Meeting Minutes for Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Approved 4-13-2011 Meeting Minutes for Wednesday, April 6, 2011 BC 214, 3:00 – 5:00 pm Members Present: Ignacio Alarcón (President), Cornelia Alsheimer, Barbara Bell, Cindy Bower, Susan Broderick, Stan Bursten, Angel Cardenas, Gary Carroll, Steve DaVega, Esther Frankel, Tom Garey, David Gilbert, David Morris, Kenley Neufeld, Dean Nevins, Kathy O’Connor, Gail Reynolds, Sally Saenger, Jan Schultz, Lou Spaventa Members Absent: Stephanie Durfor, Jack Friedlander, Zuma Vallejo-Howard (Student Rep) Guest(s): Ofelia Arellano, Lea Blackburn, Marsha Croninger, Johan Hammerby (The Channels), Kim Monda, Ellen Stoddard

1.0 Call to Order 1.1 Public Comments – no request received 1.2 Approval of Agenda – so approved with added agenda item 2.3 and action item 4.0 1.3 Approval of Minutes 3-23-11 M/S/C To approve the meeting minutes of March 23, 2011 (Nevins/Frankel)

2.0 Information 2.1 A Big Thank You to V.P. Joe Sullivan for His Informative Session with Academic Senate, March 23 Senate President Ignacio Alarcón wanted to thank Joe Sullivan for his visit with the Senate. 2.2 Academic Senate Meetings/Remainder of Semester  April 13 Academic Senate Meeting  April 20 Steering Committee  April 27 Academic Senate Meeting  May 4 Steering Committee  May 11 Last Meeting of Academic Senate Spring 2011 Ignacio announced that there were three more scheduled Senate meetings this spring. The last Senate meeting location still to be confirmed. EVP Jack Friedlander and Marci Friedlander have tentatively agreed to have the Senate hold its last Spring 2011 meeting at their house. Ignacio reminded everyone that one of the items for this last meeting is the election of officers, Senate Vice President and CPC member at large.

2.3 UNESCO and President/Superintendent Serban - added item requested by Gary Carroll Senate President Alarcón reported that Dr. Andreea Serban was recently appointed to the United States National Commission for UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, Cultural Organization) by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Senators expressed their congratulations to President Serban.

3.0 Hearing/Discussion 3.1 Continuing Education Landscape/Recent History (V.P. Dr. Ofelia Arellano attends) Dr. Arellano began by bringing everyone up to date on some homework she was asked to do concerning the CE curriculum review process. Dr. Arellano explained that they have exchanged a couple of the administrators on the committee with faculty. The CE Curriculum Review Committee members and areas of representation are: Norma Eggli vocational/computers, Claudia Johnson Adult HS/GED and Adult Basic Education, Ellen Stoddard Parent Education, and Lauren Kearns representing the Older Adult Courses. The administrators on the committee are Ken Harris and Andy Harper.

Kathy O’Connor mentioned that they are doing a great job with getting their course outlines of record completed and approved through CAC. The Chancellor’s Office requirements for the non credit outlines have become almost as rigorous/strenuous as the credit course outlines of record.

Minutes 04-06, 2011 Page 1 of 1 Academic Senate Meeting

Approved 4-13-2011 V.P. Arellano then explained the handout “Authorized Areas of Noncredit Instruction” from the California Community College Chancellor’s Office, which identifies the two main areas of non credit instruction and their subcategories: 1) Special Population and the four subcategories a) Citizenship for Immigrants b) Parenting c) Education Programs for Persons with Substantial Disabilities and d) Education Programs for Older Adults. The other main area of non credit instruction is: 2) Disciplines or Skills Areas with subcategories: a) Elementary and Secondary Basic Skills b) ESL including Vocational ESL c) Home Economics (Consumer and Family Science) d) Health and Safety Education e) Short-term Vocational Programs with High Employment Potential and f) Workforce Preparation.

