CONTACT: Lantz Simpson, Santa Monica College
310-798-3776
lalantz@pacbell.net

LEGISLATIVE PROPOSAL

INTENT

The intent of this legislative proposal is to unify the faculty in the California community colleges and create a full service faculty for the students and colleges.

DISCUSSION

The California Education Code has for many years permitted community colleges to employ a category of faculty defined as temporary part-time. However, over the decades the use of part-time faculty has evolved into a de facto two-tiered employment system that is maintained by an intertwined, three-part structure. These three supporting structures are (1) the law defining temporary faculty (Sec. 87421 et seq.), (2) the 60% law (Sec. 87482.5), which restricts the employment of temporary faculty to a 60% (or part-time) load, and (3) the law permitting two-tiered salary schedules (Sec. 87804).

The years of experience since the passage of the EERA (the collective bargaining act), and AB 1725 (the community college reform bill), show that incremental reforms aimed at temporary part-time faculty (such as pro rata pay locally and the 75-25 full-time to part-time ratio) can be accomplished. Even current efforts, such as the omnibus part-time faculty bill (equal pay, office hours, health benefits, seniority) are part of the incremental approach. Yet, the primary problem lives on because the three main supports of the system remain untouched.

The current temporary part-time system has been repeatedly attacked as being bad for both students and part-time faculty. The absurdities of the system, such as the lack of telephones, offices and paid office hours, have been enumerated countless times. However, with the reform of California's welfare system, and with Tidal Wave II on the horizon, the issue of the students' right to full access to all instructors takes on a new urgency.

An additional argument that needs to be made is that this system is bad for administrators. Community college administrators are highly paid specialists whose time is costly. The amount of time they spend on administration of temporary faculty is staggering: monitoring compliance of the 60% law, conferring with lawyers and trustees when alleged violations of the 60% law occur, budgeting for part-time hires, administering the paperwork and reviewing the evaluations of part-time rehires, approving department chair recommendations for new part-time hires, maintaining hiring pools and affirmative action guidelines, terminating unwanted or unneeded part-time faculty, developing strategies to avoid law suits from terminated part-time faculty, implementing complex benefits rules for part-time faculty and then troubleshooting errors made in payroll and benefits, planning ways to evade paying unemployment to part-time faculty during semester breaks and paying private consulting companies to do the same, devising ways to finance more parking spaces for part-time faculty, and spending countless hours on preparation for negotiating collective bargaining issues specific to part-time faculty issues.

Every year local trustees must approve budgets that spend money on these wasteful activities. For example, an average-sized suburban district (such as Santa Monica) probably spends at least $300,000 per year on the costs of maintaining part-time faculty. This cost includes at least one full-time administrator, three to four clerical staff working in personnel and payroll, and extra work for all departmental secretaries.

Meanwhile, administrators will almost universally defend the current part-time system on two grounds: budget difficulties and the need for flexibility. Yet, maintenance costs are never factored in by the system's defenders. In addition, administrators will almost never defend the current system on educational, legal, or moral grounds. In fact, administrators are sometimes heard to complain about their lack of flexibility because of current law and budgeting procedures. Therefore, a major goal of any legislative proposal should be to address forcefully and urgently these administrative concerns.

PROPOSAL

The current system should be abolished and replaced by a system of full mandated funding and infinite flexibility. The following actions would accomplish these goals.

1. Repeal of Sec. 87421 et seq. and all other statutes relating to the definition and existence of the temporary part-time faculty as a legal category, leaving temporary faculty to be used only as day-to-day substitutes.

2. Repeal of Sec. 87482.5, the 60% law.

3a. Repeal of Sec. 87804, the law permitting two-tiered salary schedules for community college faculty.

3b. Passage of an Education Code provision that requires uniformity of salary schedules for employees with the same employment classification, similar to Sec. 45028, which relates to public school employees.

4. Passage of an Education Code provision that establishes two kinds of faculty: regular assignment and partial assignment, both of which would fall under current Education Code definitions for contract and regular faculty (Secs. 87400 et seq.), and both of which would retain all other faculty rights, including tenure rights.

