Nassau Community College professors continue fight against consolidation

Nassau Community College professors will continue their court fight to block the college’s consolidation of academic departments, newly filed documents show.

The Nassau Community College Federation of Teachers and individual faculty members filed a notice of appeal Friday, seeking to overturn the dismissal of their lawsuit against the college, its board of trustees and Nassau County.

The union sued the college last June, arguing its elimination of 15 academic department chairpersons violated state education regulations and would harm the quality of education. The consolidation, which reduced the total number of departments from 21 to six, took effect in August.

State Supreme Court Justice Anna Grimaldi in Nassau dismissed the lawsuit last month, writing that the union and faculty members "failed to demonstrate anything done in violation of lawful procedure."

The union has six months to submit documents to the state Appellate Division.

Jerry Kornbluth, the college's vice president for community and governmental relations, said the appeal would be “costly and time-consuming” for the college and the union.

“The original case was thrown out … because it had no merit, so bringing it to a higher court with the same argument, to me, is a waste of time and energy,” he said.

Kornbluth said the restructuring was planned carefully and benefits students by combining related disciplines into a smaller number of departments where faculty members can collaborate more readily. He predicted it would save money in the long term.

The union has argued that the department mergers contradict the college’s strategic plan and the goals of the State University of New York's Guided Pathways program, an effort to improve student outcomes in college completion, transfers and job placements.

The union’s acting president, David Stern, said in a statement Monday that the union filed the lawsuit “to continue advocating for the interests of students and the College community, and to ensure that Guided Pathways is implemented appropriately across the institution."

Stern joined the list of plaintiffs this month, and Faren Siminoff, the union’s former president, was removed, attorneys wrote in a court filing Friday. Siminoff resigned as union president earlier this month, citing a "series of health issues," Newsday has reported.

In court filings, faculty members cited examples of what they called problems with the consolidation.

Joan Buckley, the college’s former nursing department chairperson, objected in June to the merger of nursing and two other departments into the Allied Health Sciences department. Buckley worked nine hours a day on duties such as overseeing 12 full-time faculty members and evaluating clinical experiences for about 520 students, she wrote. Her qualifications include a doctorate in nursing, and her annual stipend as chairperson was $19,960.70, she wrote.

The Allied Health Sciences chair is not a nurse, and someone who is not a nurse, she wrote, “would not know what to look for in a lab or real-world clinical experience and thus would be unable to provide a fair, appropriate evaluation.”

Siminoff argued in court documents that the department chairperson overseeing nursing and mortuary sciences would lack “the expertise and backgrounds required" in those fields. Academic departments and chairpersons, she wrote, “are essential components for an academic institution.”

By Maura McDermott

maura.mcdermott@newsday.commauramcdermott

Maura McDermott covers education. Since joining Newsday in 2012, she also has worked on the investigations team and covered real estate and the business of health care.