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Healthy Outcome for Emeritus College (November 2010) |
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By Barbara Goldthwait
Emeritus College, a vital program of Santa Monica College housed at 1227 Second Street, offers over 160 free non-credit enrichment and exercise classes during the year throughout Santa Monica and is attended by more than 3,400 senior citizens. Santa Monica College’s administration caused a stir with their September announcement that 38 health/conditioning classes that had been in Emeritus College would be converted to fee-based Community Service classes in Winter 2011.
The state of California had ceased funding these tai chi, yoga, and conditioning classes claiming them to be “recreational physical education.” The rub, only students in these 38 essential health classes would be charged fees, and only their instructors would lose their contracted salary and benefits. Inequity would exist.
EC students and faculty, the Faculty Association, and residents of Santa Monica responded in force. About 125 persons turned out at the September SMC Board of Trustees meeting. Many EC students gave testimonials relating how yoga, tai chi, fall prevention, and other health conditioning classes had transformed their lives.
They wrote letters to Dr. Chui Tsang, to Board members, to SMC City Council, and to Santa Monica newspapers. EC student John Merriam captured the feelings of many in his September 9 “Save Emeritus Classes” Letter to the Editor in Santa Monica Daily Press:
Now is the time for all of us to lift our voices, communicate with our elected leaders and administrative staffs, that we refuse to be helpless bystanders in the destruction of our essential systems and that we will do everything we can to reverse these short-sighted decisions.
Aware of the dramatic changes a shift to Community Service classes would mean, we as health/conditioning faculty spoke out to the Board, the administration, our students, and the Faculty Association. We realized “community service” was a misnomer for the proposed classes we would teach. We knew that the kind of loyalty, continuity, and community that EC founder Maggie Hall encouraged us as teachers to nurture in our classes would not happen in classes where each 8 weeks students had to pay a new fee, begin anew. We also felt a sense of betrayal knowing our pay would be lower, and our classes larger (minimum 40). We would receive no health benefits, no Associate Faculty status, and no sick leave.
President Mitra Moassessi, Vice President Sandi Burnett, and Chief Negotiator Howard Stahl of FA observed, listened, and took action. They sent an e-mail stating the administration had acted unilaterally in setting up fee-based EC classes. They “demanded” the administration respond. On September 29, the administration did. Vice President Jeff Shimizu, speaking for Dr. Chui Tsang, notified Mitra and Sandi that the administration was rescinding its fee-based-class plan. The District and EC fundraising will now subsidize the EC health/conditioning classes through Summer 2011.
Equally important, the administration is providing support to EC health faculty in revising and rewriting their curriculum so that the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s office will reinstate its funding of their classes. Associate Dean of EC, Ron Furuyama, has organized his EC health instructors in groups according to discipline and is advising them in this process. Barbara Baird, retired chair of the Communications Department, will assist in the writing. Some of the courses like Fall Prevention and Stroke Recovery have been revised so that they do not come under the physical education category.
Mitra and Sandi claim that the power of the combined voices and efforts of EC students, faculty, and SM residents led to this positive outcome. The administration could not ignore them, especially when EC students are SMC’s largest donors.
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