El Paso Community College will go to the local high schools and begin preparing the students that are at least juniors for the ACCUPLACER, according to Dr. Dennis Brown, vice president of instruction.
“Get them ready and provide some intervention,” he said, if the student has problems and needs to retest.
Brown made his remarks at a VV town hall meeting held by EPCC President Richard Rhodes. 
“The barrier for most students to start their college career is the ACCUPLACER test,” Brown said.
“Many of those students are coming to us, don’t know what the test is about, don’t understand its importance, don’t take it seriously, certainly don’t prepare for it, and guess what. Almost 10,000 of our 26,000 students are taking one or more developmental courses.”
Rhodes has hosted town hall meetings with the college’s faculty, staff and students .
“We assume that everybody gets the messages we put out, but they don’t,” said Rhodes about information going through the channels.
The college attempts to have town hall meetings at least once a year, and having them at every campus will help the communication cycle, according to Rhodes.
On Nov. 6, the town hall meeting was held at the Valle Verde Cafeteria Annex. Topics such as the teaching academy, minimizing developmental education courses and collaborations with UTEP were on Rhodes’ agenda.
Brown presented the audience with information on the Foundations of Excellence and how it plans to help students test into their core and required courses.
Brown said that faculty needs to pay more attention to the students, which may prevent students from dropping so many classes.
“It’s easier to drop a course at EPCC than it is to return an item you bought at Wal-Mart,” said Brown.
Tejano Tribune asked Dr. Rhodes where EPCC stood in reference to the hiring freeze since the governor’s reinstatement is only through the fiscal year of 2009.
“A lot can happen between now and then. The first thing is that it will be looked at very seriously by an interim committee in the legislature,” he said.
“One of the things that can happen is if [legislators] take action early in the session and approve [the bill] in both houses. Then the governor only has 30 days to veto [the new bill],” Rhodes added.
