AFT 1493 staff

AFT 1493 Executive Secretary Marianne Kaletzky is at center of Local’s work advocating for all faculty

Although AFT 1493 Executive Secretary Marianne Kaletzky (in photo below) was hired last summer and first introduced herself to members in an email message at the beginning of the Fall semester,  we asked her to re-introduce herself in this issue, along with the newly-elected officers, to enable all faculty get to know who she is and what she does.

I joined AFT 1493 as Executive Secretary in June, having spent seven years organizing workers and students in public education. Before coming to AFT 1493, I organized as a member-leader for UC-AFT, which represents adjunct faculty in the UC system, and as a member-leader and staff organizer for UAW 2865, which represents graduate student workers at UC. During that time, I worked with teachers to win a 17% wage increase, guaranteed access to lactation rooms and all-gender bathrooms, and, most recently, a repeal of a reappointment freeze that would have caused the layoffs of more than 700 adjunct instructors at UC Berkeley. I collaborated on several campaigns with Paul Bissember, this union’s former Executive Secretary (who moved to New Orleans in June,) and became interested in AFT 1493 after hearing him speak enthusiastically about this union’s commitment to engaging members and advocating for accessible public education.

Since joining AFT 1493 6 months ago, I’ve been happy to coordinate with our Contract Action Team to build our Fall Teach-In, “Social Justice Unionism in Practice: From Part-Time Parity to Anti-Oppression Organizing.” It was galvanizing to see almost 200 faculty and students turn out on Zoom to talk about how we can be in solidarity with one another’s struggles. It’s also been rewarding to consult with individual members to solve workplace issues, including ones that have arisen due to Covid and remote instruction; to negotiate together with our bargaining team to win special Covid provisions and a multi-year pilot program to quantify workload; and to see our members turn out at Board meetings to speak about the need for Covid family leave and fair faculty compensation.

In addition to organizing, I’ve worked as a public high school English teacher, a graduate student instructor, a contingent faculty member, and a paralegal. I grew up in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the daughter of immigrants from Russia and the Philippines, and now live in the East Bay with my partner Mick and our tabby cat Lyra. I have taught for many years in the Prison University Program at San Quentin State Prison and am a volunteer Spanish-English interpreter for asylum applicants through Oakland’s Centro Legal de la Raza. Once I’m fully settled into my union position, I hope to take Filipino language classes at Skyline.

AFT 1493 officers

Introducing newly-elected AFT Executive Committee members

New AFT 1493 Executive Committee (EC) members were elected in December 2020 and announced at the end of that month. Normally, our union EC elections take place towards the end of the Spring semester and newly elected officers take office at the last Spring membership meeting of the academic year; however, the timeline for this election was adjusted due to Covid, so new EC members took office at our first membership meeting of 2021, on January 20. These officers will serve through the end of Spring semester 2022. The full list of all of the newly elected Executive Committee members is shown at the end of this article, but we want to first allow the five new first-time members — Annie Corbett, Evan Kaiser, David Lau, Tim Rottenberg and Kolo Wamba — to briefly introduce themselves:

 

Annie Corbett

Hello everyone! I am so excited to participate as the AFT 1493’s Cañada College part-time representative for the Executive Committee. I have been with SMCCD since August 2019. I am currently an adjunct faculty in the Psychology departments at both Cañada and Skyline Colleges. In my academic career I have taught Quantitative Reasoning for the Behavioral Sciences, Social Psychology, General Psychology, Abnormal Psychology and Developmental Psychology. At Cañada College, I teach in the College for Working Adults (CWA) Program, which has been incredible! At Skyline College, I am the faculty lead for Open Educational Resources (OER) and am passionate about ensuring equity in all of my classes by offering courses that have Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC). I am also on the Resolutions Committee for the California Community Colleges Academic Senate.

For almost 18 years, prior to joining SMCCD, I founded and grew a non-profit residential program designed for marginalized foster youth. I worked extensively with youth who were LGBTQ, Unaccompanied Refugee Minors, and Commercially Sexually Exploited Children (CSEC). It was that incredible experience which informs and educates my teaching philosophy and methodology.

