Well good afternoon everybody. Early evening, late afternoon. Thank you all for being here. That's thank you to those present physically in this room and to lots of people online today. My name is Paul Lakeland. I direct the Centre for Catholic Studies and this event is one of three afternoon workshop sort of things this semester under the general heading of Just Universities Corporatization and the Catholic University. I'm not going to explain what corporatization is because one of our distinguished panel here will tackle that topic. On my left here, my immediate left is Professor Caitlin Merritt who teaches in the Religious Studies Department and to her left is Professor Gail Alberta who teaches in the Politics Department and they'll be picking up after me. I'm just going to say a few introductory things then hand it over to them for some comments and conversation and hopefully some questions from you as we go ahead here. A word to those of you online. You probably know this by now but obviously you can't just raise your hand and ask a question. This is a webinar format. It doesn't work like just a regular Zoom meeting but you can write a question in the Q&A box that you'll see on your screen and you can do that at any time during the talk that anything any of us say strikes you and you want to ask the question. Not wait till the end. You can type the question in and then one of the jobs I will have will be to pass the questions along at the end of our session to whoever seems likeliest to be able to answer them. So that's the format. We'll be here for about an hour if we get really excited. We might be an hour and five minutes but that's about it. Some of you, I see some students here and probably some online. So some of you will, a lot of the terminology here will be new to you. Some of you, it's old hat so either way you have to exercise a bit of understanding. So if I tell you that the background theoretical issue here is something called Catholic social teaching which has been around for 130 years in that format and even back at its beginning in 1891 it focused on labor issues. It focused on unionization. It focused on the right to free collected bargaining. He talked about a living wage. He talked about employer labor relations. It was very forward-looking document and since then there have been multiple further documents in that tradition, each one addressing the social context of Catholic teaching some way or another. So that's the topic. That's the theoretical background that will be discussed in all three of our sessions this semester. So next month we'll be looking at the question of how we serve the underserved. How does a Catholic private university manage to address that part of its mission that says we have to take care of those who are not able to simply by their way into whatever they want to by their way into or whatever. So the underserved population will be the topic for next month and the month after that it will be an issue of looking at racial justice on university campuses. This by the way this is not about Fairfield University. It's about Catholic universities in general perhaps Jesuit universities in particular and Fairfield shares in all of the problems and challenges of all these institutions but this is not narrowly focused upon Fairfield. So if that's what's happening in March and April then here in February we're going straight to the heart of that early Catholic social teaching document back in 1891 and we're asking about the implications of a concern for justice for workers in the context of a Catholic private university. Predominantly I guess we'll talk about the living wage. I'm going to leave it to these two to open that up but I will just say one thing on a campus like this or any other Jesuit or Catholic universities there are two groups of people for whom you have to have the most care in terms of making sure they have a living wage. One group who we will not be focusing on today are staff university staff everybody from those who empty the trash cans to the people who work in student affairs and so on. Those are full-time employees with benefits and it's clear there that the university needs to pay a living wage to those people. The other group who are the ones that we are more concerned with today are the people who are employed in the academic division part time. So what we sometimes call adjunct faculty or we sometimes call affiliate faculty and there are a number of other terms too. For the students here many of you have no idea when you take a class with someone whether that person is a full-time faculty member on a tenure track or a tenured or whatever or that person is an affiliate faculty member who is teaching one or two courses here or maybe more somewhere else and so on. Mostly you have no idea because it's not the quality of their teaching that is the issue. Those people represent a challenge to any private Catholic institution because the issue there is systemic when you're paying someone for a course how do you determine a living wage since you're not responsible for what other courses they might be teaching somewhere else and therefore you're probably asking yourself questions about things like how many of our faculty ought to be in this rather insecure position with a salary for a course and no benefits. There are or there were the data here is a little bit out of date but less than 10 years there were about 1.8 million faculty teaching in universities and colleges across this country 1.8 million about I think probably about six years ago of that 1.8 million 1.3 million had no access to tenure in the institution in which they worked and of that 1.3 million approximately half of them 700,000 of them held adjunct positions which means they got a course here they got a course there they got a course there good luck making a living and no benefits. So the issue of labor justice applies to staff and it applies the living wage issue applies particularly to these adjunct or affiliate faculty so as we go through this that's not the only thing we're talking about but that's probably where you're going to find the issues most clearly laid out. So I'm going to stop there for now I'm going to turn it over to Professor Alberta she'll be followed by Professor Merritt and then we'll see where we are with questions and comments and discussions as we go through the rest of the hour. Okay good. Thank you Dr. Lakeland. So hi everybody thank you for being here. I'm just going to start off with a brief overview of this idea of corporatization and how we kind of came to be in this position as a nonprofit group of institutions so this is going to be like a very broad it like an overview not specific to obviously Fairfield or you know any one particular college. So for the most part starting with Harvard as our nation's first institution of higher learning it really was considered you know a public good right that we were going to have these institutions that helped a better citizens right help the lives of individuals help better society contributed to knowledge things along those lines okay and that was mainly the model for many many years it's why most universities right are nonprofit and then we have as we kind of move through time we have a couple things happening that are important to keep in mind for the purposes of this discussion today one is the changes in the labor market for who gets to do what right as well as the policy changes that were made at the federal level as well as just some cultural shifts that occurred within the nation that changed universities into this more of a profit seeking orientation so first being you know if we all go way back in time right men were predominantly the ones who were in the workforce and providing women were covered under curvature laws which literally covered their legal existence and or got absorbed by their husband so most of the time we didn't see women actually working in the workplace and if they did they were unmarried women and that was pretty much the status quo until about then you know early 1900s where then we started to see where we have World War one followed by World War two men going abroad to serve that left factories empty right and and also a rise in more access to college institutions so the two things are going on at the same time and with that comes women entering the workplace and a change in societal norms of that married woman could also enter the workplace and not you know be a stay-at-home mom and you know child care provider and doing the housework and things along those lines that's a hefty responsibility don't get me wrong by any means and that is a huge contribution to not only the family unit but you know the society's whole but we see these shifts right so women are starting to enter the workplace and not just unmarried women we're starting to see married women entering the workplace we see technology on the rise so you have what you know we're called back then secretarial positions you had women serving in the factories while the men were you know abroad fighting in the war and things like workplace safety precautions right came out of the progressive era movement so now the workplaces became you know cleaner and more safe so women you know felt more comfortable going into those places and society felt more comfortable with women going into those places at the same time we have individuals attending universities and it starts to open up to and including women during this this process as well and so that you know occurs like you know the night early 1900s and kind of moving forward into about the 1970s and that's where we're going to see some major policy changes so in and around that era what we see is that the idea of colleges and universities and higher education being a public good something that is used for right helps shapes us grows us as a society etc etc it switches to a notion of it being a private good okay and if it becomes a private good then there is a consumer okay and and then there is profit to be had so and that came a little bit under you know the Reagan era you know as well he he really did jump on this and it it had a lot to do with to that again these cultural shifts were changing in the United States so we started you know access rates we started seeing more women go to college tuition costs for a lot of schools were relatively low and federal government and state governments paid a lot of dollars to keep these institutions up and running and this era was really emphasized policy wise with an idea of accountability and efficiency okay we started seeing those words come into play and then there became well how accountable are higher ed you know education institutions when you know we see their presidents making so much their coaches making this and professors are putting up this kind of research right there became this call by society for this accountability and so you have that coupled with a slow movement toward public perception of colleges becoming a private good okay something that then benefits the consumer which is our students right and that created some policy changes so then it became okay so if we start viewing colleges as this private institution or private good then someone's got to flip the bill so we can charge students more in order for them to come and then the state and federal governments stop paying for it and there's no call for this accountability in the same ways that there was so you kind of put all that together and you get kind of where we're at today so you get large in a growing number of individuals coming to colleges on student loans you get high student debt upon leaving colleges because the price of tuition is just skyrocketed okay it one study showed that since 1978 the cost of college has increased in absolute dollars by 1120 percent that's huge right and so with that if you have this consumer which is our students then you know the idea of the customer is always right right comes into play so that plays a role not only in faculty lives with things like rating and along those lines but then also about what is going to attract that consumer to our institution and then it became becomes almost like an arms race so what we see since 1980s and kind of pushing forward is you know oh we have a new lab at our school so our competitor is going to get a new lab we have a pool at our school oh well then now we're going to have a pool and a lazy river right so students so it becomes this arms race to continuously one up and become that shining institution but that takes money right and so where do you get that from and if your university doesn't have that money that means they're probably taking out debt for it so who gets to carry that burden can the consumers right you pass it on just like a retail agency would or any other corporation you pass it on to the buyers and the buyers are the students so there goes your tuition