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Volume 44, Number 1 October 2012

San Francisco City College: one struggle,many fronts

page 7

CCC president Carl Friedlander sums up the mixed messages of 2012: rolling back two-tier student fees (for now), CFT finds $50 million for CCs, and pension reform that wasn’t good but could’ve been worse.

page 2

A mixed year

A force for changeCabrillo instructor Sadie Reynolds is a one-woman lesson about the resilience of the human spirit, not to mention the centrality of community colleges in providing the all-important second chance so many in our society need.

page 3

CFT November 6 Election recommendationsYES on Proposition 30, NO on Proposition 32 is just the beginning in a crucial election (aren’t they all!) for public education.

pages 4-5

Community College Council of the California Federation of TeachersAmerican Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO

The California Federation of Teachers is an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO.

The CFT represents over 120,000 educational employees working at every level of education in California. The CFT is committed to raising the standards of the profession and to securing the conditions essential to provide the best service to California’s students.

President Joshua Pechthalt

Secretary-Treasurer Jeff Freitas

Senior Vice-President Lacy Barnes

Perspective is published three times during the academic year by CFT’s Community College Council.

Community College CounCil

President Carl FriedlanderLos Angeles College Guild, Local 15213356 Barham Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90068Email cfriedlander@aft1521.orgDirect inquiries regarding the Community College Council to Carl Friedlander

Southern Vice President Jim MahlerAFT Guild, San Diego and Grossmont-Cuyamaca Community Colleges, Local 19313737 Camino del Rio South, Suite 410United Labor Center Bldg.San Diego, CA 92108

Northern Vice President Dean Murakami Los Rios College Federation of Teachers AFT Local 2279 1127 – 11th Street, #806 Sacramento, CA 95814

Secretary Kathy Holland Los Angeles College Guild, Local 1521, 3356 Barham Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90068

Editor Fred GlassLayout Design Action Collective

EDITORIAL SUBMISSIONSDirect editorial submissions to: Editor, Community College Perspective.California Federation of Teachers1330 Broadway, Suite 1601Oakland, CA 94612

Telephone 510-523-5238 Fax 510-523-5262 Email cftoakland@igc.orgWeb www.cft.org

TO ADVERTISEContact the CFT Secretary-Treasurer for a current rate card and advertising policies.

Jeff Freitas, Secretary-Treasurer California Federation of Teachers2550 North Hollywood Way, Ste. 400Burbank, CA 91505 Telephone 818-843-8226 Fax 818-843-4662 Email jfreitas@cft.orgAlthough advertisements are screened as carefully as possible, acceptance of an advertisement does not imply CFT endorsement of the product or service.

Perspective is a member of the International Labor Communications Association and AFTCommunications Association.Perspective is printed and mailed by Eagle Press in Sacramento.

2 PERSPECTIVE October 2012

editorial

et’s start with some good news.

At this moment there don’t appear to be any moves afoot to establish “two-tier” fee structures in California com-munity colleges. SB 1550 (Wright), which would have instituted high fee Career Tech-nical Education (CTE) classes at a group of “pilot” colleges including Long Beach City College (the bill’s sponsor), died in the Assembly Higher Ed Committee in June. Also, Santa Monica College appears to have shelved its plans to go forward with “self-supporting” credit classes, at least for the time being. Thanks to all of you who worked to block these two ill-conceived initiatives. CFT has been key, and we welcome a breather on this front because there are so many other issues where we all need to focus our energy and effort.

Another piece of good sum-mer news was the stunning success CFT had in wrestling $50 million for community colleges away from “deferral buydown” so that the money can be used to restore a small portion of the FTES funding lost to “workload reductions” over the course of the last few years. Community college fac-ulty organizations tend to jockey a bit over who “gets the credit” when something good happens (and occasionally point fingers at one another when something goes wrong). But in the case of the $50 million that seemed to materialize from nowhere in the last moments of state budget deliberations, no honest observ-er could deny that CFT was the force that made it happen, even when the Community Col-lege League opposed it and the Chancellor’s Office stood aside. Now we need to make sure Prop. 30—which only exists with a chance of passage because of CFT—is approved by voters, so that $50 million for restora-

tion and $160 million for defer-ral buydown actually materialize, and so that a devastating $338 million cut in apportionment is averted.

Pension reformIt doesn’t quite qualify as

“good news,” but the outcome of legislative “pension reform” in AB 340 (Furutani), was not, for community college faculty in CalSTRS, as difficult a pill to swallow as some feared it might be. The only noteworthy change for current employees is the 180-day post-retirement sit out requirement. Part-time faculty seeking to collect a mimimal CalSTRS benefit while continuing to teach part-time are especially hurt by this requirement. Still, I would argue that the overall effect of AB 340 on current employees is pretty minimal. Those hired after January 1, 2013, will feel it more, because of the bump in the retirement age from 60 to 63 (for a 2% multiplier) and from 63 to 65 (for a 2.4% multiplier). But even that is a relatively modest change. When eligibility for the $400/month longevity bonus sunsetted in 2011, it cre-ated a “new tier” comparable in magnitude to the new tier that AB 340 creates for new employ-ees. So the changes in AB 340 are not big news.