I possess a B.A. (Psychology), an M.B.A. (Public Administration) and a Ph.D. (Psychology) with an emphasis in Transformative Social Change. I did my dissertation research on the “The Voices of Survivors: what are the contributing factors that assist with exiting from commercial sexual exploitation in childhood”, and published a journal article on the same topic.  I am currently enrolled in the M.A. program at Louisiana State University majoring in Education Technology (expect to graduate August 2021). I am certified by “Quality Matters” with the Teaching Online Certificate and as a Peer Reviewer.

As someone who has never been involved in a union before, it has been incredibly eye opening! I am a huge believer in equal pay for equal work and being valued for my education and experience. I am excited to represent adjunct faculty and ensure that the issues of adjunct faculty are brought forward to the Executive Committee and that adjunct faculty’s voices are heard!

In Solidarity!

 

Evan Kaiser

Hi there! I’m an ESL and English teacher at College of San Mateo. As a CSM Executive Committee Co-Representative, I look forward to hearing and supporting the needs of my faculty colleagues. Pay parity and benefits for Adjuncts, manageable workloads, and the creation of anti-oppressive environments are priorities for me.

I see our union as an important and potent complement to other shared governance bodies on campus. I look forward to learning more and working with folks from across the District!

When I’m not responding to student writing or building LMS modules, I like to cook, play the drums, and read nonfiction. 

 

David Lau

I am very happy to join the Executive committee of AFT local 1493 with your votes as chapter chair of CSM. I previously served as a member of the executive board for the Cabrillo College Federation of Teachers (AFT local 4400), where I was the communications director, newsletter editor and columnist, and 2018 Monterey Bay Central Labor Council Unionist of the Year. At Cabrillo, I won six CFT communications awards for column writing and editing. I have a background in political activism and am a veteran of the Occupy movement and the Bernie Sanders campaigns, and I am a member of DSA. I hope to help with both our local issues at the district, while also becoming active again at the State and National levels of the union.

Since 2018 I have been teaching full time as an English Professor at CSM. I was educated at UCLA and the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and have taught creative writing at the graduate level at Saint Mary’s College; I’ve also had appointments at Berkeley and UCSC teaching poetry writing. I’ve published two books of poetry, Virgil and the Mountain Cat (UC Press) and Still Dirty (Commune Editions), and I’ve published poetry and essays in a variety of journals and magazines, including New Left Review, Bookforum, Boston Review, The Margins, Literary Hub, and the Poetry Foundation website. I’m co-editor of the literary journal Lana Turner. 

I look forward to serving AFT members at CSM and the district for many years to come. 

 

Tim Rottenberg

Greetings fellow unionists and educators. My name is Timothy Rottenberg, and I am excited to serve as your newly elected Part-Time Representative to the AFT 1493 Executive Committee from Skyline College. The role of the adjunct faculty member within our district is more important than ever. Roughly 7 out of every 10 faculty members employed in our district are adjuncts, and for too long our contributions to the institutional health of our campuses have been overlooked and under-represented.

I am looking forward to representing you this year as a steward of the aspirations of part timers in our district to feel included and valued as a part of our instructional community. I’m excited to meet as many of our members as possible during our Skyline AFT Office Hours this semester.

In Solidarity!

 

Kolo Wamba

Hello, fellow AFT members! My name is Kolo Wamba, and I am pleased to have the honor of serving as the Skyline College Executive Committee Representative.  I am here because I am a big believer in democracy in the workplace, and I strive to live out this principle by actively participating in our union.

I began at Skyline as an adjunct physics instructor in Spring of 2018, and I transitioned to teaching physics full-time in the Fall of 2020.  Prior to this, by day I was a tech worker at various California companies, and by night I was a part-time STEM instructor at various educational institutions.

I see the fight for fair working conditions and part-time parity in our district as part of the greater struggle for equity and justice in our society.  But I have no illusions that any of this will be easy, or quick, or that our side will even prevail in the end.  What I can promise is this: there will never, ever be a need for me to explain to future historians that I didn’t at least give it my best shot– such is my level of commitment.

I appreciate the opportunity to serve and look forward to working with you!

