Chancellor Judy C. Miner sent the following message via email to Foothill-De Anza district employees.
Aug. 13, 2020
Dear Colleagues,
Thank you for all your good work serving nearly 21,000 students during Summer 2020, resulting in an increase of more than 3% full-time equivalent students (FTES) over last year! For the past month, I have delighted in stories from parents and grandparents praising the quality of instruction at Foothill and De Anza and marveling at how much more their loved ones enjoyed their experiences with you in comparison to a number of universities. Bravi, one and all!
Given that Santa Clara County continues to be on California’s COVID watch list, the colleges and district offices will remain closed through January 3, 2021. This means we will continue offering services remotely. There will be extremely few exceptions to the work-from-home rule during this period, primarily involving police, grounds, custodial, technology, business services, bookstore, and facilities staff who will work onsite on a very limited basis with all safety precautions in place. Please join me in thanking all our colleagues who provide these services that are so critical to the continuity of our educational mission.
The decision to continue remote operations is driven by our desire to protect the
health of students, faculty, and staff. The County of Santa Clara Public Health Department has
not yet cleared colleges and universities to reopen, and the attached graph leads
us to proceed with an abundance of caution.
I am including the link to California’s recently issued COVID-19 Industry Guidance: Higher Education Institutions so that you have the most current guidelines under which we are operating.
Striking a balance between the need for employee flexibility and services for students, the campuses will operate on a five-day schedule for Fall 2020, with the option for departments to continue a four-day schedule based on approval from their administrator. Central Services departments will continue to operate on a four-day schedule, with the option to revert to a five-day schedule based on approval from their vice chancellor. Please be sure that your days and hours of service are readily found and clearly communicated.
Foothill and De Anza are currently permitted to offer limited onsite instruction in allied health for Fall 2020. When the fall schedules were developed to include hybrid classes beyond allied health, we could never have imagined that the state would still be in early Stage 2 of California’s reopening plan. Unfortunately, this means that classes planned with some in-person meetings must now be fully online. We are planning a virtual program for district and college opening days and are looking forward to these activities given the success of the recent year-end celebrations; you truly exceeded expectations! Watch for more on opening day plans soon.
If you have additional needs related to working remotely, please speak with your manager. We will do our best to accommodate you and continue to schedule periodic opportunities to return to your worksite for essential equipment and supplies. Many, many thanks for the dedication and resilience you have demonstrated over the past five months. These are challenging times like no other and, as always, you have risen to the occasion. The tradition of undaunted persistence at Foothill-De Anza lives on!
I very much miss being with all of you in person and hope to continue seeing you during my open office hours on Zoom so we can stay connected, celebrate our successes, and share ideas about the future.
Wishing you and yours good health,
Judy