5. Passage of an Education Code provision that allows districts to employ partial assignment faculty to teach no more than 10% of a district's WFCH. Districts would be given full mandated funding and allowed three years to reach this goal.

6. Passage of an Education Code provision that requires districts to establish faculty hiring eligibility lists, similar to the kinds of eligibility lists now used in classified merit systems, to rank the order in which new faculty are hired as growth dictates. There would be three types of lists: regular only, partial only, and partial rolling over into regular. These employment lists would not in any way conflict with other hiring procedures established by AB 1725.

7. Passage of enabling and intent legislation allowing for a smooth transition.

EFFECT

Administrators would be freed from all of their current labor spent on the administration of part-time faculty, and be granted the infinite flexibility needed in rolling over new faculty assignments. Infinite flexibility would work like this: as class sections are added, some partial assignment faculty would be rolled over into regular assignments, and new partial assignment faculty would be added from the hiring list as needed. Administrators, freed from monitoring the 60% law, would no longer be limited by the necessity of hiring large numbers of new part-time faculty at the last minute.

Assignment and load as well as RIFs (reductions in force) are already included within the scope of bargaining under the EERA, and all districts should have such provisions in their current collective bargaining contracts. Under RIF agreements, administrators already have the flexibility they need should another budget crisis hit the community colleges, while faculty are protected by an orderly RIF procedure.

The procedure for making faculty assignments under a new regular-partial law would therefore be collectively bargained. It is not only possible but necessary to bargain that some partial assignment faculty may self-select to remain on partial assignment indefinitely.

Salary schedules would still be bargained locally, but all faculty in each district would be placed on one schedule.

RATIONALE

1. In the next few years, growth in the California economy will pour unprecedented new billions of dollars into the state general fund. By law, the community colleges must receive about 5% of that money. In last year's budget there was $430 million in new money. The question now is how much of that money will be spent on human resources, how much on technology, and how much on capital projects.

2. Incrementalism is good. In the legislature, the reforms of the EERA, AB 1725, STRS service credit, part-time faculty health benefits and part-time office hour pay were all good. On the local level, collective bargaining wins on pro rata pay, part-time health benefits, office hour pay, hiring preferences, and seniority are all good. These incremental reforms prepare the way for a final and complete reform.

3. When Gov. Wilson wanted to rebuild the Santa Monica Freeway after the 1994 earthquake, the money was found. When Gov. Wilson agreed that reducing class size in public schools was important, the money was found. When Gov. Wilson wanted to build several new prisons, the money was found. When Gov. Wilson wished to give a $1 billion tax break, the money was found. It is not true to say that there is no money to abolish two-tiered salary scales for community college faculty. There are billions more than enough. When the governor and the legislature can be persuaded to find the money, they will find it.

4. Abolition of the 60% law alone would not be sufficient. It would create a third, intermediate tier of faculty as well as more and more bureaucracy to administer it. A major effect of a new third tier would be to create more jobs for administrators. This system already exists in some form in other states, e.g., Washington.

5. Why two-tiered salary structures are good for community colleges and their faculty but not good for the public schools and their teachers is a case that has never been made.

6. Why tenure is good for full-time faculty and but not good for part-time faculty is a case that has also never been made. Most attacks on tenure are based on the fallacious "one bad apple" and "straw man" arguments. AB 1725 reforms on tenure review, coupled with already intense competition in most disciplines for full-time positions by numerous overqualified applicants, make it very difficult for incompetents to be granted tenure. If some current faculty are incompetent, the golden handshake is a better option than abolition or restriction of tenure.

7. How a person can be employed by a district for five, ten, fifteen, twenty years or more, and still be classified as temporary is an absurd legal fiction. In addition, districts now routinely violate Sec. 87482 of the Education Code, which relates to a limited retention of temporary faculty.

IMPLEMENTATION

Explanation of Table

The following data, the latest available, are taken from the 1996 Report on Staffing and Salaries. Parentheses indicate from which table in the report the data was taken.

