PCC Trustees Meet Safely at Home While Staff To Resume In-Person Classes

PASADENA – ColoradoBoulevard.net:

At 8:00 pm Wednesday night, shortly after Pasadena City College professors urged the PCC Board of Trustees to postpone face-to-face instruction, Alex Boekelheide, Special Assistant to the Superintendent/President, emailed PCC faculty and staff reiterating the district’s mandate.

By Melissa Michelson

“PCC will resume on-campus operations on Monday, January 24, 2022. As we continue to navigate this pandemic, we are working closely with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health and Pasadena Public Health Department to ensure we maintain a safe campus environment. While the college is open, students, faculty, and staff will be required to follow extra precautions to keep us healthy and safe,” wrote Boekelheide.

Students received a similar email.

In the email, he said masks are required in all indoor and outdoor spaces “when other people are present”; that only N95, KN95 or triple-layered surgical masks would be acceptable, not cloth masks, with appropriate masks available to staff and students for free at PCC’s testing locations. He also said COVID19 testing is mandatory, with or without vaccination, and “until further notice” all faculty, staff and students on campus will need to have “one test within 72 hours of their first time back on campus after Jan. 24 AND one test per week,” though it is unclear who will be monitoring that or proper mask-usage on campus.

Lack of data and input, erosion of trust

Almost a dozen professors signed up to speak at the January 19 board meeting, while others sent in written comments.  Board President Berlinda Brown chose not to read the letters publicly even though the Board agenda states “submissions will be read aloud in their entirety at the appropriate point of the public meeting.”

Several professors questioned why hundreds of faculty and thousands of students are to expose themselves to COVID19 while the 8 trustees and the president of the college continue to meet safely online. Professors also called for data-driven decisions rather than arbitrary and undisclosed rationale for the return to campus. To date, the PCC student body of approximately 32,000 students, has not been surveyed by the college on their preference.

Neighboring institutions like Cerritos College and Cal Sate LA have postponed their in-person teaching until February and March, said Professor Charlene Potter, and suggested allowing certain hands-on classes to return while others remain online.

Professor Mark Whitworth, President of the Faculty Association, said that the administration had recently cancelled several meetings with the faculty union, who has been trying to negotiate a return to classroom teaching starting February 12. According to a union-administered survey to faculty last week, of 500 members who responded, 400 said they don’t feel safe returning on Monday.

Professor Kathleen Dunn told the Board it would be “reckless” to make students and professors go back this soon, and that their top-down decision making “erodes trust” in the college’s leadership. Dunn shared that she used to be proud of how PCC handled the pandemic, but that is not the case anymore.

> Link to January 19, 2022 PCC Board of Trustee Meeting).

Appeal to Public with Faculty Protest and Student Online Petition

On Wednesday, the faculty union called on concerned faculty to a public protest to put pressure on the District to extend remote learning. Around 40-50 professors as well as some students participated in Thursday’s impromptu one-hour protest.

Professor Susan Hunkins, who teaches English as a Second Language, attended because she felt her non-credit ESL students’ voices haven’t been heard.  “I’ve felt our Noncredit adjunct faculty voices have [also] not been heard. This was a chance for me to publicly ask to be heard.”

A student-initiated online petition to “Protect Pasadena Community College Students & Staff – Stay Remote!” is being circulated.