On September 11th of 2024, Cerritos College Faculty Federation members, accompanied by CFT President Jeff Freitas and led by local president Lynn Wang, filled their Board of Trustees’ boardroom to both celebrate and call for the Cerritos Board’s approval of a new contract providing part-time faculty working over 40% of a full-time load full-time faculty equivalent healthcare.

The mood was raucous, yet upbeat and celebratory since to an extent, the vote was a foregone conclusion.  A number of part-time faculty spoke up about what getting district-paid healthcare would mean to them. Some part-time faculty shared stories of the health issues they had struggled with financially while trying to do the best they could by their students, or being parents of children with medical issues and hoping they could finally either get financial relief or an opportunity to get the full medical attention and support they and their children needed. 

The work to get healthcare for these faculty members was hard. From what started as campaign in 2021 to the passage of legislation in 2022, many districts questioned whether the funding would remain–it did and still does fortunately. From 2023 onward, Wang found herself making monthly requests to the Board to get it done as quickly as possible.

Having just rolled out this spring, 90 part-time faculty have already started taking advantage of the plan, and it is starting to transform their lives.

“Before this, I never had medical benefits from an employer,” said Marie Benson, a 30-year Dental Hygienist who has taught for Cerritos for the past 12 years. Because Benson had worked for smaller private dental practices, she was always left paying for her personal plans out of pocket, which even as a single woman meant payments of $800-1000 a month. One of the things she also appreciates about her new plan is that it will also help with the costs of medications. At the same time, knowing the struggles of other public school educators, she remains highly compassionate for what they face, like those teachers who spend their own money to provide supplies for their students in their classrooms.

For Andrea Sanserino, an internship instructor for Cerritos College’s Mental Health Worker Pathway since Spring 2020, district-provided healthcare is helping both her and her daughter. Prior to getting healthcare through the district, Sanserino was paying over $800 a month out of pocket for a plan with high copays to cover both her and her 16-year-old daughter.  She estimates her insurance costs then ran from between $15,000-20,000 a year.  Last year, her daughter had an accident playing sports that required surgery, and now her daughter needs another surgery on top of that, with an estimated cost of $5,000. Sanserino’s district-provided plan will now cover it. 

Given that often that medical professionals like Benson and Sanserino can make more working in the industry than teaching, the districts providing them healthcare is a smart move to help retain them as instructors, and it is a clear gain for students.

For part-time faculty facing other challenges, healthcare has been particularly impactful.  Josephina Bedola, a seven-year Spanish teacher who also teaches Spanish to medical professionals, was hit hard when her husband, a mechanical engineer, had to get hip replacement surgery. While his company covered the costs, they nevertheless laid him off while he was recovering from the surgery, and he has been actively looking for work but without success. His unemployment benefits have since run out, leaving Josephina as the sole earner in her household. Faced with these challenges, the district-provided healthcare she now receives is a godsend.

“I’m so grateful,” she said.  In fact, she recently had to go to the doctor herself to deal with a stomach ailment. Without healthcare insurance, it’s not clear what she would have done.

While giving her needed security, district-provided healthcare allows Josephina, who also teaches at Long Beach and Compton Community Colleges, to focus on doing work which she considers a labor of love.

“My passion is education . . . I ‘m surprised they pay me to do this,” she says.

Other local presidents besides Wang have felt the personal impact of getting district-covered full-time equivalent healthcare, such as Bill Zeman, president of the Citrus College Adjunct Faculty Federation:

My entire adult life I have never had a health benefit . . . I carried catastrophic coverage that discouraged using medical services because it cost so much. After Obamacare geared up, I got better coverage, Silver Plans, but even with the middle-class subsidy, I was paying much more per month, so it was anything but affordable. I had the privilege of negotiating the benefit with my district, and almost 2 years ago now, I finally got a great health plan that has $5 copays with no premiums. I was paying $1100 a month for my partner and myself when it started. Since then my partner and I have been real happy!

While considering this to be one of her local’s top achievements in her time as president, Wang, who will be leaving the presidency at the end of the spring semester, has pointed to the work ahead.

“Many of our older part-time faculty were not able to take advantage of healthcare as they are currently in Medicare . . . I’m hoping maybe we can secure them a stipend down the road,” said Wang.

One has to believe that the local, seeing what it’s done for their part-time members, will continue this work.