It has come to COCRA’s attention that in December of 2009, a recommendation was made to the WVC Academic Senate that several programs be discontinued, including the court reporting program.

One hundred percent of WVC students sitting for the California Certified Shorthand Reporters examination in the last five years have passed the rigorous Department of Consumer Affairs exam and went on to become successful members of our court reporting team.

Please support WVC by sending your letter/email out immediately.

Two of our favorite court reporters have made it easy for you. Below is the contact information you will need and two sample letters; one from Carol Karen of San Francisco Superior Court, CSR 8189, RDR, CRR, and the other from Patricia Dowling of San Francisco Superior Court, CSR 5388.

Please act today! The court reporting industry is a vital and vibrant part of our California judiciary. We need schools like WVC to teach promising men and women the necessary skills to keep California court reporting at its best!

CONTACT INFORMATION

Please send email or letter correspondence to:

Mr. Jim Henderson
Business Division Chair
West Valley College
14000 Fruitvale Avenue
Saratoga, CA 95070
jim.henderson@wvm.edu
cc: linda.lawson@wvm.edu

Continue reading for sample letters.

Sample Letter One

From: Carol Karen
Sent: Thursday, January 21, 2010 10:30 AM
To: ‘jim.henderson@wvm.edu’; ‘linda.lawson@wvm.edu’
Subject: West Valley College Court Reporting Program

To West Valley College Academic Senate:

It has come to my attention WVC is considering closing its court reporting program. As a reporter for over 30 years in both the freelance and official capacity, I have been able to witness firsthand the skill and professionalism of graduates from your school. Your institution is in a unique position to provide this quality education. The loss of the program would be realized not only by the potential court reporters who would study at your school, but also the Bay Area legal community and the public utilizing the court services, the hearing disabled, and television networks, churches and schools/universities that offer captioning.

It’s undoubtedly a goal of your school to educate people for thriving occupations that will enhance the quality of life in the Bay Area. With that in mind, I would like to bring to your attention a sampling of articles that address the recession-proof nature of the court reporting field:

At a time when people are losing their jobs in record numbers, I would encourage you to continue to educate students for meaningful employment opportunities that will be available for them when they graduate. If I can assist in any way, please feel free to contact me.

Thank you,

Carol Karen, CSR 8189, RDR, CRR
Sample Letter Two

To whom it may concern:

I have been an Official Court Reporter in San Francisco Superior Court for twenty years. The San Francisco Superior Court’s bench is 100% supportive of Stenographic Court Reporting as the means of making the record. There is a need for Court Reporting services, and that need has not changed and will not change in the foreseeable future.

The demand for vocational careers is on the rise. The Court Reporting profession offers a stable, well-paying career. Court Reporting has been very good to me. I have been able to buy a home, and I am well-respected in the court community. I have fantastic benefits and a wonderful retirement package. My salary is much more than many of my friends with twice the years of education. I am forever grateful to City College of San Francisco where I was able to lay this wonderful foundation for my life.

The West Valley College Court Reporting Program is well-known in the Court Reporting community as a dedicated and well-run program for Court Reporting students. The loss of this program would be devastating for the Bay Area courts, and I’m sure the other arenas where Court Reporters are utilized. Please re-consider this very drastic measure.

Thank you for your consideration.

Patricia Dowling

The website came up with the scoring for the jobs in the survey in the following manner.

How does Jobs Rated determine which professions rank better than others? Data on each job is broken down into five key categories: Physical Demands, Work Environment, Income, Stress and Hiring Outlook. Jobs receive a score in each individual category, and when these are added together, the career with the best overall score is ranked 1st, while the one with the worst overall score is ranked 200th.

If you’d like to see the survey yourself, you can click here for the page.

According to the article:

Between February 2008 and July 2009, the AOC elevated nearly 80 employees, and raised their pay as much as 31 percent, brushing aside its own self-imposed freeze on promotions, according to payroll records from the State Controller’s Office.

The records show that while the agency imposed once-monthly furlough days on employees with one hand, it has increased salaries so much with the other that, coupled with new hires, its payroll costs grew 6 percent from July 2008 to July 2009, for a total of nearly $4.2 million per year.

The article also listed the names of managers and directors who benefited from the salary increases.

Two managers in the agency’s Office of Court Construction and Management, who were not promoted, received 14 percent raises between July 2008 and July 2009, on top of 3.5 merit salary adjustments they’d received earlier in 2008. Another manager in that office received a 9 percent raise.

The raises do not take into account the 5 percent pay cut employees are taking as a result of the furlough.

