Attend legislative hearings on remedial education and on California’s shortage of credentialed teachers

During December, committees of the California State Legislature will hold hearings that could lead to new action on programs in public higher education including the CSU.

The State Senate’s Select Committee on Student Success will take testimony on remedial education in California’s public higher education system. This special committee’s chair, Senator Steven Glazer, has been a proponent of finding ways to move students to degrees faster, particularly in four years in the CSU.

A topic CFA will raise in public comment at the hearing is the CSU Chancellor’s Executive Order 1110 that makes broad changes to remedial education. CFA formally opposes EO 1110, as well as EO 1100 addressing general education, because the administration did not include proper and legally-required faculty participation on these curriculum matters before issuing the orders. CFA President Jennifer Eagan spoke to this at the most recent CSU Trustees meeting. The CSU Academic Senate is scheduled to testify.

CFA urges faculty in the Los Angeles area to attend to show support for CFA speakers who will address positive ways to help students in need of additional preparation. The Senate hearing on remedial education will be:

Monday, December 4, 9:30 am
In the Santa Monica City College Board Room
1900 Pico Blvd., Santa Monica

The State Assembly Higher Education and Assembly Education Committees will hear testimony next week at a joint hearing about solutions to California’s shortage of credentialed teachers in the K-12 system.

“Over the years, CSU faculty have witnessed a decline in the number of students pursuing teaching credentials,” says CFA Treasurer Susan Green, who is also a leader in the California Teachers Association, and who will testify for CFA at the hearing.

“This is due in part to a long-term political attack on the teaching profession that had discouraged students from pursing the teaching profession, as well as a struggle to win pay and benefits that provide teachers a middle-class living in the locales where they teach,” Green says. “It will take strong commitment from the state to restore the ideals that motivated so many of us to become teachers.”

Faculty in the Sacramento area are urged to attend the hearing:

Tuesday, December 5, 1:30 pm
The State Capital, Sacramento, Room 4203
Listen to a live audio stream

For more information about these hearings, contact CFA Legislative Director Mario Guerrero.

Lecturers—Remember to apply for Winter Break unemployment benefits

UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS. When part-time Lecturers are not under contract teaching, and do not have any other work, you can apply for and collect unemployment benefits. After all, you are not employed during those times, which is the point of those benefits.

CFA recommends that part-time Lecturers in the CSU check out CFA’s Unemployment Rights Supplement Guide. Many part-time Lecturers, if not most, are eligible to collect. The next eligibility period will be the day after the last official day of the Fall 2017 academic term.

For still more information, see the CFA Lecturers Handbook and much more on the CFA Lecturers Council web page.

Asian American labor leaders face arrest to stand for #CleanDreamAct

Labor leaders in the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance were arrested on November 15 outside of Speaker of the House Paul Ryan’s office in Washington DC as they demanded that Congress pass a “clean DREAM Act” before December 8.

The protesters blocked the entrance of Speaker Ryan’s office and chanted that the House Leader call a vote to pass a clean DREAM Act.

If such a law is not adopted, hundreds of thousands of young people, including thousands of CSU students and impacted faculty and staff, are among those at risk of deportation, in many cases to countries they left as children and do not know.

The Here to Stay organization, created by immigrant youth, reports that every day roughly 122 young people’s DACA waivers expire. DACA is the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals program that, on Pres. Trump’s orders, stopped taking new applications on Sept. 5. As existing waivers expire, DACA recipients become eligible for deportation.

Monica Thammarath, APALA National President (shown in photo), said, “We are ready to put our bodies on the line. Today and every day until white supremacists are out of office, we will protect and defend our family, friends, and communities from hate violence, racism, and xenophobia.”

For more information go to Here to Stay or the UCLA Dream Resource Center. You can follow updates on Twitter and Facebook via #cleanDREAMact

In Other News

YOU HAVE THE “RIGHT” TO WORK FOR LESS: In the Fall 2017 California Faculty magazine, which is online and available in print from your campus CFA Chapter office, check out a commentary about so-called right-to-work laws by CFA Membership & Organizing Chair D.D. Wills.

