The third kind of issue which we have faced in the last year - indeed which we face very year - goes to the heart of out mission in the college: The assertion by the faculty of true leadership in the college, a role which we assume by the nature of our standing as faculty, not by the permission of the administration or the Board of Trustees.

This assertion of leadership appears in many ways, including the following:

• Aggressively pursuing opportunities for recognition and professional development: 
  • Piper Professor Awards: These very competitive awards (they come with a $5,000 cash prize) are given out every year to 15 full-time faculty at texas colleges and universities.  Each college may nominate one professor a year for this award.  The nomination must be made by the president.  Some colleges have elaborate procedures for making nominations, which involve input from faculty and students.   (As an example of this, check out the procedure at University of Houston, Clear Lake City).  Currently, as far as I can tell, HCC has no set procedure for soliciting these nominations, of which we are entitled to six (one for each college in the system).  The Faculty Senate should take the lead in pressing HCC to renew and enhance its commitment to participating in this prestigious competition.
  • Faculty Excellence Awards. Until recently, the Faculty Senate has had the proud tradition of awarding a number of Teaching Excellence awards to deserving professors, librarians and counselors, based on nominations from students and faculty colleagues. In the last three years, this practice has fallen into oblivion, and the faculty's representative body has made no contribution towards recognizing the most excellent colleagues among us.  It is time to reverse this trend.  I propose a revived Faculty Excellence award, including a cash award, to be funded by the Bedichek /Orman Fund.
  • Bedichek Awards and Grants. Several years ago, the Bedichek Fund, an HCC faculty development fund managed by an independently chosen Board of Directors, dissolved itself and turned over its sizeable fund to the Faculty Senate for management.  At the same time, the Fuynd received a matching Title V grant which required that we not spend the principle of the donated money for a number of years.  The fund (now named the Bedichek/Orman Fund in honor of the late Helen Orman, English professor at Southwest College) is now managed by the HCC Foundation (it is currently the largest endowed fund in their portfolio), and it is imperative that the Faculty Senate make provisions for spending the money wisely. The Bedichek Fund has decided to disburse funds at 6-month intervals rather than annually:  this is a wise step, because it enables Bedichek to put itself before the public more often, with a corresponding increase of proposals submitted by faculty colleagues.

• Department Chair Caucus: This time last year, or to be more exact, since Spring 2006, faculty have fought a series of skirmishes against tentative moves by the  Administration to reduce the faculty's role in the front-line management of education.  The main front of these skirmishes centered on the role of department chairs.  Facing continual Board inquiries on the amount of released time being given to faculty, the administration sent out signals that it viewed the status of department chairs as a fertile field for reductions in non-teaching assignments. To begin with, Dr. Cook announced that the formula by which released time available for chairs needed to be revisited. Other voices in the administration questioned the entire role of chairs, and argued that, as faculty needed to spend their itme in the classroom, the college ought to revisit the entire concept of faculty chairs elected by their department colleagues. The arrival of the PEP was further grist for the mills of the anti-chair elements, who wondered how elected chairs could possibly be releid on to evaluate their colleagues objectively, especially in light of the imminent pay-for-performance plan.

The first step which the Faculty Senate leadership took to parry this campaign was to take advantage of our meetings with the various chancellors, especially Dr. Nielsen, to point out some fairly salient facts concerning the chair controversy:

• We stated that, to wrest front-line control of instruction from faculty and created a new layer of administrators would be a crushing blow to faculty morale, as it would reverse over a decade of progress in empowering the faculty to exercise more influence in the actual ground-level educational functions of the college;
• We pointed out that, in any case, a downgrading of the chair role was unlikely to achieve much in the way of fiscal economies, since new adminsitrators would have to be hired (undoubtedly at higher salaries than current chairs), who would then rehire many of the original chairs as assistant chairs or lead instructors to carry out the hiring, staffing, interfacing with students, etc. that chairs currently do.

The second step that I took was to revive the Department Chairs Caucus.  This body, affiliated with the Faculty Senate but composed of department chairs, originally served as a forum for chairs to develop common areas of concern at the time when the chair concept was just being fleshed out.  Now, the Caucus' mission was to serve as a body who could discuss issues of workload and policy directly with the administration, and serve as the principal advocate for the faculty role in department management. Under the very able leadership of Alan Ainsworth, the Chair Caucus has met regularly and has opened useful lines of communication with Dr. Cook and with Human Resources on a variety of policy and procedural issues.  I count this development as a big PLUS.

