Guest Editorial
The Board of Trustees of the State College of Florida Manatee-Sarasota should rescind its vote to do away with continuing contracts for faculty. SCF is not a widget factory, and should not be operated like one. It's a public institution of higher learning, as well as an important part of our community and economy. It is not owned by the trustees; its stockholders are "we the people". The job of the SCF decision-makers is to operate the college wisely, to ensure its continued success and quality.
The quality of any college rests strongly upon the quality of its faculty. To treat dedicated educators as replaceable assembly line workers is not only inappropriate, it is deeply dysfunctional. One of the most disturbing things about the recent action taken is that only one of the trustees seemed to understand that, voting against this change.
This policy action is not even in line with what a private company would do. Any successful corporation, before making a major change, would do intensive research to ensure that the change is needed and workable, because the penalty for bad decision-making in industry is business failure. Doing away with continuing contracts at SCF solves no problem; instead, it creates one. This is not ”tenure“ such as some universities offer. All the contracts do is provide some job security to valued faculty after serving for a number of years and proving their value. They still can be dismissed for poor job performance. All this action will do is politicize the faculty workplace and deter fine teachers from seeking employment with SCF. Despite no evidence of need, this measure was quickly approved, over the objections of the SCF president and staff, and even though it would make SCF the only community college in the state without continuing contracts. If the thinking was that perhaps this action could start a desirable trend at other state community colleges, that is unlikely, especially since eleven of them have faculty union bargaining agreements–an option available to the SCF faculty. But attacking tenure was not the only change proposed by trustee Carlos Beruff at their August 25 meeting. He also led the others to approve reductions in faculty winter and spring breaks, as well as this: a new hiring procedure that requires applicants for professional openings to include a salary bid. According to the meeting minutes, this would be“incorporating the principle behind bidding out a job.“ Apparently, they view hiring academic faculty to be no different than bidding out a construction project, with the lowest qualified bid most likely to get the job. Hiring low-bid candidates and doing away with tenure will certainly not enhance the quality of the applicant pool, nor SCF. We know what happens to colleges that get bad reputations: their degrees are devalued–by both employers and universities. And the students who can’t afford to go elsewhere will be affected the most. Former SCF presidents and trustees are begging the board to rescind its vote, but they need to hear from the public. You may email them all at board@scf.edu, and attend their next board meeting on October 27, at 5:30 pm, at the SCF Lakewood Ranch campus, CiT Bldg, Selby Room 116. Ask the trustees to retain the current system that has given SCF its fine reputation as a high quality college for students and our community.Rosalie ShafferPresidentLeague of Women Voters of Manatee County
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