AB 340 does mean much bigger changes for those in Cal-PERS. Increasing the retirement age from 55 to 62 is a huge change. And for our colleagues in UC, the new requirement for equal sharing of normal costs means a whopping jump in employee contributions. But the changes for community col-lege faculty in CalSTRS, who already typically retire at 64+, are not likely to create shock-waves. The bigger issue for those of us in CalSTRS revolves around the system’s underfund-ing and what steps will be taken to address it. The fact that we escaped Phase 1 of “pension

reform” relatively unscathed is no guarantee that we will fare as well in Phase 2.

Serious challengesTwo-tier fee structures, two-

tier pension systems, financial resources that have shrunk so much so quickly that the abil-ity of many of our institutions to survive is coming into ques-tion: these are very serious chal-lenges. But through the power of our union, our participation in the broader labor movement

and our partnerships with other organizations and constituencies, we have the ability to influence and shape the outcomes. Imag-ine where we would be without CFT’s leadership and political involvement on Prop. 30 and in each of these other battles.

Remember that we will only continue to be as effective in this important work if we defeat Prop. 32.

There’s another major battle raging, though necessarily qui-etly, in the California commu-nity colleges. It’s the battle for respect and support for our col-leges from our regional accredit-ing body at the same time that this body carries out its vital mission of holding our colleges accountable for meeting agreed-

upon standards. Mapping out an appropriate and effective role for our union in this arena is espe-cially challenging. But we are working hard to figure it out, because there’s simply too much at stake to stand aside, and the status quo is unacceptable.

Taking the leadCarl Friedlander, CFT Community College Council President

Tiers, budgets and the work of our union

Cover: CCSF rallies in front of San Francisco City Hall for passage of Measure A, a parcel tax, but also to show that in the face of an over-the-top accreditation assault, San Franciscans love their community college. Chris hanzo photo

Mark Your 2012/2013 Calendar

october 26-28 Council of Classified employees Conference, Hilton San Jose

november 6 election day

november 17 CFT executive Council, Burbank

december 1 Community College Council meeting, Hilton oakland airport

January 19, 2013 CFT Committees, l.a. Valley College

March 15-17 CFT Convention, Sheraton Grand, Sacramento

We need to make sure Prop. 30—which only exists with a

chance of passage because of CFT—is approved by voters, so

that $50 million for restoration and $160 million for deferral

buydown actually materialize.

L

Union Bug

October 2012 PERSPECTIVE 3

MeMBer ProFile

“As a sociology student, one of the most important things I learned was that people make history,” she explains. “Well, I’m a person. My education helped me to understand myself as a historical agent. The choic-es we make matter.”

Her choice was education. “Education is transformative – it certainly was for me,” Reyn-olds emphasizes. “And if I can make it transformative for my students, that’s what makes my work meaningful. I remember how empowering it was for me. It’s important to make it happen for them.”

She’s referring to students who take her sociology classes at Cabrillo College. She’s also talking about others taking basic skills classes in the Academy for College Excellence, a Cabrillo program founded by Diego Navarro, of which she’s now the director. And she’s talking about the men at Santa Cruz County Jail, who are part of the writers’ workshop she began as a student at the University of California at Santa Cruz over a decade ago.

Been thereOne reason why she can

understand students in all three places is that she’s been in all of them herself. Born while her parents were visiting or passing through Culiacan, Sinaloa, she was taken back to the U.S. as an infant. There she lived in a chaotic environment for the rest of her childhood. She and her mother moved often -- from California to Florida to Massa-chusetts -- finally settling in Los Angeles when she was 14.

As a result of the instability, “I was restless,” she remem-bers. She was smart, and never had trouble passing tests, but couldn’t stay in school. “I had no discipline, and lived in an environment where going to prison was part of the story of the people around me.” Even-tually it became part of her story too.

She went to jail repeatedly, although not with long sen-tences. And she developed a drug habit. “I experienced a lot of violence, and I was using because I was medicating

myself.” Seeing addiction as self-medication means she sees it as an illness and a social prob-lem. “Incarceration for drugs, which is the way a huge number of people get enmeshed in the prison system, is part of the same social problem,” she says. “It’s a product of the lack of educa-tion and poverty.”

But she also says she was lucky in some ways. She had friends who tried to help her -- “moments of human kindness, which made me realize my value as a human being.”

Something shiftedIn jail she got clean at 21,

got her GED, and began tak-ing classes. “Once I felt part of humanity, something in me shifted. I had to respect the life I was given, and therefore had a responsibility to do something with it. Once you realize you’re human, you see what human beings are capable of. You know that you’re capable of those things too – the terrifying and the beautiful things as well. So I began doing positive things with my life. Before I was try-ing to die – I had no reason to live.”

When she got out, she called the first recovery program she could find, and it gave her a

place to sleep on the floor. “I was so grateful to find a clean and sober place,” she remem-bers. Later she went to another women’s recovery house, where she eventually became a man-ager.

She also found that she loved learning. “Education became the foundation for a life of meaning,” Reynolds says. “I came back from the brink. That helps me to identify with and understand my students today.” She may have started late, but

once she got going, nothing stopped her. “I’d been starved,” she remembers. “I was hungry and it all was engaging – art, history, even math. I was so happy, and I got really good grades because I was eager and focused for the first time. That had never happened to me before.”

