Know Your Rights!

Change in 2007-2008 Calendar

by Barbara Hanfling, Executive Director

During contract negotiations 2 years ago, the Union and the District agreed to a calendar for 2007-08 with 2 non contract days (days without classes) due to the leap year and other calendar issues.  At that time, both sides agreed that there would be no classes the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, a day that is often light on students anyway and no classes the Monday after Spring Break.

It had come to the District and Union’s attention through the eagle eye of one of our Real Estate faculty members, Jim Black that having only 2 class days during any week, denied the District FTE for that week. That caught the attention of the District, so they came to the Union to discuss renegotiating the calendar.  Clearly it was not in the Union’s interest to force the District to loose over a million dollars by sticking to the no class day on Wednesday, November 21, 2007.

However, we were very clear: if we were to renegotiate this date, we needed to come to agreement before the schedule went to press and the no class day we agreed on would have to be comparable in value to the faculty. Much to our surprise, the first date that the District proposed was in the middle of week. We immediately stated in no uncertain terms, that a middle of the week no class day was not comparable.

After some discussion, a creative solution was proposed by the Union and finally agreement was reached on making Tuesday November 13, 2007 the day after Veteran’s day, the no class day. This would give faculty a four day weekend and be most comparable to the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. The new calendar will be on our web page shortly, so please access it and keep it for your records.