Negotiations update

As initial proposals for a new faculty contract are “sunshined,” AFT asks members to complete “Count On Me” cards

by Marianne Kaletzky, AFT 1493 Executive Secretary and Negotiations Team Member

Although we have not yet sat down for our first negotiating session, the process of bargaining our next faculty contract is now underway. On February 23, the Board of Trustees officially received our initial proposals for the next contract, which will cover July 2022-June 2025. These proposals include:

• A fairer salary formula than the one that gave us a .52% raise for this year
• Clear policies around class cancellations
• Paid parental leave
• Increased District contribution to full-time health benefits
• Part-time pay parity (pay PT faculty at least 85% of what FT faculty make for the same amount of work)
• Better healthcare options for part-timers
• Guarantee that faculty can do a certain percentage of work remotely
• Stronger part-timer appointment rights
• Clear, expedient disability accommodation process
• Contractual protection for academic freedom
• Contractual provisions covering distance education
• Clear policies on when faculty may be assigned to teach dual enrollment classes

Click here to view AFT’s full contract proposals

At their next meeting on March 23, the Board will hold a public hearing on AFT’s initial proposals and theirs (a process called “sunshining,” which is legally required for collective bargaining with public employees). Once the sunshining process is complete, negotiations for the new contract can begin.

To gain a deeper understanding of faculty priorities and gauge member strength, our Contract Action Team (CAT) is distributing digital and paper Count On Me cards, which ask faculty to rank their top three demands from the above list and let us know which actions they are willing to take to win those demands. You may be hearing from a CAT colleague asking you to complete a Count On Me card, or you can go ahead and complete a card today using this link: https://bit.ly/3J1VjjG

(Click here to read more about the CAT and upcoming actions in the campaign to win a stronger contract.)

If you have questions about how the negotiations process works, please reach out to Marianne Kaletzky or your campus AFT Chapter Chairs.

Class size

CFT and Academic Senates collaborate on statewide campaign to enable discipline faculty to determine appropriate class size

By Katharine Harer, AFT 1493 Co-Vice President & Rika Fabian, Skyline Chapter Co-Chair

Faculty know from experience that large classes can have a negative impact on student learning. It’s been shown time and time again that individual attention is a key to student engagement and retention, and community college students often feel lost in large classes. Large classes tend to reduce the opportunities for students to receive qualitative attention from their instructors due to the unsustainable workload they create for faculty.

Additionally, large class caps harm adjunct faculty, leaving fewer classes in the schedule to assign to part-timers, who are often unable to make up their teaching load, resulting in big hits to their pocketbooks. Another issue is when classes don’t fill up to their stated cap and they’re cancelled. Adjuncts often lose a chance at getting another class to make up for a cancelled class because a full-timer needs to make up their load, which once again unfairly impacts adjuncts.  In most cases, overly large classes do not benefit faculty or students.

Resolutions to be brought to State Academic Senate Plenary in April

Our AFT Anti-Oppression Committee helped to get the ball rolling on a statewide campaign to lower class sizes after Rika Yonemura-Fabian and Doniella Maher presented a class cap resolution at a CFT event in March 2021. Since July, community college union leaders across California have been meeting to map out a strategy to address this problem statewide. Led by Peralta Federation of Teachers’ President Jennifer Shanoski, and with the support of CFT staff, our local, along with local AFT unions at City College of San Francisco, College of Alameda, San Jose/Evergreen, Mission/West-Valley, Los Rios, Los Angeles, and others are working to get resolutions addressing class caps passed in the Academic Senates at our colleges.

Peralta Federation of Teachers’ President Jennifer Shanoski spoke about the statewide class size campaign
at the CFT Community College Council meeting on March 18 in San Francisco

A Resolution for Faculty Participation in the Creation of Class Caps for their Departments and Courses developed by the College of Alameda Academic Senate is one example. The goal is to bring these resolutions to the State Academic Senate Plenary in April and push for one strong resolution from the statewide Senate. In this effort, the Senate and unions are building a united front to work on this important issue.

Surveys on how class caps are determined around the state

At the same time, the statewide organizing group is testing a faculty survey, which is being sent to three of the largest locals in the state, to get faculty input about how class caps are determined in their departments and the impact on student learning and faculty working conditions. Once these survey responses are gathered, the plan is to have each of our locals run a similar faculty survey. Our union, through our Anti-Oppression Committee, created a comprehensive survey on the issue in May 2021 that garnered nearly 200 responses, followed by our three senates and our district senate passing resolutions on increasing faculty input in the determination of  class size.

