senate capers: Sep 7, 2017, senate meeting: our budget crisis, the "IDEA" school

Thursday, September 7, 2017

Sep 7, 2017, senate meeting: our budget crisis, the "IDEA" school

Senate meeting, Sept. 7 2017

Big issues? Our Budget Crisis. ATEP. A new school at IVC (to be housed at ATEP). MacDonald’s proposal (about a new school, branding and such)

As you know, recently, we received a communication from the district (the Chancellor and Pres. Jamal) that stated:

Our district is working closely with the California Community Colleges State Chancellor’s Office to advocate with Congress on a permanent resolution to help students who are impacted by the president’s decision. If you are interested in lending your support for this effort, please click here to contact your representatives.

During “Public Comments,” I noted that many of us are concerned about our DACA kids and wonder what the district/colleges are doing for them. That yielded a fair amount of largely encouraging discussion. I may be mistaken, but I believe the matter has been agendized for next meeting. (If not, we can still do that, if desired.)

Please let us (i.e., Henry and/or me) know what you desire. Do you have complaints, worries, suggestions? Is there something we can suggest? PLEASE THINK ABOUT THIS ASAP.

There seems to be a move afoot to provide information about the legal situation of our DACA students—clearly, many of these students are very concerned in part because they have no clear notion of what is about to occur. During discussion, Counselor Robert M alluded to a communication with someone who assured him that the state of California plans some form of non-cooperation with Mr. Trump’s recent anti-DACA decision, whatever it turns out to be.

Various reassuring comments were made, but it was clear that there is a fair amount of uncertainty and confusion out there about the ramifications of Mr. Trump’s decision for DACA students, and we need to address that. The new senate prez (June M) seemed fully to support more discussion and information re DACCA and related matters.

Executive reports

Senate President: June McLaughlin [she recently replaced Kathy Schmeidler]

The big college issue is the BUDGET—a big problem for us (not for Saddleback College). There have been severe cuts, including in the schedule. “Please report back how the spring scheduling worked for your school.”

June alluded to some standard “narrative” about why we are experiencing these severe budget issues. I asked her to provide that narrative. I think she said that our special money issue is usually attributed to a raise in salaries plus the actions of the former Vice President of Instruction re overscheduling. Skepticism at the college about the narrative is fairly widespread.

Vice-President: Jefferey Kaufmann

Need to get bodies in seats on various committees.

The committee architecture is over-burdened. Too many committees. We need to push for reform in that area.

Academic Affairs (Dan D):

Dan mentioned that we will be attempting to get DAL (distinguished lecture series) funding. He said something about Flex week too. (Clearly, either Dan needs to invest in voice amplification or I need to invest in a hearing aid. The latter, I think.)

He said that we’ll continue to attempt to improve the professional development funds situation. (We want more support for attending conferences and the like.)

There’s a move afoot to improve “new faculty orientation.”

Curriculum: Diana:

We need a rep from The Arts, LLR, student body. Bodies needed.

Tech Review Committee will process 340 courses in the coming months!

Policy now changed. Approval can now occur locally, i.e., just at the college, not at the state. All that the state bureaucrats will do is “spot check.” Much faster turnaround now.

Tech Review 2: still open to new members

Cooperative work experience: undergoing a big revision in district.

All CTE courses are undergoing review. Diana mentions various “codes.”

Emeritus – will be moved to noncredit, moved to the new school (see below)

CET: rule in Title 5. Bring labor info before submit program. Lots of schools didn’t know that.

Course Catalog. Curriculum will be going through our course catalog. It’s ugly. Lots of errors. More than we like.

Chancellor’s office has a new curriculum unit. 18 of our programs are “missing” at the state. Some kind of snafu. Hilarious, said D, with some form of irony. SC is missing 68 of its programs. (Even more hilarious.) New program bugs.

Item J: naming of the new ATEP building.

Jeff: two issues. Naming of building. Other: approval of new school (i.e. our 11^th Academic Unit)

Item J was “Naming of the New ATEP Building.”

You’ll recall that, years ago, SC’s Burnett and our own Glenn got into an ugly urination tourney regarding “who controls ATEP.” In the end, then-Chancellor Poertner made like Solomon and decided that two exactly similar buildings would be constructed at the site, one for SC and one for IVC. Ours was to be built first.

Well, ours is well on its way and folks have been scrambling to do what needs to be done to fill the building.