again and then at the same time we have this going on you start to see this emergence of rankings right and they're always around but the importance of them becomes even greater so the world news and report right and they do college rankings everything from the dormitory food to parking to student life to how awesome your professors are to tuition cost everything kind of gets asked right they send out surveys to students students answer those surveys from institutions across the nation they then look at things like graduation rates and tuition dollars and all these other things and all that data gets compiled into the rankings that come out every year so in order to keep right up on the rankings you got to have students who are going to give you good rankings which means then you're competing for good food good dorms the best dorm the most updated dorm right um the the best amount of services uh be it student life or uh rec centers or you know new parking spots facilities etc and so again kind of it almost fuels itself right in that way so then in order to deal with that right universities have to make that switch from oh we're not just here to contribute right to knowledge and society and cultivate you know our young our youth but now we need to make it all because now we have to pay back the money for that lazy river that we just put in next to our pool right or that private student parking ramp or the new dormitories that have you know all the the fancy features um and in order to do that then you start looking at how the university can start to reassess or adjust or the other word to use is cut right costs and um and a lot of times the easiest thing to do is where the the most money is well the most money tends to lie with who offers the services right the educators and so that's you know to go back to what Dr Lakeland was saying is that's where we start to see the shift you know the result of this is the shift to um contingent faculty okay you're still getting a phd uh to teach you you're just getting an ad like one tenth or lower of the cost right so you can either pay a full-time professor uh do you look at the average of what faculty make average nationally yeah for our salaries i don't have it off the top of my head for the odd kind of institution the average is probably around 110 okay so instead of paying for a full-time faculty so instead of paying 110 thousand for a full-time faculty you can uh get your students taught by a person with the same degree for like five or six k right so now you get to hire four or five people to teach a course um or teach four or five courses when full-time faculty like our institution we teach three courses a semester um so you get its cost savings right it makes financial sense from a business for-profit standpoint right um and that's kind of where the conversation that we're about to engage in is going to unfold is now we're in this place here's how we got there now what okay now that we're here um and i'm going to wrap that up and and the mic go it's kind of depressing i'm sorry this is also quickly turning into a game of hot potato which is always fun um so what we just set up right is there there's two main things that we can think about in this conversation as immediately relevant to the three of us sitting at this table the first is that because of these balance these balances of costs a class system emerges in a faculty system that is not necessarily based on credentials or experience but a big part of it is the luck of the draw is that are we yeah um so we have right kind of this just we'll work in some definitions too for a little bit when people think about the wine and cheese wood paneled life of the academic they're thinking about a full-time tenured professor that means that that is someone we'll just work across the table that means i know after fall um that person has contributed greatly to their university not just in the form of teaching but also in the form of research and publication and service to their university so it is not all daffodils and rainbows there's work that goes into it and that takes a while there's a process in which faculty members are hired and they are more often than not hired on what is called a tenure track so those people are given a carrot at the end of their labor conceivably and that they're engaging in a process that is going to give them job security a livable wage and academic freedom which is important besides that right people who are working towards that goal and are supported by the institution in their work towards that goal are called assistant professors more often than not and they're working towards tenures they're working towards that job security and that academic freedom and then the class that we're focusing on are these contingent or adjunct faculty and visiting professors also fall into this category as well and these are professors who are not even hourly employees they're considered part-time employees but they're really contract workers they are contracted from the first day of the semester to the last day of a semester to provide credit hours for a course and again they have the same academic background and often experience as assistant and tenured professors so they don't have job security they're hired from semester to semester there are adjuncts who go on unemployment in the interim because they don't have an income so when everybody else is quote-unquote on break these people might be on unemployment or they might have another job and they also don't have any job security they may not be invited back for another semester and then there are other things as well that they are maybe not having institutional affiliation to publish or research and they are also not serving the university adjunct faculty are not required to act as advisors to students for example or sit on committees or even necessarily attend faculty meetings so from an economic point of view there's certainly a trade off in terms of responsibility I'm going to put the Catholic theologian hat on and the other thing that I want us to focus on as a result of this class system that we all just talked about is that there is a lens through which to see this in terms of quantity which is important from an economic solvent point of view and then there is another lens to look at this through quality and that is particularly important at Catholic institutions grounded in Catholic social teaching so for Catholic social teaching right which did start in 1891 and has been around and has been talked about by many many popes and many many bishops and many many people including academics the question at the heart of this is where is the human being so if you notice almost everything that we've talked about so far has been about dollar signs and we have very rarely mentioned the human being so when we think about things like a living wage or what Catholic social teaching doesn't actually call a living wage but a just wage which is due to workers where is the human in all of that right when we think about things like working conditions is that just a matter of punching a clock or where is the human element in that and this is a very poignant conversation regardless of the conditions in which we are living but covid has also amplified this with realities like economic depression that's been associated with it as well as things like adjunct faculty not having access to medical benefits so they are asked to enter into a situation or an environment where their likelihood of infection is increased but they are not protected in any way and is it the role of the university particularly a catholic university to engage in that question so those are all kind of the things that we have floating around and I kind of want to toss it over to Paul a little bit but that idea of right that idea of where the human comes into this is what is at stake so Catholic social teaching right is rooted in the dignity of the human person a human person by the sheer factor that they are a human person is supposed to be protected and that falls into workers rights because catholic social teaching also posits that humans have a duty to work so part of your expression as a developed human being is to go out into the world and not only make yourself a better person and realize your vocation through your work but to also make the world around you better and yeah I guess I can add there so before I give it to Dr. Lakeland I'm going to I'm going to steal it back for a second so two things I want you to keep in the back of your mind while we continue this conversation just so we're all on the same page is the first being that it is very hard for us as individuals let alone a society to imagine that someone with a high degree be it a master's degree sometimes contingent faculty have a master's degree and more often right we have contingent faculty with a PhD and it's really hard for us to wrap our heads around the fact that someone can have a terminal degree terminal degree PhD MD or a jurist and be poor like that those two things seem not to go together right but yet they do and not just poor like colloquially speaking but like earning under the poverty line like that's a line in the sand yeah and in having to you know seek out other benefits right such as maybe food assistance or unemployment or you know yeah things along those lines so it I think that's half the battle right is that we need to accept the fact that a degree does not equal a position and money right a degree simply means that you're capable of those things and you've worked very hard and you've done very well and I'd like to say you're also you know fairly smart to do those things but it does not follow right it is not a guarantee and you know like I started off as an adjunct I'm back in the day years ago the second thing I want us to think about is how do we define what a living wage is which is I think a really important thing to talk about now I will let my the folks sitting on either side of me deal with it in like the Catholic social teaching aspect I will deal with it from the political aspect and since that is my wheelhouse and say at least this this has been a question that we have asked ourselves like all the time it's why we have a poverty line in the United States and back in the day how we decided what a poverty line is and to some degree this is the practice of determining that is reminiscent of this practice but you would have a basket of like a basket and you would go to the grocery store they would send people out from all over the right to the United States to various towns and cities and and stuff and they would put groceries in that basket for what they would assume would be a family of four okay and they would take they would then cash out take those receipts and determine how much you needed to make sure that you could have that basket of food okay and so that was kind of how this policy of the poverty line became now the reality is is the poverty line doesn't always reflect the reality right one can be just above the poverty line and still be very poor and impoverished okay so just because you met that that bar does it mean you know your life is grand and most time you're working multiple jobs so that is part one and then part two is the environment in which we've worked has changed so back in the day and when I say back in the day I mean like long time ago right the the men worked the women took care of the home and raised the children and the sons right were taught how to work on the farm etc etc and obviously this is ignoring a significant group experience right those who've been enslaved whose labor was for free but that was how it was and then so it was a it was a single earner income right and women couldn't do it anyways because they were covered under their husband and if it wasn't their husband it was their father and then we moved into this as we you know kind of went through the wars and women became more involved in the workplace and and these societal notions got more accepting then we see this dual earner income okay and that became very prevalent in the like late 19 the late 1900s where we saw this dual income becoming more and more of an acceptable thing and in some cases a necessary thing okay and then you add to that the trends with regards to what is a family and the trends to what are like you know when do we have children um are also vastly different right more often than not women are waiting longer to have until they're older to have children most I'm going to say most it's probably not a accurate word to use a decent amount of women in academia postpone any sort of reproductive anything until they get that golden ticket of 10 year because then they are secure right and in their um in their job um and and then just again also like what what is a household now too um you know whether it's same sex households or single parent households or