Saturday, March 15, 2014

A Short Answer vs. an Essay from Teachers in Response to My Question




This morning at 4:30 AM  I sent two separate messages to two friends and colleagues who are very knowledgeable.  The both responded shortly after 8:00 AM.  They both strongly recommended giving money to the DCC, but notice how different they are in the detail!  One gives a short answer, and the other writes an essay!

Short-Answer Response


Best place right now. DCC needs all the support we can give them. Please thank your friend.

Sent from my iPhone

 Essay Response

Tina, thank you for passing on the question that someone asked you, thereby giving me an opportunity to think about it. Maybe my thoughts can be helpful to others who are advocating for this cause. I'm sorry this is long but there are a lot of reasons to support the DCC!! They've put out their own list. Here's mine.

There is never any one most worthy cause to donate to---there are always competing places to put one's resources for which an excellent case can be made. However, the Department Chairs Council has some compelling things going for  it in terms of what would be now a very important cause to support. I've donated twice before, and will do so again. From my own perspective, never having been a chair, here are some unique benefits of supporting that particular cause and why now. Both current employees and retirees may want to consider these points:
The danger is genuine of completely losing the department chairs system at CCSF and having all decisions affecting us directly made by deans. The Department Chair Council (DCC) has been strongly targeted by those who would completely transform the nature of the college and who state that as their goal. When Pamela Fisher first got here and the chairs introduced themselves, her very first reaction ---essentially before "nice to meet you" ---was that she was "against all that." There was a written proposal under the next interim chancellor to drastically reduce the number of chairs, even eliminating the chair of ESL (largest CCSF department)! It was only the strong pushback  that reinstated that position. Our pushback and advocacy remain critical. Every document released relating to  the school or campus deans positions now attempts to usurp duties that are contractually the chairs' duties. Eliminating the DCC is clearly at the top of the list, the agenda. The onslaught is continuous and requires a counter-force or it will be victorious.
There is a lot of middle ground that can be explored and that could be done to the benefit of the college, but in order to do that, the DCC must be kept in place. I think there is some acknowledgement that the deans, the administration, have not always been ready to draw a line and say, "This is something on which we will take input, but for various reasons it needs to be an administrative decision. The college is best served by that."  Occasionally, that can be the case and when it is the case, the deans need to know what their job is, and it needs to be clear to everyone else too. That is different from changing what their job is. Deans are already in charge of the chairs in all the ways that count. Each constituency has its part to play. Faculty/chairs are assertive and administration should also make their case when necessary. If it has not done so when required, administration's inaction should not be blamed on the DCC. When there's a leadership vacuum of any kind, it will certainly be filled by whoever notes that vacuum, and can fill it with their own energy and talent.
Why is that only "occasionally" the case that decisions affecting instructional programs be left primarily to administration? Those decisions are best made with maximum information about what is happening in the field--at ground level. Those decisions should be made at least in part by chairs who know what is going on because they are in the classroom, have years of experience in the classroom, and are meeting regularly with their faculty who are in the classroom. It's about informed decision-making from the ground up, not from an ivory tower level by a dean who has been told what to do by superiors who take their directions straight from the top. In the worst case, that can ultimately be by big money that finances election campaigns---a wholly non-academic and profit-oriented perspective. It's far superior to have the ground-level (chair) and bottom-down (dean) supervisors meet to discuss what the issues are from their perspectives and work something out that takes into account both perspectives. Chairs are not only working with their faculty and their dean. DCC representatives participate also in venues that allow Board of Trustees, student input, and classified input into a well-informed decision-making process. 
This system of "academic democracy" allows faculty ---and to some extent indirectly, the students they work with daily--- to have some vehicle for direct input into overall decision-making through the elected chair. It's a good system that mirrors our representative democracy system in the United States. As a model for other colleges, it's been made a target for elimination before it can spread. But maybe it SHOULD spread. And it certainly "fits to a t" the grassroots democracy traditions of SF and the Bay Area. It's a visible and effective representation of our values.
The DCC is a bargaining unit, but the difference is that they are an independent union. That means that unlike AFT2121 or SEIU 1021, they do not have a parent organization which can support their struggles by providing financial and logistical resources. The chairs receive different levels of stipends depending on the size of their responsibilities, but those stipends do not take into account the costs of defending against political attacks that have statewide and even national origins. The chair system benefits the whole college in helping to give employees a voice. It's only one mechanism for that and cannot guarantee that each person will be heard. However, compared to a dean-only system,  it goes a long way towards making that possible. Many hands make light work---we cannot expect the chairs to have all the resources required to defend their own organization against this political attack. All of us who benefit by academic democracy need to lend our support. Those who are fortunate to be able to lend major financial support should do so.
A primary milestone for reducing further the number of chairs is to consolidate various diversity-related departments under a single chair. But diversity has so many elements to it and a major point in having department chairs is that even a smaller department has an advocate. Do none of these need their own advocate---Women's Studies, LGBT Studies, Latino Studies, African American Studies, Disabled Students Programs, etc.? No one person can advocate with equal passion for each department and that would not be the purpose of "consolidation" anyway. Consolidation of diversity-related departments would undermine the whole social justice thrust of our college. Of course that is part of the intent of this conservative attack on our structure.
When the funding of chairs was cut back as part of this political onslaught, the funding of coordinators at the campuses was also  drastically curtailed. In my experience working for the enrollment campaign, I have noticed that it makes it much harder to get coordinators to do yet another thing outside of the small number of things they are now actually paid to do. The practical effect that we experience in the Enrollment Campaign is that some departments or campuses cannot even get a flyer together that could be used to promote their programs! Not one flyer! We can't say "that's your job!" because their jobs have been curtailed so much that it really isn't even on their plate. It doesn't make sense to cut coordination back that much. That's only one example of the impact of cuts to coordinating time. We could probably draw up a long list. The primary rationale for those cuts  in coordination time is to transfer any essential duties to rank-and-file classroom teachers who are then expected to do the coordination work for free. In fact, one of the interim chancellors stated that---it's about making more work unpaid.
This is the time that the DCC has chosen to hold a major fundraiser, so obviously this is a time they can really use our donations of any size. For all the above reasons, and probably even more, it's our turn to step up when they need us.

Susan


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