Last Friday, FFAP met with PCC Administration to continue pushing for a fair compensation and benefits package. We spent the first hour and a half addressing the questions from Alex Jordan’s Oct. 24 presentation on the college budget which asked (among others) the following questions:
- Why has the president’s budget increased by 17 million in the last two years?
- Why are we not offering course sections that generate revenue?
- Why has management FTE gone up while faculty and student FTE has gone down?
They gave us some responses to these questions, but none of them answered our questions effectively or completely. Actually, they brought up even more questions. We’ve asked them to come back with concrete details.
Assistant Associate Vice President of Academic Affairs Karen Sanders gave a presentation on costing section offerings. It was the same presentation given to the FDCs earlier in the week, claiming there is a set slice of pie for courses and it doesn’t matter if student demand goes up, they won’t change the budget to meet enrollment.
After a break, management came back with a few counter proposals including an increase to their COLA offer from 0.25% to 0.35%, an increase of about $8 per month for an average step FT faculty. They did not agree to raise healthcare caps from their last proposal and all other offers were rejected or not addressed at all.
Our team then reviewed all 30 proposals we have passed and shared cost estimates for each. Management had no questions and no counters.
In their budget, they have only allocated $2 million for our COLA and healthcare cap increases. But we have to remember, the reason they don’t have the budget for this or for us to teach more classes to meet student enrollment demand is because they refuse to prioritize faculty and academic professionals. They have the budget but won’t allocate funds to meet our needs or those of our students.