multifamily households right that that notion changes so those things and then how many kids we have um you know my great grandfather was like one of like 12 or 13 or something like that my dad was one of nine and then there there's you know I have one so that number trickled down real fast right and and that's okay but then what does that mean right and as we kind of walk since other people don't other people have more so those are the things that I just want to throw out at you to keep in mind as these two take it over now with this you know the Catholic aspect yeah and I think that that is important because when the living wage was introduced along with many things in Catholic social teaching it did account for this idea that you were not just making money for yourself but you were making money to support your family um so it was reflective in this single income reality the other things that it includes is also that you won't be working all the time right um that you do have some semblance of fulfillment outside of your work as well and and this is kind of an interesting point that gives us a little bit of leeway into a future oriented conversation as well and whether that should play into labor conditions is that your wage should also allow you to save for the future go and you know what what Caitlin is quoting from here was written in 1891 when the Pope at the time said he talked about a living wage and he said it's a wage earned by one wage earner which is enough money to care for his spouse his children to have a decent place to live and to save a little bit for the future very few people even very few middle class people could manage that today but the the the extra thing I want to add which which sort of radicalizes the conversation just a little bit is to build on what Caitlin said about the importance of human dignity the dignity of the individual the absolute equality of all individuals before God and before the law is also added to that is the the important glass in Catholic social teaching that the individual is always already in a community not an isolated individual so if you look at corporatization or neoliberalism or whatever you want to talk about today is the stress on the individual individual rights the right to do my thing and so on and the Catholic tradition is considerably countercultural to that insisting that it's not the individual it's the individual in community so it's the shape of the community that is important and that leads to in many ways to my mind anyway is the the most important notion in Catholic social teaching today and that's the idea of the common good now the common good does not mean the utilitarian the greatest good of the greatest number it's not that the idea of the common good in Catholic social teaching actually comes from the Hebrew prophets and in today's understanding it's this that the common good of society this is the good of all measured by the quality of the attention you pay to the most vulnerable members of your society so globally we should be concerned for the two-thirds world who don't have enough to live on nationally we should be concerned with whatever it is 20 25 30 percent of people who live below the poverty line and you can ask that question about every single kind every single institution global national regional local or any university or any private university or any Jesuit Catholic university the principle of the common good is not debatable in Catholic social teaching if your if the structure of your institution is not doing its damnedest to protect the least to protect the most vulnerable members of your society then you are not following your mission you're not doing what you should be doing now come back to what I said at the beginning that's easy to say if it's difficult to do maybe it's easy to say when you're talking about full-time employees because you know your responsibility to them is to give them decent benefits and a decent salary when you start talking about affiliate faculty you don't control how the use of affiliate faculty relates to the individual affiliate faculty members quality of life you know they could be an international lawyer dropping into teacher course in the business school that doesn't matter so much but mostly they're not mostly they're exactly the way that Caitlyn describes them there was a study done by a Catholic justice organization about six years ago and the man who did it worked was a he taught foreign languages at Georgetown University so that was his context but he tried to figure out what would be a fair wage to pay per course to an adjunct faculty member and he came up with six thousand eight hundred dollars per course that would translate into about forty thousand dollars a year if you could imagine them teaching a full load three and three which I don't think most of us would consider to be a living wage particularly not if it had no benefits and at the time at which he made that calculation only seven percent of american catholic universities were living up to that mark now Catholic universities have no choice I mean they may make a bad choice but they have no choice if they are going to as we do proclaim our commitment to our mission and identity we have no choice but to try to address the issue of the common good how you address it is tricky one of the things that you can do which we haven't said yet and which actually I do believe here at Fairfield we are beginning to address is adjusting the balance or readjusting the balance between affiliate faculty and full-time faculty not necessarily tenure track faculty but full-time faculty visiting professors Caitlyn mentioned the visiting professors they're usually here for one two three years they are hired at what I think is a living wage and they have full benefits they don't have job security but they there isn't a single adjunct faculty member at Fairfield University who wouldn't kill for a job as the visiting professor they'd probably kill the the guys like me who get the wine and cheese and but uh so so we have a way to go here not just us everybody but we have a way to go but we know the way we have to go if we are faithful to the mission of the institution and that means a commitment to catholic social teaching we have to keep asking the question are we paying a living wage to our full-time employees by and large certainly at Fairfield by and large I'd say we are by and large I'm sure there are exceptions among the staff but more junior members of the staff junior means the ones who get paid less but who do the most important work like clearing the garbage you know if the garbage is not cleared you notice so for them it's are we paying them a living wage for our affiliate adjunct faculty is what can we do to be more just and to some extent at least to address the balance in the institution between full-time and part-time faculty in an ideal faculty of course everyone on the faculty would be full-time except for some who had particular skills to offer and didn't want to be full-time so they came in to teach a particular course you know which used to be the way when I was ahead of uh when I was the chair of the religious studies department 25 years ago we had one adjunct faculty member five years ago I think we had about 10 I think now we may have more like six or seven I think we are beginning to adjust and we should be not just because it's just it's just and just Paul did an excellent job of talking about the living wage just to address the second part of our the title of our talk is also working conditions right and the idea of um what an employee owes its institution and what an institution owes its employee um and I think this also sets up a really interesting conversation of when adjuncts do need to take a number of courses at a number of different institutions in order to support themselves financially that also puts them at a disadvantage excuse me in terms of their future career development so if someone is teaching a number of courses that may preclude them from doing their own research and publishing so that when they are applying for a full time possibly tenure-track job they may actually be at a disadvantage even though they may have five ten etc years of teaching experience the university may look more positively on someone with less teaching experience but more research and publications so by participating in this system they are almost disenfranchising themselves not just in the immediate present but also in the future as well the other thing that's kind of interesting from a catholic social teaching point of this is that the way to escape oppression is to become an oppressor in a certain point of view the idea that many institutions sometimes put adjuncts and full-time faculty at odds with one another is something that also should be discussed that hasn't ever been my experience but it is something you'll see this red book up here that some people who look at at this topic do talk about that in order to get into a full-time position that means that you do have the benefit of teaching less courses and there will be adjuncts who pick up the courses so that you can do your research so that kind of cyclical nature is also something that we don't need to go into much detail about but it's just something to kind of put out there that there's a lot going on this is not an easy situation to talk about or to say like oh well if they just did abc catholic universities would be fine this is very muddy and very complicated and that's why we're having conversations like this just to piggyback off of what they're both saying here i ran a couple numbers really quick based on Dr. Lakeland's average rate of salaries our knowledge of our average adjunct salaries across the nation just to give you an idea of how many courses that a contingent faculty member would need to teach in order to make what a full-time tenure-track professor makes that is 20 a year okay um that that's that's low-balling it's you by the way um so that equates to six or seven per semester if you can teach that in the summer as well if not that's at least 10 every semester okay i have i'm an assistant professor here um ten-year track and so i teach three classes a semester um paul you teach three yes classes no i'm i'm privileged i teach two that's because i run the senate for catholic studies yeah so i'm technically everybody teaches three on the right by the way those people you're talking about who'd have to teach 20 courses they still wouldn't get any benefits no so that's no benefits no health care that's no 401ks or four or one three b's um that is and that's also probably not going to be 10 courses each semester at the same institution right so back when i was an adjunct um back in the day uh also so long long time i'm not just kidding i'm not that far i was at three to four institutions at any given moment um the closest institution was about a 20-minute drive uh the farthest i drove to teach um was about an hour and a half one way um that's that's not wrong trip i'm and i would try and get five to six courses every semester to make just the the basics work um and then you know kind of continue on from there um so that just gives you an idea and it's not just the other thing that i want to highlight that maybe not be a misnomer to folks in this room or even our folks that are watching online but can be a misnomer in general is um i teach three classes that's you know three times three credit hours a piece three times three right we get nine oh you teach nine you you work nine hours a week don't we all wish right um the amount of prep that goes into your teaching for each lecture the amount of prep that goes into your course design and what readings you're going to have your students do the type of work you're going to have your students do when you're creating the course then actually doing the course and then and running it and teaching it you know in the classroom those you know three hours a week and then you follow that up with your grading your um getting ready your writing your exams your writing the prompts for essays right um all of that plays a role but we don't really think about it in that way so i um it was the other day when we were talking she did a quick and dirty analysis and it averaged out to be how much per hour less than two dollars an hour this is for this is not at Fairfield yeah adjunct faculty because they have the same like uh preparation requirements that the rest was to they may not be doing committee work but so if you look at the what they're paid and you figure out how many hours they have to put into it it comes out of two dollars an hour which is a little bit below minimum wage if you think just just the same now we're getting to the point where we probably should see if we have some more questions so i have one online here and i'm sure to be more but is there anyone in the in the auditorium has a