Free Tuition for Select Community College Programs | Rally to Defend Immigrants

The 30,000 faculty and professional staff represented by PSC will soon receive long-overdue raises, retroactive pay, a signing bonus and other contractual gains. An overwhelming 90% of PSC members voted to ratify the new PSC-CUNY contract, with 66% of eligible voters participating. Click here for a message from President Davis and details of the new contract.

In her January 14th State of the State address, Governor Kathy Hochul announced a plan to offer free tuition and textbooks for CUNY and CUNY students pursuing associates degrees in high-demand sectors. The program will cover New Yorkers between the ages of 25 and 55 who are seeking degrees in nursing, teaching, technology, and engineering. President James Davis released a statement supporting the plan as a significant step toward the PSC goal of free tuition for all undergraduate students.

“The PSC welcomes Governor Hochul’s exciting proposal to expand access to a CUNY education, making it free for more New Yorkers. We are grateful for her recognition of the essential role of free tuition in maximizing the impact of New York’s public colleges and universities, and look forward to the positive effects this expansion will yield for our members, students, neighbors, and the economy. We will continue to work alongside our allies for a New Deal for CUNY to expand this significant win and increase funding for the university ensuring tuition-free high quality public higher education for all New Yorkers,” said President Davis.

For the Spring 2025 semester, teaching adjuncts are scheduled to be paid on eight successive adjunct pay dates. At the senior colleges, the first pay date will be Thursday, February 6 and the last pay date will be Thursday, May 15. At most community colleges, the first pay date will be Friday, February 14 and the last pay date will be Friday, May 23. LaGuardia, Kingsborough, and Guttman community colleges are on a different schedule. Their first and last Fall 2 Session pay dates are, respectively, Friday January 17 and Friday, February 28. All dates are posted here on the PSC website.

On Thursday, January 16th, PSC leaders joined with allies from labor and community organizations and local legislators to protest incoming President Trump’s mass deportation agenda and affirm the importance of New York as a sanctuary city. The rally, organized by Council Member Alexa Avilés, came ahead of a Committee on Immigration hearing and featured speakers condemning Mayor Adams’s escalating flirtations with Trump, deployment of anti-immigrant rhetoric, and threats to roll back the city’s laws protecting immigrants. We stood with our partners in support of City Council Intro 214, which would protect and strengthen New York’s sanctuary laws that prevent city agencies from collaborating with ICE. The PSC will continue to resist the politics of division and appeasement, and will stand in strong solidarity with our immigrant members, students, and neighbors.

We expect threats to immigrants in our community to escalate in the coming months and years. If you are interested in working with your union siblings to fight for the rights of all immigrants at CUNY and beyond, watch here and on our website for updates on the PSC Immigrant Solidarity Working Group.

The District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky has completely blocked implementation of the new Title IX regulations that went into effect August 1, 2024, which superseded the 2020 regulations. We previously updated our members on this issue on November 8, 2024. As a result of the new regulations, CUNY issued a new “Policy on Sex-Based Misconduct.” While many welcomed the new regulations because of their increased protections for gender identity and the intent to prevent sex-based misconduct, concerns arose about the policy because of the expanded mandatory reporting requirements, among other issues. As President Davis noted in November, this issue involves “balancing various important interests and needs, including the need to protect victims of sex-based misconduct, comply with relevant federal regulations, while also ensuring the collective bargaining relationship and due process for our members.” As such, PSC demanded that CUNY negotiate over these changes. Now that the District Court has blocked the new regulations, CUNY’s policy may revert to the prior “Policy on Sexual Misconduct” or the University may seek to retain parts of the new policy that are compliant with the 2020 regulations. PSC has contacted CUNY to learn more about their response to this ruling. We will continue to insist, where appropriate, that CUNY bargain over proposed changes. We will continue to update members in the coming weeks.

Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) was a bipartisan promise. Repealing it would require an act of Congress. But make no mistake, the incoming Trump administration is hostile to public higher education and will need to be held accountable for fulfilling its obligations to public employees under federal law. And federal student loan borrowers will need to be vigilant to protect and document their eligibility for PSLF. Our national affiliate, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), is hosting a series of online student debt clinics about the steps student loan borrowers seeking PSLF should take during the Trump presidency. All clinics are at 7 p.m. EST, and the next clinics are scheduled for Jan. 30, Feb. 10 and Feb. 25, with more to be added in the future. Members can sign up at https://go.aft.org/DebtClinicWebinar. More information from the AFT about the PSLF program is available here.

The winds in Los Angeles have eased, for now. But the fires are still burning, whole communities have been devastated, and the rebuilding will take years. The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the California Federation of Teachers (CFT) are asking union siblings from across the country to donate to help displaced union members and their families in Southern California.

PSC members can help by giving to the AFT/CFT Disaster Relief Fund today. Donations will go directly to fire victims and rebuilding, with no fees or overhead taken out.

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