Dear Brooklyn College Community,

As Chapter Chair of our union I think it is important to be in constant communication during this latest budget crisis. From my perspective this crisis is somewhat manufactured, somewhat real. On the one hand, we have seen the largest year over year budgets for CUNY (past two years) in over 20 years. On the other hand, CUNY remains chronically underfunded. At the same time, CUNY has over 100 million dollars in reserve, yet they are implementing austerity measures. Nothing about this is inevitable, but we need to be prepared to push back, and push back hard. 

Rather than sending too many emails, I will be writing weekly updates on the meetings of the Vacancy Review Board on our chapter's blogspot. As most of you know, CUNY implemented a hiring freeze at the beginning of February. This means that all approved positions will go to a CUNY Central Vacancy Review Board. CUNY asked the campuses to institute their own Vacancy Review Boards (VRB), essentially to limit the quantity of requests to CUNY Central. Alan Gilbert asked me to serve on the VRB on February 9. I felt it was important for me to participate to ensure that our union's perspective is in those meetings. 

VRB Meeting Feb 23, 2023

There are 100 open (and previously approved) positions at Brooklyn College, everything from custodial staff to full-time faculty. These will need to come to the VRB. But before they even come to the VRB, division heads are being asked to prioritize positions before sending them to the VRB and chairs, supervisors, etc will need to seek approval before things move up the chain. Importantly, this means the VRB will see only a fraction of the requests made and approved by chairs, supervisors, and administrators. 

The local VRB will meet once a week to review applications and make decisions. The general approach will be decision making by consensus. Once we make our decisions they will be forwarded to Michelle Anderson and she will have the final authority on what gets sent to the CUNY VRB. 

My understanding is that the positions not approved by the local VRB are not cancelled, but rather will continue to be paused/frozen. 

The voting members of the local VRB are: 

Anne Lopes-Provost

Ron Jackson- VP Student Affairs

MJ Robinson- Chair of TREM and on Master Planning

Randall Clarke- Director of Seek

Carolina Bank Muñoz-PSC Chapter Chair