Quick take:
Cabrillo College has corrected seven of eight violations identified in a state investigation of its dental hygiene program, but it remains on three years of probation and must pay a $5,000 fine after investigators found issues including inadequate clinic supervision and students falling behind on required clinical hours.
Cabrillo College’s dental hygiene program has fixed most of the problems uncovered in a state investigation, but the program will remain on a three-year probationary period and pay a $5,000 fine after investigators found violations including unsupervised students in the clinic and students falling behind on required clinical hours.
Last week, the Dental Hygiene Board of California found that the college had cleared all but one of eight violations identified during an unannounced February site visit, and the college said that all of the program’s students met their requirements to graduate.
The college’s dental hygiene program was founded in 1967 and prepares students to become dental hygienists upon graduation. While the size of the program has fluctuated over the years, it currently educates a cohort of 20 students during its two-year program.
The program’s violations, first reported by Santa Cruz Local, not only raised concerns about the school’s management of the program but they also provided insight into how Cabrillo’s leadership responds when being held accountable by an outside agency.
From February through the spring, the state board and Cabrillo officials, including College President Jenn Capps, debated the allegations, with Capps at one point threatening to file a complaint against a board specialist who cited the college and the board’s executive officer defending the official. Over time, Capps told Lookout this week, communication improved and the sides reached an understanding.
“That was my first experience with them coming to campus…I’m used to accrediting bodies being very supportive at the outset,” she said. “It felt very different to me, like [they were] looking for stuff to write us up about. It didn’t feel like a supportive environment.”
The state dental hygiene board didn’t respond to requests for comment. But during a March 27 state board meeting, several board members expressed serious concerns about the alleged violations.
Board member Julie Elginer, associate professor at the Fielding School of Public Health at UCLA for 15 years, said she was “stunned.” Personally, she said, she felt the board should go beyond placing the program on probation, but that the board should revoke its approval of the program’s students, which allows them to sit for licensure.
“This is unacceptable,” she said. “Absolutely, categorically, for public protection purposes, unacceptable.”
During the interview this week, Capps didn’t say whether the college still plans to file a complaint, but that Cabrillo requested an administrative hearing to discuss how to work through the college’s concerns and questions with the board about how to keep the dental hygiene program in compliance. Additionally, Cabrillo officials said they asked the board if the college can put the $5,000 fine (which would come from the general fund) instead toward the dental hygiene program.
How it started
The board conducted its unannounced visit in February after receiving a complaint in November last year from one of the Cabrillo program’s adjunct dental hygiene instructors.
Two board specialists visited the program Feb. 12 and substantiated the majority of the concerns cited in the complaint. The violations included a lack of clinic supervision, students lacking required clinical hours, students advancing to new courses with incomplete grades, the program director’s limited authority to operate the program, low level of faculty support, low level of staff support, having students purchase personal protective equipment rather than the college, and, the program’s funding source.
After the board wrote to the college about the resulting eight violations, Capps responded in a March 5 letter addressing “the unreasonable and unfounded allegations of violations.” She also accused one of the board specialists of “continuously alleging frivolous and unfounded claims of violations,” of threatening to revoke the program dental hygienists licenses and said the college would file a complaint against one of the specialists.
Capps wrote that one of the specialists “targeted Cabrillo College in an attempt to discredit our program for reasons completely unknown to us…These threats are unprofessional, unfounded, and causing significant harm.”
For example, in her letter, she said the day of the unannounced visit there was an “unexpected faculty absence” that resulted in a student-to-faculty ratio of 1:7 rather than 1:5 for 75 minutes, before a replacement was found. She argued that this was an exception and not a recurring issue.
However, as stated in the board specialists’ report, the original complainant alleged the student-to-faculty ratio was out of compliance and that as a result students were sometimes unsupervised in the clinic – both of which occurred during the unannounced February site visit.
The college’s outstanding violation is hiring a second full-time faculty member for the program, which Assistant Superintendent/Vice President of Instruction Travaris Harris said the college is expected to complete by this fall.
Administrative pressures
In their site visit report and during the March board meeting, state board specialists who conducted the unannounced visit repeatedly said they believed the instructors, the faculty and the program director wanted to run the program effectively, but they ran into challenges from the Cabrillo College dean of the School of Health and Public Service, Heidi Weber. Weber resigned last month after serving in the role for four years. Harris, the college’s assistant superintendent, told Lookout that she resigned voluntarily and that she didn’t leave due to the issues with the program.
In the site report where the board specialists describe the violation of student competency, they said “Cabrillo faculty informed [Dental Hygiene Board of California] site visit team that Dean Heidi Weber would not allow Cabrillo faculty to make appropriate grade adjustments or fail students in DH 181 due to missing competencies or requirements and directed the Cabrillo faculty to pass all students onto the successive clinical course.”
JoAnn Galliano, a state board subject matter expert who helped with the report, said during the March meeting that the program director and faculty faced an “undue amount of pressure” from the administration, “specifically in working with their dean.”
“We did see that there was a lot of input by the dean on the running of the program, and over which was superseding that of the program director and the faculty,” she said. “So faculty felt powerless sometimes to make changes that needed to be made.”
She advised that rather than implementing the most severe punishment on the college’s program, the state board should instead work with the college program to ensure the students meet their requirements and graduate.
Nearly in the clear
Several months after the March board meeting and contentious letters between the board and the college, Cabrillo’s dental hygiene program graduated its 2026 cohort of students and has remedied nearly all of the violations.
In the July 1 letter to the college detailing its improvements, the state board wrote it appreciated the college’s “commitment towards compliance with the [board’s] statutory and regulatory authority.”
In its July 2 press release, Cabrillo President Capps said they took the board’s “concerns seriously, acted quickly to address every identified concern, and strengthened our program in meaningful ways.”
During the interview this week with Capps, she said she’d no longer call the claims “frivolous” but said she felt the college improved its communication over rules and interpretations. In some cases, Capps said the college and the board went back-and-forth on how they were interpreting rules and regulations to reach an understanding with the board.
“That’s what happens with these miscommunication moments with them,” she said. “That created some consternation.”