Another PLUS is that discussion about reorganizing chairs out of existence appears to be off the table, at least for the foreseeable future (one should never use "forever" around here).

• Budget Considerations: The biggest PLUS here is that the new leadership fo the college is committed to a new approach for creating the college's budget.  In the last few years, the budget process has become an increasingly annoying and even traumatic comedy-drama in which individual budget lines were set by computer based on opaque mathematical algorithms which led to logic-defying results.  it was then up to presidents and deans to challenge these results in ill-tempered meetings with the budget director, leading to wasteful expenditure of gastric juices just in order to reverse, say, a zeroing out of new books for a college library, or an elimination of the supplies budget for an award-winning drama department.

We in the Faculty Senate leadership have raised this issue with both Dr. Spangler and Dr. Arthur Tyler, the newly-hired deputy chancellor and C.O.O., and both have emphatically stated that they want a new budget process, one which involves a lot more effective input from the colleges and presumably the units within the colleges.  The QUESTION MARK is whether this new process, coming in an era of tight revenue, will really allow resources to be shifted to the instruction side of the ledger and away from the 3100 Main colossus.  I am guardedly optimistic.

• Information Technology: The biggest PLUS in my view on this front has been the arrival of the Vice Chancellor for Information Technology, Bill Carter.  I can confidently state that V.C. Carter is the first technology leader that I can remember in HCC history who is truly committed to placing instruction and learning at the center of an IT strategy.  This commitment has appeared in several ways, of which the following are the most noteworthy:
• Vice Chancellor Carter has re-established the IT Advisory Steering Committee (a new name for the old IT Governance Committee), on which faculty, staff, deans and technical people are represented.  The monthly meetings of this committee are valuable forums for discussing the priorities that will guide IT in the future. 
• Carter has also outlined a plan for systematic replacement of all instructional computing hardware as this hardware goes off warranty.  If the plan is implemented, old, broken-down and obsolete, slow-as-molasses equipment will be a thing of the past. 

The big QUESTION MARKS for IT: Will restoration of budget cuts caused by Governor Perry's veto allow this plan to go forward? Will the HCC Board fund this ambitious but common-sense replacement plan?  Inquiring minds want to know!

• "Where's-My-Stuff?"  Issues
• "We're a College, So Act Like It" issues
• "We Are the True Leaders" issues

Thanks to our stalwart compensation committee chair, Linda Burch for the following diversion from the cares of community college governance:

The Secretary of Defense briefed the President this morning.

He told Bush that three Brazilian soldiers were killed in Iraq.

To everyone's amazement, all the color drained from Bush's face, then

he collapsed onto his desk, head in hands, visibly shaken, almost in tears.

Finally, he composed himself and asked,

"Just exactly how many is a Brazilian"?

This comes from the National Education Association http://www.nea.org/socialsecurity/index.html
(Wait a second!  Weren't these the folks that Rod Paige referred to as terrorists? You'd better clock thislink with caution!!)

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NEA Seeks Repeal of Offset Provisions

In the meantime, NEA will continue its effort to repeal two little known amendments to the Social Security Act that are dramatically and unfairly slashing the retirement benefits of tens of thousands of Americans -- teachers and other public school employees, firefighters, police, social workers, and other civil servants -- who are being penalized for their public service. It's just plain wrong and the NEA is committed to working for an end to the injustices of these two provisions.

For NEA members, the hurt is massive. The Government Pension Offset (GPO) and Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) affect at least one-third of America's education workforce, concentrated in 15 "non-Social Security" states, literally from Maine to Alaska. The list also includes highly populated states like California, Massachusetts, Ohio and Texas. But, because people move from state to state, there are affected individuals everywhere.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the Government Pension Offset alone reduces benefits for some 300,000 individuals by more than $3,600 a year.

A small victory came in 2005 with enactment of an NEA-supported law  that requires the Social Security Administration and employers to warn employees in jobs not covered by Social Security that their benefits will be reduced. 

In the past, because the provisions are not widely known, the pension reductions they mandate usually came as a surprise when affected individuals applied for the benefits they had anticipated in their retirement planning.

