After long drawn out months of nonstop back-and-forth negotiations and contract proposals between the District representatives and Cerritos College Faculty Federation (CCFF), the two have finally reached a tentative agreement.

A tentative agreement is an agreement that is not certain or fixed, but instead provisional.

Currently, both teams are working on editing the final documents before ratification.

According to Cerritos College President Dr. Jose Fierro, one of the reasons it took the two parties so long was that their needs and requests were extremely far apart.

“Both CCFF representatives and District representatives were able to keep the communication lines open to find creative solutions to reach a tentative agreement,” he said.

Fierro admitted that regarding the agreement he felt that it was balanced and within the best interest of everyone involved.

He also said that both parties addressed the issues of longevity, class size, part-time faculty job security, faculty office hours and department chair structure.

CCFF President Solomon Namala acknowledged that quite a few things changed in terms of salary, and that the agreement reached is not exactly what the faculty wanted, but it was a compromise.

He expressed, “Full time faculty got a 10 percent raise over three years. Part-time faculty got anywhere from 14 to 16 percent raise, again, over three years, that’s in terms of salary.

“Full-time got two more steps added because some faculty were stuck at step ten, whereas others could go up to 30 years. So we added two steps for those other faculty [members].”

He acknowledged that more importantly, for students, part-time faculty will now be able to offer more office hours, when before it was only up to eight hours of office time in a semester.

Also, department chairs will now be compensated not only during the regular year, but in the summer as well.

Fierro believed that another reason that added to the drawn out process was the fact that they had to address more than a handful of items, and it needed to be done properly.

“Both teams needed to be creative and open to different approaches. It is a time-extensive process,” he said.

Although both parties reached a tentative agreement, there are some things that aren’t ideal, such as class sizes.

Namala divulged that class size is a big issue that hasn’t been completely resolved and that it would be good to have smaller classes because it helps students succeed, but the issue is more suited for faculty senate.

Fierro has expressed that he’s confident that the two teams will use this experience to continue to build positive relationships between one another.

As for both parties, he expressed that due to the fact that they were able to reach a mutually agreed upon tentative agreement, it will allow them to begin the new academic foundation year with a positive foundation.