Aug. 18, 2009
An open letter to the chancellor and the board of trustees,
A few weeks ago, with much regret, I informed the foreign languages chair that I would no longer be able to teach Chinese at San Antonio College. I’m a good teacher, I enjoy teaching Chinese, and my department chair really wanted me to stay.
However, it is your policies as chancellor of ACCD that have now made it impossible for me to continue teaching Chinese at San Antonio College. Specifically, your stated goal of reducing the number of full-time teachers and replacing them with as many part-time teachers as possible has shut the door on qualified, dedicated teachers like myself who want to make a greater contribution to the college but can’t because you won’t allow us to make a living doing it.
As the first teacher of Chinese in the history of San Antonio College, I was encouraged by my department chair to build up the Chinese program. If we had enough Chinese courses, I was told, then I could be made a full-time teacher. So I worked with SAC’s public relations. department and got out the word to the community that Chinese was now being offered at SAC. I also designed a Web page so that everyone could keep up with the latest on the Chinese program.
With a group of enthusiastic students, we started the Chinese Culture Club. Two semesters later, I had enough students to teach three classes in Chinese, totaling 12 credit hours, the minimum required for full-time status. But the dean in charge of adjuncts did not see it that way. We’d either have to cancel one of the classes or find another part-timer to teach it. Why? To avoid having to pay me as a full-time teacher.
He made an offer: teach the 12 credit hours, and we’ll call it 11, then accept the pay as a part-timer for 11 credit hours (a practice which ACCD’s own lawyer has since declared illegal). Reluctantly, I agreed. That was when I first began to see the dark at the end of the tunnel.
You know that a full-time professor with an M.A. and just a few years of experience makes an annual salary of $44,000, plus benefits. He/she is expected to teach 12-15 credit hours each semester. That works out to $4,400 for a three-credit course (not taking into account the other benefits accrued to full-time teachers). A part-time teacher with the same qualifications — no matter how many years of experience — is paid only $2,300 to teach the same three-credit course. That’s half the salary for the same amount of work. Because of the significant difference in pay between full-time and part-time teachers, I can understand, in this difficult economy, the temptation to reduce the number of full-time teachers and replace them with more part-timers. What a tremendous savings. Or so it seems — to the short-sighted.
You’ve correctly said that increasing efficiency is one way to balance the budget. But do you really think that it’s more efficient to have five different part-time teachers teaching five courses, than to hire one dedicated full-time teacher to teach the same courses?
In the long run, it’s actually more expensive to rely on too many part-time teachers because of what you lose in continuity, cumulative expertise and efficiency. Not to mention that most important factor that will never show up in any of your graphs or flow charts — teacher dedication. You can’t put a number on it.
If you would step out of your office and spend a little time in the classrooms, you would quickly learn that it’s not all about balance sheets and flow charts and grandiose plans to build more buildings. It’s about the quality of education. And quality education comes from highly qualified teachers who feel good about their jobs and their ability to make a valuable contribution, while at the same time being able to make a living doing what they do best.
Let’s take a closer look at the practice of making continuous use of full-time temps, which you have now forbidden. For years, administrators before you knew that the ability to hire and keep full-time temps was a really good deal for the college. You get a full-time teacher without having to pay all the benefits or commit yourself to a lifetime tenured professor. You get the continuity. You get the dedication. You also get a teacher who has to remain excellent semester after semester in order to keep his/her job.
Furthermore, it makes it cheaper and more convenient to recruit and keep the best teachers available locally. That is, it gives department chairs the opportunity to try someone out as a part-timer first before committing to full-time employment. If there’s anyone who knows the quality of teachers first hand, it’s the department chairs. So why don’t you listen to your department chairs? Why do you rob them of the most valuable resource they could ever have to provide a quality education for our students — full-time, dedicated teachers?
Your constant refrain is that we just don’t have the money to pay teachers what they expect. Really?
