Your Testimony About Pathways Matters
The Board of Trustees needs to hear from CUNY faculty and staff why Pathways is a mistake. Please sign up to testify about Pathways at the public hearing of the CUNY Board of Trustees at Hostos Community College on June 18. PSC Communications Coordinator Fran Clark (646-459-6882) can help you register to speak and coordinate your testimony with that of others. If you want to support the fight against Pathways by attending the hearing without testifying, let us know you’re coming.
Rally, Testify and Send a Letter to Demand a Fairer City Budget and More Funding for CUNY
PSC members and many others from the 99% New York coalition will gather outside City Hall this Wednesday, June 6 at 3:30 PM to demand a fairer budget that will protect services for low-income and working New Yorkers. The coalition’s revenue proposals, endorsed by the PSC, would help restore funding proposed to be cut in Mayor Bloomberg’s budget and allow increased investment in CUNY community colleges and other front-line needs.
After the rally, you can sign up to testify during the Finance Committee’s only public comment period on the city budget, which will start at about 4:30 PM in the City Hall Council Chambers. PSC Communications Coordinator Fran Clark is glad to be a resource, if you’re testifying about community college funding, and the PSC’s City Budget Campaign webpage has great materials to draw from.
If you haven’t already done so, please send an Act Now letter to the New York City Council to support PSC’s demands for greater investment in CUNY and full funding restorations for Vallone Scholarships, the Black Male Initiative, Murphy Institute for Worker Education and other CUNY programs.
Tell Albany: We Need Transparency at the CUNY and SUNY Research Foundations
Three weeks remain in the state legislative calendar. In each This Week in the PSC for the rest of the session, we will highlight a bill from our list of State Legislative Initiatives, and urge you to take action.
This week: S5797-A/A7789-E, legislation to expand the reach of the Freedom of Information Law to include the Research Foundations of the City University of New York and the State University of New York. The bill lacks a pithy title, but will do a lot to improve the functioning of the SUNY and CUNY research foundations, which help carry out the public missions of SUNY and CUNY, but operate with little public scrutiny because of their status as private entities.
Millions of dollars of research grant money flow through the CUNY Research Foundation each year, which also employs more than 700 PSC members. Transparency would help answer many questions about how PSC members’ grant money is handled. See the PSC’s support memo. Read the bill and list of sponsors. Use the NYSUT Member Action Center to send a letter in support of the bill to your elected representatives in Albany.
Petition Against Outsized Increases in CUNY’s Executive Pay
A plan to be submitted to the Board of Trustees would dramatically increase salaries for managers in the CUNY Executive Compensation Plan (e.g. chancellors, presidents, vice presidents and deans). At a time when CUNY student tuition is increasing, and CUNY faculty and staff are working without a contract, big raises for managers who already have the highest salaries at CUNY would be outrageous. OccupyCUNY has started a petition campaign urging the Board to limit executive pay and save tuition dollars for student aid. Please sign and share the petition.
No More 24 Petition Delivery at City Tech
Last week, the New York City College of Technology chapter of the PSC delivered a petition urging City Tech President Russell Hotzler to support bringing the City Tech faculty workload into line with other senior colleges. City Tech requires that its faculty teach more credit-hours per year – currently 24 – than the faculty at other CUNY senior colleges, where the teaching load is 21 hours. PSC President Barbara Bowen and PSC First Vice-President Steve London were also present. See photos of the petition delivery and read about the campaign on the City Tech chapter’s webpage.
Stand with Our Colleagues in AZ
The same conservative extremists who led a successful effort to abolish an ethnic studies program in the Tucson, AZ schools are now calling for a ban on Mexican American Studies in the public universities. PSC and our allies at AFT are supporting a petition against these attacks started by former AAUP General Secretary and faculty member at University of Arizona Gary Rhoades. Please sign and share the petition, which Rhodes and his colleagues hope to deliver to policy makers on June 14.