Unintended Consequences Victimize the Most Vulnerable

The Government Pension Offset and Windfall Elimination Provision aren't simple to explain. Congress adopted them in 1977 and 1983, respectively, out of congressional zeal to reduce federal budget deficits at the time and as a quick solution to pension "double dipping" abuses.

Their unintended consequences have been victimizing relatively low-paid public servants ever since.

In brief, here's how these provisions work. Social Security law prevents "dual entitlement"-or receipt of full Social Security and spousal benefits at the same time. In 1977, Congress began treating government pensions, such as those earned by educators, as Social Security benefits. The effect of this change was a dollar for dollar reduction in Social Security survivor benefits for anyone also earning a public pension.

In 1983, Congress amended the law to a two-thirds offset. The WEP was enacted in 1983 to prevent people with relatively high-compensated government service and relatively low-paying Social Security-covered employment from having their Social Security benefits determined under the more favorable formula used for retirees with the lowest Social Security earnings.

In practice, however, both provisions are hurting those who can afford it least and are now exacerbating what is widely acknowledged as a national teacher shortage growing to crisis proportions.

Record enrollments in public schools and the projected retirements of thousands of veteran teachers are driving an urgent need for teacher recruitment. Critical efforts to reduce class sizes also necessitate hiring additional teachers. Estimates for the number of new teachers needed range from 2.2 to 2.7 million by 2009.

The GPO and WEP are impacting the recruitment of quality teachers to meet these urgent shortages. At the same time that policymakers are encouraging experienced people to change careers and enter the teaching profession, individuals who have worked in other careers are less likely to want to become teachers if doing so will mean a loss of Social Security benefits they have earned. Some states seeking to entice retired teachers to return to the classroom have found them reluctant to return to teaching because of the impact of the GPO and WEP. In addition, current teachers are increasingly likely to leave the profession to reduce the penalty they will incur upon retirement.

What Can Be Done to Address the GPO and WEP?

NEA, working closely with members of Congress, has secured the re-introduction of legislation to completely repeal both the Government Pension Offset and the Windfall Elimination Provision. H.R. 82 has been introduced in the House  and already has more than 100 bipartisan cosponsors!

U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) have introduced S. 206 in the Senate, where Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) also are cosponsors.

Congress can fix the problem. The NEA urges everyone to join in the effort by urging their representatives in Congress to sign on to the new bill as cosponsors.

Undoubtedly, many of you are aware of "Windfall Elimination Provision" (WEP) and "Government Pension Offset"  (GPO) provisions of the Social Security Code.  These laws are designed to penalize teachers who work in school districts and states where teachers contribute to retirement plans other than social security (e.g. Texas, where college professors in public universities and colleges have a choice of paying into TRS or an ORP of their choosing, but not Social Security).  The GPO and WEP state that a person who works for an employer who doesn't contribute to social security shall have have his/her social security benefits reduced by a percentage of his/her other pension.  

This is a provision which unfairly targets teachers because they constitute the bulk of the population falling into this category.  Community college faculty, especially workforce colleagues, are very likely to have accumulated enough quarters to qualify for social security before working for the community college, thus dooming them to reduced pension bneefits when they retire.

There is a light on the horizon:  Two bills, HR 82 in the House of Representatives and S 206 in the Senate, aim to repeal the GPO and the WEP.  There is hope that Congress will take action on these bills during this session.  Fortunately, both bills have bipartisan support (HR 82 is cos-onsored by Republican Ted Poe as well as Democrat Sheila Jackson Lee).

Go to the following website to learn how you can join the fight to remove these unfair penalties aimed at teachers.

http://www.nea.org/lac/socsec/index.html

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August 3, 2007
Important Notice about New IRS Regulations
Recent changes have been made to income tax regulations which may affect school employees who are paid out over twelve months. Many public school employees who work less than a full year choose to have their salary evenly distributed over twelve months. This is commonly referred to as “annualized compensation.”

New IRS regulations state that annualized compensation may be subject to an additional 20% excise tax. The new IRS regulations regarding annualized compensation apply to both contracted and non-contracted school employees. After consultation with several Texas school districts, TSTA Legal Staff, and a deferred compensation tax expert, TSTA has determined there are two ways employees may avoid the additional 20% excise tax. First, employees may avoid the additional tax if they elect, in writing, to have their compensation annualized before they begin work for the 2007-2008 school year. Second, if a school district does not allow employees to make an election to have their compensation annualized, the employees will still be protected from the additional tax if the employees’ school district operates under a policy that is in place before the start of the school year, and that policy establishes that the school district will pay employees on an annualized schedule.