She began community col-lege at 23, and soon realized that some courses could get her cred-its for a four-year college, a des-tination she’d never previously considered. “I had to take five math classes to get any transfer classes,” she laughs. “I was a basic skills student.”

Today she sees many students in the same situation – having to take basic skills classes before they can get courses for college credits. “Most of them who come in the way I did, as a basic skills student, don’t make it. They have rent to pay, kids to feed, and hardly any money or time. That’s one of the biggest problems we have in commu-nity college.”

Academy for Academic excellence

That’s also the reason, when she began teaching at Cabrillo, that she became involved in the Academy for Academic Excel-lence. It’s designed to keep stu-dents in college by having them move with a cohort of students. “A lot of them are just out of prison themselves,” Reynolds explains. “They study social justice, and learn to focus and even meditate.” That program has been so successful that it’s now being used in other districts around the country. Reynolds

herself has become a master mentor, teaching other teachers to use it.

From her start in community college Reynolds transferred to UC Santa Cruz, where she majored in sociology. She also took a year off to work for the Fund for Non-Violence, a local Santa Cruz foundation work-ing on social justice issues in Latin America and prison reform and prisoner rights in the U.S. Finally, in 2008, she received her PhD, and got a job teaching

at Cabrillo College in nearby Aptos.

“Sociology gave me a lan-guage and a conceptual frame-work for understanding my own life,” she recalls. “I finally understood as a woman why I’d experienced gender discrimina-tion. I’d seen a lot of racism growing up, and now I could understand it as systemic and historical.”

Once at Cabrillo, she joined the union right away. She’d been a shop steward for teach-ing assistant unions at UCSC and the University of Oregon. She became the representative for her division, and then joined the part-time faculty committee. Reynolds is now the adjunct chair of the Cabrillo College Federation of Teachers.

“I love my job,” she says, “but being an adjunct is not a good position to be in. The number of units you can teach is limited, you’re paid less for teaching them, and you have less job security than full-time faculty. You’re really a second-class citizen among faculty workers. And this is the wave of the future in education, because we cost colleges less and they have the freedom to dispose of us easily.”

A life of its ownWhen she got to Cabrillo,

Reynolds didn’t leave her past behind. At UC Santa Cruz she’d begun organizing writ-ing workshops for women in the county jail, the Inside Out Writing Program. Originally she planned it more as part of a

Committed to being a force for change

Sadie reynolds: from basic skills to professor

Joh

n G

ovsky ph

oto

Cabrillo College sociology instructor and Adjunct Committee Chair Sadie Reynolds is beginning to get some of the recognition she deserves for a remarkable set of accomplishments.

S adie Reynolds doesn’t just remember where she came from. She’s made her personal history the prism through which she understands the people around her, from students to fellow

faculty to inmates in the prison system. And understanding, she says, gives her the commitment to being a force for change.

“We are spending more on prisons than on higher education,

which is a terrible social policy and doesn’t make sense. We

lock up more people than all of Europe combined, or China.

Instead, we need to shift to healing, to taking care of peoples’

needs, keeping people out of jail and implementing everyone’s

right to an education.”

Continued on page 6

4 n PERSPECTIVE October 2012

State budget cuts to public education funding, totaling $20 billion over the past four years, have taken a terrible toll on our ability to deliver the education our students need and deserve. Prop 30 will raise $9 billion in the first year, and $6 billion a year for six years after that, for public education and other

services. It will also provide constitutional approval for the governor’s realignment of fund-ing for local public safety servic-es while protecting Proposition 98 school funding.

Prop 30 stipulates an 89% -

11% split between K-12 and community college funding in its revenues.

Prop 30 would increase income tax rates on the wealthi-est Californians, and modestly increase the state sales tax by ¼ cent, to provide desperately needed revenues to rebuild our schools and services.

It is a progressive tax mea-sure, with 90% of the revenues coming from wealthy taxpay-ers, and the other 10% from the small increase in the state sales tax. Is it fair to ask the wealthy to shoulder the lion’s share of

the new tax increase for schools and services? Consider this: the top one percent of income earners has doubled its share of California’s income since the mid 1990s, while paying lower tax rates now than it did at that time.

Prop 30 will begin to restore cuts to community college pro-grams devastated by years of recession. It will also prevent another $6 billion in “trig-ger cuts” to all levels of public education scheduled to kick in January 1, 2013, if Prop 30 fails to pass. Community col-lege funding will be augmented statewide by more than $300 million per year if we succeed in passing Prop 30.

Where Prop 30 came fromIn March, the California

Federation of Teachers and its Restoring California coalition allies (now Reclaim California’s Future) reached agreement with Governor Jerry Brown and top legislative leaders to set aside their dueling ballot measure efforts and come together in support of one state revenue measure. The ballot approach to raising revenues was made

necessary by the failure of the Governor to convince just two Republicans in each house of the Legislature to vote with Democrats on extending tem-porary taxes the previous year. Despite large majorities in favor of the tax extension, the effort failed due to the undemocratic two-thirds requirement for the Legislature to pass a tax, cou-pled with the anti-tax pledges taken by the Republicans.

