Job security and due process for part-time faculty 
AB 1010 (Medina, D-Riverside) 

This bill calls for the establishment of minimum standards for part-time faculty job security. If enacted, it would require all California community colleges without a collectively bargained contract that provides equivalent or stronger job security and due process rights to establish a seniority list for part-time faculty rehire.

Faculty would qualify for the seniority list after six semesters or nine quarters of service evaluated as “satisfactory.” Only after two consecutive semesters or quarters of less-than-satisfactory evaluation would part-time faculty members lose their rehire rights.

About Assemblyman Medina 
Jose Medina is a unique advocate for part-time faculty: Before entering politics and being elected to the state Assembly, he was a part-time instructor at three community colleges in Southern California. Recently appointed as Chair of the Assembly Committee on Higher Education, Medina reached out to CFT to collaborate on bills that will improve the working conditions of part-time faculty.

Strengthen 75:25 full-time/part-time faculty regulation 
SB 373 (Pan, D-Sacramento)

If signed into law, this bill would put much-needed “teeth” into AB1725, the omnibus community college legislative package passed in 1988 and addressed in subsequent additions to California’s Education Code, especially one well-known section mandating that 75 percent of community college classes be taught by full-time faculty.

This bill would create an incentive for districts to increase the ratio of full-time to part-time faculty and create new full-time positions. It would do this by capping each district’s “maximum allowable number of FTEF [full-time equivalent faculty, a way of measuring course offerings] that may be staffed by part-time temporary faculty and by contract or regular faculty while working on overload assignments” at the level reported during the 2014-15 fiscal year until that district has reached or exceeded the 75 percent threshold.

The California Community College Board of Governors would be charged with tracking each district’s compliance with these regulations and would be authorized to freeze some of the apportionment of any district found to be out of compliance.

In keeping with the bill’s interest in achieving the goals of AB 1725, including increased student access to faculty outside of class meetings, this proposed legislation would also prohibit newly hired tenure-track faculty from performing overload assignments — teaching courses beyond a given district’s definition of “full-time” faculty members’ regular teaching load — during their probationary periods.