 

NEWLY ELECTED AFT 1493 OFFICERS

 

AFT 1493 President: Monica Malamud 

AFT 1493 Co-Vice Presidents: Katharine Harer & Joaquin Rivera 

AFT 1493 Secretary: Jessica Silver-Sharp 

AFT 1493 Treasurer: Steven Lehigh

 

Cañada Chapter:

Cañada Chapter Co-Chairs: Doniella Maher & Michael Hoffman

Cañada Executive Committee Representative: Salumeh Eslamieh

Cañada Part-time Representative: Annie Corbett

 

CSM Chapter:

CSM Chapter Chair: David Lau

CSM Executive Committee Co-Representatives: David Laderman & Evan Kaiser

CSM Part-time Representative: *No nominations were made for this office, although we ultimately received a number of write-in votes. The EC will have to decide who will be appointed to the position.

 

Skyline Chapter:

Skyline Chapter Co-Chairs: Bianca Rowden-Quince & Rika Fabian

Skyline Executive Committee Representative: Kolo Wamba

Skyline Part-time Representative: Tim Rottenberg

 

[Also get to know AFT 1493 Executive Secretary Marianne Kaletzky and what she does for our Local]

Contract Action Team

Family leave renewed in Spring MOU after faculty parents speak out at Board meetings

By Jessica Silver-Sharp with Katharine Harer

You’ve probably heard the news! Through the hard work of our negotiating team and a number of union members and activists in particular, AFT1493 settled a Spring 2021 MOU that renews the leave opportunities previously guaranteed by the FFCRA: that is, full-time and part-time faculty caring for children whose schools are closed may take up to 12 weeks of paid leave or have their load reduced without sacrificing their income, even if they already took a leave in the past year. 

However, this “win” for faculty would not have happened if not for…

• Cañada College English instructor Salumeh Eslamieh who recognized that faculty who had already taken a leave would be ineligible to take another leave this Spring, according to the provisions in place. (Note: As of this writing, the Biden administration has not renewed FFCRA).
• A group of faculty members with children, who worked with our Contract Action Team (CAT) activists to organize and speak out to the Board of Trustees on December 14 sharing heartfelt testimonies about the challenges of parenting during COVID. (Listen to their testimonies here.)  Plus a second follow-up presentation from faculty parents to the Board on December 21.
• The response of our Board, who listened carefully to faculty and quickly sent a strong message to District negotiators, which ensured faculty parents’ needs were met.
• AFT’s negotiators being available for last minute talks during their break to bring faculty’s updated concerns to fruition.
• A willingness for collaboration amongst faculty, AFT, the Board of Trustees, Human Resources and our negotiating teams.

   

Faculty parents (with their kids) who spoke out for renewed family leave include Salumeh Eslamieh (top left), Michael Hoffman (top right), Liza Erpelo (bottom left) and Jessica Silver-Sharp (bottom right)

  

Since our campuses first closed, AFT members on the Contract Action Team (CAT) team have kept family leave front and center: working with Human Resources to clarify and improve communications about leave provisions with members, sharing information and receiving member feedback with AFT Chapter Chairs, presenting faculty’s leave priorities to AFT’s negotiators, coaching and encouraging individual faculty members about leave terms and forms, and organizing and encouraging AFT members to speak directly to our Board about the impossibility of maintaining high parenting standards while devoting ourselves full time to our students.

We gratefully acknowledge our members for taking the initiative to speak out: Su An (CSM), Salumeh Eslamieh (Cañada), Michael Hoffman (Cañada), who also read a statement by Valeria Estrada (Cañada), Suzanne Poma (Skyline), Nadya Sigona (Cañada), Lezlee Ware (Cañada), Monica Malamud (Cañada) (and ourselves, Jessica Silver-Sharp (Skyline/Cañada) and Katharine Harer (Skyline).  Others prepared to speak, time permitting, included Jesse Raskin (Skyline). Again, those recordings are can be heard here.

Lastly, it’s not too late for you to take a full or partial leave during Spring 2021. Contact Ingrid Melgoza (Melgozai@smccd.edu) at District HR as soon as possible. Ms. Melgoza has worked diligently these past months to help faculty secure the best leave options available. It’s not your responsibility to arrange a leave with your Dean. Go directly to Ms. Melgoza at the District. Problems, concerns? Your AFT Chapter Chairs are ready to help.