By making a start on fair tax rates on the wealthy, we can bring back some of the funding for our classrooms and services we have lost over the past sev-eral years. Polling shows this initiative has a good chance with the electorate, because Californians are tired of cuts to education. But its chances increase greatly if voters know that 90% of its revenues come from taxing the rich.

Progressive taxThis measure will add indi-

vidual brackets at $250,000 (10.3%), $300,000 (11.3%), $500,000 (12.3%), and joint filer brackets at $500,000 (10.3%), $600,000 (11.3%), and $1 mil-lion (13.3%). It will ask only

families making more than a half million dollars per year to pay more income taxes. The ¼ cent sales tax is half the size of the governor’s former proposal. On balance, the ballot measure, if passed, will be the single larg-est progressive tax ever passed in California history.

It will have to be, in order to make a dent in the problems created by low tax rates on the wealthy coupled with the effects of the recession. The ballot measure will not solve all the state’s problems with one magic wave of the fiscal wand. California now suffers an annual state budget deficit nearly twice the size the state will receive from our ballot measure.

But it’s an important start, and key to its success is that it gets most of the money from people who have it and can eas-ily afford to pay their fair share.

For more information, and to get involved with the campaign for Proposition 30, contact your AFT local or Alayna Fre-dricks in northern California at 510-523-5238 and Esmie Grubbs in southern California at 818-843-8226.

Proposition 32 threatens everyone’s workplace rights, wages and retirement, by pro-hibiting unions from partici-pating in the political process. The measure’s wealthy backers falsely claim it’s about neutral “campaign finance reform,” and “stopping special interests”

from dominating politics. Yes on 32 advertising even mentions corporations more often than unions as its target. In fact, Prop 32 is deceitfully designed to silence workers’ political voice, and give corporations even more power over politics and govern-ment than they already possess.

Prop 32 will stop all organiza-tions from collecting funds for political action through payroll deductions. Sounds fair and even-handed, doesn’t it? But corporations don’t use payroll deduc-tions to collect funds for political action; they use the corporate trea-sury. So unions will be prevent-ed from collecting and allocating political action money, and cor-porations won’t.

The measure would also pre-vent unions and corporations from making direct contribu-tions to candidates, a provision that means little to corporations, since they would continue to be able to fund independent cam-paign Super PACs.

labor advocates for everyoneTwo thirds of the funding for

California’s community col-leges, just like for K-12 educa-tion, comes from Sacramento. When the CFT leadership makes its decisions about how to allocate members’ money on state politics, it examines can-didates’ legislative track records and public pronouncements on public education and labor issues. It decides to contribute to candidates and ballot measure campaigns with a clear set of guidelines in mind: how will this candidate or ballot measure help or hurt our members, their students, and their families. Prop 32 would end all that.

And unions don’t simply advocate for their own mem-bers, as important as that is. By backing policies like increases in the minimum wage, regulations on corporations that pursue profit over worker and public safety and health, decent retire-ment and health care policies for all, and fair taxes on the rich to fund public education and social services, unions work on behalf of everyone in the 99%.

Prop 32 in a long deceptive tradition

Prop 32 comes from a long tradition of anti-union bal-lot measures crafted to sound

eleCtioN

Proposition 30, the Schools and Local Public Safety Protection Act, is on the November 6 ballot. Along with Proposition 32 (see opposite page), it is the most important issue facing

California voters among the many ballot measures.

If it weren’t already clear enough to anyone taking the time to examine Proposition 32 that the ballot measure would tilt the political playing field way over in the direction of the wealthy

and corporations, the Koch brothers have helped to fill in the details. In mid-September the far-right billionaire backers of the Tea Party tossed $4 million into a super PAC for the purpose of purchasing television and radio ads on behalf of the Prop 32 campaign. Why this interest by out-of-state billionaires in a California proposition that claims to be about “fair and balanced” campaign finance reform?

The wealthiest Californians need to pay their fair share to fund public education

Protect students, your community, and your workplace rights

Polling shows this initiative has a good chance with the

electorate, because Californians are tired of cuts to education.

But its chances increase greatly if voters know that 90% of its

revenues come from taxing the rich.

Continued on page 5

October 2012 PERSPECTIVE n 5

Proposition 30 Yes Protects funding for education & public safety Proposition 31 No Locks California into permanent underfunding of education, health, & other vital services Proposition 32 No Special Exemptions Act. Silences voice of educators in political process Proposition 33 No Mercury Insurance sponsored proposal to allow rate hikes on low-income drivers Proposition 34 Yes Repeals death penalty and replaces with life without parole Proposition 35 Yes Increases penalties for human trafficking Proposition 36 Yes Reforms Three Strikes Law Proposition 37 Yes Labeling of genetically engineered foods Proposition 38 No Recommendation Munger Initiative. Raises money for schools, but seen as rival to Prop. 30. Proposition 39 Yes Closes $1 billion loophole for multi-state corporations to fund clean energy program Proposition 40 Yes A Yes vote upholds the process used to redraw State Senate district boundaries

positive, fair, and democratic while intending to accomplish the opposite. In 2005 Arnold Schwarzenegger backed Prop 75, which would have elimi-nated the ability of public and private sector workers to make political contributions to their unions. This was called “pay-check protection.” Who could be against protecting their paycheck? In 1998 a similar measure affecting only public workers attempted to do the same thing. In 1958 employers backed a “right to work” mea-

sure, which would have stripped unions of the ability to collect dues for any purpose—politics, collective bargaining, grievance handling—from the workers they represented. It provided no one any “right” to a job, but it sounded good...at first. Each of these measures was ultimately defeated, but only after enor-mous effort and expenditure by unions and their allies to explain their real purpose to fair-minded voters.

