The budget presented this year by the Washington State Senate included $500,000 “provided solely to convert classes taught by faculty employed in part-time positions to classes taught by faculty employed in full-time positions. Particular emphasis shall be placed upon increasing the number of full-time faculty . . . .”

When we started the year, we talked about the Academic Staffing Crisis in higher education and presented bills in both the House and the Senate that sought to improve the ratio of full-time to part-time faculty in the community and technical college system. The bills included "priority consideration" for qualified part-timers applying for the positions and called for the colleges to provide better security for part-time faculty who continue to teach in the system.

Representatives from the State Board of Community and Technical Colleges said they supported the new positions but were opposed to the "priority consideration" because it would interfere with the colleges' "flexibility." They also opposed the language calling for collectively bargaining better security for part-time faculty.

As reported earlier, we insisted that the language stay in the bills, and one bill died without leaving the committee while the other made it to Appropriations, where it died.

While we were able to get funding in at least the Senate budget, we lost most of the language that was intended to protect part-time faculty. There is a little good news, though. The budget language does specify that "the state board shall determine the distribution of these funds among the colleges in consultation with representatives of faculty unions." Hopefully, we will be able to include "priority consideration of part-time faculty" as a condition for receiving the funds.

Providing full-time opportunities for part-time faculty is one of the fundamental principles of FACE, and getting funding without the language is a serious blow. However, there is a little more good news. It seems that we do have some legislators who seem to recognize this fact.

Senator Margarita Prentice, who serves as chair of the Ways and Means Committee, said, “This is an important issue, and next year we need to do this right.”

The House version of the budget did not include funding for full-time positions, and now the Senate and the House have formed a joint committee to work through the differences in the budgets, so the work is continuing. Hopefully, we will still be able to work with the language and make the intent more clear.

We will also need to make sure that our local leaders understand that we intend that the new positions go to part-time faculty and use collective bargaining to rectify the problem. And while this may be a good time to start talking about next year’s legislative agenda, there are two other important aspects to the FACE Campaign that we must recognize.

While the national elections will capture a lot of attention and our efforts will naturally be directed toward the presidential campaign, we also have a lot of state legislative campaigns taking place. Our local has traditionally been reticent about getting involved in politics (“We’re too busy,” “It’s too divisive,” and “We should be focusing on local issues” are the most common responses I get when I bring it up), but the fact of the matter is that our compensation and benefits are directly controlled by our legislature, so we need to make sure we have people in office who respect and support faculty. We have begun a new process for getting feedback from our members that we hope will get them more involved in political action so we will have a stronger voice in the state.

I believe the most important work we do is the work we do within our locals. We have to find out what our members want and help them understand how we can achieve it.