There’s a proposal (by a committee) to name the building “Integrated Design, Engineering and Automation” (i.e., “IDEA”). I gather (from discussion) that this name corresponds to existing programs—programs that, it has been assumed, would be taught out there. Evidently, some felt that the “IDEA” acronym is problematic because it already designates other things. Still, the members of the committee feel that this name is best. “OK, then,” we thought.

There are two very distinct issues here. One is: what shall we name this building? The other is: shall we create another School (and will it be named “Integrated Design, Engineering and Automation”)?

At this point, we halted discussion of J and moved to item N: Budget, Enrollments and the new school at ATEP.

VPI MacDonald came up to present about that. My heart sank (just a little). I like ‘em, but I don’t expect good ideas from him.

He noted our massive budget crisis. M said that it is his nature to take care of one big problem at a time, and so, last year, he was all over accreditation. (And didn’t that turn out swell!) Now he’s all over the budget crisis and the imminent opening of our ATEP building.

MacDonald was there to sell an idea.

We need leverage in our efforts to get money from the district. One source of leverage is productivity/efficiency. Essentially, MacDonald wants us to use our relative productivity/efficiency as a bargaining chip re distribution of funds between SC and IVC.

In last 4 years, he said, both colleges have taken a dive, productivity-wise, efficiency-wise.

We provided lots of access. Went above cap. Our model does not allow us to claim. $2.2 million over budget. “You can’t operate like that.” Plan: let’s get back in line, a 525 (a productivity score—student hours over instructors).

Every school has been given reasonable goal of productivity.

MacDonald’s big idea concerns ATEP. Want to get ATEP off of the IVC budget. If we get ATEP off, we can grow FTES. Can’t let ATEP sink. Want ATEP to support itself.

The programs at ATEP can’t support lots of managers….. Need more FTES out there. That’s why we will move Emeritus out there. It has not been efficient, but it can be. To that end, we must rewrite Emeritus courses. (Apparently, there’s now a massive effort to rewrite all the Emeritus courses by December, I think.)

The building was designed for five programs. Makes sense to put those five programs in the building. We need to get MORE FTES out there.

MacDonald wants to create a school, to be called “Integrated Design, Engineering and Automation,” I guess, and that will be how our stuff at ATEP will be branded. It’ll be the name of the building, too. All part of a marketing strategy, a strategy to get more Full Time Equivalent Students (FTESs).

A separate school that funds itself. That’s the idea.

At least one senator haltingly suggested that, hey, maybe we should just pull the plug on ATEP altogether, since it’s been such a dog from the very beginning. She is correct: ATEP has been nothing but a money pit all these years.

MacDonald seemed to respond by saying that it exists and we’ve got to deal with it. We’ve got to make it work. He wants to reconfigure things so that it generated FTES and helps us with our budget woes.

We voted on naming the building “Integrated Design, Engineering and Automation.” I believe it passed, 15-5-4. Far from unanimous.

New business

Our LGBTQ Liaison, Alan Bilsborough, has “resigned from the District.” We need a replacement, and our own Henry Carnie has volunteered. Henry clarified that he has in mind sharing the office with one Anna Florez of student health. Everybody seemed to like that idea.

I fell into a coma about then. So that’s all I’ve got.

—ROY

Your senators:

Henry Carnie
Roy Bauer

No comments:

College and district acronyms

DRAC – District Resources Allocation

BAARC – Basic Aid Allocation Committee

CET – Chancellor’s Executive Team

BPARC – District Board Policy and Administrative Regulations

SPOBDC -- Strategic Planning Oversight & Budget Development Committee

SPAC -- Strategic Planning and Accreditation Council

APTC – IVC Academic Planning and Technology Committee

SSAMMO – IVC Student Success/Access/Matriculation/Marketing & Outreach
BDRPC – IVC Budget Development and Resources Planning Committee See
See What's "Bark"? And what on Earth is the DRAC?

The Faculty's Role in Community College Decision Making*

The Concept of Shared Governance

Shared governance is a process created by the California state legislature that guarantees faculty input in the decision-making process of community colleges. The purpose of the law, AB 1725, was to provide a mechanism to insure that the expertise of the faculty would be used in developing college policies. Although the phrase "shared governance" is not found in the legislation, it has become the commonly used description of the process that provides for faculty input. AB 1725 mandates that colleges "consult collegially" with local Academic Senates (the law also encourages colleges to seek active participation of other constituencies such as classified staff or students in appropriate areas). Consult collegially means that the district governing board shall develop policies on academic and professional matters through either or both of the following:

1. Rely primarily upon the advice and judgment of the Academic Senate

2. The governing board, or its designees, and the Academic Senate shall reach mutual agreement.

The state identified "academic and professional" matters as eleven specific areas:

1. Curriculum, including establishing prerequisites
2. Degree and certificate requirements
3. Grading policy
4. Educational program development
5. Standards or policies regarding student preparation and success
6. College governance structures, as related to faculty roles
7. Faculty roles and involvement in accreditation processes
8. Policies for professional development activities
9. Processes for program review
10. Processes for institutional planning and budget development
11. Other academic and professional matters as mutually agreed upon.