The backers of Prop 32, in addition to the notoriously anti-

worker Koch brothers, include a who’s who of anti-public educa-tion, pro-voucher, anti-union

billionaires, along with the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Asso-ciation and the Lincoln Club of

Orange County, which filed an amicus brief for the Supreme Court’s Citizens United deci-sion.

Corporations already outspend unions 15 -1 in politics. If their deceptive campaign succeeds, this one-sided measure would make our post-Citizens United political system even more unbalanced. Don’t let billion-aires control California’s political process more than they already do. Vote NO on Prop 32.

eleCtioN

Prop 32 will stop all organizations from collecting funds for

political action through payroll deductions. Sounds fair and

even-handed, doesn’t it? But corporations don’t use payroll

deductions to collect funds for political action; they use the

corporate treasury. So unions will be prevented from collecting

and allocating political action money, and corporations won’t.

The CFT recommends

1 No Endorsement3 Lois Wolk*5 Cathleen Galgiani7 Mark DeSaulnier*9 Loni Hancock*11 Mark Leno*13 Jerry Hill15 Jim Beall

17 Bill Monning19 Hannah-Beth

Jackson21 Star Moffatt23 Melissa Ruth

O’Donnell25 Carol Liu*27 Fran Pavley*

29 Greg Diamond31 Richard Roth33 Ricardo Lara35 No Endorsement37 Steve Young39 Marty Block

1 No Endorsement2 Wes Chesbro*3 Charles Rouse4 Mariko Yamada*5 No Endorsement6 No Endorsement7 Roger Dickinson*8 Ken Cooley9 Richard Pan*10 Mike Allen*11 Jim Frazier12 No Endorsement13 No Endorsement14 Susan Bonilla*15 Nancy Skinner*16 Joan Buchanan*17 Tom Ammiano*18 Abel Guillen19 Phil Ting20 Bill Quirk21 Adam Gray22 Kevin Mullin23 No Endorsement24 Richard Gordon25 Bob Wieckowski*26 No Endorsement27 Nora Campos*28 Paul Fong*

29 Mark Stone 30 Luis Alejo*31 Henry Perea*32 Rudy Salas33 John Coffey34 Mari Goodman35 No Endorsement36 Steve Fox37 Das Williams*38 Edward Headington39 Richard Alarcon40 Russ Warner41 Chris Holden42 Mark Orozco43 Mike Gatto*44 No Endorsement45 Bob Blumenfield*46 Adrin Nazarian47 Joe Baca, Jr.48 Roger Hernandez*49 Edwin Chau50 Betsy Butler*51 Jimmy Gomez52 Norma Torres*53 John A. Perez*54 Holly Mitchell*55 No Endorsement56 Manuel Perez*

57 No Endorsement

58 Cristina Garcia

59 Reggie Jones-Sawyer

60 Jose Luis Perez

61 Jose Medina

62 Steven Bradford*

63 Anthony Rendon

64 Isadore Hall, III*

65 Sharon Quirk-Silva

66 Al Muratsuchi

67 No Endorsement

68 No Endorsement

69

70 Bonnie Lowenthal*

71 Patrick Hurley

72 No Endorsement

73 No Endorsement

74 No Endorsement

75 Matthew Herold

76 No Endorsement

77 No Endorsement

78 Toni Atkins*

79 Shirley Weber

80 Ben Hueso*

STATEWIDE CANDIDATESSTATEWIDE PROPOSITIONS

CAlIfORNIA SENATE

CAlIfORNIA ASSEmblY

no on 32, Continued from page 4

6 n PERSPECTIVE October 2012

The year 2012 was the second of the two-year legislative session. The

state’s budget problem cast a shadow over almost everything and made it very difficult to get bills past the Assembly and Sen-ate Appropriations Committees if they were perceived as involv-ing any cost. In addition, transi-tions in the CFT lobbying team – some expected, some unex-pected – posed some additional challenges. The community col-lege legislative agenda, ably car-ried for so many years primarily by Judy Michaels, had to be divided between Dolores San-chez and Lynne Faulks. Dolores graciously picked up an extra load to help out our Coun-cil and did a great job. Lynne Faulks, a retired legislative direc-tor from CTA, used her vast experience to handle the rest of the community college legisla-tive agenda as an interim lobby-ist for CFT.

Judy, to whom we all owe deep gratitude for her years of dedicated and effective service to CFT, is doing well and, we

hope, enjoying life outside the Capitol to the fullest. CFT is now searching for a new per-manent lobbyist and a legislative director.

