Moot

Whereas, Career and Technical Education (CTE) faculty have unique professional development needs that non-CTE faculty may not; and

Whereas, CTE faculty may have more contact hours per student per unit than non-CTE faculty, are often part time faculty, and have less time to collaborate with colleagues in CTE programs and maintain currency in their disciplines, and in the changing dynamics of CTE and Economic Workforce Development (EWD) within California, which directly impacts funding, programs sustainability, and student success;

Whereas, Title 5 §55724 provides calendar options to districts that allow up to 15 of the required 175 instructional days per year to be used for “instructional improvement activities in lieu of part of regular classroom instruction”;

Whereas, Chapter 6 of the California Community Colleges Task Force on Student Success (Senate Bill 1143, Liu, 2010) draft recommendations (September 30, 2011) mistakenly defines this time to be specifically for the purpose of “professional development” and then proceeds to present data and make recommendations based upon this inaccurate definition;

Whereas, The Academic Senate for California Community Colleges stands on the principle that full-time faculty are essential to and an unequaled component of any effort to increase student success;

Whereas, The draft recommendations (as of September 30, 2011) of the California Community Colleges Task Force on Student Success (established in response to Senate Bill 1143, Liu, 2010) suggest that statute or regulations should be amended to allow the California Community College Chancellor’s Office or Board of Governors to mandate specific purposes for flex day activities presented by individual colleges or districts;

Whereas, Supplemental Instruction (copyrighted by the University of Missouri-Kansas City) is a defined approach to student success that is targeted toward courses that are traditionally difficult, uses specially trained peer (student) learning leaders, uses faculty-developed material, and is designed to address retention, transfer rates, degree or certificate completion, and the disconnect that can occur between disciplines, such as specific math skills needed to pass a chemistry course;

Whereas, The recommendations (as of September 30, 2011) of the California Community College Student Success Task Force (established in response to Senate Bill 1143, Liu, 2010) calls for a refocusing and reorienting of institutions towards student success;

Whereas, Faculty are deeply concerned and offended by the document’s suggestion that we need to refocus on student success; and

Whereas, Student success has always been a focus of faculty and our efforts;

Whereas, The recommendations (as of September 30, 2011) of the California Community College Student Success Task Force (established in response to Senate Bill 1143, Liu, 2010) are being vetted across the state through a variety of venues in which faculty can provide feedback on the recommendations; and

Whereas, Many of the recommendations of the California Community College Student Success Task Force fall within academic and professional matters;

Whereas, Recommendation 3.1 (draft dated September 30, 2011) of the California Community Colleges Task Force on Student Success (established in response to Senate Bill 1143, Liu, 2010) states that “Continuing students should lose enrollment priority if they

Whereas, Title 5 §55043 allows districts to “permit or require repetition of a course where the student received a satisfactory grade the last time he or she took the course but the district determines that there has been a significant lapse of time since that grade was obtained”;

Whereas, No guidelines currently exist to help districts determine reasonable standards for course repetition due to a significant lapse of time, and therefore this concept is applied inconsistently throughout California community colleges; and

Whereas, The fiscal crisis in California threatens the future of California community colleges as never before;

Whereas, Budget shortfalls at the system, district, and college level threaten the ability of California community colleges to fulfill even their core missions as envisioned in the 1960 Master Plan;

Whereas, Meeting the challenges posed by the current fiscal crisis will require collaboration and creativity on the scale of that which led to the development and passage of Assembly Bill (AB) 1725 (1989); and