Union contracts need to ensure role for faculty in determining class size

The union leaders who are working on the class cap issue agree it would be best if our locals could get language into our union contracts that ensures faculty input in determining class size, rather than basing class caps on past conventions or the whims and numerical goals of administrators. Mission/West Valley has been able to bargain and win language in their contract that gives faculty a role in making these decisions.

We’ll keep you posted about how the campaign develops and let you know what you can do to help with this push to lower class caps so that they are faculty-driven, reasonable and pedagogically sound.

Adjunct faculty health benefits

Adjunct faculty: Please take the CFT Part-Time Healthcare Survey to help improve health coverage for community college adjunct faculty around the state

by Marianne Kaletzky, AFT 1493 Executive Secretary

Like so many gig economy jobs, adjunct faculty positions rarely provide adequate benefits—including adequate healthcare. A recent survey of adjunct faculty in higher education nationwide found that fewer than half of adjuncts have access to employer-provided health insurance. The survey, which was conducted by national AFT, also found that 45 percent of adjuncts have put off getting needed healthcare, including mental health services, and 64 percent have forgone dental care. For adjuncts in California community colleges, health benefits vary widely by district, from districts that offer only a $75 per semester reimbursement to ones that offer a Kaiser plan, fully funded by the employer, plus dental and vision benefits for any adjunct working at least 50% time. In our own district, adjuncts who work at least 40% time are eligible to receive up to $3305 per semester to reimburse health insurance premiums. (See here for more on how to receive the reimbursement.)

CFT gets governor to allocate $200 million to healthcare for community college adjuncts

Our statewide union, the CFT, is working to improve adjunct healthcare across the state. Through our grassroots organizing efforts, we got Governor Newsom to allocate $200 million in his budget proposal to go towards healthcare for community college adjuncts—400 times the amount allocated in the past! The next steps are, first, to make sure that money stays in the budget, and second, to create a structure that gives adjuncts the healthcare they need.

Take the survey

To understand how to create the structure that works for the most adjuncts, we need to hear from you: if you’re an adjunct, what have been your experiences accessing healthcare over the past few years? AFT 1493 will get the survey results (from the CFT) for all adjunct faculty in our local who take the survey. This will provide critical data that can help us directly understand what kind of healthcare coverage our district part-time faculty need, and will strengthen our advocacy efforts and give us very useful information for negotiations. Please help us help you by taking this confidential and anonymous 15-minute survey: https://www.cft.org/pt-survey.

Join the campaign

Are you interested in joining the statewide campaign for adjunct healthcare? We need more members, both part-timers and full-timers, to help us win quality care for all. No organizing or policy experience required! If you’d like to join or want to learn more, please reach out to Marianne at kaletzky@aft1493.org. You can also register to attend the CFT Part-Time Faculty Conference May 1-2 in Sacramento.

Social Justice on Campus

AFT 1493’s Anti-Oppression Committee launches a petition for gender justice at our colleges

by Rika Yonemura Fabian, AOC Lead/Skyline Chapter Co-Chair, and Julia Johnson, Automotive Technology Professor, Skyline College

AFT 1493’s Anti-Oppression Committee (AOC) is a subcommittee of our union that was developed to specifically focus on investigating and challenging gender-oppression among faculty, staff and students in our college workplaces. The Committee has been working diligently in recent months, listening to staff and students about their concerns and researching the Title IX process on all three campuses in our District. We have finalized our petition and letter that demands more transparent Title IX investigations and reporting processes for faculty, staff and students in SMCCCD.

“A report is filed and it goes into a Black Hole. No one knows what happens after.”

The following quote captures the essence of the problems with the current Title IX process: “A report is filed and it goes into a Black Hole. No one knows what happens after.” This observation shared by an AOC member prompted the group to research what is happening in our current Title IX investigation process. Who is in charge of investigations? Under what organizational chart? How do they determine if a complaint constitutes a Title IX case? What kinds of training or education exist for students and employees around Title IX? Where do we find data on Title IX violations and reports filed?

The AOC has researched these and other questions and the results are summarized in this open letter to the District and the Board. The AFT Executive Board approved the letter in February, and the Committee is currently asking for endorsement from constituent bodies, such as Academic and Classified Senate, as well as Student Government on all three campuses.