In this tough environment, we had more success killing or improving bills than we had get-ting our sponsored bills passed. SB 1550 (Wright), which would have created a pilot program to allow certain colleges to charge students the “full cost of instruc-tion” for CTE classes, sailed through the Senate and seemed destined for the Governor’s desk until CFT lobbyists and advo-cates went to work once again making clear to key members of the Assembly Higher Educa-tion Committee that two-tier fee programs had no place in the California community colleges. Jim Mahler, President of the San Diego Faculty Guild, AFT Local 1931, flew to Sacramento to testify against the bill in the Assembly Higher Education Committee, where the bill died.

CFT leaders and lobbyists also worked hard and successfully to get amendments made to SB

1456 (Lowenthal), the primary legislative vehicle for some of the central recommendations of the Student Success Task Force. Though we were not able to remove the SB 1456 provi-sion tying Board of Governors waiver eligibility to academic progress, we got numerous other amendments incorporated (including amendments deleting the language tying the unit limit and education plan require-ment to the bill’s BOG waiver eligibility provisions) and were thus able to stay neutral on the bill, which was supported by the Student Senate and ASCCC.

Much of the CFT legislative agenda focused on bills designed to improve conditions for the system’s part-time faculty. We sponsored SB 114 (Yee), which went through a number of overhauls but ended up as a bill requiring districts to submit each year to STRS a copy of the collective bargaining agree-ment, which contains the full-time equivalent for each class of faculty. This bill, supported by STRS, should make it possible

to calculate the service credit of adjunct faculty more accurately. On September 30 Governor Brown signed SB 114 into law.

Other CFT-sponsored part-time bills did not fare as well. AB 1826 (Hernandez), a bill limiting fulltime overload assign-ments to 50% of the regular fulltime workload, was spon-sored by CFT alone and strongly supported by part-time faculty across the state. AB 1826 died unexpectedly in the Senate Appropriations suspense file for reasons that we are still trying to assess.

AB 852 (Fong) was jointly sponsored by CPFA, CCA/CTA, CCC/CFT and FACCC and designed to guarantee a minimum standard of rehire rights for adjunct faculty. It may have been a case of too many cooks spoiling the broth, or just a breakdown in communication among the various interested parties, but the bill ended up in a form CFT could not sup-port. The bill would have added new language in statute that included an expiration date on

the requirement to reach agree-ment on rehire rights at local bargaining tables. In the view of CFT attorneys, the sunset date was very problematic, because it would have meant the erasure of existing provisions making rehire rights a mandatory subject of bargaining with no sunset date. Because of this problem and others identified by our attorneys, we had no choice but to oppose the bill, which led Assemblyman Fong to pull the plug on AB 852.

All of us – part-time and full-time faculty, elected leaders and legislative staff of all the faculty organizations – need to learn from some of the confusion that contributed to the demise of AB 852. We must come back in the new legislative session more focused around an agenda that makes sense, is legally sound, and can unify all of our orga-nizations and allow us to work collaboratively in order to move this agenda through the chal-lenging legislative process.

By Carl Friedlander

research effort for her PhD thesis on prisons, but it took on a life of its own. “It connects inmates with people on the outside,” she explains, “and it connects the university with people on the inside. Being locked up can be so dehumanizing that this con-

nection by itself is important.”After she left, other students

took over the project, and still run it today as an all-volunteer effort. Reynolds returned to begin a workshop with men, after having worked previously only with women. “These men

really defy stereotypes in a pro-found way. In the workshop they open up. They’ve dropped out of high school, so they have very little formal education, but they’re very creative and often their writing is incredible. It really shows the potential being thrown away in the prison sys-tem.”

They also share the same problem she sees in some of her basic skills students. “It’s so hard for them to get jobs. No one will hire a felon,” Reynolds says. Yet she thinks of one student who, like herself, was able to turn his life around after a long period of incarceration. Today he works with Barrios Unidos in Santa Cruz, a community orga-nizing project, and speaks pub-licly about his experience and commitment to spirituality and non-violence. “We both were lucky to find people that helped us,” she says. “People need resources to get out and stay out, and education is the most important factor in that. There’s no question that education cuts recidivism.”

All connectedFor Reynolds, teaching, being

a union activist, and working inside the prison system are all connected. “We have to pay serious attention to the relation-ship between the incarcera-tion system and the education system,” she asserts. “We are spending more on prisons than on higher education, which is a terrible social policy and doesn’t make sense. We lock up more people than all of Europe combined, or China. Instead, we need to shift to healing, to taking care of peoples’ needs, keeping people out of jail and implementing everyone’s right to an education.”

Reynolds was mentored by Angela Davis, a radical professor at UCSC, and shares much of Davis’ critique of what they call the prison industrial complex. “She made me decide to dedi-cate my life to social justice,” Reynolds says.

That kind of radical change requires political action and commitment. “We can change direction – it’s possible,” she

declares. “Labor unions are one of the best examples of how we can create a tool to challenge the excesses of the corporate state. Unions raise the quality of life for everyone; when we’re weak-ened it’s a threat to everyone.”

So when the California Federation of Teachers made matching grants available for local unions as part of the pro-gram Political Leaders United to Create Change, Reynolds drafted her local’s application. When the grant came through, she then began working part-time as the local’s paid political coordinator, gathering signa-tures on Prop 30 ballot initiative petitions, coordinating COPE drives, and working on the cur-rent election.

