Santa Monica College Faculty Association

Representative Assembly Meeting

December 4, 2003

 

Members Present: Maria Alvarado, Robin Briggs, Alan Buckley, Tim Cramer, Gwen Dophna, Robert Flores, Dennis Frisch, Anneliese Gerl, Carolyn Holmes, John Hoover, Josh Kanin, Lesley Kawaguchi, Richard LaValle, Ann Maddox, Ed Markarian, Ben Martin, James Martin, Ken Mason, Richard McColl, Suzanne McDonald, Colleen McGraw, Richard Mednick, Mitra Moassessi, Brenda Ness, Lyle Nichols, Krystyna Oakes, Jim Pacchioli, Juan Quevedo, Toni Randall, Judith Remmes, Michael Schwartz, Lantz Simpson, Eleanor Singleton, Michael Soldatenko, Michael Strathern, Sumy Takesue, Alicia Villapondo, Andrew Walzer, Betty Wong, David Zehr

 

Members Absent: Vini Angel, Anthony Archer, Garen Baghdasarian, Fariba Bolandhemet, Juanita Burris, Tom Chen, Steve Contarsy, Jim Croxton, Becky Curtis, Nick DiCamillo, Naja El-Khoury, Mark Foster, Martin Goldstein, Craig Hammond, Ridgeway Knight, Jim Lemmon, Arnold Lessing, Alan Litt, Sheila Mason, Melissa Michelson, Jeffrey Miller, Elaine Morton, Ernest Padilla, David Phillips, Pauli Peter, Paul Roberts, Mario Semere, Rita Soshnik, Lydia Strong, Kathy Sucher, Marci Spiegler, Lydia Strong, Denise Travis, Sal Veas, Robert Ware, Mari Womack

 

Members Excused: Sandi Burnett, Fran Chandler, Don Emery, Kai Ganado, Fran Manion, George Marcopulos, Robert Massey, Kym McBride, Audrey Roche, Howard Stahl, Linda Zwang-Weissman

 

Guests:   John Henderson, Richard Tahvildaran-Jesswein

 

The meeting was called to order at 11:25 A.M.

 

I. The minutes of October 16 and October 30, 2003 were unanimously approved as read.

 

II. President's Report-Lantz Simpson

 

A. Lantz introduced Robert Flores, who announced that he's resigning from the position of Chief Negotiator as of today, which marks the end of the fall semester. 

 

     Ben Martin moved and Robin Briggs seconded the following motion:

          The Representative Assembly authorizes the Elections Committee to hold a special

          election to fill the office of Chief Negotiator.

     The motion passed unanimously. 

 

B. There will be a special meeting of the Executive Committee and interested faculty members to hear a representative from the El Camino College faculty discuss SISC, a self-insured health insurance consortium of Southern California community colleges.  It is possible that the district can save money for health insurance and that our coverage could be equal to that provided by Pers Care.  However, there are many pros and cons to changing benefit packages, and it is critical that all faculty members have a voice in such a decision.

 

C.  At the November 3 SMC Board of Trustees meeting a 457 plan was approved.  TIAA-CREF will administer the 457 plan for the college; this is a tax shelter similar to a 403B plan. As of today, the district has not notified the Faculty Association of the arrangement.  Unfortunately, these arrangements were made too late for the 2003 retirees to tax shelter their retirement incentive money.

 

D.  Lantz Simpson and Mitra Moassessi met with Graham Pope, the newly appointed Board of Trustees member and found him to be open-minded and interested in faculty points of view.

 

E.  Robin Briggs, co-chair of the Adjunct Faculty Committee encouraged all faculty members, full-time and part-time, to join California Part-time Faculty Association (CPFA).  Dues are only $30-50 per year and payroll deduction is available.  CPFA works to assure more rights for part-time faculty.

 

F.  In a meeting with Kelly Hayes-Raitt regarding the "86 the Trustees Campaign", the representatives agreed to separate the trustee election issues and campaign work from the work of the Job Action Task Force.

 

III. Approval of Faculty Association Reassigned Time for Spring 2004

 

The Executive Committee recommends the following percentages of reassigned time for Spring and Winter, 2004.

 

President   .8                                                 Chair of Adjunct Faculty Committee   .2

Vice President  .8                                          Webmaster  .2

Chief Negotiator  .6                                       Special Project  .4

Negotiating team member  .6                        Negotiating team  .2                       

Special projects  .2

Newsletters  .6

 

Winter-Total of .2 reassigned time

 

Robin Briggs moved and Dennis Frisch seconded the motion to add an additional 20%  reassigned time for Winter, 2004.

     Amendment passed unanimously.

 

Executive Committee motion passed unanimously.

 

 

 

 

 

IV.  FACCC Report-Ken Mason

     Ken reported that he believed this was the best FACCC conference ever, due to the importance of issues such as equalization which is finally being dealt with.  An especially interesting session brought up the funding equalization formula that nobody appears to understand.  Under this formula, SMC receives approximately $2800 per student while West Kern College receives $8000 per student.  SMC is lowest on the list while West Kern is first and all other colleges fall in between.   Many colleges would like to see this formula changed; Los Angeles Community College District is one of the districts opposed to changes, since they benefit from the inequities of this formula. 

     Santa Monica has managed to educate students for less than other districts by having significantly larger class sizes than the state averages.

 

V. California Community College Independents  (CCCI) report-Ken Mason 

      The SMC representatives to CCCI believe that if we are to continue to pay dues and spend time going to meetings then CCCI should be an independent union voice in Sacramento.  As it is now, the only union voices in Sacramento are unions that mainly serve K-12 constituencies while having members in some community colleges; these statewide unions do not adequately understand or represent the concerns of community college faculty.  FACCC is of course a great community college advocate, but it is not a union voice.  SMC representatives, along with Rich Hansen of FACCC, have attempted to overhaul the by-laws of CCCI in order to make it possible for CCCI to serve the need for a community college union voice in Sacramento.   

 

VI.  Negotiations-Lantz Simpson

     Agreement has been reached with the district on the use of part-time equity money.  All hourly teaching salaries will have 9.67 percent added retroactive to August 25, 2003.

 

Meeting adjourned at 12:30 P.M.

 

Respectfully submitted,

 

 

Ann Maddox, Recording Secretary