In the Special Population area of noncredit instruction, the Older Adult category is approximately 48% of the total Continuing Education offerings.

Ofelia stated that she was asked to give a report, an overview of the courses that are no longer eligible for state apportionment and the spreadsheet on agenda page 10 details that information. The reduction in the Enhanced Basic Skills was due to courses being offered that did not meet the guidelines for funding. In the Non-enhanced section the courses identified as ‘umbrella’ courses are now being worked so outlines are submitted for approval.

Tom Garey asked for the definition of ‘inappropriate’. Ofelia identified agenda page 45 and also pages 18 through 28 that might help to answer his question. Tom said that, in his mind, the problem is with specific interpretations, that seem capricious and promote distrust. Esther Frankel asked if course outlines could be rewritten, for the music ensembles case so that the course could continue to be offered through Adult/Continuing Education? Ofelia explained that after discussions she and the music department could not reach a mutually agreeable decision on the content of the music courses; credit wanted to offer them as sort of credit courses with their course outline and their faculty. The state is very clear for how a course for Older Adults is designed/written. The majority of the students in the class must be older adults and you must teach the course to this special population. Ofelia explained that it is very difficult to write a course outline of record that meets the guidelines and standards for both the credit student and the non credit student. Tom asked what the definition of older adult is and what proportion of the class do they need to be? Ofelia responded with 55 and the majority (50% plus 1) and there are some other operational/technical issues.

Ofelia expressed that we can no longer receive apportionment for Physical Education courses. However, they are going to be offered as fee based. Ofelia announced that they are also going to offer scholarships that students can apply to for the fee based courses. About the Parent Education courses and significant difference in FTEs from 08-09 and 09-10. No apportionment will be received for Parent Education courses for the Parent Child Workshops offered 2010-2011. Approval is pending at the Chancellor’s Office for three new rewritten/restructured Parenting courses. For now we are subsidizing Parent Education courses for the Parent Child Workshops at a cost of approximately $320,000. Ofelia added they are optimistic that the new courses will be approved for the fall 2011 term. The new courses will no longer be offered as lab/lecture. They are one course for three terms. The Parent Education instructors are currently working on new enrollment procedures. Esther Frankel said she knew that this was a controversial topic in the community and asked if Ofelia could explain the impact of these changes to the community. Ofelia said it has been very hard on the community because we have offered state supported courses for a long time, and now we have some that are fee based that we cannot claim funding for. Ofelia explained that all of the changes you have seen over the years are result of the Chancellor’s Office asking to look at curriculum to meet minimum conditions. We have about 3000 courses on the books that have not been offered for over twenty years. After our own research we found that many of our courses were not in compliance. Please look at agenda page 74 where you will see the college has reached an agreement with the Chancellor’s

Approved 4-13-2011 Office. Ofelia explained that we can continue to claim funding and there is a plan in place to get our 600 active courses approved over the next two years and delete/deactivate those courses that we have not offered in over twenty years. The community does not always have detailed/inside information and there is a lack of understanding about the recent requirements/regulations needed to claim state funding for courses offered and when those courses may need to be fee based and/or changed to fee based courses.

Cornelia asked if the Parent Child Workshop courses had been compliant and we could have received state apportionment how many FTES would we have generated? Ofelia said that, based on previous information we could have generated approximately 39 FTES for each term (so, total is this times 3.) The FTES will definitely be reinstated and based on the course configuration we may be generating even more FTES once the apportionment can be claimed.

David Morris asked V.P. Arellano if in her general estimation the community seemed to be cognizant about what is going on and willing to work with us to do our best and try and continue these courses if possible or is there still a lot of misunderstanding/hostility? Ofelia said there was a lot of misunderstanding in terms of why some courses cannot be offered as they had been for years. That is the information we need to continue to share with the community. The critical aspect of what we are offering right now is that we have recommendations from the state for both credit and non credit about priorities and they are transfer courses, basic skills or career technical courses. All others face scrutiny. We need to do a much better job of communicating the state priorities, the budget crisis and the impact these may have.