If ACCD is so short of money, then why was one of your first acts as chancellor to hire an army of new administrators so that you’ve now surrounded yourself by no less than five vice chancellors, seven associate vice chancellors, 10 directors and several “coordinators” and others, some with nebulous or nonexistent job descriptions, to the tune of over $2.5 million in salaries a year? And if you’re so concerned about saving the district’s money, then why did you give yourself a $70,000 raise last year, making you the second-highest-paid head of a community college system in the entire nation? If you’re so bent on belt-tightening in this poor economy, then why did you propose spending $116 million for a country-club style administration complex to house your bloated administrative staff?
You know, and we all know, that it’s not just a matter of money. It’s a matter of priorities, and it is not difficult to conclude that, despite all your disclaimers, your priority is not students or teachers or the quality of education.
Yes, we appreciate the new academic instruction center. But I can tell you that I’d rather teach under a tree and be respected and paid what I’m worth than to be housed in the most high-tech classroom money can buy while suffering the denigration we’ve had to suffer under your administration.
Students are not taught by bricks and mortar and expensive projectors — they are taught by dedicated teachers.
Under your tutelage, department chairs are now having to scramble every semester to find part-timers to cover all the classes. This leaves them with little or no time to concentrate on the more important aspects of running a department. The entire system, from human resources, to payroll, to the bookstore, is burdened by having to deal with five teachers instead of one. This also creates a lack of coordination within a department because part-time faculty are often not available for meetings, etc.
With so many part-timers passing through the revolving door, how can you possibly hope to maintain continuity within a program, or even a single course? Is this what you call “efficiency”?
I am not proposing that we do away with part-time teachers. In some specialized subjects it may not always be possible to offer enough classes to justify the hiring of full-time faculty. However, when there are enough students and enough classes, there is no reason for these courses not to be taught by full-time teachers. Only when this is not possible should we recruit part-time teachers. And the best way to attract the best professional part-time teachers available, and keep the good ones for longer than one or two semesters, is to treat them with respect and pay them at least the same per credit hour as full-time teachers. Equal pay for equal work.
When I first started teaching Chinese at San Antonio College three years ago, it was a vibrant center for language learning, offering seven foreign languages, plus ESL. At that time, the German, French and Italian classes were all being taught by full-time temps; all fine teachers, all with a passion for teaching.
Then you imposed your policy of doing away with full-time temps. The result? The German teacher left for a full-time job in secondary education. The French teacher found another full-time job but has agreed to come back and cover a couple of courses for one more semester. The Italian teacher found an office job, which was not her first choice. Yes, all three of these teachers have said goodbye to San Antonio College, and they took their considerable expertise and their passion with them.
Now our department chair has been scouring the landscape, trying to find anyone with a pulse who can teach these languages. Otherwise, these courses will have to be canceled.
After my evening class, an old woman comes into the classroom to give it a cleaning. She’s very friendly. We chat. On the way home, I did the math in my head: This uneducated woman, on a salary of $18,000 a year, earns a higher salary than I could ever hope to make as a teacher at San Antonio College. Not that I devalue the work of a custodian. What they do is just as important to the college as any of us. But how could ACCD have got it so upside down and backwards? How could you, and your brilliant, highly paid administrators, think that you can attract and retain the best teachers when you pay them less than the cleaning lady?
You have certainly written the book on “How Not to Keep Good People.”
This has been my own personal story, from my own narrow corner of the college. You might consider it a bit too self-serving. But I can’t help but wonder: How many times is this scenario being played out in other departments all across the college district? Though I lack the resources to do a complete survey, anecdotal evidence has led me to believe that I am far from alone. I’ve concentrated here on just this one policy of doing away with full-time temps, but there are other directives that have come out of your office, such as increasing class sizes and pressuring teachers to pass failing students just to keep the numbers up, that are taking this college to new lows.
As this bridge goes up in flames behind me, and I look back to the other side, I can only hope that enough people with enough clout will see the light and make the right decisions before any further damage is done.
It’s very simple. You could continue with your misguided policies and run this whole college district into the ground. Or you could reverse course before it’s too late. You might start by reducing your district-level administrators by at least half. This would free up a whole pile of money so that you could adopt a more pro-teacher, pro-student, pro-education outlook that will allow San Antonio College and the other colleges in the district to once again be ranked among the finest community colleges in the country. Yes — I did say “community”.
Len McClure
Former Chinese Lecturer
