Whereas, Assembly Budget Bill 1602 (2016, Committee on Budget) established the Student Success for Basic Skills Program, which establishes new basic skills funding formulas, replacing those in place for the Basic Skills Initiative;
Whereas, The basic skills funding formula legislated by AB 1602 (2016, Committee on Budget) includes the following weighted factors:
Whereas, The assessment and placement of students into all levels of courses, including basic skills courses is an academic and professional matter that includes not only the use of assessment tests but also multiple measures, including the high school transcript data, non-cognitive considerations, and other factors, that have been evaluated by college faculty and have been selected to meet the needs of the students;
Whereas, The Academic Senate for California Community Colleges holds diversity as a value central to leadership and governance and, to that end, has partnered with the Chancellor’s Office to develop and promote best practices for recruiting, hiring, and retaining diverse faculty to better serve California’s diverse student populations;
Whereas, AB 387 (Thurmond, as of February 9, 2017) would require health care entities (e.g. hospitals) to pay allied health students minimum wage for time spent completing the clinical training hours that are mandated by state laws governing each discipline and that are required in order to obtain California and national licensure and/or certification;
Whereas, The implementation of the Seymour-Campbell Student Success Act in 2012, enshrined in California Education Code §76300, called for a process that revokes a student’s Board of Governors fee waiver in certain instances where the student fails to meet adequate markers of progress toward completion;
Whereas, The Seymour-Campbell Student Success Act of 2012 requires colleges to afford students an appeals process when the fee waiver is revoked but the due process procedures of colleges vary widely across the state;
Whereas, SB1391 (2014, Hancock) waives the open course requirement for community college courses offered in state correctional facilities;
Whereas, As of Academic Year 2016-17, 16 pilot colleges began delivering face-to-face courses inside 32 of the state’s 35 correctional facilities;
Whereas, Pilot colleges that are delivering instruction in support of academic programs in state correctional facilities express concern that the courses they are offering might be vulnerable during budgetary cuts or when the colleges are at or exceeding growth caps; and
Whereas, Faculty throughout the country are concerned about the reported potential ending of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which has allowed undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States before their 16th birthday prior to June 2007 to remain in the United States under specific conditions and to apply for renewal of this program every two years;
Whereas, The Academic Senate for California Community Colleges (ASCCC) embraces equity principles for all in its Values Statement[1] which states that the ASCCC “works to empower faculty from diverse backgrounds and experiences in order to promote inclusiveness and equity in all of their forms” and supports this same principle as applied to all students and staff;
Whereas, The most recent Academic Senate for California Community Colleges (ASCCC) paper on faculty hiring, A Re-examination of Faculty Hiring Processes and Procedures[1], was adopted in Fall 2000, and it is good practice to regularly review and reevaluate professional standards regarding the hiring processes and procedures for all faculty;
(Note: The following article is part of an ongoing dialogue about the guided pathways framework. For reference, previous Rostrum articles on this issue may be accessed on our website under publications.)