October 10, 2012


San Mateo Community College Federation of Teachers, AFT 1493

Minutes of
General Membership/Executive Committee Meeting

October 10, 2012 at Cañada College, Building 3, Room 104

EC Members Present:

Teeka James, Rebecca Webb, Masao Suzuki, Eric Brenner, Michelle Kern, Lin Bowie, Joaquin Rivera, Victoria Clinton, Sandra Raeber-Dorsett, Dan Kaplan, Lezlee Ware, Elizabeth Terzakis, Zev Kvitky, Salumeh Eslamieh, Chip Chandler, Sarah Powers

 

1. Distribution of flyers and posters re: Yes on 30, No on 32

2. Invitation to reception/talk of Robert Reich Wednesday, Oct. 17th at Cañada 5’

3. Minutes of September 12, 2012 AFT meeting; Lisa Palmer; 5’

approved

4. *ACCJC issues: building a coalition; Dan Kaplan and Teeka James; 20’

Sept. 25th Teeka and Dan met with Chancellor Galatolo who encourages us to create a coalition of all constituencies to create a better working relationship with the ACCJC. This seems very encouraging. We welcome the impetus to work together on this goal. CFT has prepared a report.

Q: Is Barbara Beno the real problem, or is she a puppet?

Q: Background? Has it gotten so much worse with her, or is what she doing fitting in with a wider political agenda?

DK: BB generated more grievances than anyone else in her position when she was President of Vista College; she appoints sycophants to the ACCJC.

Discussion to be continued at the next mtg.

5. 6.35: Academic Freedom; Joaquin Rivera and Teeka James; 15’

The Senate is working through its rules and regs; now on 6, academic freedom/controversial language.

Diana Bennett agreed to postpone discussion of this at Senate until the union has a chance to weigh in.

Joaquin: the district feels that academic freedom is not subject to collective bargaining; we feel that it is but agreed not to hold up current contract for this issue.

The district doesn’t want it in the contract because they don’t want associated grievances.

Other districts have this.

Next mtg.: Teeka and Joaquin will bring in additional information; we will determine how to move forward on academic freedom.

6. Propositions 30 and 32: phone banking at College Vista and Cañada Vista was cancelled; Dan Kaplan; 10’

Kaplan believes we should do it. The polls are getting closer.

Zev: if labor doesn’t turn out about 75-80% of union members, Prop 32 will pass (i.e. we will lose)

Zev hates phone banking too but it works—the data shows that talking to people on the phone or going door-to-door gets people to vote.

Zev: don’t walk the halls during work time. We could set up local phone banks; there is phone banking Mon-Thurs at the council; we could do some tabling.

Teeka: we can also go to local labor councils (in the counties in which we live) to volunteer.

All 3 colleges agreed to table; union reps will coordinate.

Katharine, Lin, Teeka, Dan, Zev will phone bank 10/16 evening; time TBD

7. *San Mateo County Community Colleges Foundation request; Teeka James; 10’

Q: How about making it a scholarship for part-time students?

Q: $500-$1000 seems reasonable; we would form a committee to read applications

Q: We could also do fundraising for the scholarship

Approved: Two $1,000 scholarships, funded for the first year, and then fundraise for the subsequent years.

Lezlee, Dan, Michelle, Teeka will bring a draft to the next meeting.

8. Continuing discussion of candidate search for the 2013 Board of Trustees election

Lin met with former HMB mayor Mike Ferrera to discuss likely candidates.

Q: Did we discuss criteria? Masao thinks we should look for non-white candidates because the current board is 100% white whereas the district is only 42% white. Geographic diversity seems useful, too, as well as political experience.

Dan: the Board is working with a demographer to draw boundaries of districts; is currently holding public meetings to garner input and participants

Joaquin: we may have criteria, but at the end of the day we may not have many candidates

Teeka: agrees we should diversify the board in many ways

Rebecca: suggests looking at independent parties who are also interested in getting people into the local positions

Dan: Let’s encourage retired or close to retirement faculty to run.

At next meeting: we’ll revisit; see who’s available.

 

8.a. Eric Brenner stepping down from Distance Education Advisory Committee.

Lin nominated and approved with one abstention

Teeka will contact Jing

 

8.b. Joaquin discussion 2013-14 academic calendar

Are we okay with rolling over the calendar?

The split final exam week was approved by 3-college vote

Teeka: we might want to put in the day of grade submission, which should be 5 business days from the date of the last final exam.

We will put a discussion of creating a compressed calendar on the agenda for next meeting.

We agreed to roll over the current calendar to next year.

 

9. Performance Evaluation Task Force update; Lezlee Ware, Elizabeth Terzakis, Nina Floro 10’

Meeting October 15th

Setting up teams on each campus; Cañada will be meeting with administrators on November 6th/8th.

Also contacted Chabot and DeAnza to elicit information about their process.

Slow progress is being made; so far participants are eager and positive.

10. Concurrent enrollment; Michelle Kern; 20’

Counseling, enrollment, grading, lack of administration, and lack of technical support in the concurrent enrollment program.

The faculty want to have an administrator as well as a systemized process.

 

11. Continuing discussion of the Workload survey; Teeka James; 10’

Teeka asked faculty to edit survey draft.

We agreed to pay to use SurveyMonkey so we can branch.

Range will give more accurate data; also will elicit more participation.

We agreed that it should be set up so all answers are visible.

We think some of the answers should offer weekly hours; others will have per semester hours.

We agreed that question 9 is better answered with a range, not free-response.

Perhaps “when you participate in program review, etc., how many hours per week do you spend?” (i.e. make it clear that it’s asking about work that isn’t part of their regular duties)

Perhaps add common ‘extra’ duties such as reading email, doing equipment orders, assessing textbooks, etc.

Teeka will bring a revised draft to the next meeting.

 

12. PT parity campaign discussion; Sandi Raeber-Dorsett and Vicky Clinton; 10’

Sandi and Vicky are putting together a focus group to solicit ideas about how to define parity, etc.

Will send an email to part-time reps to get input

13. District Shared Governance Council report; Teeka James; 10’

Booted to next meeting.

14. The Advocate’s new look; Dan Kaplan; 5’

Look at the new look (4-colors) in the next issue.

Smaller paper run; digitally printed.

15. Statements from EC members on Non- Agenda Items

Should we have two shorter meetings/month? How do we increase participation? Our progress is impeded by lack of participation. Friday afternoon?