Legislative History of  “The 60% Law”

By Martin M. Goldstein

 

"Notwithstanding any other provision of law, any person who is employed to teach adult or community college classes for not more than sixty percent of the hours per week considered a full-time assignment for regular employees having comparable duties shall be classified as a temporary employee, and shall not become a contract employee. . . "  

 

      This provision of the Education Code, commonly known as the 60% law, was added in 1967 through SB 316. Why? Where did it come from? Who’s idea was it? What was it intended to do? What, in fact, did it do?

      Given the current statewide discussion and debate about changing the so-called 60% law, it seems not just reasonable but necessary to ask and answer those questions. To do so I am using archival legislative documents provided by FACCC researchers to the FACCC Board of Governors to prepare them for this discussion of a possible 60% law change. With those documents we can reconstruct at least part of the history  of the 60% legislation.

      First, a little background. The initial impetus for what became SB 316 was an administrative response to problems that had developed in the junior colleges of the then K-14 system arising from the new federal aid to education programs. These Great Society aid packages often came with time limitations and unpredictable funding schedules. Local school districts had to hire new teachers to implement the programs using federal money, but those districts did not know if the money would continue. 

      They feared being forced to hire full-time teachers and grant them tenure only to have the federal government take away the money later. The current law said that if a junior college adult class teacher taught for more than four months, that teacher became probationary (contract tenure track) rather than temporary, and from then on could be fired only for cause. 

      Our paper trail begins with an initial letter from Byron C. Curry, Deputy Superintendent of Schools in San Mateo County, to State Senator Richard J. Dolwig on September 23, 1966.  “As you know,” Curry begins, “Junior colleges must accept high school graduates as enrollees in spite of the fact that they may have shown little aptitude in their previous schooling. However, once enrolled, the student who is below standards can be dropped.” Further, he went on, other students begin and drop out of their own accord, leaving a situation in which many more teachers are needed in the first semester than the second.

      Looking forward to further problems if junior colleges moved to the quarter (rather than semester) system, as well as noting the erratic nature of federal funding, Curry proposed a change in the Education Code allowing one semester- (or one quarter-) only contracts, rather than the full-year commitments then standard. In a word, (though he did not use it), flexibility. 

 

 

 

It is telling that when Senator Dolwig sent Curry's idea out for comment, one of the Senator's advisors, Jim Jensen noted he was wary of the proposed change for several reasons, including that “implications of such legislation have not been fully explored. School districts might attempt to ‘get around' tenure laws with this section if it becomes law.”

      However, on February 8, 1967, the same day that Jensen's warning note was sent to Senator Dolwig, Senator Grunsky, and Assemblymember Petris introduced SB 316, which would authorize junior colleges to hire temporary teachers for one semester at a time, with no probationary status earned, so long as they are not hired for more than two semesters in any three year period. Dolwig had bowed out, and Grunsky was carrying effectively the same legislation.

      Or was he?  In a letter to Governor Reagan on June 26, 1967, Grunsky outlined the full scope of the proposed legislation, which now had the italicized addition to the original wording of the bill: “Senate Bill 316 allows the district to use hourly teachers without having them become probationary employees, no matter how many months they are employed, provided such persons teach less than sixty percent of the hours considered a full time assignment for permanent employees, and provided they do not employ each person more than two semesters or quarters during any three year period... I trust you will wish to sign Senate Bill 316 into law.”

      Somewhere between February and June of 1967 the 60% law was born, and the opening to create a permanent untenured underclass of teachers was created. The original law was intended to allow teachers to be hired full-time for one semester or quarter without having to give them permanent positions in case those positions weren't there, i.e., either the money or the students disappeared. 

      But with the addition of the provision that faculty can teach every semester-- so long as they don't exceed 60%-- a protection for fiscally concerned administrators became, as Jensen had warned, an opportunity to simply make an end-run around tenure, with a cheaper and more malleable workforce, the permanent “temporary” employee-- the part-timer.

      Whose idea was this? That is an intriguing historical question, one we can't answer yet. What we do know is that newly inaugurated California Governor Ronald Reagan, who had vowed to “clean up the mess at Berkeley” during his campaign, and who was no lover of unions by this point in his career, nor of teachers for that matter, was a clear supporter of this, if not an initiator. With no objections from the Attorney General, and a strong endorsement from Max Rafferty, the Superintendent of Public Instruction, the bill glided through the Senate and Assembly with unanimous approval in both houses by July, and was signed into law by Reagan as Education Code Section 13337.5  (now cited as 87482.5a).

      Whoever's idea it was, and whatever the intent was, the actual historical effects of this legislation were immediately clear. Within ten years there were 25,000 new temporary part-time faculty in the community colleges-- instead of 10-15,000 tenured contract positions that were never created.  Today there are 18,000 such positions-- and 38,000 part-timers.

      All of these part-timers earn substantially less than full-timers with the same credentials, qualifications and experience, and none of them have real academic freedom, which can only come from the job security of tenure, which none of them can have. And they have to drive to two or more different districts to earn a living.

      The proposed legislation, SB 847, to raise the 60% ceiling to 80%, will not fix all of those problems -- but it will fix some of them, and help those involved to work to fix the rest.