Carrizosa said the three employees received raises when the new director, Lee Willoughby, took over and gave them added responsibilities.

“The raises reflect his restructuring of the office and changes of assignments and related equity adjustments,” Carrizosa wrote.

AOC’s three regional administrative directors who report to Vickrey, Sheila Calabro, Christine Patton, and Jody Patel also saw big pay bumps, each receiving 10 percent increases in that 2008-2009 time period, bringing their base salaries to $198,708 a year.

According to Carrizosa, those pay raises included that 3.5 percent merit increase. The additional compensation was, “based on the need to remain competitive with other courts.

The first thing visitors to the new site will see is a feature that we had installed on the previous website. And that feature is our blog which is where we’ve been posting the latest news and information about court reporters.

We’ve also made it easier for people to follow us on Twitter and Facebook by adding icons for both social networking sites up at the top of the website. So don’t forget to friend us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

Aside from the very cool new color scheme, we’ve pared down our website to its essentials and we’ve streamlined pages to make it easier to find information.

Of course none of this could have been done without the help of the folks at the web design firm LunaGraphica. A special thanks to Bob Nicholson and Cindy Couling of LunaGraphica for helping COCRA realize its dream for a new website. If there are other court reporting state associations out there looking for a firm to either build a new website or refresh a current one, I highly recommend that you contact Bob and his team.

COCRA hopes that its members and supporters will like the new website and if there’s anything you see that you think ought to be corrected, drop us a line and we’ll get right on it.

At the COCRA Fall Conference the membership voted to approve changing how the membership is represented on the Board.  Originally we had district reps that followed the appellate judicial districts.  However, after much research, the COCRA Board presented the membership a new representation plan that is based on the California Administrative Office of the Courts’ regional districts.  Gone are the six judicial districts and in comes the three Regional Representatives.  The main impetus for this change is the fact that it is the AOC that is tasked with the running and oversight of California superior courts.

If you’d like to see a map of which region your county fall in, you can click here to view it.

The following are COCRA’s Regional Representatives and the regions they represent.

Bay Area/Northern Coastal Region

Formerly known as Judicial District 1 and Judicial District 6

This region shall consist of Judicial District 1 and Judicial District 6 and shall include the following counties: Alameda, Contra Costa, Del Norte, Humboldt, Lake, Marin, Mendocino, Monterey, Napa, San Benito, San Francisco, San Mateo, Solano, Sonoma Santa Clara, Santa Cruz.

Bay Area/Northern Coastal Regional Representatives

Jo Ann Bryce, CSR
San Francisco County
E-Mail: jbryce@sftc.org

Dawn Wood, CSR, RPR, CRR
Santa Clara County
E-Mail: dawnbwood@gmail.com

Northern/Central Region

Formerly known as Judicial District 3 and Judicial District 5

This region shall consist of Judicial District 3 and Judicial District 5 and shall include the following counties: Alpine, Amador, Butte, Calaveras, Colusa, El Dorado, Fresno, Glenn, Kern, Kings, Lassen, Madera, Mariposa, Merced, Modoc, Mono, Nevada, Placer, Plumas, Sacramento, San Joaquin, Shasta, Sierra, Siskiyou, Stanislaus, Sutter, Tehama, Tulare, Tuolumne, Trinity, Yolo, Yuba.

Northern/Central Regional Representatives

Brian Graber, CSR, RMR, CRR
San Joaquin County
E-Mail: bg5219@yahoo.com

Suzanne McKennon, CSR
Fresno
E-Mail: suzsteno@peoplepc.com

Southern Region

Formerly known as Judicial District 2 and Judicial District 4

This region shall consist of Judicial District 2 and Judicial District 4 and shall include the following counties: Imperial, Inyo, Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, Santa Barbara, San Bernardino, San Diego, San Luis Obispo, Ventura.

Southern Regional Representatives

Deborah Kalla, CSR
Ventura County
E-Mail: COCRA.Kalla@gmail.com

The day commenced with the CCRR realtime test being given to those steadfast reporters courageous enough to battle their jittery nerves at 8:00 on a Saturday morning. We’re Officials! We’re not used to our fingers flying on the machine until 9:00! Good luck from COCRA to those waiting to hear the results!

Candis Bradshaw of Pennsylvania next presented her Technogadgets and Sites Galore seminar. Her bubbly enthusiasm and savvy technosense were contagious. Official Reporters pride themselves staying up with latest and greatest technology, and Candis didn’t disappoint introducing us, among other things, to “Dropbox” and sharing her knowledge of the best laptop specs.