3.2 Debriefing of Budget Faculty Forum March 11, 2011 Budget 2011-12 Development Ignacio mentioned that since March 11, when the faculty forum took place, the news is worse since the “best case” scenario is now out the window. Ignacio asked Kenley to report on summary of the forum. Kenley said that there was an excellent turnout of faculty - over 100 attended. Most faculty supported the “we don’t want any cuts next year” proposal; support Wake and Schott Center status (no real discussion there). About the workload reduction: faculty supported the proposed “nothing for the first year” (see phase 1); and for employment there was discussion about maintaining commitment to all full time faculty and to request that the overload issue be enforced; support of all the categorical funds was not discussed; faculty supported not borrowing; and supported the 5% reserve plus the cost of TLU liability plus the annual deferral payments for a total of $18-19 million; there was not a consensus on the Equipment and Construction funds. All of these were straw poll items voted on by those that were present. All were in agreement on what the mission of the College was. Stan Bursten asked if employment also included support for the protection of regular classified staff as well. Ignacio added that the proposal is for the support for employment of “regular full time employees” (staff and faculty.)

Ignacio referred everyone to the April 5 handout from CPC with 3 scenarios of expenditure reductions starting 2011-12 through 2013-14 to match cuts based on the possible immediate reduction of $10.5 million in revenue from the state. The following scenarios proposed by the Executive Council (EC) identify how this could be achieved over three years and based on the reserves:

Scenario 1 Full reduction in revenue $10.5 million through cutting only CA resident credit FTES

Scenario 2 Reduction in revenue through cutting $9 million in revenue from credit FTES and $1.5 million from noncredit non-enhanced

Scenario 3 Minutes 04-06, 2011 Page 3 of 1 Academic Senate Meeting

Approved 4-13-2011 Reduction in revenue through cutting $9 million in revenue from credit FTES and $1.5 million from noncredit non-enhanced and enhanced non-credit FTES

Esther added that does not include other reductions that may occur [from unknowns]. Jan Schultz wanted to clarify the item of savings through not hiring for possible vacancies. Ignacio said that no one is proposing a hiring freeze per se. Each situation would be considered individually, especially in the case of smaller departments. For example, if a Radiography faculty vacancy occurs, and is not renewed, this would destroy the department. If a vacancy in mathematics occurs and is not renewed, this doesn’t break the department.

Tom Garey said that the expenditure reductions are the reductions in the cost of TLUs for the classes that are being cut which are about half of what the total FTES apportionment is being cut. Rounded off we get roughly $5,000 per FTES that covers TLU costs plus all the overhead costs. When you cut sections you are only reducing the TLU costs. Cutting 766 sections does not cut $10 million dollars. Over a period of time, it is estimated that full time faculty could be reduced by 34 through retirement or resignations. This represents savings of $1.3 million dollars but we would still need to find $5 million dollars. Dean Nevins added if someone does retire/resign the Academic Senate would have a say about whether that position would be replaced or not.

Stan Bursten asked if there are discussions going on of ways to utilize the campus facilities in a profitable way such as renting? Renting out the facilities is something that is already going on. Lou asked about the glut of students that will be coming back to us because they are not getting into other colleges, and how we can prepare for that.

David Morris expressed that he had two serious problems. The first one is that we are simply talking numbers. We are talking about signing up for a three year program of reductions and all we have are numbers. We have no idea of what this does to programs. We have not explored any of that. I am extremely reluctant to sign on to anything where I don’t know what I’m signing on for except by raw numbers. The second problem is that we are basing this essentially on the best educated guess we can make at this point but nobody really knows what is going to happen with this situation until next year and I think it would be a big mistake to sign ourselves up for a three year commitment to exactly what, other than numbers, when we don’t really know what will happen. Ignacio said that what we can be sure of is that more than likely things will be worse next year.

