January 16, 2018

Assembly Member Jose Medina

Capitol Office, Room 2141

Sacramento, CA 94249-0061

(916) 319-2061

RE: SUPPORT AB 310 (Medina)

Dear Assembly Member Medina:

As the Chair and Legislative Analyst for the California Part-Time Faculty Association, (CPFA), an association representing nearly 40,000 part-time California Community College teachers, CPFA unequivocally supports AB 310 to determine, system wide, the “percentage of part-time faculty” holding paid office hours.

The Community College System acknowledges the importance of office hours because all current full time tenure track faculty members are paid to hold office hours equivalent to one hour per week per three unit class taught as part of their negotiated contracts. Part-time faculty employment contracts do not routinely or uniformly offer part-timers paid office hours across the board; instead, many, if not most part-time faculty are pressed into routinely offering “voluntary” (unpaid and unrecognized) office hours to their students, and many of those who are paid to hold office hours are not paid at their instructional rate, but something less, often much less.

The information about office hours that AB 310 would require districts to post to their websites is information the districts are already required to maintain internally anyway. We strongly believe that compliance costs in both time and money would be negligible.

CPFA favors this bill is because it would force those districts now taking part-time funds and not using them for part-time stuff to either quit taking the funds or use them as mandated.

We fully support AB 310. The study of the “effectiveness of the Student Success and Support Program” as described in this bill acknowledges the need for all faculty to hold office hours so that students have access to their instructors is a critical component of Student Success.

Sincerely,

John Martin, Chair

jmartin@cpfa.org

Raymond Brennan, Legislative Analyst

rbrennan@cpfa.org

Download the PDF HERE.

Tag: Medina

Support AB 310: Paid Office Hours for Part-time Faculty