Negotiations Update 4 September 26
After walking out of our last negotiations due to the District’s ongoing lack of preparedness and respect, we were pleased to engage in a much more productive session today. We had a packed agenda and were able to agree on many items quickly. We look forward to more productive sessions, so that we can finally close this round of negotiations.
This was also the first negotiations session with our new team members: Shelbi Hathaway and Kristie Hill-Cummings. Both came prepared and ready for action. 💪
Stay tuned for our new Negotiations SharePoint where you can track our progress on proposals!
✅ ECELS Salary Increase MOU
On behalf of ECELS leadership, PFF proposed an MOU to increase the salary schedule for ECELS part-time faculty. Funding for this increase would come from the ECELS budget and not from Palomar General Funds. The District agreed to this MOU. We expect to see it at the October Governing Board meeting.
📌 CTE Academy Programs MOU
This is a pretty big and interesting proposal. There have been recent changes under CalPERS impacting our ability to hire skills experts in our CTE programs as short-term hourly. In order to protect these positions, the District is proposing a pilot program to hire these skills instructors as Assistant Instructors under PFF. This would allow this group of employees to continue supporting our CTE programs without negative impacts to their retirement. We had many questions.
What problems does this fix? We have over 150 special skills instructors who support programs like Fire with special skills instruction. After PERS announced their stricter regulations on the hiring of retired annuitants, none of our skills instructors felt comfortable moving forward with their regular assignments. The District is concerned there will be significant negative impacts to our programs, particularly our Police and Fire academies.
Impacts to load? No, this work would be considered ancillary duties paid on an NOHE. This means they would not be eligible for anything associated with load such as office hours, professional development, etc.
Other community college solutions? Varies. In many ways, CTE programs are concerned they would lose essential trainings should we not provide a solution.
Does this only apply to retired annuitants under CalPERS? No, this would be a fix for those under CalPERS, but it would be consistently applied to all special skills experts. Those in STRS would be able to count hours in both.
Instructor of Record? In every situation, the faculty would be the official instructor of record. The Assistant Instructor would not assign grades or replace any work of the instructor of record.
Evaluation considerations? Assistant Instructors would be monitored by the academies. There is currently no formal evaluation process.
Protections against exploitation? FT and PT faculty would not be replaced by skills instructors. Assistant Instructors would continue to provide the same support they did as STH.
CTE-specific? This would be limited to CTE. Assistant Instructors would continue to be hired as before–this means that some would be hired by admin instead of faculty.
Pay? The rate ranges from $36-$45 per hour
How many impacted employees? The District will share the exact number of employees that have been hired for this type of work. Many are also hired as PT faculty for other classes, so the District will share the number of employees who work as both as well.
PFF Members? Yes–this will mean we will be adding over 100 members to our bargaining unit. This will impact our dues collections and membership rates. It will also mean that this group of faculty who were previously STH will now be represented by PFF.
Temporary? Yes–the district recognizes that this is new territory and we can’t predict the hiccups along the way. The MOU is a pilot for this academic year only and would be reevaluated before extending.
In general, there is a lot to explore with this MOU. PFF will be consulting those impacted by this potential pilot and also welcomes any feedback from all of you.
✅ Effects of Body-Worn Cameras MOU
On August 10th, PFF proposed an MOU to establish parameters for the District’s use of body-worn cameras for campus peace officers. After a bit more discussion, we were able to agree to this MOU including language to provide advance notice of CPRA requests involving faculty, a notice of other surveillance programs, and privacy protections for employee spaces.
📌 Article 13 (Safety) District Counter Proposal #1
The District agreed with the majority of the language in our initial proposal with a few slight adjustments. They seem reasonable adjustments and we expect to come to an agreement at our next session.
📌 Article 25 (Intellectual Property) District Counter Proposal #1
The District agreed that our proposal was reasonable. As a reminder, our proposal included language to protect faculty ownership regardless of district-provided AI tools or software, redefine what is considered “substantial support” given changes to our working environment due to AI and technology, and ensure that faculty-owned works will not be used by the District or third-parties to train AI. The only concern the District had with our proposal involved the changes to substantial support. PFF will review the language again with their concerns in mind and counter at our next negotiations session.
📌 Article 27 (Resignation) District Counter Proposal #1
As you may remember, PFF opened this article to simply request a longer grace period to rescind a resignation. Currently, faculty have a 48-hour window to rescind a resignation if needed. PFF requested a 5-business-day period instead. The District initially claimed that our grace period is already longer than other comparable schools: “As a unit, looking at other districts as well, there are already 48-hours more than they are used to seeing at all.” Though they were presented with other schools who have longer grace periods, namely LACCD with a 5-day grace period and SDCCD with a 10-day grace period, the District maintained that this is a District right that they were intent on “holding the line.”
