Whereas the State of California, in particular, and the Nation, in general, are experiencing a crisis in meeting child care needs for infants through school-age children, and
Whereas the Board of Governors has identified in its Basic Agenda the need for child care as a state and local issue which should be addressed by community colleges, and
Whereas the State of California requires child care teachers to have a minimum of 12 semester units of course work before they can be fully qualified to work with young children, and community colleges have traditionally trained the majority of child care teachers, and
Whereas child development programs at California Community Colleges have not met student demand for courses required by state regulations because the number of contract faculty in community college child development programs has been decreasing, while the number of children needing child care has been dramatically increasing, and
Whereas proprietary child care providers cannot find enough trained and experienced child care providers to meet the existing need, and
Whereas at the behest of these child care providers legislators have been introducing bills allowing private and non-profit organizations to provide training for child care teachers since the community colleges have not provided an adequate pool of trained teachers,
Resolved that the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges request that the Chancellor of the California Community Colleges make local community colleges aware of the Board of Governors' Basic Agenda relating to community needs and recommend that, when Program Improvement funds are allocated, a high priority be given to child development programs and other vocational and transfer programs which meet those overriding community needs, and
Resolved that the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges encourage local senates to develop procedures, in collaboration with their chief instructional officers, to meet significant community needs by increasing full-time faculty in child development programs and similarly affected vocational and transfer programs.