Peralta Federation of Teachers

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From the President

E-mail

Greetings Faculty,

Public education in California is being dismantled. The crippling mandates of Proposition 13, including the need for a two-thirds majority in the legislature to raise taxes and a lack of appropriate revenue sources to fund public institutions, have forever changed access to higher education, community colleges in particular. How will our union respond?

Here’s what we shouldn’t do: We shouldn’t allow districts to control the discussion on “productivity.” Let’s not mince words: increased productivity means only one thing, more students per instructor. Our district insists that classes (with a few contractual exceptions) must meet a 17.5 productivity goal. Where did the magic number of 17.5—and the convoluted formula that conjures it—come from? Good question. There is no statewide agreement on this number. If we seriously want to look at how “productive” parts of our institution are, we should turn our attention to the district office, where no FTES are generated, and begin inquiring about its productivity. Though the district insists cuts are being made as far away from the classroom as possible, it hasn’t given us a standard for district office and administrator productivity.

Yet we’re pressured to increase our class sizes as the district slices “unproductive classes.” Enrolling more students without the resources to help them is not going to make us productive in any useful sense or solve the educational problems our students face. As much as it pains us to turn students away, the time has come to draw the line. Our contract does not have many limitations on class size, in great part because historically the district has refused to accept such restrictions. But common sense tells us that students in an overfilled class will get less attention than students in a class with a reasonable cap.

So one thing we must do as a union is continue to fight for class-size limits, even in these tough times, and stick to the few mandates we have in our contract. The longer we accept the overcrowding of our classes, the harder it will be to undo in better years.

Another thing: let’s get rid of the business term productivity; it has no place in assessing the work of an educational institution. Part of the work of a subgroup of the District-wide Educational Master Planning Committee (DWEMPC) that I worked with last year was to look at the term. Though we all understood that one aspect of productivity is ratio of full time equivalent students (FTES) to ful- time equivalent faculty (FTEF), we stressed the importance of other assessment strategies to determine if a class is valuable and important. Specifically, we called for decision-makers to look at whether a class fulfilled a need outlined in a department’s program review and the college’s master educational plan; whether a class aligned with community and labor market needs; and whether a class was essential for transfer, certificates, or the scholastic depth of a department. Our task as educators is to make our classes meaningful and useful to our students.

As our educational institutions are squeezed and forced to become more “productive,” we not only have overcrowded classes and insufficient support services, but a decrease in fulltime hires.

Our union must vigorously advocate for more fulltime hires. Teaching in community colleges is no longer a career path, but a temporary, low-paying job that by its nature keeps faculty fragmented and powerless. Waivers to the 75-25% law, which requires that 75% of a district’s sections be taught by fulltime faculty, are currently being pursued by districts. Our union must be active in ending the abuses of this law.

Students are paying more and receiving less, and those of us lucky enough to be employed are working harder with fewer resources. Our work as a union cannot only occur at a district level since the problems are statewide; we must be voices in legislative initiatives, too.

In unity,

Debby Weintraub