Concessions/wage freeze update: Stay tuned for open bargaining

Our AFT Bargaining team and the District were scheduled to meet and discuss budget information Monday afternoon. The District instead postponed that meeting until July 1st.

Without additional information, the AFT Bargaining team cannot engage with the District in any conversation about concessions. Therefore, potential concessions bargaining is on hold until further notice. As such, the District must continue to operate under the terms of the contract unless/until something else is negotiated.

We will update you regularly as this continues to unfold.

In the meantime please fill out the most recent bargaining survey.

Interim Chancellor appointed

Yesterday the Board announced the appointment of interim Chancellor, Rajen Vurdien. Trustee Williams stated in the District’s announcement that Dr. Vurdien has “more than 30 years in higher education, predominantly in California community colleges. His progression to the presidency began with more than a decade as a full-time university and community college faculty member (including reading faculty at Long Beach City College) and culminated as superintendent-president at Pasadena City College, where he retired February 2019.” Yes, you read that correctly, this will be the second time he succeeds Mark Rocha as the head of a major CA community college.

Our AFT representative on the hiring committee, Adele Failes-Carpenter, offered the following about Dr. Vurdien, “the recent search indicated that those with accomplished records and lifelong commitments to public higher education believe in the importance and capacity of our college, just as we do. Dr. Vurdien stands out as someone with a high regard for transparency and a strong record of having worked meaningfully with campus constituencies to navigate challenging circumstances–skills and experience that will benefit CCSF during this period.”

While we hope this appointment indicates a positive step for our college, we also cannot relax. We invite Dr. Vurdien to work with us in good faith. We look forward to forging a transparent and collaborative relationship that can begin to repair years of damage by rogue administrations, face current difficulties, and restore the keep the community in community college values of our mission.

Dr. Vurdien reports for duty July 1st.

We’re getting a lot of questions and concerns about fall in-person instruction. AFT has been attending the college’s “return to instruction task force”, so we thought we could help clarify.

In spite of the message administration sent out last Wednesday, the task force is not planning or restricting which classes might be in-person based only on department. Instead, chairs have identified individual classes that need to be in-person or partly in-person. The office of instruction is compiling that list of classes. The draft list we’ve seen so far is almost entirely credit classes; it looks that most non-credit information hasn’t yet been processed. The task force asked for the draft list to be made public by the end of last week, with non-credit included. Clearly that has not happened. But eventually administration will update this list and publicize it. When you see it, please keep in mind that decisions are being made by individual class, not simply by department. And what we see will be only a draft. If you need to teach in person and your class isn’t listed, talk to your chair ASAP.

How much we can do in-person depends on health conditions; the college may not be able to provide in-person instruction for every class on the list.

According to state rules, faculty need formal training to teach online. This was suspended in the Spring 2020 emergency shut-down, but the rules are back in force for Fall 2020. Most of our classes will be online in Fall 2020. In order to teach, we will need training.

The trainers, like all of us, are trying their best to cope in a crisis. We’re all trying to figure this out together.

Training has already begun for instructors who have Fall assignments. But those who don’t yet have assignments have been denied access to the training. Faculty have been angry and worried – what if I get an assignment later? What if I have a late-start class?

Thursday, we met with administration about the impact of the pandemic on our members. Administration made a commitment to provide training for instructors who get assignments. So if you get an assignment later, training will be available. We don’t know exactly when that training will be scheduled, or how the sign-up process will work. But we do know that your concerns and voices helped make this happen.

— If you’ve completed IOTL training in Spring 2019 or later, you are exempt.
— Everyone else will need this training in order to teach online in Fall.
— The training will be counted as load and pay on the August paycheck.
— The training is asynchronous, meaning you can log in at any time within the scheduled window.
— You should have received a letter in your ccsf.edu email from Cynthia Dewar, with a link to sign up for training. (Contact Cynthia Dewar, cdewar@ccsf.edu)

If you have a teaching assignment for Fall 2020, and you’re not already approved through IOTL, sign up now! If you get an assignment later, sign up later!

SUPPORT UNDOCUMENTED CCSF STUDENTS!