question keith would you mind coming to the mic so that anybody online can actually hear you this is our and just to put the two-dollar thing in perspective that it is less than what your wait staff makes um so just think about that thanks so i'm Keith mask was on the director of campus ministry one of the things that i noticed missing from the conversation are labor unions and the church has a rich teaching and wants to embrace labor unions but also is has a horrible track record internally with labor unions so i wonder if you might talk about that yeah it does it does i remember uh this is 35 years ago now there was movement to to uh to to bring some of the staff and in those days we had many more staff who actually were hired by the university it wasn't sort of farmed out and the movement of labor unions to get on to to come to fairfield to organize labor i remember the director of human resources at that time saying at a public meeting there are strangers among us so this is the warning and what what father Keith says there is exactly right that in theory going back to 1891 we have a terrific record on the importance that the importance of labor unions and lately an abysmal record not here hasn't come up here lately but it's come up at a number of graduate institutions and some other catholic institutions that have simply tried to prevent unions being formed especially for adjunct faculty and in the bigger institutions for graduate students who are doing a lot of the teaching anyway and you know the role of the labor could you justify that please yeah so the role of the labor union just you know kind of think about it from this you know historical political context and by no means am I a labor union expert but it they serve they serve an important purpose right and one they they give us our minimum wage was like what is that word our minimum wage they um vacation time weekends off right labor day um work workplace safety okay all of these things that we kind of come to know we're part of not only the labor movement but also this you know this progressive movement um out of the you know the 1920s 1930s where we are trying to kind of reform a bunch of things and so they they do play a role and there is something to be said right about collective action if we get together there's power in numbers if we get together and you demand something it is vastly different than when a single person demands something um and so you know that is also you know one of the reasons why it's in you know then to put it in the private sector kind of or this private good corporate corporatization thing it is better for corporations in general to have fire at will employees right and because then if you're not performing right they can let you go if they can hire someone to do the same work just as good for less it works right um because their bottom line again is profit but when you transfer that into an institution of higher learning right and like our colleges and universities that be that could become problematic um because then you're not allowing your scholars to do their their work and contribute to knowledge and and teach the youth and and do those things so uh again just a different kind of perspective but yeah and as father keep mentioned unions are part of catholic social teaching um they are seen as a good in helping achieve that common good that professor lego was talking about um and we have seen some catholic universities that have embraced and used unions in terms of their contingent faculty as well as their graduate students which is also an an important population to acknowledge at some universities and then there are other universities you know at the very other side of that that have discouraged it but somewhere in the middle right we always have to remember that idea of community um and that this idea of working together and talking openly with each other and knowing where responsibility lies whether that does come in the form of a union or not is also at the heart of catholic social teaching um and that is maybe another way to think about it as well okay so I have a couple of things online here um one from uh professor Betsy Bowen in the English department and she says this she's always looking out for students she says this thank you all I think that was us mainly one point that may speak to students is that they too are being shortchanged by the system because affiliate faculty aren't being paid to advise write letters of reference serve on committees that get necessary work done there are fewer faculty available to support students in all kinds of ways parenthesis I know that some affiliate faculty do these things anyway but they're not obliged to then we have one question which is a huge one I don't know that we're going to have time to answer it but William Deegan asks this in your description of the issues the three of us what are your thoughts on solutions to these issues both from inside the university and from outside the university so I have a comment I something came in my head on Betsy's question that I think can relate to so one of the the things that was highlighted um by Caitlyn was that you know contingent faculty usually are not in department meetings right they're not usually part of the general faculty meetings I'm so you're not in the in the places where the decisions get made you know or as you know the Hamilton musical says you're not you know not in the room uh where it happens so I'm part of the answer to that for you know that question is the idea that universities as a whole needs to shift how we include contingent faculty and allowing them now I'm not saying exploit them more like being like hey so come serve on this committee and he asks we're not going to pay you for it um but if they have access to the table if they can pull their chair up to the table that means their voices getting heard and if their voices get heard that leads to policy change um ideally right or at least that's the circle um if you can't even sit at the table how is that ever going to start happening um now again I would not be for saying hey contingent faculty teach this class and sit on this committee and we're not going to pay you anything additional right part of and you know my position as an assistant professor or Paul's position as a full professor is that we do service right so part of our salary is understood to be we do research we do teaching and we do service um and so that's we have a seat at the table so um I think that's at least part of something that needs to change and another thing just to address about professor bowen's comment well two things excuse me um the first right again getting back to this common good thing if first of all it would be impossible to teach 20 courses in an academic year um like I don't there you couldn't um but to that end as well even right like one of the things to consider is at what point does pedagogy get compromised so if someone has to teach I think I heard once from a colleague that they were teaching something like nine classes at three different institutions and you know there are ways to fix this so maybe you're teaching six of the same section or something so you're only preparing you know three different lectures for a week instead of nine different lectures for a week anyway but that idea of quality of work right also plays both ways here are you putting out something that you're proud to say is your work but then are you also effectively doing what is being asked of you um so that idea of like of student engagement in this as well is also something to think about and and contributing to the to the common good someone who teaches less courses conceivably can focus on those courses and put more work into them and that's just going to contribute to the overall learning environment as well the other thing too I just want to quickly say is right more often than not students have no idea whether they're professors or adjuncts or not that shouldn't stop you from asking from a letter of recommendation if you have a if you have a relationship with a faculty member or of these other things but it is important to know why someone might say no it's not necessarily because they don't like you right it's because they maybe don't have the time or they're not compensated or and they're protecting their expertise in time um or things like that like there's other yeah the uh the other thing right is so we're looking at this from a corporate perspective right the idea that private institutions like universities have moved to more toward a corporate model so that means again there's a consumer and that consumer is our students okay um if the consumers rattle the cage and make noise and demand change you're paying for it right like the corporation will listen um in that sense that that's the corporate model so to answer you know another thing that to go back to that question is some of the change can come from the consumers of the product and that is the students um now how far that will go and or who will listen is you know a conversation may be very different day but um that's why for instance when you boycott right brands for doing x y and z or you choose not to I mean there's you know there's products from companies that I won't buy from because of something that either has happened they've stood for or whatever that goes against my beliefs right and so in my my personal values so I don't engage with that company so it's the same kind of thing um the other thing to think about too is and I'm gonna throw this this little nugget out there and see where it goes is the budget right um there are ways in a budget to redesign it so that there is there can be a little bit more of an equitable distribution right um so I think one of the things that Gerald Bayer points out in his book is like uh your um uh coaches or athletic directors at some universities right make a ton of money um and just moving a small percentage of that budget to the contingent faculty boost them up closer to this idea of a equitable and living wage so there there are solutions it's just you know having someone with the ability to to do that in a group pushing forward the change and um having institutions listen let me let me draw this to a close with a short anecdote about the power of the consumer 20 years ago the university was outsourcing its a lot of its uh janitorial staff to a company that wasn't going to pay particularly well and didn't like unions and the benefits were poor and actually it was the students who got hold of the story and among other things occupied Bellarmine for a night much to the annoyance of the senior administrators who operated there and eventually got it overturned that is they didn't get overturned but they got the company the outsourcing company to comply with the requirements that would mean that the people who were going to be outsourced would have pretty much the same salary and conditions they had had at the university but what strikes me as something to think about you should be think you should know whether your faculty are old dinosaurs like me or poor people running around on a bicycle from three different institutions you should know but when they occupied Bellarmine I've never forgotten this they hung a big banner out of the window and on the banner it said this was the students addressing the institution and it said practice the values you teach us to live by that was a terrific moment there's a great social socially conscious magazine journal in this country called Mother Jones and that year to everybody's amazement Mother Jones listed Fairfield University as one of the foremost politically active campuses in the country never since have we been there but for one shining moment we were you should think about all these issues and remember the common good thank you all for being here special thanks to Caitlin and Gail and see you in a month thank you and thank you online for all being here and paying such close attention


I'm Caroline with NDSU Extension. Today I'm making a healthy snack with my daughter Ellery. You will need one cup of dried fruit, one cup of nuts, five tablespoons of semi-sweet chocolate chips, and eight teaspoons of butter. You will also need a one-gallon resealable plastic bag and six cups of popcorn. Popcorn is an excellent whole grain snack. You will add all of your ingredients into the bag. We'll start with the cranberries and the raisins which are part of which food group? That's right. Then we will add our low salted peanuts. We chose low salt to cut down on sodium and peanuts are an excellent source of protein. And our mini chocolate chips give us a little added sweetness and we'll add the butter for seasoning. Seal up the plastic bag and give it a healthy shake. Then you can divide your trail mix into snack-size bags. One half cup is a serving and each serving has 130 calories. Enjoy your delicious snack!