Before lunch, Kitty Costello, M.A. MFT taught us to manage our stress with breathing and relaxation practices. Her demeanor was very, very calm, and her pitch was soothing and melodious. Can you imagine if every judge, litigant and witness conducted themselves in such a fashion? Our jobs would be so much easier. As reporters, we tend to take on the stress of the courtroom. Did you know that when a stressful trigger occurs, you have six to ten seconds to redirect your nervous system from the fight or flight response? Kitty gave us the tools, in effect, to save ourselves from ourselves! We left for lunch with our shoulders down and our “Zen” on!

After lunch we got down to business with our Sacramento Watch. Tami Brown, Lyn Yard and Suzanne Lauzon filled us in on the latest goings-on around the State regarding labor issues, court closures and the harrowing budget details.

Stacy Gaskill (San Mateo), Debbie Neville (San Francisco), Adrienne Peretti (Alameda), Retta Parsons (Santa Cruz), and Suzanne McKennon (Fresno) were our Town Hall panelists. You could hear a pin drop as each Reporter gave us the details of the happenings in their respective counties.

The last seminar of the day is always the hardest for our presenters. The audience begins to look cross-eyed and delirious by this time of the day. Thank goodness for Rhonda Aguilina’s briefs workshop!! You’re probably saying briefs? Not too exciting, but Rhonda was hilarious and totally entertained us with her flippant, off-the-cuff humor. It’s official! COCRA’s Rhonda Aguilina is DRA’s Mary Bardellini. We loved it. What a great way to end the day!

Please check our website for COCRA’s next event, which will be in April of 2010. Thank you to Gordon Aiavao and the Conference Committee for all the hard work!

Here are a couple directions and tips on parking for those of you planning on attending COCRA’s Spring Conference this Saturday April 4th at the SFSU Campus at 835 Market Street between Fourth and Fifth Streets.

PLANES

Those of you planning on flying in for the day or the weekend will be coming in either through San Francisco International or Oakland. If you’ve got the money, you could catch a cab. But if you plan on taking BART, here are some directions from the airport websites.

San Francisco International

BART operates rapid rail service to northern San Mateo County, San Francisco and the East Bay directly from SFO. The SFO BART Station is located on the Departures/Ticketing Level of the International Terminal (Boarding Area G side). BART is easily accessed from any terminal by riding SFO’s AirTrain to the Garage G/BART Station stop. There is no charge to board AirTrain. BART provides a connection to Caltrain at the Millbrae station.

Oakland International

AirBART operates between OAK and the BART Coliseum/Oakland Airport station daily, approximately every 10 minutes, until midnight. Service begins at 5 a.m., Monday through Saturday, and at 8 a.m. on Sundays and holidays. There is a single shuttle stop for both terminals, conveniently located between Terminal 1 and 2 at OAK’s third curbside.

TRAINS

BART Map of Powell Street Station

If you’re taking Caltrain from the South Bay you’re going to ride into the city and get off at the last stop which will be the San Francisco station. From there you can either walk the roughly eight blocks up Fourth Street to Market Street, or you can catch MUNI, San Francisco’s public transit system, to Market Street.

Those of you who plan on taking BART from either the East Bay or along the Peninsula will get off at the Powell Street Station. Now, please note that the easiest way to get to 863 Market when you’re at the Powell station is to take one of the exits up to Market Street. Don’t bother entering through the San Francisco Center entrance. You’ll just have to exit back out to Market Street.

Riders on the MUNI Underground will also get off at the Powell Street Station and follow the directions above.

AUTOMOBILES

Now for the details on parking. The two closest parking spots are the Fifth and Mission Street Garage located on Mission Street between Fifth and Fourth Street and the Ellis-O’Farrell Garage at 123 O’Farrell Street between Powell and Stockton.

Fifth and Mission Street Garage

Fifth and Mission Street Garage website and directions

Ellis-O’Farrell Garage Website

Ellis-O’Farrell Garage Website and directions

Just a reminder for those of you seeking to be certified in realtime reporting that the California Commission on Realtime Reporting will be giving its California Certified Realtime Reporter (CCRR) this Saturday, September 12th, at the 2009 COCRA Fall Conference. There’s still time for you to register online and you can do so by registering online with COCRA or you can register for the CCRR at the official CCRR website.

A $3.89 million “accounting error” could cost 60 court workers’ positions in San Mateo County Superior Court. On Aug. 25, 2009, more than 200 workers rallied to fight service cuts to the community if one in four court workers is let go.