August 24, 2026

Colleagues,

After 18 months of hard-fought negotiations, we have reached a tentative agreement with the District on a contract!  Top-line gains are as follows:

• Raises: 13% raises over 3 years(4%-4%-5%) (2025-26 pay raise will be applied retroactively).
• Stipends: a one-time payment of $3500 for full-timers employed as of Fall 2026 semester and $1750 for part-timers employed in academic year 2025-26.
• Health Coverage Increase: Health insurance coverage for two-party and family plans for Kaiser increased to 92% (from 88%)
• Academic Freedom!
• Pay Parity for Part-time Instructional Faculty:
  • Achieve Pay Parity at 85% for all part-time instructional faculty starting academic year 2027-28.  This achieves our goal of “equal pay for equal work” and will result in a significant increase in compensation for most of our part-time instructional faculty, on top of the across-the-board raises all faculty will receive in this deal.
  • Pay-by-load beginning Fall 2028 subject to completion of “impacts and effects negotiations” to be complete by May 2027.
• Increase to Overload Pay: Overload pay increased 2.5% in Year 3
• Summer Office Hours: Full-time faculty teaching in the summer will be paid for office hours starting Summer 2027
• Calculus Class Caps: Effective Spring 2027, Math 251 and Math 252 will have class size maximums of 31 students.
• “Parental Leave” bank of up to 20 days, where faculty members will be able to donate up to 2 of their District-paid personal days to a person taking parental leave.
• Lab Parity Reopener: the parties will convene a joint committee to review lab assignments Fall 2026, with negotiations on this specific issue starting in Spring 2027.
• Binding Arbitration for grievances.
• Personal Necessity Days increased and more flexible: Employees can use up to 6 sick days for Personal Necessity purposes, and 3 PN days can be used without prior approval / subsequent documentation.  District to provide 2 paid personal days to be used for whatever reason.
• Disability Accommodations: the District must respond to faculty inquiries on the status of their disability accommodation requests within 10 days

Make no mistake: we achieved these gains together through tireless organizing and solidarity.  When our contract expired at the end of June 2025, the District was offering less than 6% raises over three years, and basically nothing else.  Then we successfully boycotted Flex Day.  Then the District’s offer went up to over 8% raises over three years.  Then we successfully organized our “Count On Me to vote Yes in the strike vote” campaign, and the District increased its offer to 11% raises over three years on the eve of our first-ever strike vote in March.  Then we had a 95% Yes strike vote result, fought all the way through the summer during fact-finding, and organized a credible strike threat for this September.  That is how we won not only 13% pay raises over three years, but almost EVERYTHING you see above.  The District refused to negotiate on Academic Freedom for over a year, and now we have it in our contract!  Further, we achieved meaningful structural changes to how part-time instructional faculty are paid.

None of this would have been possible without the commitment of every faculty me

mber who took action for this cause.  Whether you consider yourself an organizer or not, if you talked to your colleagues, asked them to fill out a Google Form, attend a Board meeting, wear a red shirt, etc., you organized!  We did this together.

Next Steps: the Board of Trustees will vote on approving the Tentative Agreement Wednesday night (we don’t need people to turn out for the Board meeting anymore – the big showing is canceled!).  After that, our Tentative Agreement will be formally drafted into contract language for final approval into our contract, and we will schedule a union membership vote to ratify the contract.

We’ll keep you informed as we have more details to share.  For now, let’s celebrate this historic contract for our union, and for us!  We’re going to repeat our social at Fieldwork Brewing in San Mateo this Friday, August 28, from 4-7pm.  Hope to see you there!

In Solidarity,

Chet Lexvold
Executive Director
San Mateo Community College Federation of Teachers, AFT 1493
lexvold@aft1493.org
(650) 395-8347