President's Report

October, 1999

 

Greetings to all.  Hopefully, it has slowed down a little for all of you.  There are many things happening both on campus and off in regards to the Classified Senate.  At the Board of Trustees meeting for October, I delivered the regulary monthly report on behalf of the Senate.  I did relay to the Board and Administration that we are in a holding pattern in regards to our Senator elections due to particpation challenges facing the Senate.  The members of your Executive Committee of the Senate meet last week to continue to brainstorm ways to increase participation, however the larger issue of finding staff willing to participate still remains. Until that issue is sufficiently addressed, it seems rather pointless to take on more tasks as a organization or conduct elections.  The Senate Executive Committee will meet with Dr. Robertson on October 14 and we will seek to find some support and counsel.  I personally still believe that it is not a case where managers or department chairs are overtly telling their staff they cannot participate, but rather there is so much work for each classified staff person to do, they feel compelled to devote their entire energies to their jobs and nothing else.  Of course I could be mistaken and there very well could be supervisors who are making it difficult for employees, however Dr. Robertson and Robert Sammis have told me that this is unacceptable and will talk to any manager who is attempting to prevent classified staff members from feeling they are unable to participate. 

 

Release time limitations

I do want to bring to your attention the issue of release time.  Many of you have asked me to broach the subject of release time with Administration for Senate activities.  While release time always seems like a wonderful "gift," it has definate pros and cons.  Release time will get classified "released" formerly to attend meetings or activities.  Mangers, supervisors and deparment chairs generally acknlowledge this formally and unconditionally.  That is not the difficulty. The challenge resides in the fact that the release time does not dissipate the work that would normally be completed while the staff member is released.  This is compounded when the employee then must try to "catch up" on the work which was not done once they return to work.  This is not to say that release time is not valuable or shouldn't be asked for however I do feel we need to keep this in mind when requesting release time for meetings and events.

 

 

 

Bigger issue

The larger issue as the Executive Committee has discused, is that there is an employee workload shortage.  If you have been here longer than a few years, you will remember we once had a "down or slow time."  We have seemed to have lost that time during the semesters.  There are simply does not seem to be enough employees to handle the work demand.  Unfortunately, as you can imagine there is no easy answer to this.  With other financial demands on the college, it may not be possible to hire enough employees to meet the need.  Hiring classified is a committment the college has continued to make.  It is my understanding that sixty-five classified employees were hired last year and more are still to come, judging by the hiring opportunity notices which continue to be distributed by the Personnel Commission and Human Resources.  However this is not a bottomless pit.  It is also my understanding that Senior staff must "lobby" for lack of a better word, at the beginning of the year for classified positions to be included in the budget.  Since I am not totally clear on this budgeting process, Dr.Roberston and Cheryl Miller will be coming to a future senate meeting to do a presentation and question and answer session. 

 

Other answers?

I will probably be labled blasphemous, but I will be brave and say that maybe instead of concentrating so heavily on the hiring of classified to meet the demands maybe we need to review how all of us are handling our workloads and find new creative ways to work "smarter."  There must be a way to assess how we are working and see where we could make improvements.  Maybe a survey asking how staff handle tasks and routine projects.  If patterns are apparent there may indeed be better ways to accomplish objectives more efficiently and timely and thereby allow more time for employees to partipate in other activities.  These are my floating ideas.  Give it some thought and we should have time at the meeting to discuss this.

 

Board of Trustees Meeting for October

I have included a copy of my report to the Board of Trustees for your information.  A lot of the information I have already shared with you in this report.  There was an excellent report from Jennifer Montgomery of the Child Care Services and Dr. Karen Hill-Scott a consultant about a future option for childcare services.  SMC is investigating the possibility of leasing two buildings on 15th Street to be used for a childcare center.  Next month's meeting should contain a recommendation if SMC will indeed move forward on a lease of the site.  Dr. Robertson's contract has been renewed for four years. 

 

 

 

Committee Reps

We are starting to get requests for classified participation on Academic and Collegewide Committees. We need people to serve on these committees. Even if you can only serve for one or two meetings until the new senators are elected that would be fine.  At that time maybe some of the new people would be interested and we could switch reps. 

 

Public Relations

 

Your Executive Committee has asked that I work on a newsletter for public relations purposes.  This might also help promote enthusiasm for elections.  While newsletters are my area of expertise, I need some help proofing. If you are interested let me know.   Per your request, I have tried to alert classified staff of upcoming meetings for the Personnel Commission meetings and CSEA chapter meetings.  We need to work collaboratively with CSEA to work on a schedule of when reminder notices will be sent so that we don't have duplication.  Incidentally, to save paper, we currently do not send the agenda to all classified staff.  In light of your recent request to remind all classified of meetings, we may want to revisit this policy and decide if we wish to once again send notices to all instead of senators only.  For this month, I will send email copies to all and see how that goes. 

 

I will end my report. I know it was lengthy, but I thought you needed to be kept informed. 

 

See you at the meeting on the 14th.

 

Tony