Tropical storm bread impacted San Lucia on June 22nd, 2023. San Lucia Med Services recorded wind speeds ranging from 50 to 60 miles per hour with at least 71.1 mm of rainfall. Damage assessments in the various sectors across the island is continuing. The Nemo can report on some of the preliminary assessments from various reporting agencies. In the education sector, 19 school plans sustained damage to windows, roofs, water storage and perimeter fencing. The Bexar Primary, Moggush, Bellevue Combined and Viewford Primary Schools were among the more severely damaged buildings. All of the affected school plans have since resumed normal classroom instructions. The agricultural sector reported 75.8% of banana crop was impacted by tropical storm bread. Regions 4, 3 and 8 were the most severely impacted by the storm, recording a 90% loss in region 4 and 80% loss in regions 3 and 8 respectively. Regions 2, 5 and 7 suffered a loss of 60%, 75% and 70% respectively. Based on the assessment, it can be reported that the banana and the plantain industries were severely impacted by the passage of tropical storm bread. In the aquaculture sub-sector, large quantities of cultivated zemos were washed away from farms in Peralin, Savins Bay and Opecan. In the forestry sub-sector, 50 hectares of the government reserves were damaged. The government's nursery in Larissoux, Viewford, under the southeast coast project was destroyed. There was moderate damage in the livestock sub-sector. The Department of Infrastructure noted fallen trees and blocked drains, which have since been cleared. A few rock slides occurred on the west and east coast roads. The pre-hurricane mitigation program of tree trimming and drain desilting is continuing. Damage assessment for the housing sector is ongoing, whilst minimal damages were reported in the tourism sector. The major utility companies have reported all systems are up and running. Nemo appeals to all to continue with preparedness measures to save lives and property as we are in the hurricane season, which officially ends on November 30, 2023. Please remain vigilant and make it a habit to monitor weather information issued by the Met Services.


From closed session. There was no reportable action out of closed session and Are there any additions or deletions to the open session agenda? Okay So we'll move on to oral communications. This is the portion of the evening that reserve for the public Just comment on items that are not on the agenda so Three minutes is a good time for this Current so if anybody would like to come to the podium slash lectern Do some one that I know John Hayes hasn't been on board very long But I thought he was that kind of a person At the forum he read from the grand jury report among people He didn't say that right here on the very first page The grand jury began looking at long people water district July 2009 and finished its informal investigations It's formal investigation mid-May 2010 and Some things that he read everything bad What he didn't read was in the third paragraph for the past five years but District has been operating in the red and through many years of ineffective actions and neglect by the board of directors and management Staff LCWD is on the verge of bankruptcy He didn't read that He just said it's on the verge of bankruptcy and it was my fault and that he older well people When I defended myself They laugh it was quite something so They weren't satisfied with that so they go on the press banner put their ad on and let's say in 2011 blah blah blah they Don't put the right day and after miss Finney's Response I Think it was deliberate and It's not right That isn't how board members are supposed And they also I don't know how many people are here from long deco couple They blasted long people They didn't say my name. They didn't say those mom's name. They said Do you want people from long people? Doing the same thing to artists Anybody else from the public like the comment Here finally it's too bad When there were items that people in long people were concerned about and today's meeting I know it's gonna be a little short but it's very significant for long in that We're going to be celebrating hopefully Roger's was integral to the success of the merger who was integral to the long people getting by And being what it can be And I would like to honor him he was it was missed out in a lot of the reporting Significance of his contribution, and I'm really glad that tonight We can say that and say in and close to our home This over again this and thank you very much The other significant Success is I think that are coming are having totally unexpected and our food both mr. Rogers and to the state Finally wanting to get the monkey group Projects resolved and going It hasn't been specifically from the board before jargon's feet. We've had some Roadwatch So I'm looking really a lot forward to the next coming years and things drastically changing I'm in favor of seeing you face this on this board But we will get by Thank you Would anybody else like to speak during oral communication? I don't see any other hands up at the moment, so I'll close out oral communications And we'll move on to unfinished business The item is upper Zangandy Creek streamwood habitat enhancement project access agreement Sure In 2014 I believe it was the the board authorized the county and Project that would enhance stream in stream habitat birds spawning some Specifically steelhead and coho salmon The Louisiana Creek has been identified by the National Marine Fisheries Service as the most important String in the San Lorenzo River watershed for the recovery of coho salmon and steelhead in our Region in our watersheds specifically in the San Lorenzo and the San Lorenzo is really the southern most Stream that the coho so the county and the RCD and the city of Santa Cruz and the San Jose Valley Water District in 2014 Started Discussing how to improve in stream habitat. What's happened in Zangandy Creek is it's been inside Because all the stream wood has been removed and so it's eroded away down to bedrock and so the stream habitat and It doesn't have a lot of coho and diverse features in the stream bed And so by putting logs and large wood into the stream We would recruit cobble and silts and different kinds and it would pool with pools and Complex stream habitat 2014 And we received a fish respiration Brandon FRGP And so we've gotten through the planning phase now and these are in the design has been provided in the agenda and We're into the next phase now, which will be to to do the Installation of the large wood into the stream and so what we're asking for tonight is for permission for the project take place on the property and asking for access to the district's Property that's up on the upper water upper watershed in Zangandy It's about a half mile stretch of Zangandy and then they're the half mile stretch Downstream from us that's owned by the city of Santa Cruz So we own the upper half mile and we own the lower half mile and it's a one mile stretch and we'll be installing large wood into multiple locations along that stretch The next and then the next phase just so you know that this isn't going to be the last time you hear about this It'll come back again and we'll have you consider The grant and Maybe a little bit of board discussion first and then I'll go to the public for comment I just had a question. It's been a couple years since we saw this and Then it's mentioned in here that you know ours are our properties are best because there's not development up there and so forth And the barriers are upstream from our property Are is our CD doing anything in the lower reaches with homeowners private property owners or is there? They're putting all their eggs in this basket This time for this project, it's just focused on the city's It looked in the agreement like they're installing structures But we're responsible for maintaining it for 20 years. Do we have any idea how complex that's going to be? That's We have similar structures installed in the watersheds Gap and lower in the Zion And they're still in black A long period of time 16 Our water channels outings the CCC crews and spotless if they're a little lower profile structures, but they're still in place for the most part Little concern, okay So next summer is when it's anticipated that the installation will take place How long do you or does fish and wildlife imagine that it will take to have the silt and gravel and cobbles? captured by those In a way kind of like artificial rears and for the stream bed to start taking on a different character I Guess I have one question about how mate does they're cabled at one end is that right for and they break away and something really big and Or are they cabled on both ends to keep them? Anger Yeah, there's there's looks like the design of the logs is to be sort of criss-crossed And then they'll be multiple like folded and cabled together So it looks like you know each each one has many large large logs at least And then some smaller Like So any maintenance it would be rare that maintenance would be needed and take a very big event and if it was Moving oh, oh, so there won't be minor maintenance. It'll be So Given the fact that there's probably being a lot of trees cut down. Okay, is there Around Unusual time Okay, I'd like to go to the public now anybody from the public like to comment on this item. I Don't see anybody so Let's bring it back here Any other board discussion before we Okay for us to take a motion on authorization to proceed with this I'm trying to look for the The wording shall I read the wording are we ready to I would move that we authorize the district manager to execute the access agreement and To authorize the district manager to enter into a cooperative agreement associated with the actual permitting Can we do this on a voice vote I think so all in favor I any opposed Okay, let's move on to new business then and item a is the district manager employment contract so either I'm happy to kick it off if Gina would would summarize if there's anything that I have left out Rick and I had a conversation based on the parameters that the board and me with The template of the district's agreement is based on that which was used for the prior director It's a fairly standard set of terms and agreements the The concerns that the board raised were regarding in That would say concerns that Okay, so yeah, but just the parameters were were defined the negotiation resulted in the document that's in the packet and Yeah, yeah, I think we all spotted that one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, there should be a Right Oh This is Yeah, what I have is Okay, I think my understanding is the only substantive difference is that you weren't willing to explain except a small Hybrid car as your vehicle Okay, okay, let me take it to the public then anybody want to comment on this item tonight I think How happy And I think he'll do a great job He's he's calm Treats everybody with respect. I'm so happy that he's having this opportunity To do this can help out the district. Thank you Thank you any other anybody from the public want to comment You don't see any so close up orals on this and bring it back to the board Think we probably have no more discussion, right? So somebody like to make a motion. I'm very happy to make a motion that we Appointe Rick Rogers and name Rick Rogers as not acting but permanent regular