In “Right to Work is Wrong for Faculty,” Wills points out these are really Work-for-LESS laws, and are part of a broad attack on public worker unions to weaken their power to bargain fair contracts, thereby rolling back benefits, pay and what influence we have over our own work lives. If an upcoming Supreme Court decision makes this policy national, those who lose out will include college faculty in public colleges and universities like the CSU. 

Faculty Rights Tip: I Need a Union Rep!

Have you (or someone you know) ever been called into a meeting with an administrator and you were not quite sure what the meeting was about?

And once in the meeting realized, you were being questioned or investigated about some issue for which you might be disciplined, reprimanded, or otherwise negatively affected? You need, and are entitled to have, a union representative or another advocate of your choosing with you at that meeting.

You can invoke your right to have an advocate with you before or during the meeting by saying:

“If this discussion could in any way lead to my being disciplined or terminated, or affect my working conditions, I request that my CFA representative or another advocate of my choosing be present at this meeting.”

The administrator must grant the request even if it means rescheduling the meeting to a time that works for you and your advocate.

The rights of represented (i.e. you are in a union) employees to bring an advocate and to have the time needed to obtain an advocate for investigatory meetings comes from the 1975 Supreme Court case, NLRB v. J. Weingarten, thus the term “Weingarten Rights.”

Given the increase in investigatory meetings, it’s important to know about and exercise these rights now more than ever. If you are called in, clarify whether the meeting could result in discipline.

Here are links to previous Faculty Rights Tips about Weingarten Rights:

• Weingarten Rights
• Campus Investigations and Weingarten Rights
• More about Weingarten Rights

CFA is here to help! If you have concerns, contact your campus CFA faculty rights representative

For answers to questions or to suggest a tip, please write us with the subject line “Faculty Rights Tip.” See previous Faculty Rights Tips on a range of topics in our contract.

Links of the Week • November 29, 2017

Stan State shows Warrior spirit with donations to fire victims
Turlock Journal
The Stanislaus State Campus Cares Fund, created by the CFA Stanislaus Chapter to provide aid to students dealing with food insecurity, homelessness or unexpected emergencies, kickstarted a crowdfunding effort to assist the fire victims at Sonoma State. Stan State President Ellen Junn: “We are very fortunate that Campus Cares was started by the CFA” … “One of the really neat things about being in the CSU is that we get to care for our students,” said CFA President Steven Filling. “We get to put our money where our mouth is, and really importantly tonight, caring for our students means not just our Warriors, but our students in Sonoma too. You’ve had our thoughts and prayers, and at the end of the year you’ll get our check.”

Q&A with MEChA’s three-day march organizers
The Signal
The Movimiento Estudiantil Chicanx de Aztlan (MEChA) Club organized a three-day march with the hopes of advocating and pressuring Congress for a “clean DREAM Act. The march went from Merced to Livingston, Livingston to Turlock and Turlock to Modesto on Nov. 10-12.

Grad Students Would Be Hit By Massive Tax Hike Under House Bill
NPR-FM

GAO Report on Non-Tenure-Track Faculty
Inside Higher Ed
Major findings include that non-tenure-track professors teach about 45 to 54 percent of all courses at four-year public institutions and higher proportions at two-year publics.

AAUP: November-December 2017
Academe
This issue examines political and other divisions within higher education. Contributions from faculty members, AAUP chapter leaders, and an undergraduate activist consider how to advance learning and social justice in tense campus climates.

Withering Humanities Jobs
Inside Higher Ed
Full-time jobs in English and languages continue to decline, reaching a new low, says preliminary annual jobs report from the Modern Language Association.

Another Bad Year for History Jobs
Inside Higher Ed
American Historical Association sees 12 percent decline in openings, for fifth straight year of downward trend.

Report: Only 30% of ninth-graders will graduate from college
San Jose Mercury

Under New Law, Iowa Unions Vote to Recertify
Inside Higher Ed
Faculty union advocates in Iowa were worried earlier this year when state legislators passed a law saying that public-sector unions would have to vote, by a two-thirds majority, to recertify their collective bargaining units before the end of every contract. Yet all seven faculty and graduate student bargaining units passed the new threshold for recertification—most by wide margins.