Proactive Approach to the Threat of Privatization of our Community College System

Spring
2013
Resolution Number
13.06
R
Contact
Assigned to
Resolutions Committee
Category
General Concerns
Status
Completed
Status Report

The Executive Committee deemed this resolution unnecessary as this is one of its key roles. The Executive Committee already serves the role of the proposed standing committee requested in the resolved statement through its advocacy work accomplished through plenary session breakouts, its institutes and its publications. Furthermore, the President regularly communicates concerns through letters to appropriate individuals and parties, consistent with established senate positions.

Whereas, Newspapers like the Washington Post, which owns Kaplan University and Kaplan Prep, large and successful private education conglomerates, have mounted concerted campaigns to discredit community colleges for being inefficient and harmful to their students and their faculty for being lazy and overpaid, and organizations like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) have mounted concerted conservative legislative campaigns to advantage corporate goals to privatize education at the expense of our public educational institutions;

Whereas, As its name clearly implies, California Competes (and groups like it), as a veiled attempt to privatize education in this country have launched a full frontal assault on our faculty and community college system with claims that are best addressed by taking over the rhetoric with regards to public education rather than always responding point by tortuous point after the fact;

Whereas, AB 515, a California Legislative bill, if it had not been defeated, would have legislated a two-tiered fee system among the community colleges in effect setting up a private system within the public system geared towards creating an access hierarchy based on the ability to pay much larger fees, leaving less advantaged students competing for what is left; and

Whereas, California is notorious for its unwillingness to fund its public education system from primary to secondary to higher education at appropriate levels that value the education of its citizens or the wellbeing of its students, leaving the public education system extremely vulnerable to corporate and legislative intrusions to privatize the system on many fronts;

Resolved, That the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges create a standing committee whose sole charge is to proactively counteract moves to privatize our community college education system by actively and publicly promoting the community colleges and actively and publicly opposing any moves to privatize them in all venues in which we are legally permitted to engage.

MSR Reason: Referred to clarify intent and to review how Exec is already doing this to determine if resolution is necessary or if it is even feasible.