 

VIEWPOINT ON CCSF CRISIS

City College of San Francisco in the Crosshairs Again

by David Lau, AFT 1493 CSM Chapter Chair

Flashback. It is 2010. The Great Financial Crisis unleashes an epic wave of austerity in California, setting the Golden State adrift. Rather than use Democratic supermajorities to pass tax on the wealthy and corporations and fund education in California, Governor Brown commits to austerity and to putting all tax increases before a popular vote, which is not required by law. School and community college districts across the state respond with teacher and staff layoffs, as classes and opportunities disappear.

[Read a report on the current crisis at City College by a CCSF faculty member]

One particular college, City College San Francisco (CCSF), bucks this trend by maintaining the legal minimum of budget reserves to avoid catastrophic cuts to classes, faculty, and staff, cuts that will alienate the public from these traditionally popular institutions. Coupled with arts and music-killing repeatability restrictions (still in place today) and Gates Foundation-sponsored attempts to restrict course offerings, the community aspect of California’s extraordinary system seems to be bleeding out.

CCSF then comes under sustained attack from the rogue accreditor ACCJC in 2012, just as the campaign for Proposition 30, an AFT and NEA-backed ballot initiative to tax high-income earners, is heating up. For years, the notorious ACCJC chief Barbara Beno leads an effort to shutter the largest community college in our system on wholly specious grounds. The elected board of CCSF is deprived of its governing powers because of the accreditation hardball. Enrollment plummets, destroying revenues and enforcing austerity.

CCSF survives this tribulation because of the courage of its faculty union, AFT local 2121, which is among the most militant in our system and in the San Francisco public sector. (I can still recall the party at the CFT convention the year that CCSF faced down and beat ACCJC.) In the meantime, taxes on high-income earners passed under Proposition 30 are extended under another successful union-backed proposition, 55—both successes coming at heavy cost to union war chests. AFT 2121, working from a strategy of social justice unionism and community engagement, moves from one victory to another, this time wining popular support to pass a local ballot initiative in San Francisco, 2016’s Proposition W, to tax high-end property sales and fund tuition-free CCSF for all San Francisco residents.

Fast forward to the end of the decade and the success of AFT-backed state tax initiatives and the property transfer tax in raising revenues is clearly visible in 2019 bumper-crop budget projections. Even as other states face huge shortfalls in revenues because of the pandemic-induced economic depression, California’s revenues are comparatively healthy because of our taxes on high-income earners, who are doing very well in the context of remote work and the Covid-induced Federal Reserve backstopping of Wall Street in toto, from junk bonds to hedge funds, far exceeding in scope the 2008 bailouts and subsequent half-decade of quantitative easing.

Yet in 2019-2020, and before the pandemic, the misleaders in the CCSF administration and on the board of trustees were planning extensive cuts to course offerings and part-time faculty positions. A college that once boasted nearly 100,000 students has been reduced to just under 30,000. This year, even more cuts are proposed, with CCSF full-timers now warned they will receive pink slips this spring. With the pandemic as a new reason for austerity, Democrats in Sacramento have been sharpening their blades to slash spending on our sprawling system of community colleges, once again refusing to raise taxes before or after the bitter defeat of Proposition 15 last fall.  Colleges like CCSF, which are funded by the state and not by local property taxes (like our basic aid district) are due to face sharp cuts, even though the State budget shortfall of historic proportions has not materialized. Administration and board misleaders, who have also bungled bond funding for a performing arts center, are looking to even more extensive cuts than the ones they planned a year ago. The existence of CCSF is again under threat. Administration and board are making sure the crisis doesn’t go to waste.

ACCJC was the preferred get-tough instrument for the various forces opposed to public higher education and the deeply unionized campuses like those in California, where labor has fought for and won more higher taxes even if Democrats then often curtail or redirect the spending that should ensue: the boondoggle online-only college Governor Brown created would be one salient example of how Sacramento misuses funds labor fought for.

Education unions that actively engage their communities like Local 2121 are politically potent organizations, even alternative social movements (in embryo) challenging the Democratic machine. But with the ACCJC strategy to shrink and reduce the California system gone for the moment, it now appears that a less top-down, more local series of actions are afoot. A difficult fight lies ahead. Our union must stand in solidarity with local 2121 and the diverse students of CCSF. This is a political battle for the future of higher education that will have consequences beyond San Francisco. Major increases in spending will be a prerequisite to reopen campuses and Governor Newsom and the legislature have already turned back one attempt to raise a wealth tax and fund such measures.

