Topic: Legislative Action

Article part-time faculty paid office hours

Join CFT campaign for office hours pay, full-time positions

How can we get more state funding for office hours, equal pay for equal work, and new full-time positions that that will benefit existing part-time faculty? CFT is calling on part-timers and their allies to urge the governor to include line items in the state budget dedicated to these essential improvements. 

Advocate for our interests in providing equal education opportunities for students by writing directly to Gov. Brown and others who influence the state budget. Ask the governor and the Department of Finance for these new resources:

California Teacher accreditation ACCJC

Faculty protest class cancellations caused by ACCJC sanctions
Two lawsuits and a trial move forward; governor signs CFT transparency bill

The trial to determine if the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges acted unfairly when it pulled City College of San Francisco’s accreditation will go ahead on October 27. In the meantime, San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera won a victory when the trial judge ruled on September 19 that accreditors “violated controlling federal regulations” by having an unbalanced evaluation team, with only one academic representative to evaluate the college in 2013.

California Teacher EpiPens school nurses

New law asks staff to perform more medical procedures
School employees “volunteer” to medicate students in danger

Senate Bill 1266, introduced by Republican Senator Bob Huff (Diamond Bar), and signed by Gov. Brown on September 16, requires public schools to stock emergency epinephrine auto injectors, known as EpiPens, on campus. This is an expansion of the law that said schools could stock the devices for students with a severe allergy to make it a mandate that all schools have the device on hand.

Article pesticide use
Mike O‘Connor, the lead custodian at Anzar High School in San Juan Bautista, monitors the campus for pest problems. O'Connor is a member of the Aromas-San Juan Federation of Classified Employees.

Legislation would bring reporting of pesticide use
Staff to receive training, schools to develop pest management plans

Legislators are debating measures to ensure that pesticides at California schools don’t become a bigger concern than the pests they are meant to exterminate.

Under Senate Bill 1405, schools that use pesticides must designate someone to maintain a complete record of all pesticide use at the site, and submit it to the Department of Pesticide Regulation at the end of each calendar year. Current law requires only professional exterminators to report their use.

Article unemployment benefits

Staff seek fair unemployment compensation
Bill to bring equity stalled in Legislature

Linnette Robinson has worked with special needs students at Berkeley High School for four years, after two years in the district’s elementary and junior high schools.

Yet every winter and summer, Robinson and tens of thousands of other classified employees across California scrape by during involuntary “vacations” the best they can. Because while other workers receive unemployment benefits during seasonal breaks, school staff do not.

California Teacher unemployment benefits Lobby Days

Staff seek equal access to unemployment benefits
Employees struggle to make ends meet when the paycheck stops during school breaks

Linnette Robinson has worked with special needs students at Berkeley High School for four years. Every winter and summer, Robinson, who has worked stints at other elementary and middle schools, tightens her belt and scrapes by during school breaks the best she can. “Most of us won’t see a paycheck from mid-June to the end of September,” she said.

California Teacher ACCJC accreditation

Judge rules trial required to determine legality of ACCJC actions
CFT lawsuit advances significant step toward fair accreditation in community colleges

City College of San Francisco started 2014 with some much-needed good news. San Francisco Superior Court Judge Curtis Karnow ruled that the school’s accreditation cannot be revoked until a trial determines whether the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges, or ACCJC, acted unlawfully in sanctioning the college. Karnow said in his ruling that closing the college would be “catastrophic.”

Article adult education

The importance of adult education and including adult educators in consultation
Testimony of CFT's Jeff Freitas before Senate Education and Assembly Higher Education Committees

Thank you Senator Liu, Assemblymember Williams, and the committee members.

My name is Jeff Freitas and I am the Secretary Treasurer of the California Federation of Teachers. The CFT represents early childhood educators, K-12 teachers, classified employees, community college faculty, UC lecturers and librarians, and adult educators in the K-12 and community college worlds.

Article teacher evaluation

Opponents of evaluation bill want invalid tests to be measure of teacher evaluation effectiveness

By Gary Ravani, President, EC/K-12 Council

Showing their hand, opponents of the much-debated AB 5, A Best Practices Teacher Evaluation System (Fuentes), stated in testimony to a state Senate hearing yesterday that they are opposed to a provision that the tests used to measure academic growth be “valid and reliable” for the curriculum, the pupil being taught, and for the purpose of teacher evaluation.

Article part-time faculty

Teachers as organizers: Part-timers embrace political organizing this election year

This year, part-timers have been active from the classroom to the state level in advocating for higher education funding and the rights of students. Lisa Chaddock, part-time instructor in geography at San Diego City College and Cuyamaca College, traveled to Sacramento in March to testify in the Assembly Higher Education Committee on behalf of AB 1826, which would limit full-time faculty overload to 50 percent of a full-time load.

Article

CFT fights for death benefit equity

To help cover the average funeral cost of $7,775, CalSTRS pays survivors $6,163 when a retired teacher dies.

But when a retired classified employee member of CalPERS dies, beneficiaries are paid only $2,000. To close that gap, CFT sponsored AB 2606, carried by Assemblyman Tony Mendoza, D-Norwalk, calling for an increase in the classified death benefit to $6,000 over four years. 

Article part-time faculty reemployment rights

Three CFT-sponsored equity bills continued in 2012 legislative session

When locally bargained contract improvements seem impossible, statewide legislation becomes an attractive option. Over the past few years, CFT and other education unions and associations have sponsored bills to strengthen part-time faculty job security and improve working conditions. While the ultimate gains of this strategy could be tremendous, the process of passing bills can be extremely challenging.