Well, it sounds like you have been stirring the length of contracts pot again in GI. The 190 folks are feeling VERY threatened. While I see several issues here, the dominant thread seems to be 190s losing their contracts at the expense of 160s gaining work days. Perhaps ALL the options need to be presented. This is getting to be a very divisive issue with some folks. What do you see or have discussed with administration as ways we can approach this issue?

-- Anonymous, April 19, 2000

Answers

Vicki's point is valid and is of personal concern to me. However, I see no way of dealing with our short semester problem without bringing up this issue. We need to keep in mind that there are a number of our fellow faculty who had their contracts cut from 190 to 160. It might be that we should look at a gradual increase in days. If we added 5 days for each of the next two years, that would get us to 170 without quite such a blow to the budget. Is there a way we can lengthen the short contracts without lengthening the long ones? Possibly those on long contracts would be willing to either offer accelerated courses in the summer or agree to work a greater number of shorter days. (I'm not real comfortable with that second idea, but we need to do something.)

-- Anonymous, April 19, 2000

We need to look at as many different options as possible. Making everyone a 175 was simply an option that was mentioned because it's basically a zero-sum option since the number of 190's and 160's is about the same. I don't think anyone took it very seriously at the meeting, but I've been playing with the numbers to see if it could work. I DO think it could work, but only if 190 people are secure enough that their current summer workload could withstand the scrutiny of supporting a hireback. Given the response that this has had, I don't EVER want to hear about this option again. Even though it might work, and might even be useful, it is obviously too emotional to too many people.

-- Anonymous, April 19, 2000

P.S. I'm breaking this up to make it a bit more readable:

Everett is absolutely right that we need to propose something, and one of the things that John Higgins very specifically proposed was making the contract extension part of a multi-year agreement. I think that a gradual expansion answers a lot of concerns, including but not limited to how to pay for it.

Several things that people need to be aware of when we talk about contract extension: the 175 that we are talking about here is NOT our current 175. This is being paid for 175 days for JUST fall and spring semester. There will be NO additional summer duties included. In addition, because this won't affect average daily rate at all, this is a bump up in salary IN ADDITION TO whatever percentage increase is called for. Your average daily rate will stay the same, you'll just be paid for more days.

Since the main reason for all of this has always been having a real semester of 15 weeks plus a finals week, we need to probably ask for the first year bump to be to 167 days. This allows for 160 teaching days along with the 2 report days, 2 registration days, 2 staff development days, and All College InService. For the second year, we should bump up the additional 8 days. When those days should be scheduled is something we should look at. One problem is that the other institutions who "require" 175 days for two semesters don't actually count days, so there really isn't a precedent here for how to schedule those days given our administration's mania about butts in chairs.

We will have to be very careful and indicate how we expect all of these days to be scheduled and used. However, the administration will claim administration rights to scheduling, and they are right, to a degree. We will need to stress over and over that this is NOT a salary issue, that it is an instructional issue. Salary just happens to come along because otherwise, it DOES drag down our average daily rate.

-- Anonymous, April 19, 2000

God, I'm long-winded today! One other thing that people need to be very aware of is that in the March Cabinet Minutes http://www.cccneb.edu/president/past%20cabinet/mar00cm.htm John Higgins clearly states that summer workloads will need to be adjusted college wide for anyone contracted full-time (190 people) to make sure that they are generating 1.83 FTE or 55 credits. Contract length or workload is going to be adjusted for a lot of people already, I think. It might as well be with our input as to how to adjust.

-- Anonymous, April 19, 2000

Everett-- How many faculty are still left from the slash and burn trick of dropping 190 to 160 days? Jim and all-- Regarding the threat of dropping current 190 faculty, based upon their credit load in the summer: This 1.83 FTE requirement was, as I understand it, another of Tyson's "pick a number" techniques to justify his decisions about workload for Gen Ed faculty only. When Hastings faculty were dropped from 190 to 175 (the second slash and burn this campus has endured), the "pick a number" was something like 1.56 FTE per summer session necessary to make the cut. As I see it, we cannot trust administration to treat people equitably with summer hire backs OR extended contracts. Until we get work load ironed out, we are just adding more of a mess to the pot-- and it's boiling over. Our cluster chairperson would not listen to our circumstances in the summer. She has almost all of us who are 190 teaching an accelerated lecture course, even though we pointed out that Hastings College is offering many of the same courses to h.s. recent graduates for $50 a credit hour. In addition, she has us competing with our colleagues, because courses overlap with starting and ending dates. I had a student ask if she could just "stay" in my sociology lecture for the first two credits, because she wants to then take microbiology. That, I think, is really going to hurt enrollment. So-- if I don't have 1.83 FTE this summer, it truly is not my fault, because she screwed around with our schedules. The result could be that my contract will be cut. We have a many-headed monster here. There ARE people with 160 contracts who are not interested in working more days. Have you heard that one yet?

-- Anonymous, April 19, 2000