📌 Article 10 (Professional Development) PFF Initial Proposal
Our initial proposal for Article 10 focused on opening up the reporting window for PD hours for PT faculty. Currently, PT faculty must submit PD hours by May 1st in the Spring and December 1st in the Fall in order to accommodate the review necessary for PD submissions and payroll timelines. This means that any PD conducted in the final month of the semester or over summer/winter intersession can’t be included and is therefore unpaid. Our proposal provided a fix to this problem to open up the reporting window and still allow for timely pay periods. The District seemed amenable to this fix and shared interest in allowing for more flexible reporting periods.
📌 Article 8 (Course Maximums) PFF Counter Proposal #1
Once again, our goal for Article 8 is to codify existing practices that don’t exist in our contract. In their counter, the District insisted we did not need specific language around criteria for reduced class caps or standard class cap sizes, and instead felt we could reference the class cap negotiations process. So we restructured our proposal to outline the class cap negotiations process with this specific information. We assured the District that our intent was not to add or change anything. The language from our class cap negotiations agreements and from our large class cap MOU is represented in this new section.
📌 Implementing AB 65 MOU
Over the summer, the state passed AB 65 giving community colleges a discretionary COLA to provide 14 weeks of paid pregnancy disability leave (PDL) for all eligible employees. The new paid PDL must be implemented by January 1st, but the new COLA was already applied to our budget. Our MOU proposes that the program be implemented immediately instead of waiting until January. We also added language that any additional funds from this discretionary COLA be applied retroactively as a percent increase to all employee salaries instead of being used to pad our reserve fund. The District’s lead negotiator seemed particularly interested in this MOU as AB 65 is new and MOUs like this haven’t been explored yet.
📌 ECELS TERB Forms MOU
TERB presented the new ECELS Evaluation forms developed in collaboration with TERB, ECELS leadership, the ECELS faculty liaison, and ECELS faculty. These forms were also presented to Faculty Senate and PFF for approval. The District will review on their end. We hope to see a counter at our next session.
✅ Nursing Grant MOU (PFF Counter)
After gathering feedback from those impacted, PFF was able to agree to this MOU providing grant funds to nursing faculty completing selected certificate programs.
✅ 27-28 Calendar New Adjustments
There was a great deal of discussion around a calendar designed to prevent late grade submission. The District continued to present a calendar with the start date for Fall 2027 a week earlier than had previously been agreed upon in our 26-27 calendar, which is already public facing and used for planning purposes. We reminded the District that they can’t renegotiate an established calendar. They did point out the specific concerns with the grading window for Fall 2027, so we were able to come up with some creative solutions for this calendar period to support timely grade submissions without changing the semester start date. We also included a more flexible summer schedule for specific programs. We should see the 27-28 calendar posted soon.
Our official calendar agreement:
We agree to the general session for summer beginning June 1
The Fall Semester will need to begin on the date negotiated for our past calendar: August 23rd with an All College Day on August 20th
We agree to the new format with Summer in the first position
We agree to the proposal for all grades to be due 5 calendar days after the semester ends unless otherwise noted. Fall Grades to be due by January 3rd for all sessions that end on December 18th and Spring Grades to be due by June 2nd for all sessions that end on May 27th
Provided nothing else is different from the proposal discussed in Spring 2026, we can agree to the 27-28 calendar.
Discussion
Noninstructional Priority Numbers - there was some discussion around how these are calculated and who should be receiving them. Ultimately, we agreed to continue the conversations but to allow for PN numbers to be sent out asap for staffing purposes.
ASL Interpreter Position status - the hiring committee is currently being formed with representation from our Deaf faculty 🎉 We expressed our continued concern that the position would be used for student services instead of faculty/staff support. The District maintained that this position is for faculty and staff—it is being paid out of District funds and not DRC funds. We are very excited for this movement!
Office Hours Website & Receipt - the District acknowledged that there is a way to provide a confirmation receipt upon submission of office hours and is working on redoing the form to allow for this. Huge thank you to Will and the Parity Project for all their work in advocating for a smooth office hour submission process for PT faculty.
Chair Stipend Error - PFF was alerted to an error in updating stipends in the CBA with appropriate COLA over the years. The district assured us that the stipends were updated with appropriate COLA adjustments on the back end, but it is running a report to ensure all stipends were paid with appropriate COLAs applied.
Our next September meetings:
September 21st 9:30am-1:00pm
September 29th 12:00-3:00pm
Signing off—but still here for every comma, clause, and cause.
Your PFF Negotiations Team