“I look back at my own experience,” she concludes, “and I can see how important it is to give people hope for what’s possible, in their own lives, and for our whole society and country.”

By David Bacon

Legislative UpdateCarl Friedlander, CFT Community College Council president

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Sadie Reynolds teaches classes for prisoners as well as “normal” students.

Force for Change, Continued from page 3

State budget casts shadow over legislation

October 2012 PERSPECTIVE n 7

aCCreditatioN

After working hard last spring and summer to close the budget gap forecast for this year, which included a 2.85% faculty sal-ary cut, CCSF’s accreditation

was threatened in July by the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC). Along with Cuesta College and College of the Redwoods, CCSF was ordered to “show cause” why the college shouldn’t lose its accreditation after this academic year.

This most severe sanction—threatening to revoke the col-lege’s accreditation if it does not address numerous financial and administrative issues—is particularly odd in CCSF’s case, given that the college was not already operating under either of the other, less severe sanctions. ACCJC acknowledged that the college continued to provide quality education, yet simultane-ously ordered CCSF to “devel-op an overall plan of how it will address the mission, institutional assessments, planning and bud-geting issues identified in several of the 2012 evaluation team recommendations, and submit a Special Report describing the

plan by October 15, 2012.” As a single-campus district of

nearly 100,000 students, CCSF is the largest provider of higher education in the state. It’s vital

to our local economy, key to supplying workforce training, basic skills courses in English and math, and preparing students for transfer to four-year institutions. Like other community colleges across the state, we educate and train a large proportion of our region’s nurses, firefighters, and emergency medical technicians.

Costly overreachAccreditation efforts to ensure

schools are providing students with a quality education are important. Attempts to micro-manage fiscal and governance procedures, however, amount to a costly overreach that threatens important programs.

The reality is that many of the problems faced by CCSF and most of public education today stem in large measure from the state’s ongoing budget crisis and consequent severe underfunding. Over the last three years, fund-ing for community colleges in California has been cut by a total

of $809 million, with $53 mil-lion coming from CCSF alone. This has resulted in the loss of 16,000 students and nearly 250 faculty. Downsizing is happen-ing and happening fast. We have 1,579 faculty now compared with 1,740 just one year ago.

Still, there are longstanding issues cited by ACCJC that the CCSF Board and administration have failed to adequately address. Fourteen areas were identified where the college was not meet-ing standards, including measur-ing student learning, providing student and library services, school governance, and manag-ing finances.

The college’s trustees request-ed help from the State’s Fiscal Crisis and Management Assis-tance Team (FCMAT), which issued a report in mid-Septem-ber taking aim at what they consider to be poor management of limited resources, overstaff-ing, and excessive spending on employees. Given the current economic environment, they conclude there is a dire fiscal crisis at CCSF, manifest in what it terms an unsustainable level

of program offerings and geo-graphic sites and overly generous employment practices.

Race to the bottomDistrict administration, aided

by ACCJC and the FCMAT report, will likely use the data to try to extract further concessions from faculty and other staff. FCMAT’s report contains a host of recommendations that con-stitute a “race to the bottom”

for faculty working conditions and our contract. Recom-mendations to lower CCSF’s costs by returning to the super-exploitation of part-time faculty, for instance, would roll back employment practices more than thirty years. For part-time fac-ulty, the suggested cuts would

slash pay, eliminate health and dental benefits, and choke off access to full-time faculty jobs.

Additionally, FCMAT’s attack on full-time faculty at City Col-lege appears ignorant of the bargaining history at CCSF or the statewide commitment to full-time faculty long embodied in state law. For years we’ve negotiated to improve and stabi-lize faculty livelihoods, enabling faculty to devote their energies

to teaching and serving students. We’ve built a strong full-time faculty core that is better able to develop curriculum and spend more time with students. We continue to view these gains as essential to the wellbeing of our

Fighting to maintain access to quality education

Parcel tax will help SFCC

Iam City College!”That’s the upbeat perspective we hear as the San Francisco

community pulls together to respond to a harsh accreditation report, mount campaigns to pass revenue initiatives on November’s ballot, and save the college. Although there are many good things happening and signs that City College of San Francisco (CCSF) is getting back on track, we are by no means there yet.

AFT 2121 president Alisa Messer (at microphone) has been in thick of the fight to keep SFCC afloat.

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Many of the problems faced by CCSF and most of public

education today stem in large measure from the state’s

ongoing budget crisis and consequent severe underfunding.

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Continued on page 8

8 PERSPECTIVE October 2012

San Diego

AFT Local 1931’s community and political outreach hits new heights

Labor may be in dire straits across the country but AFT Local 1931 in San Diego seems not to know it. Recently, the community college faculty union won an award from Alli-ance of Californians for Com-munity Empowerment (ACCE) for being their “2012 Commu-nity Leader in San Diego.” As ACCE’s Dave Lagstein noted when bestowing the award, 1931 is not just there when it’s easy, “They are there when it’s hard.” Specifically, Lagstein cited AFT’s work in challenging a labor-endorsed Democrat on housing issues and helping to get key votes to pass an important housing bill. AFT is also part-nering with ACCE to get out the vote in traditionally under-represented communities of color in San Diego and encour-aging folks to vote YES on 30, NO on 32, and for progressive Bob Filner for Mayor.

