BILL ANALYSIS Ó
SENATE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
Senator Ricardo Lara, Chair
2015 - 2016 Regular Session
AB 1690 (Medina) - Community colleges: part-time, temporary
employees
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|Version: March 14, 2016 |Policy Vote: ED. 5 - 2 |
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|Urgency: No |Mandate: Yes |
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|Hearing Date: August 1, 2016 |Consultant: Jillian Kissee |
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This bill meets the criteria for referral to the Suspense File.
Bill
Summary: This bill requires community college districts to have
collective bargaining agreements with part-time faculty that
include specified conditions of employment.
Fiscal
Impact:
New seniority lists: According to the Community College
League of California, out of 72 community college districts 40
districts do not include seniority provisions in collective
bargaining agreements with part-time faculty. Assuming a cost
of $5,000 to $10,000 per district to establish a list,
statewide reimbursable costs would be between $200,000 and
$400,000. This estimate assumes that the estimated 32
remaining districts have an agreement in place that is based
on seniority up to the 60 to 67 percent of a full-time
equivalent load; has a regular evaluation process; and
includes due process for termination. Once these existing
AB 1690 (Medina) Page 1 of
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agreements expire, new agreements would have to be established
containing the specified requirements in this bill.
(Proposition 98)
Maintenance of all lists: Initially only those districts that
are not exempt of this bill's requirements will be eligible to
claim for reimbursement for maintaining seniority lists. Once
existing agreements that are eligible for exemption expire all
districts will be required to maintain seniority lists in
accordance with this bill. If each college campus used a
partial position to track the data necessary to maintain the
seniority list, reimbursable state mandate costs could exceed
$2 million. (Proposition 98)
Background: Existing law defines "faculty" as those employees of community
college districts who are employed in academic positions that
are not designated as supervisory or management, as specified.
Faculty include, but are not limited to, instructors,
librarians, counselors, community college health services
professionals, handicapped student programs and services
professionals, and extended opportunity programs and services
professionals. (Education Code § 87003)
Existing law also defines any person who is employed to teach
for not more than 67% of the hours per week considered a
full-time assignment to be a part-time, temporary employee. (EC
§ 87482.5 and § 87882)
The Board of Governors (BOG) of the CCC has had a longstanding
policy that at least 75 percent of the hours of credit
instruction in the community colleges, as a system, should be
taught by full-time instructors (commonly referred to as
"75/25"). Existing law requires the BOG to adopt regulations
regarding the percent of credit instruction taught by full-time
faculty and authorizes CCC districts with less than 75 percent
full-time instructors to apply a portion of their "program
improvement" funds toward reaching a 75 percent goal. However,
the state has stopped providing program improvement funds and
the BOG has since required CCC districts to provide a portion of
their growth funds to hiring more full-time faculty. (EC §
87482.6)
AB 1690 (Medina) Page 2 of
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Proposed Law:
This bill requires community college districts to have
collective bargaining agreements with part-time faculty that
include specified conditions of employment.
Specifically, this bill requires collective bargaining
agreements to comply with the following regarding part-time
faculty:
Community college districts, upon initial hire, and thereafter
must evaluate the faculty member pursuant to existing law.
A faculty member qualifies and is required to be placed on a
seniority list if after six semesters, or three years, the
faculty member has not received a less-than-satisfactory
evaluation.
A faculty member is required to be placed on a seniority list
for each assignment at each college he or she holds during the
seventh semester.
After the sixth semester, each community college district is
required to try to maintain the workload equivalent that the
faculty member was assigned during the sixth semester. As new
assignments become available, they are required to be offered
in seniority order to those who have qualified to be placed on
the list and have completed the associated assignment.
In the event assignment reductions are necessary, they must be
made first to those that have not yet qualified to be placed
on the seniority list, and then in reverse seniority order.
In cases of a class cancellation due to low enrollment,
faculty members who are lower on the seniority list are
required to be displaced.
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Each new assignment successfully completed is required to be
added to the seniority list.
Procedures, such as those governing refusal or rejection of
offered assignments, or breaks in service are required to be
locally negotiated.
If a faculty member qualifies for the seniority list but
subsequently receives a less-than-satisfactory evaluation, the
faculty member is required to be provided with a written plan
of remediation with concrete suggestions for improvement. If
the faculty member receives another unsatisfactory evaluation,
he or she loses seniority rights and may be dismissed at the
discretion of the district.
Appeal and grievance rights and procedures are required to be
locally negotiated.
Provides that a community college district that has a
collective bargaining agreement in place before January 1,
2017, that has required components is exempt from the bill's
requirements upon the expiration of that agreement. The
collective bargaining agreement must include faculty members
based on seniority assignment based on seniority up to the
range of 60 to 67 percent of a full-time equivalent load. It
must also have a regular evaluation process, and due process
for termination once a faculty member has qualified for the
negotiated provisions.
Related
Legislation: AB 1010 (Medina, 2015), similar to this measure,
would have required community college districts to have
collective bargaining agreements with part-time faculty that
include specified conditions of employment. This bill failed
passage in the Senate Appropriations Committee.
AB 1807 (Fong, 2010) proposed to require community college
districts, through collective bargaining, to establish and
AB 1690 (Medina) Page 4 of
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implement reemployment preference lists for part-time faculty.
This measure was held in the Assembly Appropriations Committee.
Staff
Comments: The requirement for each campus to have a seniority
list is new and would likely be determined by the Commission on
State Mandates to be a higher level of service and therefore
reimbursable by the state. In addition, community college
campus would be required to track part-time faculty information
in order to comply with the minimum standards set forth in this
bill required to be included in collective bargaining
agreements. Regardless of whether colleges currently track this
information, once a statutory requirement is put in place for a
particular activity, all community college districts are
eligible to submit claims for reimbursement.
Data points that would be required to be tracked include: (1)
part-time faculty that become eligible to be placed on a
seniority list by date of hire and those that lose eligibility;
(2) each new assignment successfully completed by the faculty
member; and (3) the workload level of each part-time faculty in
relation to the level the member was assigned during their sixth
semester. These data would be necessary to ensure the correct
match of faculty to courses, verify that the faculty member is
maintaining the required workload, and track seniority by
discipline. To the extent each college campus needed 0.25 of a
position to track this information at a cost of about $21,000
including benefits, statewide costs would exceed $2 million.
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