district manager under the terms of this agreement Okay And I think we can do this one of the voice vote. So Yeah, welcome as official See you're into nearing decree and raise you 42 years For their support I want to thank our people that have spoke up for me our rate payers and said kind things I have to thank the candidates. They've been very nice. I appreciate that Not pulling me into the to the election I hope I can live up to tall and kind words. I really do I'm a joy for the district. I'm part of this I'm part of the community in your large portion of my life I think I know what the community wants And I'm gonna work to do that and I appreciate your support Thank you very much Okay, let's move on to the next item on the new business agenda and that is the other post-employment benefits op-ed trust fund administrator Talking about this a while ago So there are Some employees that retired that are offered other post-employment benefits, which is a small contribution towards their their medical Right now the district has been doing okay as you go Method you are able to set up a trust fund Dedicated to these type of things where you are able to earn Higher interest rates on it. It is dedicated and set aside specifically for this type of purpose While the district isn't in the financial situation to fully fund something like this This is at least setting up the trust funds so that we can have the flexibility of being able to fund something Similar to like a pension to you know, I mean a lot of it is fun You know, you are trying to fund it in advance not doing a pay-as-you-go type of method. We've looked at Sir, which is It's calcers, it's their California employees retirement benefit trust fund And then we looked at cars the difference between the two is They are a for-profit and then sir was created to be to kind of follow with the they are The non-profit agency very similar to us. Obviously we all are aware of Calcers in general They offer lower rates and they've had exceptionally high People buying into their their trust fund as compared to cars So for those reasons, I think it's kind of a good fit for them Let alone the fact that they do cheaper. They have a much lower management fee And Well, I've actually got a question we saw this committee, so I I understand it But this may not be maybe we'll have to talk outside the gas be 75 versus gas be 68 Are we going to be having more changes if that comes into effect? Yes Where Okay, so it's it's it's a similar style, but it does it's not overlaid. It's just covers different Where And that brings me to my second question you mentioned here at some point later in the report again remember it was we can start Putting just the current year's Budgeted amount in there and if we need to withdraw it, is there any penalty associated with withdrawing it? No, you're only allowed to withdraw for the funds that you've expended So if we started off slow with just a matching type of a program where you know It costs a deal method a thousand bucks this month We'll turn around and contribute a thousand dollars to the fund if the district were to get into some sort of Cash pinch situation. We could then go and request a reimbursement from our old trust fund for the money that we had expended So at least starting off, that's definitely the easiest way to ensure that if we were to get in a situation Still yeah, we'd still be able to withdraw the money Thanks The matches And certainly the Is the difference in the number of basis points just a private versus public Someone the district manager and the director of finances being the people that can authorize the withdrawal of qualified funds or change the funding the funding process, so I mean if If the financial situation of the district continues to get better then we can start making decisions down the road To contribute more than just the matching to help, you know reap the benefits of the interest of this account Can earn to get us about nice points where it's I'll go to the public then anybody want to comment on this item. You don't see anybody putting their hand up So we'll bring it back to the board For the discussion and if not, then I liked it when we saw a committee I think it's a bargain compared to the private one and the earnings are great. I mean, they're with the record of earnings There's no guarantee as they always say I think it's a good choice I appreciate Stephanie's keen eye on opportunities for us to do long-term strategic saving and Optimize our resources Okay The first one does not the second one does require resolution But it's essentially authorizing us to enter into the trust agreement so there's a paperwork to sign for that and Then the second one is adopting the attached resolution By delegating authority to the district manager and director of finance to request disbursement of all the funds from the trust And I'll offer this to the budget and finance committee first if anybody from such wants to make a motion to Can we do all three is one? Pardon Yeah, okay Thank you never hurts to So can we do this as one One motion to prove all three including the resolution. Yeah Resolution probably separate Okay I'm Right I would move that we Authorize the district to enter into the trust agreement and For the pre-funding of OPEP and Also authorized the district manager and or should we and I would say to the director of finance and business services To control the timing and amount of funding Oh Who do and or that doesn't matter we want to do we need discussion on that? Everything and I mean and or in this case, I think and is the Is the or version? I mean it says that either can do is that correct? Both, okay, I'll mend my motion to say and or okay, I'm gonna hear a second Okay Can we take a vote? Director Bruce. Yes, director Radcliffe. Yes Okay Oh Is it page 40 right, so it's a resolution 8 18-19 Yeah 4-0 4-0 the packet Oh Well, maybe I'll move for approval of resolution 8 18-19 delegation of authority to request disbursements resolution number 8 Okay Holly director small Yes, director Bruce. Yes, director Radcliffe. Yes, yes Okay Good so That moves us okay on to the consent agenda Bring it to the public first in this case with anybody from the public want to comment on any Items on the consent agenda. Okay. I don't see anybody Directors does anybody want to pull anything from the consent agenda? Okay, I see none. I'll move approval of the consent agenda Okay, let's just do this up-and-down vote all in favor aye any opposed Very well consent agenda is approved District reports all this was that Here Well We can contemplate that with anybody in the public want to comment on anything in the district reports I think it kind of identified So What is it called surcharge You can serve Okay, thank you any other public comment on district Okay, I don't see any Any further board just a note we talked about it. I think last time just congratulations again on the fish ladder clean out For the storm, so we're really glad that got taken care of this year since we couldn't make it last year Okay, are we good I had a this this may not be an engineering report item that I have a question about the status of the work on Bear Creek Road, and then we have a workaround pipe there, but Operations as well because I Guess something else going on the activity on highway nine around Okay, I mean there's a lot of district trucks there Okay Okay, great Thanks for getting on it Okay, are we good, okay So There are there's one letter of written communications. Anybody want to comment on communications Remember the public Okay, I don't see any We're good, and then there's informational material in there I Guess I've never officially asked this in public take public comment on informational material. Okay, not necessary. Okay, so We'll note that is in there Okay, okay And Since I hear no needed discussion Can I hear a motion for adjournment Directors They've done interesting things they want to tell us about Well, okay, okay, I guess I thought that was happening with everybody under district reports, but okay Committees Anybody want to comment on their committees? We had a meeting Yeah, there are minutes are in here Yeah, I think Bill and I have very brief updates on our CSTA. Okay, go ahead Okay, I Didn't learn anything at the golf thing because the guy was like the auditing guy world warring, you know It gets hot down there, you know People don't walk around the world.  So anyway I did socialize a bit more at the conference because it wasn't like the one in Monterey because I was always driving home So I meant and I did talk to a lot of people on stuff like that. So anyway, I just go through the different they have all this different classes that you go to break out sessions they call and And it was fun. Yeah, I have to admit, you know, I really appreciate the public Way to go down there or something like that, but I did I did actually learn The timing was kind of weird, but I did go to let's put on by a lawyer and it's called Public Agency Advocacy Advocacy the rules regarding logging and ballot measures and It's I ironically I mean during the time When I sat there actually email Rick, I know that we had a chat session set up with chalk And the public agency is not supposed to This is more involved. It's actually city, but when it comes up to an election You're not supposed to absolutely not use any public monies Advocating one side or on a resolution or a candidate as well So I did see it kind of a little bit of a problem with having these chat sessions with chalk and then Rick immediately changed it to Stephanie but that was all and then I also did see a problem with we did send out a mailer For all the infrastructure improvements Projects that came out right when the election came out. So but there was no big deal I don't think it's a thing. But anyway, that was a lot. That was basically what this Session was about, you know, because I was interested in that, you know, you have to when you're public official, you know You really have to watch, you know On everything. So that was that one. So and then the next one I Wanted to go this one was settings for the stages to test how to prepare for pep improvement projects But the room was packed and I couldn't get in that one So then I went over to more bites for your bucketing the most of the volume for your district's technology investment And that was all like I mostly meant maybe we have to improve our website I think that's something that's up with me. So it's more about this, you know technology and figure special district and proving it proving the website Well, I'll try to go through this a little bit faster, so it's not so boring but Then I went over to beyond and posted pray how to recruit the vet rightful of candidates at the time I didn't know Rick was gonna get signed on so I was like, hey, you know learn about That and that was put on by HR professional and there was a lot of district managers and stuff in that And then I went to Best practices of recruiting hiring negotiating about evaluating and terminating for its general manager Again, that was concerned about that and actually that was kind of helpful tips about they also went over the district manager contracts To make sure you cover all the all the different situations of the contract, which you know, I didn't I know Margaret That stuff that that was that was again interesting And then what the other one was can we all just get along