March 14, 2023

Welcome 

Agenda approved. 

Minutes from 3/7/23 approved with one correction: The CTE file attached last week's agenda and minutes was an old file.  That file link will be updated.

Measure G

Jennifer Mahato said she was asked not to present today based on what happened at the Board meeting last night.  President Holmes called for a “reset” on the megaproject (event center, A Quad and services for students building).  He will be discussing the process of this reset with College Council Thursday.  Erik noted that President Holmes did not tell any of the chairs that this item would be pulled.

The reset will change the timeline for the project.  The April 11 Board study session will be postponed.  Cheryl encouraged folks to attend College Council on Thursday on Zoom since it’s an open meeting.  Neither Cheryl nor Jennifer have any idea what this reset will look like.

Budget Advisory Committee (BAC) Update

Vacant Position Report

Pam Grey said one would think that the vacant position report would be easy to pull, but it is not.  She screenshared the "Vacant as of January 2023" report, with the disclaimer that this is not a static report and is always changing.  There are 16 vacant faculty positions General Funds (Fund 14) in that report, total $1,533,134,24.

Pam also screenshared the vacant positions from restricted categorical funds.  There are 28 total faculty and classified positions on this list and none of them have funding.   Every vacant position on this list has a story, for example, they may have been funded by a grant that expired.

Lastly, Pam shared a list of all positions in recruitment as of January, with 41 positions on that list.

When a faculty position goes vacant, there is typically a part-time faculty member employed to teach the classes that person taught.  However, if a classified position goes vacant, before the College can hire a TEA (temporary employee) for that position, they must alreayd have a requisition in to show they are in the process of hiring a full-time classified employee.

Debbie Lee asked if RAPP would be doing anything to fill the 16 vacant faculty positions, especially in light of the audit that showed that the District has not hired as many full-time faculty members as the State has given us funding for.

BAC will be discussing these reports again at their next meeting March 23, 2023, and then release the funds to RAPP.  Then RAPP would set the timeline and process for hiring.  This is different than the funding we were giving from the State that was in the audit, and we will not be penalized if we don’t reallocate it by any certain deadline.

Tim expressed concerns about the District accounting for how many full-time faculty members we have and how this will effect our faculty hiring.  The FON and FTEF reporting don’t seem to match.  Pam encouraged Tim to ask his question to Vice Chancellor of Human Resources Ray Quan.  Debbie pointed out that this discrepency could be because non-instructional faculty may be counted in one report and not in the other; FON includes non-instructional faculty as well as faculty members on Article 18 and 19, who are counted as full faculty members.  Tim said the number of part-time faculty on the report has fallen 70% since last year.

Tina asked if we always replace faculty "like for like".  Historically, we have replaced faculty with faculty, but not necessarily in the same department, although usually in the same division.  However, RAPP does not have to follow the processes we have historically followed.

This will be an Office 365 link created and shared so that these files are restricted to anyone with a CWID but not shared with the entire world.

SRP Position Updatee 

We have an available balance of $364,119.35 in the second portion of the SRP, which was released Summer 2022.  This is after using SRP to pay for the three nursing positions and the auto tech position previously approved this quarter.  The nursing positions were previously funded 20% from general fund and 80% from Strong Workforce (SWP), so we only had to allocate 80% from SRP to cover these three positions.  The District put these SRP retirements on hold for three years, but they are now being released by the District into the GEneral Fund (Fund 14).

BAC will combine this balance with the vacant faculty positions and release the funds to RAPP to allocate, likely early Spring quarter.  Basically, RAPP will be given a total dollar amount to work with and decide how to allocate.

Personnel Hiring

RAPP currently does not have a process for hiring.  We are very behind the usual timeline for faculty hiring, which is usually decided at the end of Fall quarter.

Alicia shared that the old process was problematic.  There were departments with really big needs that were left hanging, like music and history, which were ranked very low on the priority list, even though they only have one faculty member each who are stretched too thin in scheduling and curriculum.  We should consider more closely the full-time to part-time ratio in departments.

Tim advocated for this ratio to be considered, and to remove SLO completion as a consideration.

Moaty said we need to visit all CTE programs that have faculty accreditation requirements, like nursing does.  Erik asked that all deans with such programs get those requirements to the RAPP chairs.

Salvador said we could go through the prioritization process, but need to consider what should happen if a department can’t fill a position that they are alloted this year in Fall 2023 or Winter 2024.

For classified positions, we should create a metric e.g. number of custodians needed per square foot or per student.  Tim has a report from the CSEA president that may help with that.

Cheryl advocated for a process in which RAPP decides if a hiring request is critical or not, and fund all critical positions.  If there is not have enough money this year, the critical positions get funded automatically next year.  Critical means you can’t function next year without it, whether it’s a resource or not.  It’s the job of the deans to make sure chairs are being honest with the things they mark critical.  

Positions needed for accreditation are at the top of the list.  Then people who are “ juggling all the balls” and need support should be funded next.  

Deans can already start asking their chairs to start considering the positions they will be requesting and the justification.  Is the request due to retirement, expansion os something else?  Why are you requesting the hire?  This will take a while to do, so if chairs start it now it can be ready for Spring consideration.

Elvin shared that we need to create some guidance for the greater community.  We need to align what we are doing with the future of the college and the Educational Master Plan (EMP).  However, we as a committee have not thought about to use the EMP to allocate the budget or to define "critical" and "desirable" based on our vision.  The EMP can help us create guidance and a rubric instead of relying on requests that use words like “equity” or “critical” because they know those words get funding.

We need to decide as a group what to do about classified position funding.  For example, if a lab tech resigns, that position must be filled right away and can’t wait for an annual review and allocation cycle.

Brainstorm of things to consider when looking at requests:

• Full-time to part-time ratios (as an equity issue)
• Impact on instructional program
• Review cycle for classified positions
• Commitment for onsite use like buildings
• Modalities and resources needed for programs
• Vision, change, growth, future
• Intentional, not reactionary
• Incorporation of EMP
• Accreditation, especially for CTE

Revieing Resource Requests

• Summary of current work

Erik talked through the first tab of the spreadsheet linked above. Lottery has $2.7M to spend and $867k in requests, so that’s good. 

In some of the division tabs, it’s unclear which software licenses are lottery-eligible.  So the amount for lottery-eligible requests will go up when things are clarified.  This will also help the instructional equipement funds requests total go down. 

The “base” row is the annual allotment to departments, and the other rows in the lottery column are “supplemental”.  RAPP should revisit the lottery base annual allotments.

Instructional equipment currently has less than  $400k  available and more than $500k critical requests.