By Lantz Simpson

How can the community colleges as a system improve the compensation of its part-time faculty?  That has been the major issue before the Part-time Faculty Issues Task Force, first convened in November 2000 by Chancellor Tom Nassau.  The task force, which I have been participating in as CCCI representative as part of the consultation process, has continued to meet on a regular basis since then.  It has tackled two basic issues regarding the compensation and use of part-time faculty in the California community colleges: the $75 million budget change proposal to improve part-time faculty compensation statewide and the interdistrict full-time faculty proposal.

As with other consultation issues and task forces, all the major community college constituencies have been represented.  The Chancellor himself chaired some of the early meetings.  After the Governor's January budget was announced, which included $62 million (out of $75 million requested) for part-time faculty compensation, discussions became serious about how the money was to be allocated and spent.

As the discussions went on, it became clear that administrator groups were angling for a way to get their hands on the gap-closing money and use it for something else.  At first, administrators argued for "local control" and "no statewide standards," but once they realized that no statewide standards for "closing the gap" really meant closing the gap all the way up to 100% of full-time pay, administrators changed their stance and began arguing for a statewide standard set as a low as possible--around 70%, in the hopes that many districts could meet that standard in the first year and have money left over from their allocation to be used for other things.  Faculty groups, led most eloquently by Carolyn Russell of FACCC, then argued that all the part-time compensation money in every district should solely go towards closing the gap, and that no statewide    standard   was   necessary   for   the first year because compensation levels and pro rata ratios were so varied from district to district.  This was the consensus reached by the task force and was the recommendation it passed along to the Board of Governors.

The task force has also discussed at great length the interdistrict faculty proposal. Under this plan, districts would volunteer to participate in a pilot program involving multiple districts giving the same part-time faculty person a part-time assignment in each district that would add up to a 100% assignment for the faculty person. One district would be designated as the "host" district, and that faculty person would then be placed on the tenure track in that district. The system is asking the state to kick in extra funding ($2 million for the fist year) so that the faculty person would make the equivalent of a full-time salary. Numerous practical and legal issues are still being worked on and a progress report is scheduled for the May 14-15 Board of Governors meeting.