improving board manager staff roles and relationships And that was different personality types and stuff things as a director to make things as an organization move smoother along with the The mixer your organs, you're not getting out of line. You're not micromanaging whatever and then the finally the last one I was most excited about was governments and engaging youth and That was internship programs for College high school juniors and seniors that were you get they basically get paid and most of the ones that get approved Get the students get paid a minimum wage, but they actually work with You know, we might have some kids that are working with the pipeline You know go cruising around and actually doing work Performing work engineering and environmental stuff like that. So I I really I would like to learn exactly more about Actually, no an engineer that works for San Jose water his name is Jacob Pierce Yeah, and he's a he was a long time ago He says now he's a top senior in the works of San Jose water He's always been trying to get up because he was an intern with San Lorenzo while they water district long time ago and So I wanted to learn more about that and then next year maybe talk about expanding that I think it would be interesting thing to talk about. It was pretty exciting That that might be something that we might stand I know we had those kids that were doing a study or something Remember what men mean they were doing it that environmental study stuff like that. I don't know if they got paid for it or not So anyway, and that was it. Thank you Okay, did you want to come in sure just I will cut to the chase the two breakout sessions that I attended that were most valuable and Timely for for our needs were one on social media policy that For special districts many of us are just coming up to speed on the use of social media It's kind of a brave new world for a lot of us And there are some best practices and there are some big problem with legal considerations around how Trademark issues and copyright issues are handled in social media context and a number of other things. So There was a breakout session that just sort of brought out all of the different things that Special district should be aware of when they when they either utilize social media like Facebook or LinkedIn or Instagram or anything So that's that was something that was I brought back and raised at the admin community and we'll we'll have a forthcoming Social media policy to make sure that we say stay on the right side of all of those requirements the other session was on District voting special district voting by district and not at large so electing their their board members by specific districts and the motivation for this isn't necessarily like It's now being motivated by someone who wants to use the voting rights act and Racial demographics to make sure that there aren't discriminated classes of people being excluded from Representation on a special district board and There is a particularly litigious and Eager lawyer or law firm who is bounty hunting and issuing requests for action. That's the right word for it. They're basically requesting an action that special districts change their voting arrangements according to the demographics of their district and And There have been a number of special districts particularly in Southern, California who happened hit with what is essentially a $30,000 do this or else letter and so the breakout session was and raising the issue to the awareness of That they have a diverse community and they want to make sure that their diverse community is represented It's probably a really good time to take a look at the demographics of your special district and make sure that representation is very proper So any other board discussion on any of the district report sections of Many reports or director's reports Yes, I think we're done then and we've already mentioned the written communications and informational materials So I'll make a motion that we adjourn and I assume we all okay Okay, anyway, thank you all for coming. We are now adjourned at 718


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statistics and excel correlation baseball statistics got data let's get stuck into it with statistics and excel first a word from our sponsor yeah actually we're sponsoring ourselves on this one because apparently the merchandisers they don't want to be seen with us but but that's okay whatever because our merchandise is is better than their stupid stuff anyways like our accounting rocks product line if you're not crunching cords using excel you're doing it wrong a must-have product because the fact as everyone knows of accounting being one of the highest forms of artistic expression means accountants have a requirement the obligation a duty to share the tools necessary to properly channel the creative muse and the muse she rarely speaks more clearly than through the beautiful symmetry of spreadsheets so get the shirt because the creative muse she could use a new pair of shoes if you would like a commercial free experience consider subscribing to our website at accountinginstruction.com or accountinginstruction.thinkific.com you're not required to but if you have access to one note we're in the icon left hand side one note presentation 1670 correlation baseball statistics tab we're also uploading transcripts to one note so that you can go to the view tab immersive reader tool change the language if you so choose and be able to either read or listen to the transcripts in multiple different languages using the timestamps to tie into the video presentations one note desktop version here thinking about correlation where we have different data sets to see if there's a mathematical relation or correlation between them in other words are the dots and the different data sets moving together in some way shape or form and if there is a mathematical relation or correlation between the different data sets the next logical question would be is there a cause and effect relationship causing the mathematical relationship or correlation and if there is a cause and effect relationship the next logical question would be what's the causal factor that's causing the causal relationship which is causing the correlation or mathematical relation between the different dots and the different data sets we're not going to be looking at a baseball statistics we're going to be pulling our stats or imagine they pulled from when we did this in excel this baseball reference website we're not advertising for them but we're just getting our data there so we can imagine going to the website as we did when we work this in excel and you can check this out in excel if you so choose and we have the option of downloading the excel but it's limited so we were able to transpose it to a csv file which is comma deliminated and then simply copy this entire thing paste it into excel and change the formatting from a comma deliminated formatting to a table which is a common theme oftentimes because oftentimes data sets might be in a csv or comma deliminated file when we pulled it in we get something that looks like this we have of course baseball stats now note that baseball stats are similar to job stats so baseball is great because you have a whole lot of stats in baseball due to the nature of the game but it's a job for them and many of the concepts we apply when analyzing different baseball players can be applied to different jobs as well we're going to try to break down what are the essence of the jobs what can we measure in the job how can we use ratios and we can apply some of these statistical analysis to judge performance of one person to another and of course compensation you would think should be based on performance based on these kind of this type of analysis uh so we've got the age we've got all of these stats up top we're going to be focusing in on those pick like the age and the batting average so the batting average over here represents how many times someone gets on base so it's kind of a versus how many times they were at bat so if they're if they're at bat they're hitting if you're not not familiar with baseball they're trying to hit they're trying to get on base whatever what whether that be first second third or a home run and and they have a lot more likelihood of getting out because there's many different ways that they could get out with a pop fly striking out grounding out being thrown out and so on and then we're going to compare that to the age so as they get older the hypothesis might be our older players is it correlated that older players are going to have a lower batting average right that would be the hypothesis so we'll check that out and so i'm going to take my data here and we're going to focus in on just those those components so we pulled in the name and we pulled in the age of the players and then we pulled in the batting average and then we're able to sort them sort them here by these by this table now note when we look at the batting average the next common kind of issue that comes up is uh there might be some batting averages that shouldn't be in our data set possibly because maybe they didn't have that many at bats so maybe they had one at bat and they got a hit their batting average would be a hundred percent then one out of one however that's not a useful stat uh generally because it's because it's going to skew the data and really they didn't have enough at bats to really have a judgment so we could we trimmed down the data set here so that we're picking we're trimming out those that were very high and very low because the likeliness would be that they didn't have a lot of at bats and therefore they have outliers on the batting averages so keep that in mind when you're looking at large or a lot of data uh that you want to think about how can I adjust the data so that I can get to the heart of the meaning of what I am looking for now if I was to plot this out on a histogram if we just select all of the age and put it on a histogram it looks like this so it's kind of a chaotic histogram it's not exactly bell shaped it's it's a you know kind you got the I guess the middle point here but we have another peak at 30 to 31 and it's kind of interesting in baseball because experience might matter in baseball more than in other sports in other words sometimes when people temper down and actually get less uh edgy they might actually do kind of better sometimes because of the of the nature of baseball you need a lot of patience you know with baseball but then we've got the batting averages which looks kind of more like of a bell shaped curve which is somewhat what we would expect with the batting averages so we just selected this whole thing and entered a histogram and notice batting averages are kind of like performance it would be kind of like performance on a test and you would think that if you if you are picking people that were all the best based on their performance of being the best that if you took like the test scores of it meaning judge their performance you'd get something that looks somewhat like a bell curve if you didn't get a bell curve in that case you might think that something funny is going on because you would think that they're all similarly uh similarly good in terms of their performance because they're all at the same level they're professionals so you would think that performance would would mirror some kind of bell curve