Pasadena City College Faculty Association Newsletter - Spring 2010

Welcome Back: Dreams Deferred and Promises Broken
Support March 4th Protests

While each new semester brings the hopes and dreams of fresh beginnings (and, yes, the chaos of strained nerves as desperate students attempt to add your classes), we must assess the harsh realities of Spring 2010. The first shock came from the Chancellor’s Office announcement that state Community College enrollments are down!

The 1% drop represents about 21,000 students out of 2.9 million in the largest college system in the country. The old adage that during high unemployment students return to school is only true if classes are available. The cuts have reversed a five-year trend of enrollment increases. At the flagship institution, Santa Monica, classes have been cut by 5% per semester for three semesters running. At El Camino, classes have been cut 11% over the past year even though overall enrollment is slightly up. Thus, teacher exploitation rates increase exponentially as El Camino class sizes balloon. At PCC our overall numbers of students (actual head count) are down 3.7%, and at Glendale enrollment is even worse at around 6% fewer students.

Historians may note that while the cuts have been in place for some semesters, Spring 2010’s quantitative data document the end of the California collegial mission, the promise broken, and the educational dreams permanently deferred. No one is optimistic.

However, we teachers should reject the attempt to persuade us to be “realistic” and accept the cuts as necessary. Unfortunately, Chancellor Scott himself cited “mission creep” that supposedly includes “superfluous” courses in yoga and flower arranging. Such rhetoric belies the real issue. The current budget slashed Categoricals (dozens of programs that help the neediest students), and some districts are cutting Basic Skills, GED, and ESL classes. The latest recommendation from the state Legislative Accounting Office (LAO) recommends a 40% increase in fees for CCs.

The Community College cuts and CSUs’ announced reductions in students, coupled with 32% tuition increases for CSUs and UCs, have inspired the March 4th protests statewide.

PCCFA urges all Faculty to join their students, lead them, or at the very least, excuse them from attending class the afternoon of Thursday March 4th so that all may join in the massive demonstrations. Thousands of teachers and students from LA area high schools, Community Colleges, CSUs and UCs will converge in a grand alliance to seize the initiative and turn the tide for public education in California. March 4th is however a nationwide effort to address the broad injustices of war budgets, bank bailouts, and the assault on health, education, and welfare for tens of millions of people (see reverse side for details).

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Why March 4th is Important

This coming Thursday, March 4, 2010, thousands of students, workers, and faculty across many campuses statewide (from K-12 through university) will be participating in simultaneous demonstrations against the budget cuts to education. Although this burgeoning of mass activism is particularly focused on addressing the state’s mismanagement of our funds, this movement must also be contextualized within a larger framework.

• Since 2001, $1 trillion has been spent on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. For 2011 alone, Obama’s proposed military budget is a record $738 Billion. Education, on the other hand, will receive a comparatively smaller $122 Billion.
• In the midst of an economic recession, the banks and credit unions responsible for the financial chaos received $700 billion in bailouts, with which CEOs gave themselves bonuses for a job well done.
• Although the national rate of unemployment is at 10% (12.4% in California alone), when the numbers of half-employed workers are factored in, that percentage can jump to as high as 20%.
• At a time when at least 20 million Americans are uninsured, politicians killed a public option and endlessly debate over how best to serve the interests of insurance companies.
• Despite being the 8th largest economy in the world, California is 48th in taxing corporations operating within the state.
• In 2009, California spent $48,000 per prison inmate, while per pupil spending was at $7,500 (ranking us 47th in the nation).

All this mismanagement of our resources, coupled with a general disenchantment over Obama’s broken promises of hope and change, have brought to the foreground an obvious contradiction: that our elected representatives do not represent us. Given that this past January, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that corporations could have unlimited spending in candidate elections, democracy, it seems, has been sold to the highest bidder. In the absence of a functional democratic mechanism that serves the needs of the people, it is then the responsibility of the people themselves to organize, exert the power of masses, and remind the politicians who is really in charge. March 4th is not only a movement of students, educators, workers, and community members working collectively to redress the injustices of the system, but it is the continuing struggle to ensure access to education for future generations. It is quintessentially the true spirit of democracy and merits our complete support.