Minutes of
General Membership/Executive Committee Meeting
November 8, 2006 at
Present:
Meeting began at 2:25
Facilitator: Teeka James
Because Harry Joel and Jing Luan had come to talk with us about the Concurrent Enrollment Initiative, Distance Learning Advisory Committee, and the Department of Construction Planning, we agreed to reorder the agenda.
4. Concurrent Enrollment Initiative
The District is interested in expanding concurrent
enrollment “up and down the
Ernie confirmed that there will be a District task force devoted to this new Initiative, and he and Dan stressed to Harry and Jing that the EC would like to see a written proposal outlining the District’s plan for expanding concurrent enrollment. He later asked for a written invitation from the District, requesting AFT and faculty participation on the task force.
Faculty expressed a number of concerns and asked a number of questions, most of which were not answered.
Concerns:
Ž Calendar differences between high schools (minimum of 180 days) and SMCCD (175 days), in particular the difficulty of us starting earlier.
Ž Potential resistance from parents of high school students. Some high school students taking various college preparatory classes have been ill-prepared for college courses, which often comes as a surprise to the students and their parents.
Ž Articulation issues
Ž This Initiative feels very top-down, designed primarily as a way for the District to take in additional revenue.
Ž The need for AFT to talk with the high school teachers’ union.
Questions:
Ž Are on-line courses being considered at this point? NO
Ž How much interest is there from the high schools?
Ž What will the make-up of the task force be? What is the timeline? What is its function?
Ž What overall timeline does the administration have in mind for the Early College Partnership?
Ž What has been the reaction of high school faculty to what may be perceived as loss of classes for them?
Ž Who will decide which courses are taught at the high schools? (Some departments and programs may not want to offer classes at the high schools.) We want our faculty to be part of this decision-making process.
When asked, finally, about whether high school teachers might teach some of these college courses on their campuses, Harry acknowledged that that was a possibility. This revelation, which Harry referred to as “blended faculty” and which was new to the EC, led to many more questions and some serious concerns by EC members. Harry explained that if high school faculty met minimum quals/equivalency they would apply to teach our courses in the same way that other adjunct faculty apply. When asked how these high school faculty would be evaluated, Harry explained that they would continue to be employees of the high schools where they taught, but would be teaching “our curriculum.” (He did not elaborate on how our curriculum would be passed on to high school teachers.) He did not know whether the courses they taught would be in addition to their regular loads or would be overloads. He emphasized that this level of detail isn’t worked out yet. EC members wanted to know what the motivation for this “blended faculty” was, and stressed that anyone teaching our courses should be employed by the District and should be subject to the same evaluation process as other faculty.
7. Distance Education Initiative/Advisory
Committee
This
committee, slated to meet approximately once a month for at least a couple of
years, will support the District’s Distance Learning Initiative (first meeting
November 13). Jing did not clarify whether this would be a standing committee.
He will co-chair with a faculty member;
11. Department of Construction Planning
update
Harry assured the EC that the Executive Director positions will go away once the bond money is gone, but pointed out that the Ed. Code states we must offer those people employment. He is relying on attrition to take care of this when the time comes. Dan asked whether the District could have written a job description that specified the jobs would run out when the money ran out; Harry said “no,” not with regular classified positions.
2. Statements from AFT members on
Non-Agenda items
Ž Dan reminded members that we need to be gathering signatures for the Community College Ballot Initiative. He circulated petitions to be signed now.
3. Minutes of the August 10, 2006 meeting
& October 11 meetings
August 10 minutes approved.
Dan has changes to make to October 11 minutes, but did not have them with him; tabled until the next meeting.
Ernie
announced a change in responsibilities;
5. AFT Local 1493 Budget Report
We needed to approve our budget at this meeting. Harriet talked us through the handout she had prepared, which included projected and actual budgets for the year. The change in the dues structure has made a huge difference; we won’t have to dip into the savings account, which has almost $50,000 in it. Rick asked if we could see actual income from 9/05 to 8/06 to compare with projected budget expenses for 9/05 to 8/06. Harriet and Dan will make changes to current budget (for internal use only because official budget was already submitted to CFT and approved by July 1), and bring back at next meeting.
6. AFT/Academic Senate Class Size
Resolution
This document is the result of a year-long process. There were remaining questions about some of the language. The EC agree to change “androgogy” to “pedagogy” in #3, change “obligation” to “opportunity” in #9, and add “and AFT Local 1493” to #12.
** When it became clear that we would not be able to address all of the agenda items, Ernie proposed the following:
Ž Table items # 10 (P/Ter Report), 12 (Campus Reports), 15 (District Committee on Budget and Finance Report), 16 (District Shared Governance Council Report), & 17 (Affiliation Reports: San Mateo Labor Council and the Bay 10) and handle them over email.
Ž Move items # 14 (USLAW Re-affliliation) & 18 Open Discussion/ Meeting Critique) to the Dec. meeting.
8. Retreat Planning Follow-Up Discussion
on How to Proceed
Members decided not to give up any of our meeting time for Retreat sub-committees; these will continue outside of the meeting structure.
9. AFT Structure Sub-Committee Report
Eric presented the ideas of the Governance Structure sub-committee to the EC. As a way to increase faculty participation in AFT business and to increase communication between AFT members and the EC, the idea is to create campus chapters that might meet once or twice a semester and would function much like the Governing Councils on each campus with representation from each Division.
Teeka agreed to prepare a written recommendation for the EC ahead of the next meeting. Discussion of the proposal will be on the December meeting agenda.
Assignment: Dan distributed lists of faculty on all three campuses and asked that each of us look over the lists in order to recommend faculty we think might be interested in serving in the new chapters.
The sub-committee also suggested consolidating each of the sub-committee on a single campus to make it easier for the groups to meet. EC members would still be welcome to work on sub –committees on other campuses if they wish.
A related
announcement: Dan announced that the first grievance training was held at
13. Grievances
1.
The union and the district settled the grievance for the nursing
instructor who was not rehired after giving failing grades to two students.
She agreed to resign in exchange for a substantial monetary settlement.
2. The
other part-time seniority case was not settled and is scheduled for arbitration
on Nov. 9th.
3. Two
grievances were filed on behalf of part-time librarians whose hours of
employment were radically and unilaterally changed by the administration from a
set schedule for the entire semester to a variable schedule, which could change
from week to week.
4. On
the same issue the union filed an Unfair Labor practice charge against the
district for refusing to negotiate with the union on hours of employment, which
is a mandatory subject for collective bargaining.
5. OSHA
is still investigating the working conditions in building 36 at CSM and in
building 7 at Skyline.
Closing announcements:
Ž Ernie will email a proposal for how to shorten our meeting agendas. He suggested that if an item if information only, people should write it up so that it can be included in the next meeting packet.
Ž Yaping will facilitate the next meeting.
Meeting adjourned: 4:45
Submitted
by Anne Stafford (except for the Grievance report, which was submitted by John
Kirk because I couldn’t follow everything he said on Nov. 8).
AFT 1493 Executive Committee Minutes