Since each college determines exactly how shared governance will be implemented on its campus, the process varies widely in its scope and details. With relatively few exceptions, shared governance has provided California community college instructors with a vehicle for input into the decision making process unmatched in any other state.

*Provided by 4Faculty

The SOCCCD Academic Senates sue their district (and win)

[UPSHOT: the Chancellor/Board essentially unilaterally changed the district's full-time faculty hiring policy despite a statute according to which the Academic Senate (i.e., the faculty) has important rights in the development of such policies. In the end (2005), faculty entirely PREVAILED.]

Part 1: From Dissent 66, Oct. 7, 2002

LEGAL STORMS BREWING

I counted two and seventy stenches, All well defined, and several stinks. —Coleridge

Intervention sought: During an August meeting of the IVC Academic Senate, it was suggested that, given the Chancellor & Board’s exclusion of the Academic Senate from governance, there really is no point in continuing. It was suggested, too, that the Senate might better devote its energies to seeking redress in the courts.

* * *

On September 12, the exec. cabinet of the IVC Academic Senate sent a letter to State Chancellor Nussbaum, seeking his “intervention” “to secure rights granted to local senates under Title 5” of the Ed Code. The letter cited four examples of the Board’s many actions in violation of “law, policy and process.” The first concerned the Board’s action (Fall 2000) to revise BP6120 (academic freedom), despite objections from the senates. Example 2 was the Board’s adoption (12/01) of a revision of BP5604 (eligibility for admission) despite “vehement” senate objections. Example 3 was the Board’s decision (2/02) to unilaterally revise BP 2100.1 (delegation of authority to academic senates), despite the policy’s explicitly prohibiting such action.

The fourth and most recent example concerned “revisions to District hiring policies,” including revisions to the Full-Time Academic Employees Hiring Policy, developed over the summer by Chancellor Mathur. These revisions, said the letter, “are rife with numerous individual violations of law, policy and good practice.” Despite Title 5, “At no time were any of the governance groups on either campus invited to participate, or even alerted to the existence of the committee.” Further, governance groups were given only 8 days to provide “input.”

* * *

The Senate’s letter yielded a response—a letter discovered belatedly, and already opened, in the senate president’s mail box! Dated Sept. 16, the letter, from Ralph Black, attorney for the State Chancellor’s Office, requested further info to determine whether his involvement “would be warranted.” Black offers a jurisdictional point: “Unless faculty hiring is listed as an ‘academic and professional matter’ under the SOCCCD shared governance policy..., faculty hiring does not fall under the jurisdiction of [the Board of Governors’] regulations.” (More on this later.)

On Sept. 25th, Mathur emailed the Saddleback Academic Senate, suggesting that he is under no obligation to consult the Academic Senates regarding modifications of the hiring policy. To support this odd view, he cited Black’s letter and its point about jurisdiction, but he ignored Black’s remark, in the same letter, that Faculty hiring procedures are covered by [the] Education Code..., which requires that “hiring criteria, policies, and procedures for new faculty members shall be developed and agreed upon jointly by representatives of the governing board, and the academic senate….” (Ralph Black)

Late in 1993, the Board approved a “Full Time Academic Employees Hiring Policy” that makes clear that the hiring policy can be changed only upon mutual agreement between the district and the faculty senates. This, of course, is the crucial “further information” that Ralph Black needs and will soon receive.

* * *

Budget development, of course, is plainly listed among the academic and professional matters of the district’s “shared governance” policy (2100.1). Hence, a failure to consult with the academic senate regarding budget development would be a violation of “shared governance”—one that clearly does fall under Black’s jurisdiction. Mr. Black will be interested to learn that, at IVC, the senate has been excluded from the budget development process for years.

Part 2: From Dissent 67, April 14, 2003

[“Kurt Bozny” is one of Chunk’s alter-egos.]

According to a statute, faculty hiring policies are to be “mutually” agreed upon by the district (i.e., the board) and the faculty (i.e., the academic senates).

During the Summer of 2002, Chancellor Mathur established a committee, including no faculty, that developed a new hiring policy. The faculty were not even informed of this committee’s work. The product of the committee—a truly appalling and incompetent policy—was then adopted by the board.

