BILL ANALYSIS �
AB 2295
Page 1
Date of Hearing: April 29, 2014
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON HIGHER EDUCATION
Das Williams, Chair
AB 2295 (Ridley-Thomas) - As Amended: April 10, 2014
SUBJECT : Community colleges: academic employees.
SUMMARY : Provides that a community college academic employee's
entitlement to transfer leave of absence for injury or illness
applies if the employee signifies acceptance of his or her
election or employment with another district within 5 school
years succeeding the school year in which the employment with
the first district is terminated.
EXISTING LAW
1)Allows every academic employee employed five days a week by a
community college district (CCD) to be entitled to 10 days'
leave of absence for illness or injury and any additional days
should the governing board allow for illness and injury
(Education Code � 87781).
2)Authorizes the governing board of a community college district
to adopt rules permitting academic employees of the district
to use leave earned, as specified, in cases of compelling
personal importance; and, specifies that the additional leave
time shall not exceed six days in any single school year (EC �
87781.5).
3)Allows any academic employee of a CCD who has been an employee
of that district for a period of one school year or more and
who accepts an academic position in a school district or CCD
at any time during the second or any succeeding school year of
his or her employment with the first district, or who, within
the school year succeeding the school year in which the
employment is terminated, signifies acceptance of his or her
election or employment in an academic position in another
district, shall have transferred with him or her to the second
district the total amount of leave of absence for illness or
injury to which he or she is entitled under (as specified in
EC � 87781). Authorizes that the board of governors shall
adopt rules and regulations prescribing the manner in which
the first district shall certify to the second district the
total amount of leave of absence for illness or injury to be
AB 2295
Page 2
transferred. Current law also specifies that no governing
board shall adopt any policy or rule, written or unwritten,
which requires any employee transferring to its district to
waive any part or all of the leave of absence which he or she
may be entitled to have transferred (EC � 87782).
FISCAL EFFECT : Unknown
COMMENTS : Background . Education Code � 87782 (as described
above) was initially designed for tenure track faculty. Current
law requires the transfer of sick leave between CCDs to be
transferred from one district to another within the year
succeeding termination of employment from a district. However,
according to the Faculty Association of California Community
Colleges (FACCC), sponsors of the measure, "Due to the lack of
reasonable assurance of employment, part-time faculty are never
truly terminated from employment." FACCC contends that
part-time faculty are not offered subsequent courses to teach
and that this may cause some faculty lapses longer than a year
of employment at any one district. Because of this situation,
some faculty have experienced difficulty requesting their sick
leave be transferred from one district to another once it has
become clear they are not returning to work at a specific
district, or if they are ready to retire and were not aware they
only had one year to transfer sick leave.
Additionally, upon retirement, faculty are entitled solely to
sick leave reported by their employer to the California State
Teachers' Retirement System (CalSTRS) in his or her final year
of employment, not any year of employment.
Purpose of the bill . According to the author, part-time faculty
often work in multiple CCDs for the span of their entire career
and are unaware they are able to transfer their unused sick
leave between districts, thereby missing out on potential
sources of a safety net in the event of an illness or the
benefit of service credit upon retirement. The author argues
that there is no statewide policy on the rules for transferring
unused sick leave for part-time faculty, subsequently; this has
resulted in confusion for CCDs and part-time faculty. The
author states, "AB 2295 will allow for a part-time faculty
member to reasonably determine if he or she is not returning to
work at a specific campus. Most re-employment rights'
contracts, which are locally bargained, expire after three years
if there have been no courses taught during that time. That
AB 2295
Page 3
would leave a faculty member another two years to learn of their
ability to transfer his or her sick leave, and to facilitate the
transfer."
FACCC contends that in order for all sick leave to be properly
credited to a part-time faculty when his or her time is being
reported to CalSTRS, that he or she needs additional time to
complete the reporting process. FACCC states, "AB 2295 will
greatly aid this effort and allow all part-time faculty to fully
capture their unused sick leave for both medical necessity and
for CalSTRS reporting.
Related legislation . AB 2705 (Williams), which is scheduled to
be heard in this committee on May 6, 2014, seeks to change the
name of "part-time" faculty to another term that best describes
the role they play in the CCDs.
Moving forward, the authors of these measures should work
together to ensure that the name change proposed by AB 2705 is
accurately reflected, as needed, in AB 2295.
REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION :
Support
Faculty Association of California Community Colleges (sponsors)
All Faculty Association of Santa Rosa Junior College
Opposition
None on file.
Analysis Prepared by : Jeanice Warden / HIGHER ED. / (916)
319-3960