CHAPARRAL

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Part-time faculty equity funds

Our share of the $57,000,000 that the governor signed over to the community college system is being negotiated for our underpaid part timers. The funds will be made available to the college in February, and we have until February of 2003 to define what parity is.

The district has agreed to form a taskforce of Guild members and administration, with a paid outside consultant, to study this reopener. The eleven-month pay proposal was brought forward in order to level the field for all full-time faculty salaries. There will be no loss of pay or ability to earn overtime for anyone. It is meant to bring everyone’s salary potential up to the same level, and will be an option available to all full time faculty members.

Every day the community college budget for next year seems to deteriorate further. As this article goes to press, it looks probable that there will be a lowering of our funded Proposition 98 guarantee; "growth" funded at a low level; and finally, COLA funded at less than 3 percent. Our budget will certainly be impacted. That means we must decide what the priorities of this institution are going to be. I hope we will make the difficult decisions and not simply cut everything 15 percent across the board. That would mean eliminating classes. Teaching students is the primary business of the college. We are, unfortunately, still being funded on growth, and we cannot grow if we cut classes.

In his most recent newsletter, Chancellor Nussbaum said that the recent appellate court case, Connerly v. State Personnel Board, determined that, “In that decision, the court struck down the community college statutes that address affirmative action employment, finding that the statutes violate equal protection guarantees and Proposition 209.” We were asked to cease all activities that could be defined as filling affirmative actions “quotas.” He continued on to say that, “Although the Court invalidated our particular statutory and regulatory system, it nevertheless agreed that many activities are appropriate to ensure equal employment opportunity.  In commenting on state level employment, the Court found that actions ‘that provide for data collection and reporting do not suffer a constitutional defect because a determination of the underutilization of minorities and women . . . can serve legitimate and important purposes.’” In other words, we can continue to diversify our faculty, staff, and administration (and report on that progress), as long as we have not set up quotas that we are trying to fill.

In closing, I want to thank our faculty for their efforts, on behalf of our students, in making an amazingly smooth transition to our new schedule. This is an intense semester, with many faculty engaged in many college activities. The Guild still has scores of “loose ends” to tie up in the contract, changes that have been made necessary by compressing our calendar. As soon as the contract is completed you will receive a printed copy. In the meantime the contract that appears on the Guild web site is the closest thing to “reality.” Thank you for your patience.