2020

Whereas, Substantial shifts in placement, enrollment, and successful completion have been experienced as a result of both full AB 705 (Irwin, 2017) implementation and COVID-19 pandemic challenges; and

Whereas, The funding to support institutional transformation as codified by the California Community Colleges Guided Pathways [Award] Program is coming to an end, with the final allocation of the remaining 10% in July 2021;

Whereas, The work of establishing and improving a college’s guided pathways framework is integral with all institution-wide work;

Whereas, During the current emergency conditions, the Alternative Attendance Accounting Procedure, Title 5 § 58003.1(f), is employed for noncredit distance education courses that do not use the Positive Attendance Procedures, Title 5 § 58003.1 (e), requiring a calculation of student contact hours that includes

(a)  The total number of hours of instruction in the class
(b)  The number of hours expected for any outside-of-class work
(c)  Instructor contact as defined by Title 5 § 55204;

Whereas, Education Code section 87454 allows tenured faculty within a given district the right to retain their faculty tenure when assigned to an educational administrator position, while Education Code section 87458 states that educational administrators without faculty tenure have the right to become first-year probationary faculty provided all of the requirements of section 87458, commonly known as “retreat rights,” including the existence of a process reached by joint agreement between the representatives of the governing board and the academic senate and approved by the governing board

Whereas, Many faculty are required to complete a minimum number of professional development or Flex hours each term or year, and art of the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges’ (ASCCC) mission is to foster “the effective participation by community college faculty in all statewide and local academic and professional matters,” a mission it achieves through an infrastructure that includes various committees and a wide-array of events intended to inform, engage, and listen;

Whereas, Lab-based courses and hard-to-convert courses in other disciplines may need to be moved into an exclusively online format due to pandemics and other natural disasters;

Whereas, While most people may believe that hard-to-convert courses are largely science-based, other lab-based disciplines are also subject to discipline-specific challenges and limitations, including but not limited to nursing, fire science, performing and fine arts, CE/CTE, ASL, kinesiology and physical education, early child development, communication studies, and anthropology;

Whereas, California Community Colleges have largely moved to an online format because of the global COVID-19 pandemic;

Whereas, The Academic Senate for California Community Colleges has resolved to support the new distance education definitions in resolution 09.06 adopted in Spring 2019, but the Distance Education Guidelines have still not been approved by the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office;

Whereas, The California Community Colleges Student Success Scorecard reports that in 2017 the gulf in completion rates for degree, certificate, or transfer within six years of entering community college was 30.1 percentage points between the group with the highest completion rate and the group with the lowest rate;

Whereas, Oral and written testimony given through the consultation process used for the review of Minimum Qualifications for Faculty and Administrators in California Community Colleges, also known as the Disciplines List, supported the following addition of the Registered Behavior Technician discipline:

Certification as a Board-Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA) as set by the Behavior Analyst Certification Board (BACB);

AND

Master's in behavior analysis, education, or psychology
OR
the equivalent

Whereas, The California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office has issued a call to action, to look with fresh eyes at the limitations and barriers to educational equity in California Community Colleges;

Whereas, Educational equity is in the requirements of the California Education Code and Title 5 Regulations, and educational equity requires understanding the unique challenges and barriers faced by individual students or by populations of students and each student having equitable access, guidance and support in pursuing educational pathways and career goals;