The Faculty Obligation Number:

A Floor Not A Ceiling

By David Yancey, FA, AFT 6157 President

The Details of the Process

For those of you not familiar with a Faculty Obligation Number (FON), it is a very critical number with which we should all be familiar. The FON was established by the Board of Governor’s (BOG) in their Code of Regulations, Title 5, and Section 51205 (c) (1). Contained in this section of the BOG Code of Regulations is the process used to determine the minimum number of full time faculty each district is required to maintain or face serious financial penalty.

To understand this calculation may take more time out of your life than you are willing to give because it is reasonably complicated and based on a series of reported numbers surrounding the “funded FTES” in a district in any given fall semester. (i.e. projected fundable growth at the Advance Apportionment, OR, the actual percentage of change at P2 at the Recalculation Apportionment, blah, blah, blah….my head is already hurting). Once the FTES number is determined then the Board of Governors determines how to adjust the FON in that district. It works like this.

In adequately funded years this base number of full time faculty is increased by an “adjusted” percentage of change in a district’s FTES. In English this means that in good times when your district increases its FTES (full time equivalent students) your number of full time faculty increases. In inadequately funded years the regulations described above allows the BOG to freeze the FON regardless of any increase in FTES. Even worse, if your district fails to meet their minimum required level of FTES, even in a “frozen year” then their district’s FON can be reduced.

How Did We Get Here?

Some of you will remember our district’s old pattern of “robbing Peter to pay Paul”. Almost every year the district administration would take FTES from summer to meet the minimum requirement for the prior year. We were forced into that mode because the administration insisted on not going over our cap of paid FTES. It was a never ending cycle that ultimately led us to a negative position called “Stabilization Funding” and the state stepped in and bailed us out. The long term effect of this status is part of the reason our FON is going down and not up. I think our district has now learned from those mistakes.

Over the last several years our district has fortunately increased its annual FTES. This was accomplished by the efforts of all. The whole district has extended itself; faculty, staff and administrators have all worked hard to pull us out of the negative patterns of past administrations. Our district now sees the wisdom in the concept of having a cushion of FTES to ensure we are always growing. Furthermore the current district leadership and college presidents see the role and impact of full time faculty play in ensuring one of our primary and fundamental goals, Student Success.

What Do We Do Now?

The subtitle of this article is “A Floor and Not a Ceiling”. This perspective should be the view of the FON in any district in this state, especially ours. The legislature set the FON to ensure a “minimum” number of full time faculty were teaching in California’s community colleges. As good as our adjunct faculty are, they know what we all know, and that is that students benefit more by having consistent access to faculty beyond the classroom.

We need more of our adjunct faculty to become full time faculty. It is good for the students and good for the faculty. Research clearly supports that higher student retention leads to an increase in student success when classes are taught by full time faculty. Over the last seven years we have lost almost forty (40) full time faculty positions (dropping from 272 to 234) and next year our FON is predicted to fall to 223 possibly making us lose close to fifty (50) full time faculty over the past 10 years.

We are all aware that the academic work of the colleges and the district are dependent on having adequate numbers of full time faculty. Accreditation was just the latest example of that necessity. And that is to say nothing of the ongoing need for program reviews, curriculum updating and the myriad of committee work necessary for the functioning of the college. We are all struggling with meeting the requirements for SLO’s and it is clear that the responsibility for ensuring this work gets done falls on the shoulders of the full time faculty. Adjunct faculty are not paid for this extracurricular work and therefore cannot be expected to carry this weight.

It is the position of the FA, AFT 6157 that the San Jose Evergreen Community College District must reverse the trend of declining numbers of full time faculty we have seen in the past several years and start hiring more full time faculty. If we truly believe in our mission to ensure our students the best opportunity for success then the “faculty voice” needs to be strong and loud. Every division and each Academic Senate should echo the voice of the Faculty Union in demanding more full time faculty positions.