After much debate last fall over the maximum units faculty can teach, the Academic Senate considered solving the issue Wednesday by moving the decision to what has historically been an academic policy to a negotiated item via the Faculty Association.

In an attempt to mediate the issue, the senate sponsored a technical assistance from the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges and the California Community College League last Friday. The senate was informed by the technical assist that many other colleges negotiate teaching load units with the Faculty Association, and they may consider doing the same for City College. Currently, the limit for teaching loads is listed in Administrative Procedure 7210. 

Before last fall, full-time faculty could only teach up to 21 units in the fall and spring semesters, although this limit hadn’t been imposed until recently with some faculty members teaching up to 33 units per semester. With so many faculty members in disagreement about the limit, it appeared to some that the decision should be in the hands of a union while others wanted to maintain the current system through the Academic Senate.

“I think it’s pretty clear from the meeting that the TLU stuff needs to be taken over by the union,” said Danielle Swiontek, senator representative of social sciences. “The guy from the [Tech Assist] was like, ‘I know nothing about this, because these are not senate issues,’ and he went to talk to the union people.”

Because some of the senators weren’t present during the technical assistance meeting Friday, they agreed to create a combined google document where they would share notes with those who did not attend in order to better educate all the senators on the issue.

They will come back to further discuss the issue at their next Feb. 13 meeting.