Banner complicates adjunct scheduling

At Tuesday's Staff Council meeting, Annie Samano, office supervisor of services for women and nontraditional students, reported that unit assistants are having problems scheduling adjunct faculty with Banner.

Samano, who deals directly with grants, said no one took into consideration in programming the Banner system that differences exist among adjunct faculty who are paid with grant funds.

Grants can operate on different fiscal years the colleges' fiscal year of Sept. 1-Oct. 31.

This causes problems in scheduling for adjuncts who work under different grant funds.

Some academic unit assistants are at a loss with how to input data into Banner and complain of not having gotten enough training to input work schedules for employees.

In other business, Anelia Luna, continuing education training network program manager, asked Staff Council President Geraldo Guerra if a plan exists to build trust between colleges and the district.

Luna said she read an article in the Oct. 7 issue of The Ranger, "District, colleges agree on one thing — there is no trust," which discussed the lack of transparency and trust between district and the colleges.

Guerra said he did not know if this issue is going to be discussed at the next budget retreat, but said right now, everyone is focusing on the 25 strategic initiatives to save money.

He said the next budget retreat will be about cuts for the next two years.

He said there is no set date for the next budget retreat.

Luna said she doesn't want this issue to go ignored. "It shouldn't be us against them," she said.

College Connections adviser Audrey Grams asked Staff Council if they could start a food drive this semester.

She said Phi Theta Kappa's food pantry is running out of supplies and the shelves are pretty bare.

The food pantry needs monetary donations and dry nonperishable foods.

Grams also said starting Nov. 1, the food pantry will serve only people from the Alamo Colleges who have an ID.

The food pantry first started serving anyone in San Antonio, but starting a year and four months ago, the focused shifted to people from the Alamo Colleges and residents with a 78212 ZIP code.

Because of high need in the 78212 community, the food pantry has to limit service to students, staff and faculty from the Alamo Colleges.