BILL ANALYSIS Ó
SENATE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
Senator Ricardo Lara, Chair
2015 - 2016 Regular Session
SB 373 (Pan) - California Community Colleges: full-time faculty
percentage
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|Version: April 6, 2015 |Policy Vote: ED. 5 - 2 |
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|Urgency: No |Mandate: Yes |
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|Hearing Date: May 4, 2015 |Consultant: Jillian Kissee |
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This bill meets the criteria for referral to the Suspense File.
Bill
Summary: This bill establishes the Community College Excellence
in Education Act and sets a cap on the number of part-time
faculty for each community college district based on the 2014-15
fiscal year, thereby limiting new hires to only full-time
faculty until the district reaches a 75 percent threshold of
full-time faculty. This bill also prohibits new tenure-track
faculty from performing overload assignments during their
probationary period. Finally, this bill sets forth a series of
provisions governing how the threshold is maintained and
repercussions in cases when it is not maintained.
Fiscal
Impact:
Mandate: This bill may impose a new reimbursable mandate on
California Community College (CCC) districts. The
Chancellor's Office indicates that this bill results in
estimated statewide annual costs of about $550 million
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Proposition 98 General Fund for additional full-time faculty
to meet the threshold required by this bill. Additional,
potentially significant, costs could be incurred for districts
to report faculty information to the Board of Governors and to
hire additional faculty if needed to shift overload
assignments to tenure-track faculty.
Costs to enforce the requirements of this bill are estimated
to be absorbable by the Chancellor's Office.
Background: Existing law defines "faculty" as those employees of a
community college district 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, disabled student programs and services
professionals, and extended opportunity programs and services
professionals. (Education Code § 87003)
Existing law defines a temporary (part-time) employee to be any
person who is employed to teach for not more than 67 percent of
the hours per week considered to be a full-time assignment.
(Education Code § 87482.5 and § 87882)
The Board of Governors of the CCC has had a longstanding policy
that at least 75 percent of the hours of credit instruction in
the CCC, as a system, should be taught by full-time instructors
(commonly referred to as "75/25"). CCC districts with less than
75 percent full-time faculty are required to provide a portion
of their growth funds to hiring more full-time faculty.
(Education Code § 87482.6)
Proposed Law:
This bill requires all districts to report to the Board of
Governors by March 31, 2016 the total number of classroom and
nonclassroom full-time equivalent faculty attributable to hours
worked by part-time temporary faculty, and by contract or
regular faculty while working on overload assignments during the
2014-15 fiscal year. This calculation represents the district's
maximum allowable number of classroom and nonclassroom full-time
equivalent faculty that may be staffed by these types of faculty
until the district's full-time faculty percentage is greater
than or equal to 75 percent. Once a district reaches this
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threshold, district must either maintain this threshold or not
exceed its maximum allowable number as calculated above.
If the Board of Governors determines that a district does not
comply with the provisions of this bill, it must designate an
amount of the district's apportionment, as specified, to be
deposited in the county treasury to be available to the district
once a determination is made by the Board of Governors.
If the governing board of a district determines this will result
in a serious hardship to the district, it may apply to the Board
of Governors for exemption. Upon applying for exemption the
district must provide the exclusive representative of the
district's academic employees and all academic employee
organizations eligible for a payroll dues deduction with a copy
of the application.
The Board of Governors must either grant the district an
exemption of less than $1,000 or of $1,000 or more if a majority
of the members of the Board of Governors finds that the district
will suffer serious hardship. If no application for exemption
is provided or a portion of the exemption is denied, the
applicable funds will not be available to the district.
Finally, this bill prohibits new tenure-track faculty from
performing overload assignments during their probationary
period. The term "overload assignments" refers to the practice
of full-time faculty electing to teach additional courses (with
additional pay) beyond their normal full-time teaching load.
Policies regarding overload assignments vary significantly among
community colleges and departments.
Related
Legislation: AB 950 (Chau, 2013) proposed that a full-time
faculty member for a community college district not be assigned
workload that includes overload or extra assignments if they
exceed 50 percent of a full-time workload in a semester or
quarter, as specified. AB 950 failed passage in this committee.
AB 1826 (Hernandez, 2012), similar to AB 950, failed passage in
this committee.
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