If your school district does not allow you to elect to have your compensation annualized, you need to determine whether the school district has a policy in place that makes the election for you, as detailed above. In any event, it is important that you attempt to have your school district address this issue in writing so you know whether you need to make the election yourself or the school district has made the election for you. If neither of these things has occurred by the first day of school, the safest course of action would be to request non-annualized payments (receive pay on a ten or eleven month basis, as applicable.)

Most school districts are aware of these new regulations and should provide employees with an election form by the first day of work. If your district does not have such a form, as detailed above, determine whether your school district through policy has unilaterally made the election to annualize compensation.

If no election has been made by or on behalf of an employee by the first day of work of the new school year, the safest course of action would be to request non-annualized payments (receive pay on a ten- or eleven-month basis, as applicable).

Once an employee makes the election to annualize compensation, it may not be revoked during that school year. Employees who elect to have their compensation annualized, must make that election at the beginning of each new school year

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Dewhurst: Restore funding for colleges

This statement appeared in the Monday, July 23 editionof the Houston Chronicle, as a letter to the editor.

HCCS.NEWS SPECIAL EDITION  VOL. 10  NO. 131, THURSDAY, JULY 20, 2007

(The following opinion piece was written by HCC Chancellor Dr. Mary S. Spangler for dissemination to local media outlets.)

HCC CHANCELLOR REBUTS GOVERNOR’S EDITORIAL

    Houston Community College continues to be deeply concerned about the erosion of support of the most important sector of higher education that keeps Houston and Texas at the forefront of economic development for the region. State funding for higher education makes it possible for community colleges to offer an affordable education to its citizens.
    Thus, while the Governor has expressed his belief that community colleges are the “backbone” of our higher education system and he supports increased formula funding for them, it is ironic that his veto of the very funding he sent forward to the state legislature for approval might well result in an increase in taxes and tuition to offset the loss.
    An even greater irony is that community colleges are part of the bedrock of this state’s economic and social prosperity, and these actions seriously undermine the engagement we in education developed over many years – a connection with those who are traditionally disenfranchised from the educational process: the high school graduate who does not qualify for financial aid because his parents earn too much but live just above the poverty line; the single young mother juggling time between a job, motherhood and getting an education; the worker who has been laid-off and is training for a second career while collecting unemployment, which is just about to run out.
    Governor Perry’s actions leave Houston Community College and our sister institutions with few choices. We are carefully monitoring the situation, while making fiscal management decisions that have the least amount of impact on taxpayers or students. We also rely on the alliances with those elected to office and appreciate their continuing support, including Senator Whitmire, Senator Gallegos, and Senator Williams and Rep. Smith, Rep. Otto, and Rep. Eiland, as well as the other members of the Texas House of Representatives and Texas Senate who support us. Their due diligence in the arduous appropriations process will keep the dialogue going until commonsense prevails.
    In the meantime, students from all walks of life can come through the doors of all our educational institutions knowing that we will work hard to continue to offer quality education at an affordable price, no matter the final outcome.

Dr. Mary S. Spangler, Chancellor
Houston Community College

Trustees at Austin Community College have voted to raise tuition and fees to make up the shortfall caused by the Governor's veto of last month.

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ACC raises fees $2 per credit hour

Increase needed to compensate for vetoed state funding, college officials say

Click-2-Listen

By Katie Humphrey
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Austin Community College students will pay $2 more in fees for each credit hour they take to help make up for Gov. Rick Perry's veto of legislation that would have aided the state's two-year colleges, ACC officials said.

The decision by the ACC Board of Trustees was part of a $185.5 million budget that it approved Monday night in a 6-2 vote.

A total of $3.8 million disappeared for ACC when Perry vetoed $154 million for community college health benefits statewide, and the board's budget is a combination of fee increases, tuition hikes and cuts that will be announced later to make up for that money.

The board's new budget includes an $8 per credit hour tuition increase for students outside the college's taxing district and a $24 per credit hour tuition increase for out-of-state students. Students from outside Texas make up 2 percent of the student body.