As community college faculty and AFT members, we must pledge our strong support to our faculty colleagues and the student body of CCSF. Their struggle is our struggle. The pandemic has so far been a hot house of historical transformations, with education losing ground as speculative wealth grows to dizzying new levels. It is a time, as historian Robert Brenner notes, in which capitalist elites are escalating the plunder of our society and education systems. Our fight back movement in the public sector must begin now.

Solidarity with CCSF

New Crisis at City College of San Francisco

By Rick Baum, CCSF part-time faculty member

On Friday, January 22, 2021, during the first week of the new term, the City College of San Francisco (CCSF) interim chancellor issued a statement that all full-time tenured faculty would soon be receiving a lay-off notice.  How could such an action be happening?

[Read an economic and historical analysis of the CCSF crisis by CSM English instructor and new AFT CSM Chapter Chair David Lau]

An answer may start with the rogue Accrediting Commission on Community and Junior Colleges which harshly sanctioned CCSF in 2012. A year later, it threatened the college with closure. Since then, CCSF has been severely downsized and transformed to be run more like a business in which a greater emphasis by those with power is placed on the number of bodies in a class rather than on whether learning is taking place.  Despite winning its full accreditation in January 2017, and a free tuition program for residents of San Francisco, jobs and enrollment have continued to decline, as shown by the state Chancellor’s data mart:

City College of San Francisco Enrollment & Faculty Declines

	2011/12	2017/18	2019/20
Enrollment	90,352	67,638	55,070

	2012	2019
Full-time Faculty	748	549
Part-time Faculty	898	766

 

For years, the college community has been told there is a budget crisis. The administration has claimed it can be “solved” by eliminating classes, and that, somehow, miraculously, enrollment will increase.

That has not happened, especially since the administration has done a poor job of encouraging students to enroll, resulting in low-enrolled classes followed by more cuts. And, a few months after one cut, the college community will be informed of another budget crisis requiring still more cuts. Last year, some 300 classes for the spring 2020 term were cut. For the 2020-21 school year, before the pandemic, the administration decided to cut 800 more classes and eliminate the jobs of some 250 part-time faculty. For the 2021-2022 school year, they currently intend to cut 600 more classes.

Why is this happening? Don’t administrators seek growth?

There appears to be a change in which the “success” of administrators is measured not by growth, but by how capable they are at imposing austerity.

For CCSF, one needs to also take into consideration that most of its students are working class and lower middle-class people of color whose educational needs and interests have, despite lip service to the contrary, been historically disregarded.

Essentially, CCSF is undergoing a transformation from being a community college that serves the needs and interests of a diverse student body to one that is a job training center, or a college that students attend simply to complete requirements to be eligible to transfer to a four-year school.

These changes have resulted in the degradation of the college’s faculty.  A blast sent out by the faculty union, AFT  2121, describes one result of the chancellor’s lay-off message to tenured faculty:

“A March 15th notice (a.k.a. pink slip) is…a statement that you could be laid off in the Fall. It puts full-time faculty in the same position for Fall 2021 that part-time faculty are in every semester: We’re employed if there’s work available, but the District is not obligated to create work for us.”

The Higher Education Action Team (HEAT), a community organization that was formed out of a meeting of part-time faculty in the Fall of 2019, has been fighting against the further dismantling of student educational opportunities at CCSF. Its members have organized protests, spoken out at meetings, and have fought for emergency funding from the city to restore classes cut for the spring 2020 term. That measure was passed by a 7 to 4 vote of the SF Board of Supervisors, but was successfully vetoed by Mayor Breed.

HEAT is now seeking widespread support for a petition that describes some of the destructive actions of CCSF’s administration, and calls for an expression of no confidence in their leadership.  If you are concerned about the integrity of CCSF and want more information about what has been happening to it, read and sign the petition here.

HEAT can be contacted at: sfcitycollegeheat@gmail.com

____________________

Rick Baum is a member of AFT 2121 and has taught part-time at CCSF for over twenty years. He has published articles in Counterpunch, Monthly Review, New Politics and the journal of the California Part Time Faculty Association (CPFA)