Campus Action

To the Board of Trustees, President, and Cabinet of Bellevue College:

The faculty of Bellevue College are gravely concerned with the current direction of the College. The proposed elimination of Parent Education and dissolution of the School of Business & Technology announced abruptly three weeks ago have compounded the concerns we have expressed over the past year and lead us now to call upon you to take swift action in changing the administration’s approach to meeting its responsibilities to the College.

Since the start of the 2024-25 school year, our College’s administration has consistently marginalized faculty voices, paying lip service to and failing to meet good faith expectations of shared governance and consultation. Faculty have the longest-term investment in the College, yet rather than being treated as partners in the College’s future, we are finding our efforts to participate in the short- and long-term planning of the College stymied and our attempts to communicate with one another and the administration blocked. In a functional environment, faculty would be able to raise concerns as to how we, as a college, are meeting the challenges facing the institution, higher education broadly, and the world around us as a community. Instead, faculty are being met with defensiveness from the Cabinet and are forced to only communicate by way of curated, one-on-one, or informal encounters. We need to have opportunities for clear communication between the faculty and our leaders. That simply has not been happening.

We also recognize that management has responsibilities which are separate from faculty responsibilities. Many of our concerns relate to management not meeting its responsibilities. The following are all areas where BC has a clear problem, presently or on the immediate horizon, in either failing to make adequate provisions to implement the faculty CBA or to satisfy the requirements of outside authorities:

• The quarter-long Educational Equity workshop for new faculty was not offered in Fall 2025 as required by the CBA. The parties intentionally negotiated a full year’s lead time to facilitate the administration’s timely implementation of this provision, yet the administration failed to do so.
• Academic Affairs has not made any progress toward or shown meaningful engagement in meeting the extensive new accessibility requirements required under Title II starting in April 2026, despite the fact that the requirements were communicated by the Department of Justice a year and a half ago.
• The College failed to make arrangements for clinical site supervision in line with new Adjunct travel limitations that went into effect for Fall 2025, again, despite having a year to do so.
• Communication about a “phased implementation” of a moonlighting policy in line with the 2024-2026 CBA was delayed until May 2025, contributing to a staffing grievance that was resolved in favor of the faculty member, and delaying key provisions of the CBA article to Summer 2026.
• The accrediting board for the Radiation Therapy and Medical Dosimetry programs has notified the College of insufficiencies in program chair coverage after an abrupt reduction for the summer of 2025 and has required the submission of plans for sufficient coverage in future summers and the resolution of the program chair’s complaint.
• OASIS, the recently renamed office charged with scheduling and a central priority for maintaining enrollment, is still not fully staffed. As a result, faculty have continued to step in to do administrative tasks and provide institutional knowledge. At the same time, they are still being told that they must wait indefinitely for EMPL records to be generated so that they may be paid (“Unfortunately, there is only one person in HR that can create new EMPL RCD’s in ctc link at this time”—email response to faculty chair inquiry on late contract, 10/10/2025) and promised improvements in workload and accuracy have not manifested.

This is not an exhaustive list, and we believe that many of these problems could have been avoided had the College listened to faculty and staff who were trying to protect the institution by addressing issues proactively. The administration has chosen instead to pay two rounds of consultants for a botched and unworkable strategic plan and to retain consultants to study and implement the above changes in OASIS. The costs of these choices—in dollars, goodwill, and bad results—make them poor alternatives to listening to the faculty and working in partnership. We have seen the administration repeatedly rebuff our attempts to engage and avoid or repair problems while the College fails to meet its responsibilities to the campus and the community.

Now, despite all of these existing items that require dedicated attention to resolve, Academic Affairs has proposed eliminating the Parent Education Program and dissolving the School of Business & Technology. Faculty do not believe these proposals are prudent, nor do we believe the institution has the capacity to implement them on the proposed timeline.

Eliminating our Parent Ed program with less than three months' notice will mean families won't have adequate time to find alternative childcare. Furthermore, closing this program would end the important work to improve parenting in our community by ending high-quality education and support for families and caregivers.  It would also destroy a wellspring of goodwill with a community that will have college-age children in the decades to come, costing the College future enrollments. The cost savings from closing the program will likely be minimal in comparison to the cost to the community, which will be considerable.

Our School of Business & Technology provides four-year degrees that launch careers. While faculty understand the College’s desire for long-term efficiency and savings, implementing this scale of divisional change could actually cost the College more – not to mention causing confusion for students and staff, and necessitating re-negotiation of multiple provisions of the Collective Bargaining Agreement prior to implementation. Please understand that simply shuffling the School's programs to other divisions will not reduce the levels of staff and resources that are necessary for students to succeed.

The faculty of Bellevue College are responsible stewards of the College, its programs, and its reputation. We are committed to our students. We are fearful of the damaging approach to leadership exhibited by the present administration and we call you to see the effects of this mismanagement and take action.

ENDORSED BY THE MEMBERS OF BCAHE October 14, 2025