Community College must address survival issues of faculty and students

Editor’s note: The following is adapted from a testimonial delivered at the Peralta Community College District Board of Trustees meeting in Oakland, CA on July 23, 2019 by faculty member Ina Adele Ray.
Our faculty situation, which is a nationwide issue, is unsustainable and eventually the chickens will come home to roost. I ask you to move the District in the right direction to give our faculty union a fair contract. Part-time (PT) temporary faculty members make up around 70% of the entire faculty body at all Peralta Community Colleges, and only a small handful can afford health insurance. And those who can afford it are at risk of losing it every time their class gets cut. Each semester, PT faculty are at risk of not having classes to teach, and sometimes they find this out at the last minute. One of our faculty members had a health condition and after their class was cut, they spiraled into debt and almost lost their home to afford health insurance one semester. Most faculty either have to rely on a spouse’s health insurance if they are lucky or just go without and end up in the emergency room of the hospital if they are sick. Or, they risk their housing stability in order to stay healthy to be able to afford health insurance. The cost of living and health insurance crisis we have also affects our students’ quality of education.
The health and housing stability of our faculty is the health and education of our students. Part-time professor, Thea Hunter, died at age 53 on Dec 17, 2018. She died of cardiac arrest after she arrived in the ER from issues with her asthma and her lungs flooding with fluid. She had no health insurance. Dr. Hunter earned her Ph.D. in History at Columbia University and was an expert in legal history, slavery and the Atlantic World. She taught at many schools including Princeton University. She also faced racism—some people thought she was janitorial staff and students’ parents questioned whether she even had a Ph.D. at Western Connecticut State University.
On behalf of Thea and our faculty in the Peralta District, I ask you to urge the District to negotiate a fair contract for the PFT union, to either increase the already state mandated 50-50 health insurance plan to 70-50 paid for by Peralta or offer cash in lieu of paid insurance like you do with our full-time faculty so the health of our faculty and the quality of our students’ education are sustained.
I also ask you to urge the District to give raises to all faculty, across the board. Our full-time faculty members are the lowest paid in the California community college system in one of the most expensive places to live in this country. This is unsustainable and again, if the District cannot address these survival issues that our faculty face, then our students will lose out on a quality education with healthy and housed faculty members. Thank you for listening. And thank you for the ethical leadership that exists on this board.