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April 1999 - SSMI Results in Call for Additional Fall Classes |
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At the April Board of Trustees meeting, Fran Chandler, FA President, urged the College to build add additional sections of classes that normally close early each semester to ensure that students are not harmed by the Student Success Maximums Initiative (SSMI, pronounced sesame). Those additional sections will be necessary to accommodate the large numbers of students who will find themselves unable to crash into sections that are already full. Adding these sections will also ensure the college does not lose students, which would result in a significant reduction in general funds to the District. (Community colleges are funded primarily by means of a specific dollar amount per full-time equivalent student.).
In April, the Board was told that the common practice of adding five or more students above the established maximum for each class to allow for students who drop later in the semester will be suspended in Fall 1999. At that time, the Faculty Association will ask faculty not to add any students at all once the optimum size established for each class has been reached. SSMI, authorized by the FA Negotiating Council on February 6, is intended to send a twofold message to the Board of Trustees: (1) that faculty are unwilling to continue generating extra funds for the District by adding additional students when the District is not acting in good faith to settle the 98-99 or the 99-00 contracts and (2) that over-adding often compromises the educational integrity of classes, limits the number of assignments and activities that can be done, limits the number of students who can be served outside of class, and detracts in countless ways from the education of those students who were duly enrolled in classes.
To learn more about the Student Success Maximums Initiative--and to debate its worth--you are encouraged to attend and to participate in a thorough discussion of the issue. This open debate will take place on Thursday, May 27, at 11 a.m. in B111. The discussion will be led by Rick Russell, Department Chair of Behavior Studies, and by Alan Buckley, Negotiating Team Member and Co-Chair of the FA Legislative Action Committee. Participants are asked to feel free to express their opinions about the issue and to bring with them any anecdotal and/or statistical evidence they might have to analyze the impact on student success of adding or turning away students above the established optimum class size.
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