More recognition: San Diego AFT members will be honored by the Center for Policy Initia-tives (CPI) for helping educate students who go on to con-tribute to making a better San Diego. According to local presi-

dent Jim Mahler, “We have also recently partnered with the CPI Students for Economic Justice program devoted to training the labor and community activists of the future.”

Social justice modelLocal 1931’s political direc-

tor, Jim Miller, says, “The local’s internship program is based on a social justice unionism model that seeks to align faculty inter-ests with those of the students and the community we serve. This year we have interns work-ing in the City College Workers Rights Center helping educate their fellow students, mostly non-union workers, about their rights on the job.”

Another group of student interns is devoted to a wide scale student voter registration drive, while a third group is focused on a nine week program of walking and phoning for Propositions 30, No on 32, and Bob Filner for Mayor. Says Miller, “The notion here is to engage students in the political process serving their own interests and those of their community. The students work alongside faculty volun-teers and participate in education workshops on union history and political issues.”

Miller has a simple answer to the question, “Why do all

this?” “Because as the old slogan puts it, “An injury to one is an injury to all.” If we just sit back and think defen-sively and selfishly about our own piece of the pie, there is no reason why we should expect the larger commu-nity to come to our aid. As the example of the Chicago Teachers Union strike illustrat-ed, community outreach and organizing creates key allies. We forget this at our peril.”

members on the runIn addition to community

outreach efforts, members of 1931 have chosen to run for office at an unprecedented rate. AFT members Gregg Robin-son, Lyn Neylon, and Mark Anderson all ran for the County Board of Education with Rob-inson making the run-off for seat 1 and Neylon and Ander-son winning in June, taking seats 2 and 4. If Robinson wins his race, AFT Local 1931 members will hold the board majority.

In the San Diego Unified School District, AFT member Marne Foster finished first in the primary and is poised to take Seat E in November. AFT member Rick Cassar is run-ning for Cardiff School District Board while fellow 1931 mem-

ber Scott Barr is vying for a seat on the Coronado School Board. At the Community College level, City College professor William Stewart is running for Southwestern Community Col-lege Board while Grossmont College professor Mary Graham was reelected to the San Diego Community College Board where we have won every seat.

Finally, AFT member George Gastil is in the race for Lemon Grove City Council. Says Mill-er, “Sometimes when the deck is stacked against you, you have to try to change the game.”

One thing is clear. If Local 1931 succeeds in all of these races, which is likely, AFT mem-bers will be playing a big role in the future of San Diego.

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Local Action

College students join with members of the San Diego Faculty Guild, AFT Local 1931, to make thousands of phone calls in support of Proposition 30, in opposition to Prop 32, and for endorsed candidate for City Mayor Bob Filner.

T-shirts are just the beginning of the story for faculty at State Center Community College in

Fresno, who are determined to main-tain unity of all employees as they face budget cuts and efforts to divide the members of the three bargaining units at their school. The local unions of the California School Employees Asso-ciation, Police Officers Association and State Center Federation of Teachers knew they needed to demonstrate their solidarity a year-and-a-half ago when the district called for differential con-cessions as they began their separate negotiations processes. Their message to administration and the Board was clear: NO DIVISION. CSEA, POA, plus SCFT equal ONE! T-shirts were print-ed to visually drive home their point. Members of all three units attended board meetings to carry their message of “equity while servicing students” and to successfully push back a first round of assaults. These group efforts in part contributed to a successful “status quo” resolution for all groups in nego-tiations.

State Center students, faculty, and the institu-tion.

AFT 2121 has been committed to keeping a close eye on the District’s budget, balancing employee needs with the College’s fiscal health. Much has been done to prevent CCSF’s fall into fiscal insolvency, including program reductions and employee attrition; consolidations and reorganizations; prioritizing and reducing assignments; and multiple, painful years of wage freezes and wage givebacks. All of this is being accomplished while—as ACCJC recognized in its July review—the quality of education at CCSF is being maintained. CCSF has held on by its fingernails, seeking ways to continue to serve a broad range of student needs and maintain educational access during these challenging budgetary times.

new efficiencies and new revenues

But 2012/13 is the worst year yet, and we need an innovative combination of new efficien-cies and savings and new revenues

to get through it. Measures to improve enrollment and scheduling, assess costs by site, streamline management, and implement improved tech-nologies will make better use of available resources without harming students or workers.

At least as importantly, pas-sage of Prop 30 will bring in over $6 billion of new revenues per year statewide, primarily by raising income taxes on the top tier of California income earn-ers. The stakes are high: CCSF stands to lose another $10 mil-lion this year if Prop 30 fails. And locally, Proposition A, a CCSF parcel tax, will generate more than $14 million per year.

Our current fiscal situation is quite serious, but we will not let it be used as a divi-sive opportunity to roll back decades of important gains in a new race to the bottom that would be felt not just at CCSF, but throughout the state.

For student stories about how City College has helped them, go to iamcitycollege.tumblr.com

by Alisa Messer

CCSF, Continued from page 7