close relationships with the trustees of the Los Angeles Community College District, connections built on campaign money, a Times analysis found. Companies working on the district's construction program account for 44% of the $4.6 million contributed to trustees' election efforts or to campaigns to pass construction bond measures since 2001.

The Los Angeles Community College District will pay outgoing Chancellor Marshall E. Drummond $428,750 in the wake of his unexpected departure, officials said Friday. Drummond, 67, was placed on a leave of absence in June, and, weeks later, the district announced that he would be leaving with 23 months remaining on his $354,408-a-year contract.

Los Angeles Community College District trustees agreed Wednesday to lease part of the historic Van de Kamp's Bakery property to a charter high school, amid protests that officials broke a promise by dropping plans for a satellite campus at the site. The Glassell Park property, the subject of a ferocious preservationist fight a decade ago, underwent a $50-million to $60-million rehabilitation that saved the bakery's landmark 16th century Dutch town house facade in preparation for a campus.

Two runoff elections are set for trustees of the Los Angeles Community College District. Auditor Tina Park is challenging incumbent Angela Reddock for Office No. 2, and attorney Robert Nakahiro is taking on incumbent Nancy Pearlman for Office No. 6. Trustees are elected at-large to run nine campuses serving Los Angeles city and county. Reddock, a lawyer, was appointed to the board in 2007. She said she would increase student transfer rates to four-year colleges.

A classroom dispute at Los Angeles City College in the emotional aftermath of Proposition 8 has given rise to a lawsuit testing the balance between 1st Amendment rights and school codes on offensive speech. Student Jonathan Lopez says his professor called him a "fascist bastard" and refused to let him finish his speech against same-sex marriage during a public speaking class last November, weeks after California voters approved the ban on such unions.

Even as the University of California and California State University grapple with construction shutdowns, the Los Angeles Community College District on Wednesday awarded $400 million in new building contracts, the latest phase in a $5.7-billion construction program that experts describe as one of the biggest college public works projects in the nation.

Los Angeles' community colleges are an underappreciated treasure of this region. They are the door through which our immigrant culture enters the American workforce -- the educator of nurses and firefighters, and professionals of all types. What's more, in contrast to L.A.'s public schools, the Los Angeles Community College District is a responsibly run system with a record of fiscal and educational success. It has earned voter support for its latest bond issue, Measure J.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday launched an investigation into how the Sheriff's Department conducted a narcotics-search operation at Los Angeles Trade Tech College in which 33 students, all minorities, were detained. The Oct. 17 incident has fueled allegations of racial profiling from civil rights groups and sparked changes in the way the Sheriff's Department communicates with the Los Angeles Community College District.