Kenley said he didn’t think we will be able to plan for three years. What is important for us is to focus on is next year. Every year the college makes a budget in May based on the projected budget from the state and last year that did not happen until October. The college will make a budget in May to be approved by the Board of Trustees. Trustee Croninger clarified that what happens in May is the tentative budget. Kenley agreed, it is a tentative budget and then adjusted in the fall when we hopefully will know what the budget is. It is a place for us to start and it will begin all over again next year. We need to come back to whether or not we anticipate enough significant cuts in the next three years and the $10.5 million is what the state will be reducing our budget by for next year and that will be absorbed by reserve funds. The idea that is being brought to us is do we spread it out and if we do spread out how far along do we spread it out. Do we start next spring? We are not starting fall 2011. Do we start spring 2012 or do we wait until fall 2012 to absorb any potential cuts.

Ignacio added that in the interest of full disclosure he used the public comment request at the last Board meeting to ask them individually to start reductions in the spring and not put it off. To put it off, in his mind, would be reckless and irresponsible.

Approved 4-13-2011

Tom said the timing bothers him. We have three more Academic Senate meetings scheduled until the end of the school year and a summer meeting and the schedule for spring 2011 begins to get built in August. There is not enough time to begin the discussions about where are we going to start cutting and what are we going to cut and not just about the numbers as David just mentioned. Tom noted from CPC that under the current projections based upon continued spending patterns the total utilization of reserves over the three year plan is under $10 million. Ignacio expressed that the figure is actually $12.8 million effect on reserves, assuming that we start cutting in 2011-12. Tom Garey reminded everyone of something David Morris said at the last meeting, about the college and the diversification and breadth of the college as something that has taken 50 years to build up and would hate to see it destroyed in a few months. Ignacio expressed that the idea is exactly that, to not destroy it but to make reductions judiciously. Tom said judiciously means taking time. Cornelia would like to know what the ideas are, what the plan is to reduce the overhead costs, something that the Academic Senate has not looked at or discussed. Kathy O’Connor said this is the EC’s proposal and they are bringing this to us for consultative discussion. Kathy would rather begin these cuts in the spring to give her enough time to shrink her program without destroying it.

Jan said we may need to look at possible overstaffing because of the number of sections being cut and based on these massive section cuts proposed that it would be impossible to discuss section cuts without having that information from the departments to know what they are planning to cut. Lou said we need to aggregate the retirement and overhead figures so that we can discuss this and know what these cuts mean. Ignacio said we can’t know exactly who is retiring. What we have is an educated estimate, based on recent patterns and composition of departments.

Barbara wanted to know about what was discussed at CPC about the different scenarios. Kenley said the first wasn’t discussed and the third scenario seemed like a bad way for the college to move. The discussion about the remaining expenditures is important to have and recommendations from Jack Friedlander and Joe Sullivan can be found on agenda page 8 and 9.

David said we are very fortunate to have a surplus and we do have the luxury of some time. We do not have to be afraid and we do not have to do anything right now. We are always better when we make our own decisions rather than have them forced on us. David would like to adopt some criteria based on a little more knowledge to have a better idea of how to proceed with the least amount of damage.

3.3 Criteria to be Considered for Reductions of Class Offerings (pg. 75-77)

4.0 Action Course repeatability and Title 5 changes Resolution - Kathy O’Connor Jan Schultz wanted to express her concern about the areas that have repeatable courses for pedagogical reasons and may fall through the cracks for lack of representation at the Senate Plenary e.g. field trips. Tom Garey said an added way to work this would be to press the issue through the various professional associations and forward their comments and recommendations to the state Academic Senate. Corrections: Change effect to affect. Crises should be singular. Paragraph 5 needs a “that” before ‘the ASCC” and remove the comma before the word hold. M/S/C To endorse the resolution written by Kathy O’Connor with recommended corrections (Carroll/Garey)

5.0 Adjourn

Approved 4-13-2011