On May 5, the State Council approved a resolution put forth by the CFT Part-Time Committee, calling for CFT to sponsor legislation “to establish a permanent healthcare program for part-time faculty and their dependents.”

The resolution draws from the California Education Code, Sections 87860-87868, which, effective January 1, 1997, called for the establishment of a “Part-Time Community College Faculty Health Insurance Program for the purpose of providing a state incentive program to encourage community college districts to offer health insurance for part-time faculty.”

The law originally stipulated that such an insurance program would apply to those faculty whose “teaching assignment equals or exceeds 40 percent of the cumulative equivalent of a minimum full-time teaching assignment.”

The program would require the Chancellor’s Office to “apportion to each district that establishes a program pursuant to this article an amount that equals up to one-half of the total cost of the individual enrollment premiums required to be paid for the health insurance coverage of participating part-time faculty and their dependents in the district.”

This program, as with many such provisions in the Education Code, stipulates that funding be provided to implement it, and presently, the program is only funded to $490,000 – a far cry from the funding needed to make such a program viable. For this reason, the CFT resolution also calls for a method to supplement the portion not funded by the state, and to report verification of the program to the Chancellor’s Office.