Hello Team Palomar! Here is an overview of our negotiations meeting from October 10, 2024: ☀️Annual Reopeners/Sunshining Excited to officially agree on our reopeners for this academic year: Article 15 + Appendix F and Article 16 are automatic reopeners The District chose to open Article 4 + Appendix B and Appendix L After our listening sessions and feedback from faculty, we chose to open Article 20 and Article 12 We are currently working on our proposals, so stay tuned fo

Hello from your Negotiations Team! We are still in the early stages of our reopeners, but we are making steady progress as we continue to advocate for faculty across a range of important issues–class caps, benefit arrears, salary placement concerns, etc. We are addressing many issues that affect our working conditions and ensuring that faculty voices are heard every step of the way. Ground Rules Both parties agreed on the ground rules for our reopeners Reopeners will be rea

Hello Comets! Here is an overview of our negotiations meeting from September 11, 2024: MOU on International Transcripts We presented an MOU to support faculty whose salary placement is complicated by international transcripts. The District responded in a favorable way, but wants to review options to solve this problem individually instead of with an MOU. Noncredit Workload Issues There was a healthy discussion about the changes to noncredit workload and the impacts it has

August is here! And your Negotiations Team is still hard at work advocating for faculty! We met with the District twice in August to...

Summer Update - July 31st Hope your summer is going well! In July, we were able to meet twice to continue our negotiations—once for contract negotiations and once for class caps. We also met with the District on two other occasions to collaborate on other faculty concerns. MOUs We continued to advocate for an increase to the amount of reassigned time for our Curriculum Co-Chair to offset the increased workload caused by AB-928, AB-1111, and changes to Title 5. The District

Summer Update - June 28th Hello and happy summer! This week, the Negotiations team met for the first time this summer with the District. We also met twice this week for class cap negotiations–the first time the District has been able to meet for class caps since January. We had a full agenda. Here are a few of the highlights: MOUs We signed an MOU for stipends for faculty working on the Faculty Cultural Curriculum Teaching Institute under the Culturally Responsive Pedagogy

Negotiations Update This morning we met with the District and finalized agreement on adjustments to the 24/25 academic calendar to account for the insufficient Mondays issue in Spring 2025. The new draft calendar overlaps the first week of spring with the last week of winter intersession, moves spring break by a week due to that change, and shortens the summer session to 8 weeks, allowing for a gap between spring and summer and summer and fall. A few important notes: Progra

Negotiations Update At today’s meeting, we spent the bulk of our time discussing options for calendar revisions for Spring 2025 to attempt to effectively address the insufficient Mondays issue. PFF’s team shared the feedback received from faculty as we attempted to figure out a solution that would be preferable for most people. Discussion will need to continue, so we scheduled another meeting for tomorrow morning (5/24/24). We shared the results of our ratification vote on

Negotiations Update Your PFF Negotiations Team has worked diligently since October to negotiate the 2023-2024 reopeners for the 2022-2025 District/PFF Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA, aka “the contract”). The full contract was NOT open for negotiation–we were focused on only a few articles in this round of negotiations. We finalized negotiations on all reopeners with the District this week and will send the ratification vote to all PFF members on Monday 5/20/24. The vote

Negotiations Update We made exceptional progress at today’s meeting and are now literally one footnote away from completing all 23/24 reopeners. Read on for details about today’s meeting: Article 15 (Compensation)- TAed Vocational/CTE compensation Previously completed (and future) trainings, licenses, and certifications can be counted towards grade advancement (71 hours of training = 1 graduate unit). Each year (40 hours per week x number of contract months) of occupationa

Negotiations Update We had a long meeting with the District team today, where we presented one counterproposal and they presented three counterproposals. We also engaged in discussion about numerous issues. Appendix F (Reassigned Time and Stipends) We presented a counterproposal for Appendix F, and the District was able to respond after they caucused during the meeting. While we did not receive additional positions we were requesting in this round, we have reached agreement

Dear PFF Members, Due to the deadlines of our third-party vendor for our online elections, the timeline for the Spring 2024 PFF election has been slightly revised: All voting PFF members will receive a mailed, hardcopy Notice of Election from Ballot Point at their home address beginning April 20. This information will also be posted on the PFF website. The election will run (electronically, using a digital ballot) from April 20 to May 8 . Members will be asked to confirm one

Negotiations Update 3/14/24 At today’s meeting (on National Pi Day) we brought a pie to share with the District team along with a visual illustration of the discrepancy between full- and part-time paid office hours. We discussed the following: District Counterproposal (Article 20- Working Conditions) The District’s counter included some different perspectives than our proposal on the assignment of office space, leading to some productive conversation with the District about

WHAT'S NEW THIS SPRING ? Negotiations, Awards, Elections, Parity, and More!

We made good progress towards finishing up our remaining reopeners at today’s negotiations meeting. The District presented their first counterproposal to our Article 15 (Compensation) and Appendix F (Reassigned Time and Stipends) proposals. As expected, the District did not accept all of our proposed gains and increases in Article 15 and Appendix F but did importantly agree with us on some long-awaited gains. We engaged in some good discussion and have optimism for some poten

During today’s meeting with the District: Academic Calendars 2024/25 (adjusted summer), 2025/26 and 2026/27 - TAed We were able to make some positive adjustments to the academic calendars for upcoming years. The main changes are to the summer schedule. Starting Summer 2025, the summer session will be 10 weeks long (down from 12) allowing for a week gap between spring and summer and between summer and fall. This will allow for grades to be submitted before the next session s

Dear Faculty Colleagues- On February 12, The Palomar Faculty Federation (PFF) begins accepting nominations for the following PFF Executive Board positions: Two-year terms- May 2024 through May 2026: One full-time faculty Co-President One full-time or part-time faculty Treasurer One full-time faculty Executive Board Members Two part-time faculty Executive Board Members Two at-large Executive Board Members (full- or part-time faculty) Eligibility requirements will be pos

At this morning’s negotiations meeting, we met the new VPHRS, Anna Pedroza, who is joining the District’s team, and finished presenting all outstanding proposals in this round of reopeners. Article 15 (Compensation) We presented our initial proposal for Article 15. Highlights include: Slight raise for 24/25 Automatic COLA CTE salary scale parity for our colleagues in fields without advanced degrees Improvements to PT and FT office hour compensation Appendix F (Reassigned Ti

At today’s negotiations meeting we were able to sign a long-awaited and discussed MOU and clear up several areas of discussion. Article 4 (Workload and Calendar)- TA While we finalized negotiations on this article before winter break, we were able to sign it today. Please see the previous negotiations update for details. Large Class Stipend MOU- SIGNED We began conversations with the District in 2017 about compensating faculty who teach courses with caps over the standard of

Negotiations Update 12/14/23 We made some exciting progress at our negotiations meeting today! As we work through negotiating our 2023-24...