Faculty, welcome back.As you know, the big news right now is the governor’s proposed budget. According to CCC Chancellor Diane Woodruff, “The California Community Colleges received a reduction of $525 million that includes a two-thirds reduction in growth funds.”
No doubt, you’ve already received lots of emails alerting you to the trouble ahead.
But NOTE WELL: there can be no doubt that Chancellor Mathur will exploit the situation to serve his interests. That’s what the man does.
As you know, owing to his bungling, our colleges are, and have been, in crisis mode re the 50% Law. The gist: state law requires that at least half of expenditures (in community colleges) go to faculty salaries and benefits (“instruction”). But, for years, in part because of ATEP start-up costs, we’ve spent increasingly less on instruction and are now doomed to cross below the 50% mark. (See The data & Documents.) Among the desperate measures we’ve taken: the en masse and ASAP hiring of faculty.
No district would do that unless it had to. Faculty hiring should be done carefully, deliberately. Not hurriedly.
Our haste has already produced fiascos. HR has bungled advertising for these 45 new hires. Check out our ad in the Chronicle of Higher Education. It's useless; and it contains errors. (This was discovered during a recent IVC Academic Senate meeting in which it occurred to folks to actually go online and check out the ads that HR was in such a hurry to get into the CHE.)
No doubt Mathur will seize the opportunity to blame all of our woes, including our 50% woes, on the state budget. He’ll announce various obnoxious initiatives too, using the budget crisis as cover.
We can’t let him get away with that.
"But wait!", you say. "The state’s budgetary woes do not apply to us because we’re on basic aid!"
Well, yes. But there’s a big “but”: despite our special funding situation (we rely on local property taxes), our board of trustees insists on funding the colleges as though we received the more common state funding. And so that means we’re headed for seriously lean times. We’ll have to spend less money.
Meanwhile, the district (i.e., Gary Poertner) projects that we are headed for non-compliance with the 50% Law (for 2007-2008) to the tune of four and a half million dollars. But the projection assumes a faculty COLA of 4.53%.
Among the provisions of the state budget: no COLA.
That means that we’re headed for an even greater degree of non-compliance (with the 50% Law) than we thought. And that means: we need to hire more faculty or increase faculty salaries/benefits.
How that all fits with spending less money ain’t exactly clear to me. (Admittedly, I’m no money guy.)
At any rate, it’s important that we learn the facts about all this and keep an eye on you-know-who.
So welcome back.
12 comments:
A short year ago, during the State of the State bloviation, GAS told us everything about of Caleefooorneaaas finances was good to go. Lots of clapping ensued.
A few weeks later his former primary opponent (Senator McClintock) sat down with GAS and warned him about the precarious position the state budget was really in.
Of course GAS just dithered and dallied along with the rest of the whores in the Statehouse.
They even passed a budget (late again!) that gave us education types a 4.5% raise system wide. Now the bastards want it back.
Contracts have been signed based on those budget numbers and chaos will reign once again.
The operating principle for voting for a politician should be "vote 'em out" until we can get a crew in there that can operate the ship.
Chunkster: From your analysis, it appears the faculty will likely receive a big fat pay raise, similar to the bulbous asses commonly seen on most tenured professors. I suspect we will also see a lot of smiles on the ever-present complainers that want Goo fired. Wow! Now is that ironic or not?
3:26 Faculty pay raises are ALWAYS trailing. First the employee incurs the inflationary loss in their paycheck. Then whenever after some years a contract reopener ALLOWS for a pay raise (COLA) they negotiate for it. Most raises do not fully recover the inflationary loss.
In my District faculty have not received ANY raise in 5 YEARS. That is a de facto pay cut. When was your last raise 3:26?
As far as your snarky "fat ass" faculty comment goes I'll note this. The last time I checked the people of California voted to spend 40% of the State budget on education. Half of that goes to the classroom. If you don't maintain a standard of living for these faculty then the invisible hand will move the best of faculty to other work. Less qualified people will take their place and the death spiral that our education system is in will accelerate.
If you like the idea of paying folks less every year 3:26 why do you not apply it to yourself? You could actually give some of your pay back to your employer for that time or two you wasted time at work! Since everyone, even you, COULD be more productive just kick down some to da man. You'll feel better afterward.
Just asking.
The Governator's mid-year budget cuts and next year's reduced funding for K-14 schools are just proposals. P-R-O-P-O-S-A-L-S.
To actually do anything, Arnie will have to suspend Proposition 98which requires a 2/3 vote of the State Legislature.
--100 miles down the road (and the sky's not falling down here either)
Hey Chuck, isn't it true that the SOCCCD has a couple million dollar surplus as a result of not fully complying with the 50% law? Sort of saving the money for a rainy day eh? Well here's that rainy day; the state budget crisis. How about that! The SOCCCD administration and the BOT have good foresight and exercised good judgment after all!
It really is all about money, money, money, MONEY, isn't it? And of course, power!
In this system, students don't have a chance.
1:04--
You need to read more carefully. You're forgetting about the 50% Law, which has been on the books since about 1960 (so don't believe the blarney about this came as some kind of surprise). It requires that at least 50% of expenditures be on instruction. So the trustees cannot now spend this money to cover such things as ATEP or, say, marketing 'cause that will make the 50% problem bigger. The state has already told us that it means business about this law--that we'll pay a price for violating it.
Get a clue! The board has hoarded money and has consistently refused to spend it on the colleges. By it's own "rules," it cannot now spend their stash, for it has declared that the colleges will be funded in accordance with the amount they would get from the state, if the district were funded there.
This is an old complaint. Pay attention, dude.
100 Miles:
Yes, it's a proposal (which is the word I used), but, as you suggest, it is being regarded as a fait accompli by CC spammers, it seems. Don't wanna confuse the issue by joining them.
On the other hand, what is likely to occur to 98? Sounds dicey to me. Not so?
Chunk--
Goodness knows, I don't have a crystal ball, but from what I've heard and read, the chances of suspending Prop 98 are slim and none.
A decade or so ago, Pete Wilson tried the same thing to balance the budget (which was even more out of whack than this year's). There were a lot more anti-public-education Republicans in Sacramento at the time, but he was unsuccessful.
CTA is the most powerful union in the state, so they're the folks to talk to about protecting us.
--100 miles down the road
Thanks, as always. --CW
P.S.: I hope you enjoyed the video of Mathur's Elvis "dance." It's not quite "pissing on his grave," but it will do for now.
This isn't the first time the state budget has tanked...and the SOCCCD keeps its fist tightly clenched as the rain keeps falling, 1:04! It wasn't "good sense" that led to a slush fund of millions and millions, or extravagant pay raises to the few for political payback; it was greed, penury, and a lot of posturing by fiscal "conservatives" who are actually fiscal imbeciles. Chunk is right--the folks in your district have to point out the blame-game that Ragoo will play with you!
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