San Mateo Community College Federation of Teachers, AFT 1493
Minutes of General Membership/Executive Committee Meeting
Wednesday, January 15, 2014, at Cañada College
EC Members Present: Eric Brenner, Vicki Clinton, Salumeh Eslamieh, Nina Floro, Katharine Harer, Teeka James, Dan Kaplan (Exec. Secr.), Michelle Kern, Monica Malamud, Sandi Raeber-Dorsett, Anne Stafford, Elizabeth Terzakis.
AFT (non-EC) Members Present: Doniella Maher (Cañada, English), Karen Olesen (Cañada, Counselor), Rob Williams (Skyline, English)
Guests: Zev Kvitky (CFT Field Rep)
Meeting began at 2:45
Facilitator: Sandi Raeber-Dorsett
1. Welcome and Introductions:
Done.
2. Statements from AFT (non EC) members on Non-Agenda Items:
None.
3. Minutes of December 11, 2013 AFT meeting:
Approved with correction of a typo, with two abstentions.
4. Spring AFT Social discussion:
In the focus groups with part-timers that were held in the fall, one of the issues that came up was the difficulty in getting part-time faculty interested in working on a parity campaign with the union. So as a first step, it seems that the union should have some kind of social event for PT faculty. It may be more effective to have an event at each campus. The idea of having a baseball game with PT playing against FT was brought up, but this may be better saved for the future, and instead we could organize a simpler “meet and greet” with treats. How would PT be motivated to attend? According to Dan, the motivation should be that PT are not paid enough. Doniella suggested framing this event as a “PT appreciation gathering”; this suggestion was very welcomed. It was agreed that EC members on each campus will work on putting together this event early in the spring semester.
5. Performance Evaluation Task Force: Spring semester timeline and new MOU
The PETF met on Monday. The PETF has all the pieces of an evaluation for tenure-track, post-tenure and adjunct faculty.
Q: Why does our contract say we have tenure-track evaluations on year 1 and year 2, but then grants a two-year contract for years 3 and 4?
A: This prompts an evaluation committee to be really rigorous in their evaluation early on; by the time a tenure-track faculty member has been through the first two years without major concerns, a two-year contract for the following two years sounds reasonable.
Q: What about evaluation of school nurses? School nurses are under Student Services, like counselors and librarians, but they also practice medicine… what about this aspect of their job?
A: Regina S-S is a nurse and she will work on this.
Q: What about the release time for faculty on the PETF and the MOU?
A: We could roll it over and extend it to include spring semester.
Motion: Have Joaquin work on a roll over MOU to include spring semester? Approved unanimously.
It is a good idea to have forums in the spring and again in the fall, just before the ratification vote, so that the PETF can explain the rationale for the changes in the evaluation forms and procedures. The fall forum should happen during flex days.
6. Professional Development: continuation of the discussion
At Skyline the Professional Development Committee changed the application forms and the committee chair created a rubric to evaluate proposals. Additionally, there was a move to evaluate the applications online, without a face-to-face meeting or any kind of interaction among the members of the Professional Development Committee. One aspect of the rubric was giving more weight to applicants who proposed some event to disseminate what they learned from the professional development activity with the broader campus community; this aspect would put certain faculty members at a disadvantage, if they were to use professional development funds for an activity that was very discipline-specific and had no appeal to the faculty at large. These changes have been met with dissatisfaction among the faculty.
Another issue is the lack of coordination/cooperation among the Professional Development Committees on the three campuses.
A two-prong approach will be necessary:
– An intervention at Skyline to deal with current concerns regarding evaluation of Professional Development applications
– Set up a meeting of the three Professional Development Committees
6b. Quality Public Education Campaign: Spring semester activities – Katharine Harer
The CFT started a new campaign called Quality Public Education Campaign. The CFT funded 4 grants in other districts (SJ/EV, Cabrillo, LA College Guild, Cerritos). These grants help locals work on goals such as the following:
– Internal goals: membership drive, organizing students (starting student chapters, having student interns who work in the union)
– External goals: working with community organizations, elected officials, Board of Trustees
Katharine will write a grant proposal for our local so that we can work on similar goals. One of the locals surveyed faculty members about their current involvement with community organizations; the intent was to leverage existing relationships between individual union members and community organizations when reaching out to these organizations in order to form partnerships to pursue union goals.
7. Status of 2.30 – Teeka James:
2.30 = Rules and Regs on Political Activities. No update.
8. Recent grievances and complaints – Dan Kaplan:
Tabled.
9. 41st Annual National Conference (April 6-8 in NYC)
Tabled.
10. CCSF update – Dan Kaplan:
The judge in San Francisco granted the injunction requested by the SF City Attorney, but not the one filed by the CFT. Judge’s decision was based on the fact that closure of CCSF would produce irreparable harm to the city of San Francisco. Bob Bezemek will be working with the City Attorney’s office when the case toes to trial.
11. Report on Community College Council Committee meetings
Labor in the Schools – Michelle Kern
Committee is seeking funds from community groups to cover printing costs of Mandarin language materials. Committee will be tabling at CFT and AFT Conventions.
Civil, Human and Women’s Rights – Nina Floro:
Committee worked on
i. resolutions for the CFT Convention (request financial support for a couple of delegates to the Tri-national Coalition to Defend Public Education)
ii. workshop on human-trafficking for the CFT Convention.
Educational Issues – Teeka James:
Committee worked on resolutions for the CFT Convention, dealing with
i. providing support for teachers for the implemention of Common Core standards
ii. support and local control for teachers regarding the use of technology
12. AFT 1493 video interviews update – Dan Kaplan:
The person who was going to do the video did not do the job as promised. We only have snippets of interviews and speeches, amounting to 30’, not all of which are useable.
EC members will look at the existing footage. Discussion will continue at the next AFT meeting, regarding whether we want to produce a video, and what the content would be.
13. March 2014 CFT Convention:
Tabled.
14. Statements from EC members on Non-Agenda Items.
None.