LCC Faculty Colleagues,

Your LCCEA Bargaining Team met with the College again yesterday and reached agreement on an MOA (below) regarding the impacts of hyflex instruction:

 The MOA provides:

• The College will provide a fully functioning, up-to-date computer in classrooms for use during hyflex instruction, and if it is not functioning and cannot be remedied within five days or moved to another classroom, the faculty member has discretion to offer the class face-to-face or online.
• The College will provide functioning wifi at reasonable speeds to facilitate streaming in faculty offices and instructional spaces or will provide alternative space if it takes more than five days to fix wifi issues.
• Faculty teaching hyflex who attend workshops on the use of Dtens shall be compensated at regular rates.
• If the College offers professional development workshops on hyflex instruction, part-time faculty who have exhausted in-service hours shall be compensated at regular rates.
• Faculty who convert courses to hyflex modality shall be compensated for 70 hours at the Curriculum Development rate as part of regular ATC processes. These hours are in addition to any hours awarded previously for development of the online or hybrid course.
• Classes in hyflex modality shall have the maximum class size reduced by 12.5%.
• For courses that are team taught where class sizes cannot be reduced, faculty teaching in the hyflex modality shall be compensated an additional 0.67 hours (at regular rates below 1.0 FTE and at the overload rate above 1.0 FTE) for each hour of synchronous hyflex instruction.
• Upon request, the College shall make all reasonable efforts to identify, hire, and train a student assistant who shall be provided and assigned to attend all synchronous hours of hyflex courses.
• The College shall provide data including course success rates for in hyflex courses. Consistent with Art. 39.1.2 Faculty Council shall participate in developing campus-wide tools to assess the hyflex modality.
• Individual faculty may refuse distance learning courses (including hyflex) consistent with the Distance Learning MOA.
• All other provisions of the contract and MOAs remain in effect, and this MOA will expire at the time a new contract is completed (e.g. June 30, 2024 or thereafter).

On whole, we think this MOA protects workloads for faculty teaching in hyflex modality through the provision of student assistants and reduced class sizes while also providing compensation for time devoted to curriculum development, and ensures that other basic necessities are provided (e.g. functioning hardware and wifi) to set the stage for faculty to do their best work in serving students. (Please note: the attachment is the messy document used in bargaining. The properly formatted, signed MOA will be posted on the LCCEA website as soon as it is available.)

On an unrelated note, LCCEA has not yet received a response from the College regarding reassignment time for faculty participating on governance councils and looks forward to receipt of a response that demonstrates a renewed commitment to shared governance. (For details see update sent to all faculty on May 28).

In addition, while an MOA is in place for Summer term working conditions, the parties have not begun negotiations regarding Fall reopening. We anticipate more changes to health and safety guidelines soon within Oregon. Given the many changes that have already occured since the April survey of all faculty (e.g. CDC no longer requires masks for fully vaccinated individuals), your LCCEA Bargaining Team may initiate another survey during the summer, if needed, once anticipated updates to health guidelines are announced. 

Your LCCEA Bargaining Team

Kelly Collins

Adrienne Mitchell

Nancy Wood