Thus, at long last, the faculty senate sued the district. (It was about time!) Below describes the serving of papers and its immediate aftermath.

April 14, 2003

Saddleback and Irvine Valley Colleges' Academic Senates Sue the District

By Kurt Bozny

April 8:

Santa Ana, 1:15 p.m.: Wendy files the much anticipated “faculty hiring policy” lawsuit against the SOCCCD Board of Trustees and Chancellor RAGHU P. MATHUR. She’s well-prepared, and so she breezes through the paperwork. Soon, she’s out the door, headin’ south!

2:10: Wendy’s back at IVC. She and I decide to head down south together to serve Mathur with the writ and the attached documents—a big stack. It’s good to bring an observer, cuz some people get way squirrelly when you try to serve ‘em with a lawsuit, and Mathur’s definitely the type.

I briefly search for one of those neon green “legal observer” caps like they wear at the big protests in L.A., but I can’t find one. Dang!

Mission Viejo, 2:40: we’re up on the 3rd floor of the Library, closin’ in on Chancellor Mathur’s office. I catch a glimpse of Mathur exiting his office, movin’ towards Robina Husting’s desk. He hasn’t spotted us yet.

Wendy closes in, holdin’ the thick stack of legal papers in front of her. As it turns out, Mathur is holding a similar stack of papers in front of him. The two meet in the small space in front of Robina’s desk. Mathur just stands there. So Wendy places her stack on top of Mathur’s stack, sayin’, “You’re served.”

Mathur’s horrified. The indecorous fellow now jostles and squirms to avoid holding the papers, but it’s too late—he’s got ‘em.

I’m thinkin’: “Does he actually suppose that the lawsuit won’t happen if he avoids holdin’ this stuff?”

Finally, in a desperate attempt to avoid being served, Raghu shoves the legal papers forward and they fall to the floor. Fwap!

Legally speaking, such fwappage is irrelevant; he’d been served and, once again, he’d attained the title “Respondent Mathur.” Besides, leaving the lawsuit on his secretary’s desk counts, too, so Wendy now picks up the papers and places ‘em there.

Meanwhile, I size up the Chancellor’s unseemly conduct. “How rude,” I proclaim. We exit.

Respondent Mathur struggles to think of a comeback, but Attorney Wendy (and her cap-less Boswell) are already out the door.

Finally, he’s got one. He shouts:

“How rude are YOU!”

* * *

Wendy Gabriella

April [9]: The next day, the district issues a peevish press release. It says:

SOCCCD Chancellor Raghu P. Mathur…commented on a lawsuit filed by the IVC and Saddleback College Academic Senates that disputes a new SOCCCD faculty hiring policy, stating, “The district is following the guidelines established under Title 5 that defines the ‘Delegation of Authority to the Academic Senates.’ There are 11 areas within the scope of academic and professional matters for which the academic senates have primary responsibility.

“The State Chancellor’s office has confirmed our view,” Mathur said, “that our hiring policies do not fall within the primary responsibility of the faculty….”

This is classic Mathur. The State Chancellor’s office does indeed hold that hiring policies are not among the 10 + 1 areas in which faculty are assigned primary responsibility by Title 5, a state regulation.

The problem is that the lawsuit does not mention Title 5 and it does not allege that Title 5 has been violated. Rather, it alleges that the new policies, and the manner in which they were developed and approved, violate an Ed Code statute (EC87360) and utterly defeat the intentions of legislators.

Ed Code statutes, of course, are more than regulations; they’re laws. They count bigtime.

In other words, with regard to the issue of faculty “hiring” policies, we don’t need no stinkin’ Title 5.

Respondent Mathur is ignoring—or failing to understand—that, in reality, the State Chancellor’s office takes the following view:

Education Code section 87360 requires governing board and academic senate representatives to agree on hiring criteria, policies and procedures to be adopted by the board. (Letter from California Community College Chancellor’s Office, Ralph Black, General Counsel, January 29, 2002).

In the District’s press release, Board President Don “So sue me” Wagner offers his own spin, expressing “disappointment” that the senates have decided to force the district to “spend money on attorneys, rather than students.”

* * *

On the 10th, the Register reports that

In an unprecedented move, the faculty senates of both Saddleback and Irvine Valley colleges have voted to sue their district chancellor and trustees over a new hiring policy that gives more power to college administrators at the expense of traditional academic hiring committees.

The lawsuit … asks a judge to set aside the new hiring policy because it was not approved by each college’s Academic Senate.