possibly so if it wasn't a bell curve you might that might lead to interesting questions in and of itself now if i take the mean of the data uh hold on i'm not if i take the mean of the data we just select all of this data and take the average adding up all the ages and divided by the number we get to 28 if we take the batting average mean adding up all the batting average and divided by the number of rows we get to the 0.22 or 22 percent in other words notice that's under 50 percent well under of course because like i say it's it's a lot more likely that when someone is batting that they're going to get out that they're then they're going to get on base at some and some way then the standard deviation of the sample for the ages this is the measure of the spread 3.66 and for the batting average 0.0555 so then we have our our uh correlation calculation so let's just do this in terms of the mathematical calculation for the correlation we take all of our ages and we're going to come take the z score so the z score we've seen multiple times i'll just uh calculate that it's going to be the 24 minus the 28 divided by the standard d 3.66 and that gives us 1.08 about there's rounding uh involved here let's just do another one and so we get the 25 minus the 28 divided by the 3.66 we get the 81 about and then we can do that all the way down we can do that for the second factor which is the batting average where we can take then the 0.5 in this case minus the mean 0.2216 divided by the standard d for the sample 0.0555 we get about five we can do that all the way down uh uh hold on we get about five there it is and then we could do that all the way down and then we can multiply out the two z scores so now we're going to multiply out the 1.08 times the 5.5.01 that gives us the 5.43 about so that gives us these two bits which we can now sum up and if we sum it up that will give us our numerator so if we sum all that up that gives us the 41 31 the numerator the denominator is the number of items minus one so we'll do a sub-calculation for that n minus one n the number of rows minus one is going to give us 814 then we can divide out the numerator and the denominator now in the outer column being 41.31 divided by 814 gives us about uh 0.5 07 and so on all right so it's not you know highly correlated here the age and the batting average when so we can kind of start to think about that and say well maybe that's the case because like I say if someone is in the league longer then maybe their batting average they get better possibly at batting and they've done more they've done more steroids but that's just kidding so maybe they bulked up in that time or something but no so so but you the performance could go up in baseball but if I took if I take my data tab over here and we test that out by going to my data analysis which you can turn on in excel by going to the options and turn on the analysis toolkit and go to the data analysis looks like this we can check out the correlation enter the data which would just be the two columns of data which have to be side by side so you couldn't take this just from the original data set we had to put them side by side if we're going to use this analysis tool for the correlation and that would then give us the age versus the batting average there's that negative 0.05075 so there's our double check that we did on our numbers if I was to then plot it the age on the x the batting average on the y you can see that the trend line is pretty again is doesn't show a high correlation right the dots are not highly correlated now when my hypothesis would have been that as they get older maybe their batting average would go down that's why I put the age over here on the x as the independent factor which would be driving the batting average right but if I flip these two around I can say I can say well what if I put the the age over here on the y you still get that negative correlation but now that but now it's just flipped the other flipped the other way around so it's just a matter of thinking of trying to get an idea of which you think is the causal factor and usually we try to put the independent factor or the thing that's causing the other factor on the x but that could just be a hypothesis here there doesn't seem to be a significant causal factor between just these now we can also go to our data analysis and allow it to give us our descriptive statistics just to show that in excel so we're going to give the statistics for the summary data and the confidence level and that spits out this which gives us a nice summary it gives us our mean our standard error the median the mode the standard deviation the ketosis sample various units range minimum maximum sum and count now these are not dynamic they don't move as we as we change the data or anything like that but uh they're a great tool to first start putting something together a model together and then you might do these with an actual formula just to double check or to kind of double check your numbers but this kind of analysis of the two data sets age and the batting average might give us some insights sometimes which might give us some more hypotheses and whatnot to see what we want to do going forward in terms of thinking about correlations and how these data sets might be related now if that didn't work we can say okay let's pick some other data so we can go back to our data sets and say well let's try the batting average and the rbi now the batting average is how many times they get on base and the rbis are the runs that were batted in so meaning the hit that they got drove a run in which actually scored a run or a point right of run so so that means so if that's the case then then then i would think my hypothesis would then be that a higher batting average would be kind of the causal factor and i would think that their rbi's would go up right because if they got more hits you would think the rbi's would go up now this one's a little bit careful a little bit a little bit weird however because you'll note that the batting average is in terms of a percent a ratio meaning how many times did they get on base versus how many times did they have the opportunity to get on base here represented with a decimal but could be represented with a percent whereas the rbi is just an absolute number meaning how many how many rbi's do they have so that's a that's a you got to keep the keep that in the back of the mind and say well that's a little bit kind of weird because obviously if someone had more at bats even if their batting average was lower they got on base less percentage of the time they might have more rbi's because they they were they had more opportunities to hit someone in right so some so you might think that maybe the rbi's we should do the rbi's as a percentage of at bats or something like that where we're comparing percents to percents so just something to kind of keep in mind but we'll keep these data and see what happens with it so notice the rbi's if i plot this i get an interesting histogram so now i'm just plotting the rbi's and most of them are the zero to nine point eight and then and then tapering down from that point and so and then we have the batting averages which we saw before which are going to be as we would think more kind of bell shaped because this is the average of kind of performance in terms of getting on base now again if we went to the rbi's up top and we took the rbi's like as a percentage of at bats and we did the same kind of thing and that we did with the batting average trimming off the really high numbers and the low numbers we we might in that case get something that's more bell curve but we'll continue with this let's do our calculation over here so here's our mean of the batting average and the rbi's meaning the average of these two numbers and the standard deviation or spread calculation for those two numbers then we'll do our mathematical calculation same kind of thing we did before yet we have the batting average we've got the z score same concept with the z score now the z score might not be exact the same because we might have trimmed off a little bit more or less in terms of the of the very high ones and the very low ones but the calculation of the z for the data that we have here is going to be the same kind of concept 0.311 each x minus the mean 0.221 divided by the z 0.06 and that's going to give us our 1.5 about we could do that all the way down we do the same thing for the rbi's which are absolute numbers here so now we're going to say all right the rbi's are going to be the 131 minus the mean on the rbi's 26.575 and then take that and divided by divided by the standard deviation 26.337 gives us about 3.95 about we could do that all the way down all the way down we can multiply out the z's and c's what that does 1.518 times the 3.965 gives us the 6.018 okay we can do that all the way down and then if we sum out that outer column that gives us our numerator so we sum that up that gives us our numerator 352 89 the denominator is going to be in minus one so we can then take the number of data points in this case 823 minus our one that gives us 822 and then we have the numerator and denominator in the outer columns so I can then say all right this is 352.898 divided by 822 and we get 0.429 so that's more highly correlated I can do the same thing with my data analysis tool to double check it and that looks good and then if I plot this I can say okay now we've got something there's our regression line our trend line and it looks obviously more positively correlated here so we're going to say all right yeah the batting average as the batting average goes up then the rbi's goes up that's kind of what we would expect we have here the batting average on the x and that's usually what we would do if we think that is kind of like the independent and then the dependent over here the rbi's but we could reverse it and it would look like this so now you've got it's still positively a positively sloping line but now we've got the rbi's and actually if you think about like the rbi's would be a would be a decent way to then think about what the batting average would be right according to this right if we knew the rbi's we might be able to predict you know what the batting average is now notice there's going to be of course outliers on these so like this one over here we had a batting average of higher than 0.6 between points you know 0.65 or something that's a very high batting average what would that indicate that would if they're that high of a batting average it would indicate that they didn't get on base i mean i'm sorry it would indicate that they didn't have that many at bats they probably had a few at bats which means the ratio isn't really a valid ratio possibly we could we might have been better off to delete that one because they probably didn't have that many at bats which means they didn't get and you can kind of see that from here because they if they had a really high batting average you would think they would have batted somebody in right and they didn't now maybe they were the leadoff hitter or something like that so they don't have any opportunity but still as the lineup turns over you would think that they would have opportunities to bat someone in typically so something seems kind of funny with that if you flip it over here you get the same thing but now here's that here's the dot up here at the 6.5 and now the rbi's are down below