Sign the letter and petition

We will be bringing the letter to the Board of Trustees to share our concerns and demands and we need your support. Please sign this letter and petition to demand more transparency and accountability in the Title IX process. Title IX laws are designed to improve the learning environment for all of us – to allow everyone to attend class, speak out and work in safety and without fear of reprisal.  We invite you to be part of this endeavor that demands a working and learning environment that is free from gender oppression!

Faculty Focus

LaShonda Kennedy, equity champion and community advocate

Interview by Evan Kaiser, AFT 1493 CSM Executive Committee Rep.

LaShonda Kennedy is an adjunct Work Experience Instructor and Spark Point Basic Needs Coordinator at CSM. I talked with LaShonda about community service, her various roles in Workplace Education at CSM, and adjunct faculty rights. Our conversation highlights her involvement with key programs and services, such as Cooperative Education and Spark Point, that extend student learning beyond the classroom.

LaShonda Kennedy

Can you talk a little about your upbringing and path to college?

Both my parents actually went to community college, so for my brother and I, college, in general, was a requirement, not an option. And I wanted to go somewhere a little different than where all my high school buddies were headed – the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which of course is a great place. But I wanted to forge my own path. I had visited Wake Forest University on a minority weekend trip and had such a good time. I had also attended Governor’s School [a program for gifted high school students] for drama in the same town, when I met a recruiter who told me I’d be a good fit and encouraged me to apply even though it was competitive. I loved it so much that I applied the next week on early decision, and I was in by Thanksgiving! So in my journey to college, I was pretty determined to go where I wanted to go.

As you progressed along your career journey, what led you to work at a community college and in Workplace Education more specifically?

I’ve worked at four year colleges throughout my career and enjoyed that work, but I really wanted to do something that was more community-focused.

Outside of work, I spend a lot of time doing community service. We were raised that way – waking up first thing on Thanksgiving morning and giving out food, for instance – so I wanted to get involved in community service as opposed to Stanford, Wake Forest, and even UNC, which are places where not everyone can go, and even when you can get in, you can’t always afford it. So I love this type of institution because it’s for the community.

There’s a perception that four year colleges don’t understand the needs of the community college student, but because I’m a career counselor by trade, I do understand the importance of all levels of education. Eventually, I was able to get a great opportunity at a community college in Iowa and translate that to my work at CSM.

And your current role is Work Experience Instructor, but you have other roles, right?

I was also the Program Services Coordinator for Workforce. A month ago, I took a temporary assignment as Spark Point Basic Needs Coordinator. Outside of work, I’m the President of my Junior League, I’m the chair of the Transportation Advisory Committee in Redwood City, and I participate in the Rotary Club.

What is SparkPoint for folks who don’t know?

It provides basic needs for students, but one of the things it’s most well known for at CSM is financial planning and assistance, helping students create budgets, get their finances on track, and correct credit if that’s needed. Nicole [Salviejo] also helps with tax preparation. And Tom Bauer came up with this great idea, the hunger initiative program, which provides $75 monthly vouchers for students who qualify to help augment their grocery budget.  We also have a rapid housing program which provides temporary hotel stays for students who lose their housing.

In your current role, what do you like the most, and what is one thing that you’d change? 

What I like the most is the impact. It’s a rollercoaster from day to day, but at the end of that rollercoaster – even if it’s a deep, deep dive – it’s an impact. You’ve helped a student get into a hotel temporarily. You’ve helped a family get groceries who may not have them.

The one thing I would change at SparkPoint, but also across our campus, is the resources. I’m sure you’d say the same thing in your department. And not just the financial ones, but also the people to do the work. Because this work that we do, meeting students 1-on-1, requires people to do that front-end and back-end work.

One program at CSM related to Workforce Education is Cooperative Education. What is that, and can you share any anecdotes about Cooperative Education students?

Cooperative Education is the opportunity for students to earn credit for their work experience. At CSM, vocational work experience requires that the job relate to their major, so the worksite really becomes the classroom as they “learn while they earn.” Students develop three learning objectives with their supervisor, and throughout the semester they actively work on improving them because, at the end of the day, most employers are looking for the same competencies regardless of the industry: teamwork, critical thinking, and on down the list.

A perfect example was a student who happened to take my course three times. The first time, she focused on the technical aspects of the job, but the second time, I pushed her to hone one of those general competencies. So she chose public speaking and worked on it for the whole semester. Then, literally two weeks before the end, a news station showed up to her job and she had to do an interview with the local news! She said she would not have been able to do that had she not been working on public speaking all semester. And it aired on the news – I still have the clip! It’s awesome.

