BILL NUMBER: AB 420 INTRODUCED BILL TEXT INTRODUCED BY Assembly Member Wildman FEBRUARY 12, 1999 An act relating to community colleges. LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL'S DIGEST AB 420, as introduced, Wildman. Community colleges. Under existing law, persons employed in academic positions by community college districts are faculty or faculty members. This bill would provide that it is the intent of the Legislature that an amount be appropriated to fund 5,000 newly created full-time faculty positions over a 7-year period commencing during the 1999-2000 fiscal year. Vote: majority. Appropriation: no. Fiscal committee: yes. State-mandated local program: no. THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA DO ENACT AS FOLLOWS: SECTION 1. The Legislature finds and declares all of the following: (a) Campuses of the California Community Colleges have historically hired part-time faculty to meet short-term needs, to employ working professionals as teachers, to strengthen the tie between the college and its community, and to enrich the curriculum. (b) Part-time faculty provide hiring flexibility, and, in some cases, needed expertise, at less cost than full-time faculty. (c) Part-time faculty often fill voids created by unanticipated enrollment growth, and may provide technical expertise that regular full-time faculty may not have. (d) With rapid expansion, community colleges began to overutilize part-time faculty for financial rather than curricular reasons. (e) In the late 1980's, the Legislature attempted to reverse the ongoing trend of hiring part-time instructors instead of full-time instructors through the passage of Assembly Bill 1725 of the 1987-88 Regular Session (Chapter 973 of the Statutes of 1988), which was intended to increase the number of hours that students were taught by full-time faculty members versus the number of hours taught by part-time instructors. (f) California's community college students deserve teachers who can devote full time to teaching and are available for individual consultations with them. (g) California's community colleges presently employ 67 percent of their teaching force in part-time positions. (h) All Californians who are qualified and willing to work deserve full-time jobs. Part-time faculty are qualified for full-time appointments. (i) Temporary contracts are being misused to employ part-time faculty. (j) Creating full-time teaching jobs in community colleges is an educational quality issue, equivalent to class size reduction in the elementary and secondary schools. SEC. 2. It is the intent of the Legislature that an amount be appropriated to the Board of Governors of the California Community Colleges to fund 5,000 newly created full-time faculty positions over a seven-year period commencing during the 1999-2000 fiscal year.