Community college faculty often campus-hop. Newsom vetoed a plan to make their lives easier

Adrian Castillo is not accustomed to job security. He’s a part-time professor who simultaneously teaches media arts courses at three different Los Angeles-area community colleges, while also working as a high school substitute teacher to make ends meet. Castillo often doesn’t know which colleges will offer him classes to teach next, or whether those classes will be online or in person. 

“It is stressful just trying to balance everything,” said Castillo, who has taught at the community college level for 10 years.

Castillo’s experience — an ever-fluctuating schedule and lower pay compared to his full-time colleagues — is common across the California community college system, where 68% of faculty, about 35,000 of them, are classified as part-time. 

Existing law caps part-time faculty at teaching 67% of a full-time load, which typically equates to three courses, at any single California community college campus during a semester.

On Sept. 22, Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed Assembly Bill 2277, which would have raised the cap for part-time faculty to 85% of a full-time load, or about four courses, at a single community college. The state Legislature approved the bill earlier this month. In his veto message, Newsom wrote that “this bill continues to create unknown, but potentially significant costs or cost pressures in the millions to tens of millions of dollars.”

The Association of California Community College Administrators argued in a letter opposed to the bill that “AB 2277 would infringe upon the local authority of community college districts to collectively bargain their own paid leave provisions at the district level.”

Fragmented health care coverage a concern

The administrators association has also opposed previous iterations of the bill due to concerns that allowing part-time faculty members to teach more courses at a single campus could trigger the Affordable Care Act, requiring colleges to expand health care coverage for part-timers.

Meanwhile, faculty unions say AB 2277 wouldn’t have triggered the Affordable Care Act because of a provision in the bill stating part-time faculty assignments at any single community college must be fewer than 30 hours per week. 

“They have to understand that I’m as much of a gig worker as many of them are.”

kirsten olson, part-time anthropology professor based in oakland

The vetoed legislation was supported by the California Part-Time Faculty Association, which said in a letter that AB 2277 would “improve quality of life for part-time faculty” by “allowing them greater opportunities to be a resource to their students and participate in the campus community.”

Health care is a focal point for part-time faculty, with many not receiving health insurance from the colleges where they teach. In 2022, the state provided $200 million to a fund to help community colleges pay for health care for their part-time faculty, and that funding is ongoing. But it doesn’t fully bridge the gap.

Kirsten Olson, a part-time anthropology professor in Oakland, relies on receiving benefits through her partner, who is a full-time professor at Laney College. The districts where she teaches offer some health coverage for part-timers who qualify based on their per-semester course load. However, she said she prefers her partner’s plan because it’s “automatic, easy and I don’t have to fill out paperwork every semester.”

Olson teaches “an extraordinary number” of classes — eight to 10 per semester across four colleges. That’s twice the load typically taught by full-time faculty. 

“I’m very honest with my students because I’m great at getting into the classroom, (but) I may not have their work graded for them by the next class,” Olson said. “I will get to it as quickly as I can. But they have to understand that I’m as much of a gig worker as many of them are.”

Students feel effects of absent professors

When part-time faculty are spread thin, it can have an adverse effect on students, said Ivan Hernandez, a computer science major at Diablo Valley College who serves as the president of the Student Senate for California Community Colleges. Hernandez said most of his peers probably don’t notice if their professors are part-time or full-time, but their learning can be harmed when part-time faculty don’t have time to be on campus often or hold regular office hours. That’s why Hernandez said he supported AB 2277.

Long term, Hernandez said he hopes part-time faculty receive “more fair compensation” and are able to teach at just one campus, not just for the sake of their own wellbeing, but for the sake of students, too.

“When you’re part-time and doing multiple things, like teaching at different institutions, that affects the flexibility of the professor,” Hernandez said. “And they work really closely with the students. ”

AB 2277 was authored by Assemblymember Greg Wallis, a Republican representing Rancho Mirage in Riverside County, who issued a statement saying he was “disappointed” by the veto.

“While this is a setback, I am confident we can find a solution,” Wallis said in the statement. “We must be fiscally responsible, especially in tough budget years, but improving our education system remains one of my top priorities.”

Faculty say more needs to be done

Scott Douglas, a part-time professor at several community colleges in the San Diego area, worked as part of the California Part-Time Faculty Association to push for the bill.

Five days a week, Douglas drives a 100-mile loop between MiraCosta, Palomar and San Diego City colleges and the University of San Diego to teach math. He works out of his mobile office, a 2016 Ford Escape that has about 120,000 miles on the odometer. A lengthy commute has been Douglas’ reality since he started as a part-time professor in 1987.

“Adjunct faculty are so dislocated,” Douglas said. “They’re so spread out on all these different campuses and disengaged, that they don’t become faces or names that their full-time counterparts are aware of, and they’re not incorporated into the system and part of the system.”

He said AB 2277 would have helped. 

“It’s sort of psychological, if you can get more work on a single campus, be more present, helping students, be more engaged, more in the faculty meetings,” Douglas said.

But some other part-time faculty, such as Siobhan McGregor-Gordon, aren’t as disappointed by the veto as much as in the situation overall. 

McGregor-Gordon has taken on many responsibilities as a part-time faculty member at Santa Rosa Junior College. She teaches courses under the English for Multilingual Students umbrella, represents her college on the Faculty Association for California Community Colleges and serves on her college’s Academic Senate, among other roles.

McGregor-Gordon said AB 2277 “perpetuates the same bad system.”

“Our California Community College system is run on the backs of part-timers, just like Walmart,” she said. “And it infuriates me.”

Part-time faculty looking for job security often have to rely on their seniority. Jeff Judd, a part-time professor of 20 years at Las Positas College and five years at Contra Costa College, says his work is more stable than part-time professors who are just getting into the field because he gets preference in the courses he can teach. That’s because Las Positas College, where he began his teaching career, gives priority to faculty who have been there the longest. Contra Costa College allocates a certain number of units per semester after teaching for several semesters. Both systems put new part-timers at a disadvantage, making it hard to get even one class on campus.

The changes AB 2277 proposed could “certainly make life easier” for part-timers, Judd said, but would require the professors to do more professional development, such as attending workshops and conferences, in some community college districts including his. In Judd’s district, the more units a professor teaches, the more hours they must commit to professional development. If a professor teaches at multiple campuses, as many part-timers do, those hours can become untenable.

Several part-time faculty said they would like to see community colleges across the state offer more full-time roles. They also want the campuses to offer better pay and benefits to part-timers teaching across multiple colleges, with course loads that are equivalent to their full-time counterparts. 

Castillo, the part-time professor in Los Angeles, said teaching is a passion that “outweighs the cons.” So Castillo, a community college graduate himself, will keep at it despite the challenges he and many of his colleagues face.

“I made a lot of great friends (as a community college student) and it really just kick-started my career,” Castillo said. “I try to pay that forward.”

Desmond Meagley, Amy Moore and Lizzy Rager contributed to this story. Brumer, Meagley, Moore and Rager are fellows with the College Journalism Network, a collaboration between CalMatters and student journalists from across California. CalMatters higher education coverage is supported by a grant from the College Futures Foundation.