Using 1996 as the base year, full funding of new salaries and benefits for the third year of a three year period of transition and implementation would cost approximately $148 million in new dollars, which is figured as follows:

1. The total money the state spent in 1996 on full-time community college faculty salaries was $773.8 million (E-6). Multiple by twenty per cent for benefit costs to get the total full time faculty cost, $928.6 million.

2. No single table indicates the total statewide part-time salary and benefits expenditures. It can be calculated by taking data from various tables. The statewide hourly average salary, $37.09 (F-6), is multiplied by the number of part-time faculty, 29,230 (F-7), and multiplied by the average part-time WFCH, 5.5 (F-7) and multiplied by the number of school weeks per year, 36. The answer is $214.7 million. Since few part-time faculty have benefits, no attempt was made to calculate the benefits figure.

3. WFCH figures indicate the proportions of faculty assignments among full-time, full-time overload, and part-time assignments. Full-time WFCH was 408,784 (C), overload was 57,532 (C), and part-time was 159,426 (F-7). The corresponding percentages are 65.3%, 9.2%, and 25.5%.

3. Proportionally, a calculation can now be made to discover what the amount of money needed would be to compensate 90.8% of the faculty (full-time plus part-time) at current full-time rates. The answer is $1,291.2 million.

4. To determine the amount of new money needed to reach $1,291.2 million, subtract what is currently being spent on full-time compensation, $928.6 million, and on part-time compensation, $214.7 million, or $1,143.3 million total.

5. The amount of new money needed is $147.9 million.

N. B. The amount of money needed may actually be less than $148 million because most part-time faculty around the state are still paid for every hour they are in the classroom, and not paid according to their local load factor. For example, many districts' art instructors have a load factor higher than 1.0, thereby giving them a higher pro rata pay than instructors with a 1.0 load factor.

Recent new money for part-time health benefits and office hours are not figured in, nor are expected savings in administrative costs.

In addition, money must also be set aside for the acquisition of temporary buildings to create the additional needed faculty office space.

TABLE

DISCOVERING THE AMOUNT OF NEW MONEY NEEDED TO IMPLEMENT THE FULL SERVICE FACULTY LEGISLATIVE PROPOSAL.

DATA TAKEN FROM THE 1996 REPORT ON STAFFING AND SALARIES.

ROW NO.	DATA CATEGORY	Figures in Thousands
A	Statewide FT salaries (Table E-6)	$ 773.8
B	Statewide FT benefits (A x 20%)	154.8
C	Total FT salaries and benefits (A + B)	928.6
D	Statewide PT salaries (E x F x G x 36 [school weeks/yr])	214.7
E	Statewide PT salaries avg. (Table F-6)	$ 37.09
F	Number of PT faculty (Table F-7)	29,032
G	Avg PT WFCH (Table F-7)	5.5
H	Statewide FT WFCH and % (Table C)	408,748 65.3%
I	Statewide FT overload WFCH and % (Table C)	57,532 9.2%
J	Statewide PT WFCH and % (Table F-7)	159,426 25.5%
K	Amount needed to compensate PT the same as FT. (C/H x J)	$ 362.6
L	Amount of NEW MONEY needed. (K - D)	$ 147.9

EFFECT ON CURRENT PART-TIME FACULTY

After the three year implementation period, there should still be a partial assignment available for every current part-time faculty person who wants one.

Explanation of Table 1

NOTE: The 1993 Report on Staffing and Salaries was used as it was the latest available. (A study update using 1996 data is underway and will be finished and posted soon.)

1. Yearly retention rates for full-time faculty are 96.3%, 81% for part-time faculty. Projected actual retention and the numbers of new faculty to replace attrition are indicated in the "To replace" columns.

2. Add 1.5% per year for growth (growth will probably be higher).

3. The total number of faculty needed under this proposal is the total number of replacement faculty needed for attrition and growth plus the numbers needed as new hires under the 90-10 provision. The number of new hires is calculated as a proportion between the current number of full-time faculty and 90% of 68% (the 1993 full-time WFCH percentage). The total number of partial assignment faculty needed is a proportion of part-time faculty at 26% WFCH (with growth) over the next three years and partial assignment faculty at 10% WFCH (with growth) over the same period.