Ice Cream Anti-Socials and Unstrategic Plans

           We know now that the CCCS paid its lobbyists $132K, and persuaded the North Metro Chamber of Commerce and the Aurora Chamber of Commerce to pay their lobbyists to defeat our equal-pay-for-equal-work legislation in 2014 (HB 14-1154) and 2015 (SB 15-094). In this way, the CCCS threw its faculty majority of nearly 5,000 hardworking, devoted teachers under the bus, after having told us our only recourse for a pay raise was to work with the state legislature.

          
                CCCS administration dressed some windows with its Adjunct Task Force. The hastily assembled group, comprised of administrators and a few adjuncts that administrators handpicked to "represent" adjuncts, met in secret, published no agendas and no minutes. Last year, at the end of several months of its secret meetings, it published a list of recommendations, foremost among them a 28% pay raise for adjuncts and a few other measures calling for inclusion and consideration. 

          The CCCS governing board un-recommended the pay raise on the spurious claim that the system is broke (with a quarter billion dollars in reserves) but made much hay at the Capitol about the inclusion and the consideration. What we learned from CCCS administration, their pet legislators and their lobbyists is that adjuncts are supposed to feed their children and pay rent with inclusion and consideration; either that or go out and get some other jobs to make ends meet. Yet even inclusion and consideration are non-starters for CCCS administration.

          The expensively produced Adjunct Task Force Recommendations remain meaningless eight months after their adoption. Case in point, nearly 1,000 adjuncts were effectively dissuaded from participating in the so-called "strategic planning" sessions at FRCC, as adjuncts were not paid to attend the hours-long confabs. Now, the FRCC is hosting an Ice Cream Social to "all employees" to celebrate their Strategic Plan. Adjuncts who might go to it will not be paid to attend the celebration, either, although all other employees who will be there will be eating ice cream at the taxpayer's expense, partly celebrating how they found a way to keep half the employees from providing input to their so-called strategic plan in the first place. Thus, FRCC has made its celebration an Ice Cream Anti-Social, and their Plan, Unstrategic.

How much did the CCCS administration pay its lobbyists to help defeat our legislative efforts this year and last year (Senate Bill 15-094 and House Bill 14-1154)?  What was the CCCS rationale for giving its 1,246 full-time faculty a 20.3% pay increase at the same time it fought to keep paying its 4,667 adjunct faculty poverty-level wages? Why are adjuncts having their course loads cut and being told that enrollment is down, when it is up by more than 18,000 students? Why are adjuncts being told the CCCS is experiencing "budget shortfalls" when the CCCS has more than a quarter billion dollars in reserve and puts aside $20 million each year it does not spend? Read what new research reveals about the CCCS here:
The 2015 CCCS Adjunct Index

Some background on its creation:
Think Outside the Box and Publish an Index