Dear Colleague,
The Florida Board of Governors has made each university and college responsible for developing guidelines and criteria for reopening in the Fall 2020 semester. In response, FAU’s Administration has presented a broad approach, covering various aspects of this complex issue.
To assist with this process, UFF-FAU has developed the following criteria designed to keep FAU faculty, staff, and students safe, while maintaining quality working and learning conditions. As the unified voice of FAU’s faculty, we require that each of these items be implemented before face-to-face teaching resumes in the fall.
- Faculty and GTAs can enforce syllabus-level policies requiring all students to wear masks when attending face-to-face class meetings. This will ensure the health and safety of all students and faculty in enclosed environments.
- FAU must provide sufficient PPE products and resources to maintain faculty and student safety throughout the semester.
- Because faculty members oversee the health and safety of the classroom, faculty may remove students who break PPE or social distancing protocols.
- In order to maintain proper social distancing protocols, all faculty office hours, department meetings, and committee meetings for the Fall 2020 semester will be held online, rather than in-person.
- All class sizes/configurations must be considered to ensure safe social distancing, and course caps should be kept at a minimum to reduce the spread of COVID-19 on FAU’s campuses.
- Faculty, staff, and GTAs can self-identify as “vulnerable,” allowing them to teach and work remotely, without being required to provide any medical documentation, in accordance with HIPPA standards. FAU administration has neither the right nor the expertise to evaluate an employee’s health status or the health status of their family members.
- Transition time between classes must be increased to 20 minutes to account for safe social distancing protocols so that students and faculty are not packed tightly into the Breezeway or building hallways.
- One-way traffic flow in classroom and office hallways must be clearly marked.
- In order to preserve faculty, student, and staff health, FAU must provide adequate anti-viral air filtering in classroom and office spaces, according to CDC guidelines.
- Requiring faculty to develop separate syllabi for online and in-person teaching delivery is not a hybrid class, which the university has misappropriated in this case. A class that is taught with parallel in-person and online modes requires two separate preps. Faculty cannot be required to teach these courses without an increase in salary and/or benefits and an adjustment in workload/FTE.
- FAU must ensure that all professional cleaning staff are specifically trained to disinfect office and classroom spaces and that they receive hazard pay. Faculty are not trained to perform this disinfection and cannot add such work to their assignments.
- Non-tenure line faculty and GTAs teach the overwhelming majority of IFP courses. As such, the university policy of holding most major and graduate courses online, while keeping 1/3 of IFP courses in the classroom, puts these employee categories at greater risk of exposure to COVID-19. In response, UFF-FAU demands that all on-campus teaching assignments be balanced equally between tenure line, non-tenure line, and GTA instruction in order to ensure that contingent employees are not especially vulnerable to COVID-19 exposure.
- FAU social distancing protocols must recognize and accommodate the differences between departments in terms of available size and types of working spaces.
- To ensure the health and safety of the entire FAU body, third-party university vendor staff must have the same access to testing, tracking, and sick leave as the broader FAU faculty and staff.
- FAU must provide flexible use of COVID-19 related paid sick leave that does not come out of accrued sick leave. The institution should fund this from the paid two weeks in the Emergency Paid Sick Leave Act/Families First Coronavirus Response Act. There will be no negative repercussions for use of sick leave when required by policies and/or advised by medical professionals.
- FAU must establish clear, uniform protocols for class cancellation, substitution, or relocation due to symptoms of or confirmed exposure to COVID-19.
Please send any questions or comments to president@uff-fau.org.
In Solidarity –
UFF-FAU Executive Committee