You’re a self-described equity champion and community advocate, so from your vantage point, what does equity look like in our district, and what is an example of equity work that still needs to be done?

I think we’re speaking about equity in the right ways. Now we need to make sure everyone’s on board. You have to bring people along on some of these things. I’m thinking of the whole discourse around Critical Race Theory. You need to help them understand why these things are important. A lot of us say we’re all about equity and want to help our students – and we mean that – yet we look at the surveys and students are telling us that’s not what they’re feeling. This comes up even in staff surveys.

So for us, we just need to put in the work. It’s hard work. We can’t pretend we can just snap our fingers and it’s just going to be there. I’d love to see more of that. And I’ll give you an example of something we did with Accounting. Pre-COVID, in partnership with the County, we organized tours to companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon for students to see themselves represented there. We wanted to look beyond just the students who sit in the front of the class and volunteer first for everything. We said, let’s come up with an application process, giving students a chance to summarize why they want to go and how it’ll impact their lives. And Steve Heath and others went into some of the learning communities to raise awareness about this opportunity. That all takes work! But if you look at the picture of the students who went on the trip, it’s not what someone would think if you said “this is a group of accounting students who went to Google Cloud Finance.” There were Black students, Southeast Asian students, female students, students of all different backgrounds. This wouldn’t have been the case if we picked the 8 students in the front row who, you know, could have afforded to drive themselves. And so I think people care about equity on our campus – you can hear it in their language – and I want to see it more in the action, the actual hard work and action that you have to do.

Right. We have these equity statements which are pretty transformative, but you can’t just say “justice-y things” and expect anything to happen. 

Because students know. You can say whatever you want to say – they know what’s real.

As you were talking, I wrote down “commitment to things like deliberation, iteration, and figuring out logistics.”

That’s right, and it’s hard. And we sometimes don’t want to own that it’s hard. I mean, I’m a person of color and I’m admitting that, even though it’s harder to feel left out, it’s hard to enact equity in the way we need to. But if we say it’s important – if it’s in our mission and all of our statements – then it shouldn’t be something we shy away from.

Turning now to AFT, you’ve been involved more recently with the Contract Action Team (CAT) (and you’re also the Vice President of the Classified Senate). How did you get involved, and why was it important to you to do so?

Well [laughs], I got a call from David Laderman, and I’ve worked with him in other areas like on Curriculum Committee, where I recently presented another volunteer-based work experience course, and he was so supportive. So he called me and explained why it’s important to bring our colleagues along – not that people don’t care, just that they don’t hear enough about why their voices need to be heard. I’m a big proponent of representation, and sometimes the loudest voices get the most representation, but they don’t always represent everybody’s interests. I wasn’t sure I had the time, but then I thought I might have a different voice, or be able to share voices that don’t often get amplified. Especially for adjunct faculty!

Speaking of adjuncts, what are 1-2 contract priorities that you think would improve working conditions for adjuncts?

I think pay is #1. It’s hard for me to even think #2, #3, or #4. My pay as an adjunct is even more peculiar – I get paid per student, so depending on the number of students I have, that gets me up to 1 unit or 2 units or 3 units. I love this work, so this doesn’t bother me, but I have a full time job, so I’m not complaining. I can’t imagine piecing together just adjunct work. Whether you have 3 classes or 5, the amount of work that you have to put in to engage with students is a lot. Adjuncts should be properly compensated for the investment that they make, which in turn might free up time for them to engage more on campus. But right now, when you’re asking folks to do extra things, they can’t – they need to spend all that time commuting between campuses or preparing lessons or grading.

In talking to some adjunct colleagues, I’m not sure they feel they have a voice inside their own departments and divisions. That’s a problem. Everyone’s voice is valuable, but sometimes they’re treated as a “second voice” or an afterthought.

To wrap up, give us a glimpse into your life outside of work. What do you like to do in your free time?

My husband and I love to travel, so we’re going to St. Kitts and Nevis this summer (for the last few years we’ve felt a little stuck, so we’re super excited to travel internationally again). We also like to wine taste and still have a wine club membership, so if we ever have an AFT party, I can donate some! We like to test out great restaurants in the area since we live in a place where a lot of those folks reside. And we have a bulldog, just like our mascot! So we spend a lot of time with her, too. If there’s any upside of COVID, it’s that we traveled more locally, and we got to bring her along.