The Alamo Colleges District board of trustees approved the creation of one sole faculty senate for all of its five colleges, effectively doing away with between 79 to 89 seats.

The move reflects the colleges’ need to comply with Texas Senate Bill 37, which limits the size and role of faculty senates. 

Tuesday’s unanimous vote cemented the creation of a single faculty senate with 25 to 35 seats, with each college getting the same amount of seats and one of those seats being appointed by Alamo Colleges Chancellor Mike Flores. The rest of the senators will be elected by full-time faculty. 

This was a slight expansion of the initial proposal placed before the board last week, which called for 25 seats — five per college — and voting in the future to expand as the colleges grew. 

“I think this is a better approach than we had in the previous one,” said Board Chair Clint Kingsbery before the vote. “I think that this is necessary right now because we have the September 1 deadline, or otherwise we will lose all the faculty senate.”  

Senate Bill 37, which was passed by the Texas Legislature in May, limits the size of faculty senates to no more than 60 members which will serve as advisory bodies to the board only, without having a say in decisions on curriculum, evaluations or hiring.

Before this vote each of the five Alamo Colleges — San Antonio College, Northwest Vista College, Northeast Lakeview College, St. Philip’s College and Palo Alto College — elected its own faculty senate totaling 114 voting senators. 

The five elected chairs of each senate then formed part of the United Faculty Senates, as well as one elected council chair. These representatives spoke during the public comment portion of board meeting on Tuesday night asking for trustees to consider approving all 60 allowed seats to better spread the workload and avoid having to go back for a vote each time the colleges needed more representation. 

“Why be more restrictive than the law allows?” asked Cindy Katz on behalf of the United Faculty Senates. “Let the policy reflect the language of the law, ‘up to 60’… this would allow changes in the number of senators to be adjusted as necessary with the growth of the district without having to come back to the board each time.” 

The senators also asked for clarity on what the role of this senate would look like now that their size will be drastically reduced and the scope of their work limited by the new state law. The approved policy calls for their role to serve solely as an advisory body to the board. 

“The Faculty Senate serves exclusively as an advisory body and represents the collective faculty across all colleges within the District,” the approved policy update reads.  “It may not be delegated the final decision-making authority on any matter.”

The new law is slated to take effect on Sept. 1, but with one week to go before the start of the academic year the outgoing and incoming faculty senators said it’s not clear what role, if any, they play for the rest of the month.

By Wednesday morning — the day after the vote — the Alamo Colleges United Faculty Senates page on the district’s site had been disabled.   

Chancellor Mike Flores, who will be in charge of determining the exact number of seats, between 25 and 35, said his intention is to move along this process with input from the faculty who will vote to elect the majority of these senators. 

Voting faculty members and those running for a seat are required to be full-time faculty deemed by the colleges as being in good standing. 

“In drafting of the procedures we’ll be in conversation with them,” Flores said, referring to faculty and faculty leadership. “I think the essence is to preserve the spirit of shared governance in an advisory capacity that’s along with the new state legislation.”

Katz said that while an equal number of chairs made sense to the board members who approved it, faculty members are concerned about equal representation with such a limited number of faculty members serving. 

“Because we are so unique, each of our colleges has its own culture, it has its own programs and its own structure… it takes away the voice, it takes away the variety, faculty are not one-minded on anything,” Katz said.

The San Antonio Report partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage.