October 21, 2002

Dear Professor Denson:

  We have received and read with interest your essay “Academic Suffocation And Obstacles To Student Success at Florida Community College At Jacksonville.” We appreciate the time you took to prepare your paper. The Board of Trustees has no higher priority than the success of FCCJ students. We know that our faculty and other employee groups are dedicated to optimizing student success. We understand also that issues of course assignment and workload are important to our teachers. Your views related to these interests are set forth clearly in your paper.

  The role of the Board of Trustees in matters of policy and administrative procedure is to adopt and maintain college policies while delegating operating matters, such as many of those referenced in your letter, to the administration. Accordingly, I have provided a copy of your essay to Dr. Wallace for administrative consideration. The Board, of course, will continue to exercise its monitoring and oversight responsibilities.

 On August 6, 2002, the Board approved a revision to the college’s Participatory Governance Model (copy enclosed). Pursuant to the model and applicable Florida Statutes, academic concerns are to be addressed through the Faculty Senate, and employment issues that fall within the statutory scope of negotiations are subject to collective bargaining. Campus Governance Councils are also available to resolve campus-based issues. I commend these channels to you for addressing your concerns and advancing your suggestions.

Sincerely,

Thomas W. Fryer, Jr.

Enclosure
cc: Board of Trustees
Dr. Steven Wallace
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October 29, 2002

Dear Mr. Fryer and other FCCJ trustees:

I have received your letter of October 21, 2002, about the report that I sent to you about various student-oriented issues at the college.

I am assuming that you members of the board are looking at the issues, perhaps in a discreet way that will not cause any public embarrassment to the administration.  I also appreciate your sending to me information about processing matters through the faculty senate and the Faculty Federation.  I am assuming that you made the recommendations in good faith.  The process you discuss assumes that senate and Faculty Federation might alert the administration to developments about which it was unaware; the report repeatedly emphasized that most of the actions were those deliberately done by the administration without any consideration for the students' quality education.

For a fleeting moment, it went through my mind that perhaps that recommendation was the college's equivalent of "send him the bed bug letter" or a possible way to placate a critic, who may only have the energy for an initial complaint.  I wish I were a nobler human being without such thoughts, but, alas, I came by it honestly.

Let me recount to you what happened years ago:  In the mid-1970s, some of us faculty senators noticed that students were signing up for classes and never attending.  Eventually we realized that most of them were veterans, who signed up for classes, received VA benefits, and did nothing else.  As a faculty senate member, I consulted with some fellow senators and drafted a resolution to deal with the problem.  In the senate, we debated the issue and then passed it unanimously.  The administration back then pooh-poohed the problem and was not going to rock the boat.  A colleague and I then each sent a one-page letter to then U.S. Rep. Charles Bennett.  I also sent variations of the letter to 15 or so officials and news organizations:  the Governor, some of the state legislators, the Times-Union, the Miami Herald, the Associated Press, columnist Max Rafferty (former GOP Superintendent of Education for California), Jack Anderson, and "Sixty Minutes."  We didn't want to go public with wild claims, so we looked at our estimates of how much was being wasted and came up with $50,000 just at FJC.

The letters went out, each one typed on a regular typewriter in the largely pre-word processor days.  Rep. Bennett's staff had received multiple complaints from the faculty and forwarded the inquiry to a House subcommittee.  A national columnist with two or three columns a week is always looking for material, so our letter wound up as the basis for a Max Rafferty column in the old Jacksonville Journal.  Not long after that, Jack Anderson's "Washington Merry-Go-Round" column referred to the VA attendance problem.  Stories revealed that the problem at FJC alone was costing taxpayers $3.5 million -- not the $50,000 that others and I had worried about.  Several months later, when we thumbed through the report from the subcommittee of the U.S. House, we repeatedly saw documents from FJC being used as evidence of misjudgment.

The moral of the story is simple:  Since quality education sits on a foundation of sound fiscal sense, trustees and administrators are wise to be alert when haphazard educational fads are pushed to the front.

Although the clock is ticking because you members of the board have been alerted to the problems in the report, I, nonetheless, will forward copies to the senators and federation leaders.

        Sincerely,
        Howard Denson

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 The faculty who read the early drafts of this white paper were overwhelmingly in agreement regarding most of the conclusions in the report.

 With their guidance, I softened the tone at several places.  A couple of readers wanted the report to be shorter since they did not believe trustees would give that much attention to the report.  One suggested trustees might only be able to handle 250 words.  I have patterned the report after the institutional studies that FJC/FCCJ has commissioned in the past, often at costs of $150,000 or more.

 One of the readers did not think that any reduced point classes should be offered (See Point #7).  I agree with that position for "meat and potatoes"-style courses, but North and Downtown particularly may benefit from reduced point classes in, say, British Lit or the Bible as Lit.

 The faculty would be divided regarding college-wide departmental exams (exit exams).  In many classes, such exams could be counterproductive; however, in "life or death" courses, when graduates may cause serious injury or death, such exams are reasonable.

 Faculty don't like to point fingers at colleagues for not being qualified for respective courses, especially in creative courses.  Again, using the "life or death" standard, the report maintains that it unfair to pressure unqualified instructors to teach courses whose graduates may cause injuries or deaths.

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[A]ll you have said in the document makes sense to me. I, for one, have stuffed classes, AND I developed an online class on the promise that, unlike the lame telecourses I have taught in the past with what I thought was way too many students for me to take care of at 45, [one official] told me, as I started to work on the course, that it would be capped at 20. At the time, I thought, "Well, my word!  FCCJ is finally being wise and paying mind to statistics which say that distance learning should have FEWER not MORE students than face-to-face classes."  After meeting and bitching with EVERYONE I could
corner--including [a top vice president], I have determined that the highest levels of administration seek ACCESS way more than the quality they also speak of.  All of this makes me crazy, and I have since exited the distance learning situation completely out of principle.

One colleague was showing me how easy it is to have tons of kids in an online course, but I cut her off midstream saying how much each student takes as far as grading and discussion threads that I answer as instructor.  Anyway, thank you also for listening/reading. -- South Campus humanities professor (Oct. 29, 2002)

I received an e-mail today that online classes will be increased by another 5 (overrides) next term.  I have asked for clarification (still not received) to make sure I’ve read that correctly.  If it is correct, that is a 75+% increase in enrollment/section since August.  When the board chair says he will forward your “essay” (I find that word interesting; he dismissed the paper as a trivial assignment from a bothersome student) to the administration, that’s like the farmer telling the chickens he’ll let the fox handle their grievances.  I’ve been saying it, and I’ll continue to say it with this regime, there is no concern for academic quality/integrity/ethics by this administration.  Their main goal is to soothe a bruised ego received when the faculty did the “dastardly” deed of taking a democratic step to change representation.  They may have power, but they lack authority. -- Downtown Campus Arts & Sciences professor (Oct. 30, 2002)

I’d like to suggest a slight change in your item #10, concerning what happened with orientation this summer. -- South Campus counselor (Oct. 30, 2002) [Item #10 in the paper has been updated to include the additional information]

Howard, seems like very valid points to me.  Good work. -- North Campus allied health professor (Oct. 30, 2002)

I graduated from FCCJ South Campus in 2002 with a 4.0 GPA, president's list five consecutive terms, phi theta kappa, member of all-florida academic team.

I  think FCCJ is a great school; what makes it great is its teachers. South Campus, in particular, is experiencing a "golden era," with teachers at least as good as any at UNF or JU. many of FCCJ's outstanding teachers were in place long before the current administration.

The administration is good at running a business, but education is not strictly a business. If college officials had their way, they would turn the school into a giant extruder, squeezing out the maximum number of students with maximum efficiency. that is not education.

I believe the faculty and the administration should balance each other. If the current administration succeeds in its efforts, the faculty will lose its voice and become merely hired help.

That would be the worst possible thing that could happen to FCCJ. -- a former student
 
 

Although the white-paper is not a product of the Faculty Federation, the administration directed its chief labor negotiator to criticize the motivation of the faculty bargaining team.  On Oct. 30, the chief negotiator claimed bad faith and tried to argue that the author was still president of the Faculty Federation.  He raised the prospect of an unfair labor practice.

In response, Professor Denson e-mailed the following reply to be delivered to the FCCJ team:
 

TO:           Mr. Jo Berry-Segna, UFF Chief Negotiator

                 Mr. Michael Grogan, Esq., Chief Negotiator for FCCJ

FROM:     Howard Denson, Eng.-Hum. professor, North Campus

RE: CONCERNS RAISED AT THE OCT. 30 SESSION

Since I understand that my writing was discussed near the conclusion of the Oct. 30 negotiation session, I'm sorry that I had to leave. My 26th wedding anniversary is Oct. 31, and you may understand that such occasions take priority over most other matters.

I understand that Mr. Grogan was instructed to raise certain points in a forceful manner, and, before I address those points, let me say that I believe the FCCJ administration has betrayed its bargaining team of Mr. Grogan, Ms. Chris Arab, and Mr. Steve Robbins, Esq.

I recall our meeting during the summer when President Wallace had talked about good faith and we were agreeing not to bargain in the newspapers. However, before the FCCFF bargaining team next met with the FCCJ team, the top administrators of the college had abandoned the agreement in place by unilaterally imposing certain new policies. I am not sure what the administration's motivations were regarding the effect of the new practices on faculty; however, I do know that the practices had, and are having, an adverse effect on our students.

Since I do not believe that the existence of collective bargaining should be used as an excuse to trash the classrooms and the students, I resolved to do something.

I withdrew from the FCCFF bargaining team because I wanted to do an in-depth paper on what was being done to our students. I did not want any constraints that would prevent me from bringing the issues to the attention of the board, if necessary.

The following, therefore, may be of interest:
 

--The white-paper on "Academic Suffocation" at FCCJ represents the views of many, many faculty members, but it is not a document produced by, or voted upon, by the Faculty Federation or its bargaining team.

–Neither the Faculty Federation nor the FCCFF bargaining team has to defend the contents of the paper; neither do they have to "chastise" me since the FCCFF endorses academic freedom and free discussion.

--The white-paper did not refer to any proposed article that would be negotiated into a contract; instead, it was very careful to refer only to matters that were adversely affecting students, and it is my understanding that the students are not represented at the bargaining table by either side, although both sides will undoubtedly touch the rhetorical base about "students always being in our mind," etc.

--I have not been president of the FCCFF since a couple of weeks or a month after the election. Every official at the college knows that Professor Gena Casas has been the president for almost six months. When the FCCFF Update [Online actually] or FCCFF Quick Notes went out, these e-mail newsletters routinely listed the current officers, and Dr. Wallace and Ms. Arab are on the Hotmail mailing lists. In an earlier negotiation session, when Mr. Grogan quoted her remarks to the board, he was showing an awareness of her title.

--Since I withdrew from the bargaining team, I have signed each attendance sheet as a "visitor." I don’t have to justify why I am there, but I’m a visitor, in part, because I’m working on a mystery novel set at a community college, etc., etc.

Now, let me address the correspondence with the board, and the rationale behind it:
 

--It is my firm belief that matters should be kept within the college. When a serious issue has come up in the past, I looked at the issue as the one-time Goldwater Republican and Nixon Republican that I was. A typical FJC/FCCJ board is not going to listen to a mere "union leader." Therefore, issues have to be presented in terms of (a) taxpayers' monies, (b) sound educational practices, and (c) sound management practices.

