ASCC President Felipe Grimaldo is putting together a Writing Campaign, in which he will be collecting signatures for a petition to send to local legislators requesting for Cerritos College to be alleviated from the Full-time Faculty Obligation (FTO) until the school’s budget is healthy again.
Director of Public and Governmental Relations Mark Wallace explains what the FTOs are and why they are in place.
“The full time faculty obligation is a regulation that requires the college to have 75 percent of their courses taught by full time faculty and the other 25 percent taught by part-time faculty,” Wallace said.
Wallace went on to add, “This is to ensure that community colleges are maintaining the highest quality of teaching.”
The issue Cerritos is having is if the college fails to fill those positions with full-time faculty then they [state] will withhold roughly $66,000 as a penalty from the money the school gets from the state.
While some schools choose to pay the penalty so they don’t have to hire FTO’s, Cerritos is not in that position to neither hire nor be penalized hence the campaign to have Cerritos exempt from the regulation.
Grimaldo said that it wouldn’t be right to penalize the College if it can’t meet the goal.
“Times are getting harder here at Cerritos and right now is not the time to impose a penalty for not being able to hire the required full-time faculty and meet the requirements.”
He has put together a petition with a cover letter written by himself, Holly Bogdanovich, director of Student Activities and Wallace.
He also will be collecting signatures from students and faculty as well as the community, March 15 from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. and March 17 from 9 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. during Hoe Down Days.
Grimaldo will have a table with the a draft of the letter and petitions for students to sign which he will then take to the local legislators.
Many posters will be up informing students about the letter as well as the actual letter so they can read it for themselves.
One idea Bogdanovich mentioned is to hire adjunct faculty or part-time faculty to fill the needs of the students while not taking even more money from the school that it can’t afford.
“We can bring adjunct faculty in and that person can provide the same service just not all the benefits.”
Students should want to sign because if the school can get alleviated from the regulation that will allow for part-time faculty to be hired and with the money saved more class sections can be added and students can get more classes.
Bogdanovich says that if the school were to try and meet the FTOs then money would have to be pulled from other resources and programs to meet that obligation.
Even students are helping the campaign become known. Broderick Woods, commissioner of convocation of fine arts says he feels it’s his duty, as a student representative to let this be known.
“Being a part of ASCC, clubs and doing what I do on campus, I feel it’s my obligation and my goal to get the word out there to the students to let students know what’s happening because there are some students that don’t know what’s going on,” Woods said.
He also urges students to get involved, saying, “We’re the ones being affected.”
Woods, also went on to mention, “The ASCC can just send it [the petition] up there [legislators] ourselves but we feel like it’ll really make a difference if we can get more students to do it.”
Grimaldo is looking to hand deliver the petitions to the local legislators during the last week of March.
If students would like to get involved but can’t make it on the March 15 or 17, they can stop by the Student Activities Office to sign the petition or even volunteer to help carry them and get signatures.