Tuition for in-district students — about 71 percent of ACC students — will not go up.

All students will pay the $2 general fee increase starting in the fall. It will raise the cost of a typical three-credit course $6.

Over a two-year period, Perry's veto cost ACC $7.6 million, college officials said. Another of his vetoes axed $390,000 that lawmakers had allocated to help cover costs at the new South Austin campus.

The college relies on a combination of funding from the state, local taxpayers and student tuition and fees. If state funding shrinks, the college must raise taxes or student tuition and fees to compensate, ACC President Steve Kinslow said.

"That expense doesn't go away," he said. "It gets displaced."

Kinslow said the college does not plan to cut student services and will look for ways to reduce the budget for deferred maintenance and expansion of the college district. Discussions about additional cuts are under way, he said.

College staff members had recommended that the board raise the general fee $5, but the board chose a lower amount to put less of a burden on students, board Chairman John Hernandez said.

The fee will rise from $13 to $15. The cost of a typical three-credit course for an in-district student in the fall will be $162.

"We hated to do it," Hernandez said. "We're just glad that it was a smaller impact than was initially projected on the students."

Trustees James McGuffee and Allen Kaplan voted against the budget. Lillian Davis was absent.

Kaplan said he would have preferred a $5 increase to avoid having to make cuts as the college attempts to expand.

"We are a growing college, and we have to pay more dollars for expanding our programs," Kaplan said. "If it doesn't stop momentum that the college has had for the last few years, it certainly slows it down."

Here's the word from El Paso Community College, as reported in the El Paso Times:

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HCCS comes out swinging ... in Katy.  There are a lot of Perry supporters there who need to read this:

*****

This article from the Coastal Bend and Corpus Christi shows what a major impact the Governor's ill-considered veto will have on the community colleges in this area.

Community colleges veto cuts health funds

Here is a pretty miffed local news editorial from Brazoria County:

Gov. Rick Perry acted irresponsibly in his decision to slash funding for group health insurance for community college staff and has gone beyond his usual reactionary politics to what, unless he gives us a better reason than he has so far, can only be seen as misdirected payback.

There’s not much Perry did this session that made sense. His premature and rabid push to mandate the HPV vaccine for all young girls in Texas left even the least cynical among us wondering what drug maker Merck had done to curry such favor with the governor.

Now, with the sweep of his veto pen and his half-baked reason for using it, Perry has managed to lump all community colleges together and paint them as rule-breakers who have misused state funds. Last week, Perry cut $154 million in funding that had been earmarked for group health insurance for faculty and administrators at the state’s 50 community colleges. By way of explanation, he accused community colleges of falsifying appropriation requests to use state money on benefits for employees who are not eligible to receive it, such as groundskeepers, custodians and faculty whose positions are funded through grants.

Local officials deny that charge, of course. We see it as a convenient and mean-spirited excuse when what Perry really was trying to do was assert his power, in case we and legislators who largely undercut him this session, forgot he can.

Had Perry really been concerned about widespread misuse of state funds, the correct course of action would have been a warning and an audit of those colleges suspected. That he instead cut off this substantial funding source was irresponsible and will lead to significant repercussions.

At Brazosport College, the cut funds amount to about $1.37 million for 2008-09, and Alvin Community College officials estimate their loss will be about $1.5 million.

Perhaps most galling is that while officials at the colleges will twist themselves and their budgets inside out to make up the difference, having to either raise taxes, raise tuition or both, the money they should have gotten will just sit as an unused balance.

We have confidence the colleges will find a way, and we all should remind our legislators that we want the funding restored somehow, though by the time they meet again it will be too late for the 2008-09 budget year. Both State Rep. Dennis Bonnen, R-Angleton, and State Sen. Kyle Janek, R-Houston, who represent parts of Brazoria County, have expressed outrage at the governor’s veto.

Access to higher education and lower taxes have been high on Perry’s list of stated priorities, but as we most recently witnessed with his veto of eminent domain legislation that would have protected property rights he supposedly holds so dear, what Perry says and what he does are often opposites.

The just-closed legislative session was not a pleasant one for Perry, we know, but it’s time he stop making things worse.

This editorial was written by Yvonne Mintz, managing editor of The Facts.