--When an FJC board ignored serious matters, then it was fair practice to take matters outside the college, at whatever level it was required to remedy the problems.

When former President Charles Spence came onboard, I wrote him a two-page letter about what I thought the 12-year president, Benjamin Wygal, did wrong (mainly not listening, etc.). I sent a similar letter to Dr. Wallace when he became president.

The abiding theme is this: An administration should listen to the faculty about academic issues. We faculty often do not speak in Gregorian Chant-like unison; however, when a preponderance faculty are saying that certain practices are hurting the students and the classroom environment, then it takes a masochistic bureaucrat to ignore sound advice. Indeed, it takes outright hubris of a Sophoclean kind (think of Creon in Antigone).

The text of "Academic Suffocation" has gone out to about 360 faculty on a Hotmail mail-list that I have been maintaining. It has repeatedly requested any corrections from faculty. Not one faculty member has said that the conclusions were wrong, that facts were wrong, and that such-and-such matters were not hurting students. None, zilch, nada.

A revised "Academic Suffocation" is not going to the state legislators in the next few weeks or possibly months. I am hoping that a goodly percentage of the 16 recommendations are adopted. A bureaucracy can even find ways of implementing certain reforms without acknowledging any pressure from the likes of me. I don't care about any credit, if the reforms are made.

On the other hand, it is possible that the administration might dig in, perhaps after making only a couple reforms. If they choose to force students to face the remaining 14 problems, then that would signal to me that a revision should go to the media and the state legislators, several weeks or months from now.

Mr. Grogan relayed the administration's concern about funding cuts from the legislature if FCCJ's dirty-linen is aired in Tallahassee. On the plus side, we all have metaphorical detergents and washing-machines, so there's no reason why the administration can't get out the scrub board and remove the spots from our academic garb.

I don't really see the legislature penalizing the FCCJ funding for managerial misjudgments. Based on my experiences in the 1970s and 1980s, here is what typically happens:
 

* The local board ignores the troublemakers, perhaps saying, "After all, Dr. ----- knows what he's doing. We've got to support Dr. ------."

* The matter goes to the head of the Division of Community College and/or the State Superintendent of Education. They say that "Dr. ----- at FCCJ is dealing with some troublemakers."

* The matter again gets to the head of the Division of CC, etc. They say that "those troublemakers at FCCJ have made another complaint, and we'll probably have to respond to it."

* The matter goes to the state delegation, perhaps after having been seen by individual legislators. The delegation is irritated with this problem and asks, "What's going on at FCCJ?" The state officials, and perhaps by now the governor, are saying, "It looks like Dr. ----- at FCCJ can't handle things."

* If the same problems remain unaddressed, the next stage is obvious. The hierarchy says, "We need someone else to be president of FCCJ. It's obvious that Dr. ----- can't handle it."

Now, except for a reply to Mr. Fryer's Oct. 21 letter to me, I won't have any more contact with this board. I have touched that base.  I hope it's not necessary for me to go to the media or the legislators in 2003 or 2004. I had rather spend the time working on my own writing.

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As the above memo was being communicated to the administration team, the college ignored completely that the white-paper focused on student-related concerns and, to the views of many, wasted three hours of negotiation time on Thursday, Oct. 31, until the two sides agreed on the following resolution:
 

Since a former president of the union and former member of the Federation collective bargaining team has communicated a “white paper” directly to the college’s Board of Trustees and members of the bargaining unit and this “white paper” and follow-up communications may be misconstrued as collective bargaining positions and/or proposals, the following statement is issued:
 

 1. The “white paper” was neither authored nor authorized by the Federation and does not officially represent the views of the Federation.

 2. The Federation is committed to the collaborative approach to collective bargaining adopted by the College and the Federation and encourages its members to use the duly constituted avenues of governance to address matters of concern.

 3. The Federation’s official positions on college practice and policy will be clearly stated as such and collective bargaining positions will be distributed in accordance with the ground rules established as part of the negotiations process.