Minutes of
General Membership/Executive Committee Meeting
March 8, 2006 at
Members Present: Ernie
Rodriguez, Rick Hough, Nick Kapp, John Kirk, Yaping Li, Victoria Clinton, Teeka
James, Kathleen Feinblum, Katharine Harer, Karen Olesen,
Guest: Nick Kapp
The meeting was called to order at 2:25
Minutes were approved with corrections.
NON-AGENDA ITEMS
The Spring Membership Conference will be holding a retirement workshop
entitled “Building a Better Today and Tomorrow”, on Saturday, April 1 from
8:30-2:30 at
A union backed demonstration to end the war in
The March for Peace, Justice and Democracy anti-war demonstration will
be held in
A student-educator’s conference against the war will be held at
Jenny Saarloos, past EC member, sent us a friendly letter from
A proposal that establishes a peer evaluation tool for online courses
has been proposed. The EC will discuss this issue in a future meeting.
CO-PRESIDENT’S REPORT - Katharine Harer
Negotiations report - The new district offer is 3% total comp which
includes benefit increases and part-time office hours for 2 years. This offer is unacceptable especially
considering that the COLA from the State was 4.3 % for this year and 5% for
next year. The district wants to offer us a one time “bonus”. The EC refused
this one time enhancement. A possible strategy is to have a 2 year contract and
have all money go into salary as opposed to benefits. This scenario would mean
we would get a retro check at the end of the year and at the end of the second
year, receive a higher percentage of the total comp. This offer is an
improvement over the last offer, but not good enough
Katharine Harer and Joaquin Rivera are thinking of not running for AFT
co-presidency but are still interested in negotiating the contract. The
position is now wide open for others to step in. One suggestion is to have
co-presidents, one being newly elected. Dan Kaplan suggested that those
interested in running for co-president and other union offices attend the Union
Leadership Institute at the end of June.
COMMUNITY COLLEGE INITIATIVE – Dan Kaplan
The Community College Initiative is an initiative to separate the K-12
constituency from the community college constituency in order to calculate
community college funding using its own formula. In the most recent
development, Rosa Perez of
CAMPUS REPORTS
Teeka James and Yaping Li - CSM - no report
Karen Olesen -
Rick Hough - Skyline - faculty has asked about negotiations and dates
of possible forums.
GRIEVANCES - JOHN KIRK
The arbitration date has been set for May 20 regarding the nursing
instructor fired for flunking two students.
The grievance regarding the part-timer denied seniority was turned down
by the chancellor. An appeal for
arbitration was filed.
A tenured professor was assisted in writing an agreement of separation.
ACADEMIC SENATE/AFT CLASS SIZE RESOLUTION - Nick Kapp, president of the
District Academic Senate, and Dan Kaplan
The District Academic Senate and AFT are jointly drawing up a
resolution to address class size. Nick Kapp distributed a preliminary draft of
a resolution. Several suggestions were made to clarify the draft. Dan Kaplan
recommended that those who want changes made in the draft, work on the
electronic version previously emailed and send the suggestions to Dan.
COMMUNICATION OF QUALITY OF LIFE - Katharine Harer
Katharine Harer is writing an article on Quality of Life issues for the
Advocate and is looking for examples,
anecdotes from faculty on how being overworked is affecting their teaching and
their lives.
DISTRICT COMMITTEE ON BUDGET AND FINANCE REPORT - John Kirk
John Kirk passed out an update on the FTES recalculation. According to
law, if enrollment falls, we can borrow the present semester’s FTES from the next semester’s FTES. However,
John Kirk warned us against borrowing FTES for the future. If the enrollment
drops even further, then it begins to affect hiring/firing decisions.
DISTRICT SHARED GOVERNANCE REPORT - Katharine Harer
The District Shared Governance didn’t
have a quorum. The Mutual Respect Policy came up very briefly because
there wasn’t feedback from the Academic Senates of CSM and
The Meeting was adjourned at 4:40
Respectfully submitted,
Kathleen Feinblum