The Pasadena Area Community College District and the Pasadena Faculty Association (PCCFA) came to an agreement following a Public Employment Relations Board recommendation on Dec. 12, 2022 to bring back the winter intersession to PCC after it was removed from the academic calendar as a three year “pilot program” which started in 2021.
The pilot program was created and approved by the PCC Community College District and the Board of Trustees was not legal according to the PERB ruling because it did not properly negotiate with the Faculty Association about the impacts to PCC and the major changes to faculty hours, wages and instructional time.
In an email to PCC faculty on Dec. 14, 2022 the PCCFA said that this was a beneficial win for faculty, their wages, the association’s commitment to those it represents, and students who support the winter intersession.
“Going forward there will now be more classes and teaching opportunities during the historically popular winter session,” the email reads. “This win means a stronger voice for students – who strongly supported winter session in shared governance – regarding their academic futures.”
To the knowledge of PCC neither party moved forward with the process of an appeal within the 20-day limit set out by PERB, which allows the process to move forward and the confirmation of a revised calendar prior to the start of the 2023-2024 academic year.
Even though neither party moved forward with appeals to the ruling, each side agreed to extend the final deadline of the PERB decision by 90-days to allow for negotiations on any remaining issues besides the 2023-2024 calendar.
“There are other items in the PERB decision that are still to be negotiated/determined and both parties agreed to extend the date for the PERB decision to become final by 90 days to provide more time to potentially negotiate those issues,” Board of Trustees member Jim Osterling said in a later email.
To fight the “pilot program” the Faculty Association filed an “unfair practice charge” on Nov. 25, 2020 with PERB against the District citing the Educational Employment Relations Act that “establishes collective bargaining in California’s public schools (K-12) and community colleges.”
In their filing the Faculty Association alleged that the creation of the “three-year pilot program” was not in fact bargained for in good faith or done legally by the District.
“Unilaterally implementing a three-year pilot program to change the calendar format without providing the Association with reasonable notice and meaningful opportunity for bargaining over this decision or its effects,” The PCCFA said in their brief in the final 300 page document.
From March 2019 to October 2020 negotiations took place with the goal of ending the semester before Jun. 1. These talks between the District, Academic Senate and the Calendar Committee did not include the PCCFA.
Ending the semester before Jun. 1 originally was one of the primary goals if the winter intersession remained in place, even if it meant eliminating spring break completely, scheduling Saturday classes, getting rid of finals week in spring and winter, or anything to maximize the amount of instructional days in a compressed time frame.
These discussions led to the conclusion that the continuation of the winter intersession while this “pilot program” was ongoing would not be viable.
Following the nearly 19-month negotiation process, the Board of Trustees voted on a new calendar on Oct. 21, 2020 for the 2021-2022, 2022-2023 and 2023-2024 school years which eliminated the winter intersession for those three calendar years.
Now that the ruling has been overturned and the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the District and the on-campus Faculty Association has been finalized, it was brought to the Board of Trustees who unanimously approved it at their Feb. 15 meeting.
The MOU that both parties agreed to was approved by the Board of Trustees which now allows for the calendar committee and the Academic Senate to move forward with creating a revised schedule for the 2023-2024 school year, a process that has already begun.
According to PCC’s spokesperson Alex Boekelheide, an agreement to amend the calendar has to be made within the next 60/90 days in order to give enough time to the college, counselors, professors, students and others on campus to make changes to be prepared for the return of the winter intersession.
“We [the PCC administration] are facing some deadlines when it comes to deciding about the next winter intersession,” Boekelheide said. “In the next 60 to 90 days we need to make some decisions– and we’re not going to leave that to the last minute.”
With the exception of the changes to the 2023-2024 calendar year, the Memorandum of Understanding between the District and the Faculty Association academic schedules have to be “developed a minimum of three years in advance.” While not legally binding they set the stage for wider negotiations between both parties.
This isn’t the first time that PERB ruled against the District in their calendar disputes. The first time was in 2009 when the district’s governing board canceled the winter intersession as a “cost-cutting” measure following the repercussions from the 2008-2009 recession and economic struggles that beset California Community Colleges who rely nearly entirely on state funding to operate.
Only 49 other community colleges in the state offer winter intersession classes which is around 43% of the CC’s in the state. The other 66 community colleges in California remain on a calendar system that aligns better with the CSU and UC systems and transfers, without a winter intersession.
PCC was aiming to do the same as a majority of CC’s in California, but the move to eliminate the winter intersession was done without proper consultation and negotiations with the Faculty Association.
The inclusion of the winter intersession would push back PCC’s calendar and would end later than June 1 according to Osterling.
“What it does is it runs in between fall and spring,” Osterling said. “It pushes back the start of spring which in turn pushes back the end of spring and PCC students were graduating later than the four years and many of the community colleges.”
Osterling added that it made it hard for PCC students to “compete for jobs or internships” because other students from other institutions had a head start.
Some of the motivations for this move was to “more closely aligning the District’s [PCC’S] calendar and course offerings with those of area high schools, other community colleges and State universities,” according to the PERB document.
Surveys specific to the winter intersession were collected and compiled by the Academic Senate, The Calendar Committee and school administration during the two years that the “pilot program” was in effect, and prior to the enforcement of the new calendar in 2019.
“To say that we have data that we could rely on to make a decision [about winter intersession] I think is a stretch,” Boekelheide said. “We’re always collecting data on what our students do and internships, placements and experiences.”
An exact calendar is yet to be determined for January 2024 for the start date of the winter session classes, holiday off-days and potential end dates, but Boekelheide stressed that the decision would need to be made soon as to give enough time to PCC to make a smooth transition back to the “status quo calendar.”
According to an email from the PCCFA they have yet to negotiate “monetary considerations for faculty who lost wages due to the District’s unilateral action” and “the reimbursement of legal expenses incurred by the Faculty Association in filing this PERB legal action on behalf of faculty.”
The PCCFA, the Academic Senate president and the CFT aligned faculty on campus did not respond to requests for comment.
This story has been updated to include new information.