When the new rules were approved by a 4-3 vote by the …trustees in January, faculty representatives unsuccessfully pleaded with the board for more time to discuss them.

The state’s Education Code requires that hiring criteria and policies for new faculty members must be developed “and agreed upon jointly” by board members and the Academic Senate….

…Typically, new college instructors are selected by hiring committees made up of faculty members who are experts in the field and the head of the department. Their selection is usually ratified by the college president, the district’s board of trustees or both.

According to Wendy Gabriella, an IVC instructor and attorney who filed the lawsuit, faculty members were particularly unhappy with new rules that allow the district’s human resources director to change the scores awarded by committee members if she deems them too far off the norm and to unilaterally change interview questions.

Professors were also displeased with a new ethics and confidentiality section of the hiring policy that allows the human resources director to investigate and punish any member of a hiring committee who is accused of violating confidentiality.

“The policy allows the human resources department to accuse hiring committee members of bias, change their scores and discipline them without any due process or opportunity for appeal,” [said the] Irvine Valley Academic Senate President….

* * *

Also on the 10th, the President of the IVC Academic Senate, Greg Bishopp, sends a memo to IVC faculty. (The Saddleback Senate Prez later spams it to Saddleback faculty.) It says:

The Academic Senates of IVC and Saddleback College have filed suit in California Superior Court to block the implementation of a faculty hiring policy, which they believe to violate … the California Education Code. While the trustees and the administration of the SOCCCD maintain that their new policy, and the process used to develop this policy, does not violate the law, the Academic Senates claim that they do. In violation of the law, the Senates maintain, district administration has failed to allow faculty involvement in developing the procedures for hiring new faculty members. As a result, the adopted policy is fraught with violations of law, policy, and accepted practice.

Prez Bishopp also notes that the senates have “exhausted all internal means of appeal” and that, in January, Wagner “invited the Senates to sue the district to resolve the legality of the Board of Trustees’ alteration of board policy.”

That Wagner is quite a guy!

Bishopp closes by noting that the record

shows who has been responsible for wasting the district’s money in the past. Board President Don Wagner has stated that, “our district will again prevail on this misguided litigation.” However, in the seven legal actions brought by members of the faculty against the Board of Trustees, the courts have sided with the faculty and against the Board every single time, demonstrating that the Board, by violating the law, has been responsible for the suits, not the litigiousness of the plaintiffs. If the Board of Trustees does not wish to spend money on litigation, it should avoid breaking the law.

* * *

The district’s new faculty hiring policies (BP4011, 4011.1, 4011.2) are available online at the Saddleback College Academic Senate website.

Those who wish to read the statute should go to

Statute

To read a review of the statute and its relation to the historic AB1725 legislation, one might start by reading the local senates “handbook” on the State Academic Senate’s website:

Handbook

See you in court! —KB

Part 3

Judge Clay Smith
[10/10/09:]

Here’s what happened next:

Judge Clay Smith ruled that the district had indeed failed to include the faculty in the development of the faculty hiring policy, contrary to law. He thus ordered the district and senates to get together to develop a faculty hiring policy. But, in the end, the district’s representatives and the senates’ representatives did not see eye to eye on major issues, and so the district unilaterally pushed through the version of the policy that it liked, and it pronounced that policy the product of the committee. That policy was almost as appalling as the one that was neutralized by Smith.

Surprisingly, despite the vociferous objections of the Academic Senates to the new policy, Judge Smith ruled that the policy was indeed the product of “mutual agreement.”

It was an absurd judgment.

The Academic Senates appealed.

By summer 2005, the appellate justices unanimously acted to overturn and vacate Smith’s absurd judgment. The board tried one or two last ditch efforts to have the court reconsider, but to no avail. The academic senates had won, and that was that.

The senates had prevailed, period. That meant that the only valid policy was the one developed at the end of 1993 (that one was mutually agreed to). It was good from the faculty’s perspective.

The appellate justices urged the parties to work out their differences, and so, in the Fall of 2005, district representatives (namely, Mathur, the instigator of the original unilaterally imposed policy, and Lang, now the board president) and Academic Senate reps (namely, the two senate Presidents and the union president) mutually developed a policy that both sides could agree on.

That work was completed by late October, 2005. This mutually ageed to policy is a vast improvement.

At the time of writing, it only remains for the board to approve the new policy, and there is every indication that they will do just that. If they fail to do so, then the decidedly faculty-friendly 1993/4 policy will apply.

[The policy was approved.]

Thursday, September 7, 2017

Sep 7, 2017, senate meeting: our budget crisis, the "IDEA" school

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