Association of Professional Administrators

Minutes 2024-3

Date/Time: Friday, March 15, 2024, 10:00am
Location: ZOOM Room

Present

APA Statewide

  • Seth Bean, President
  • Susan McNeil, Vice President
  • Mark Powers, Secretary
  • Aaron Childs, Membership Coordinator (Non-voting)
  • Julie Dunlap LePoer, Web Manager (Non-voting)
  • Catherine Santiago, MTA Field Representative (Non-voting)

APA Chapter Presidents

  • Seth Bean, Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts
  • Brian Cahillane, Westfield State University
  • Jane Decatur, Framingham State University
  • Peter Fenuccio, Worcester State University Susan McNeil, Massachusetts College of Art & Design
  • Jenna Shales, Bridgewater State University
  • Rosa Taormina, Salem State University
  • Edward Vacha, Massachusetts Maritime Academy

Guests

  • Gretchen Mayhew, Fitchburg State Vice President

Absent

APA Statewide

  • Roberta James, MTA Field Representative (Non-voting)
  • Maria Brunelle, Treasurer (Non-Voting)

APA Chapter Presidents

  • Rebecca Shersnow, Fitchburg State President

Call to Order

  • Time: 10:03am

Approval of Minutes

  1. Approval of February 16, 2024 Executive Board Meeting Minutes
    • Amendments: Salem Institutional Issues added
    • Motion to minutes of the February 16, 2024 Executive Board Meeting as presented/amended made: by: S. McNeil 2nd by: J. Decatur
    • Vote: Unanimous Action: Motion Carries

Public Comments

  1. None

President’s Report – Seth Bean

  1. MTA Annual Meeting – Call for Attendees
  2. Cherish Act – in Senate and in House.
  3. Draft of an Information Request (McNeil)
    (see below)
  4. HELC – discussed have common proposals.
    For example:
    Increase Health & Welfare Trust contributions from the Commonwealth
    Requesting Steps for Longevity
    Requesting Shifting from Legislative funding to Executive Funding to move 100% funding of the CBAs to be the responsibility of the Commonwealth (rather than only the 1st year of the CBA and years 2 & 3 being funded by the individual campuses)
  5. Annual Dues increase proposed by the MTA of $33.
  6. Some 400+ responses to the Contract Negotiations Survey sent to the membership
  7. Catherine Santiago –
    • Demand to Bargain to sent March 8, 2024.
    • Cherish Act. Still in the House Ways & Means Committee. To meet on March 26, 2024.

Draft of an Information Request (see #3 above)

We are submitting this information request on behalf of APA and in accordance with chapter 150(e) and the APA contract.

Please provide the following information:

Copies of all voluntary salary or equity analysis reports that have been conducted and concluded at any of the 9 State Universities in the last 5 years. Please include the benchmarking and data collection and comparisons used to conduct the analysis. Please also include what actions were taken to address salary compression and inequities found.

Copies of any announcement sent out at each of the 9 universities in the last 3 years which announces the opening and closing dates for submission of salary/promotion requests?

  • the names, titles and current job descriptions for all individuals who applied for promotion/salary adjustments pursuant to Article VI.B.2 of the APA contract, over the course of the last three years/budget cycles
  • copies of all materials submitted by the individuals listed in item #1 as part of their request for promotion/salary adjustments.
  • 3 the Bi-Annual reports and Annual Performance Narratives for the last three years/budget cycles, for all individuals listed in item #1
  • names and titles of all individuals who received promotion/salary adjustments pursuant to Article VI.B.2 over the course of the last three years/budget cycles.

A complete list of all vacant APA positions at each of the 9 campuses and how long they have been vacant. Please include the job description for each and if there is a date set for launching the search to fill the vacancy.

Please provide from each of the 9 campuses a complete list of temporary contracted employees hired to perform some or all of the duties of any vacant APA bargaining unit position, please include the dates of hire and expiration dates of their contracts and rate of compensation for these non-benefited contract employees’.

Complete List of APA unit members currently receiving compensation (per CBA no less than $100 per week) for performing duties of a vacant APA position. Please include the job description of the unit member assigned, the job description for the position being covered and how much they are receiving in compensation, as well as the starting and anticipated ending dates.

A list of APA Bargaining Unit positions with current searches in process

  • Please include the posting and job description, which campus, and the stage that the search is currently in.
  • List of all non-unit professional positions that have been created since January 1, 2019, indicate at which campus the positions were created.

Can you please provide us with a copy of the written policies from any of the 9 universities who allow employees to take a class completely free of Tuition and Fees at their campus.

Additionally, from the campuses that do provide this benefit can you provide a list of APA union employees who requested and were approved to take a class using the tuition and fee waiver Staring from September 2022 thru January 2024.

Treasurer’s Report – Maria Brunelle

  1. Payroll due on Tuesday, March 19, 2024 by 12:00pm.
  2. Approval of February 2024 Treasurer’s Report– POSTPONE Until April Meeting

Membership and Data – Aaron Childs

  1. 1440 Overall Membership since January 2024. A(n) Increase/Decrease of 16 .
  2. 239 Non-Dues Paying Member. A(n) Increase/Decrease of 8 since February 2024.
  3. New server purchased/received and installed at Westfield State in their Server Farm. Windows Server 2019 along with SQL Server 2019 has been installed and all updates and patches have been applied. During the week of March 18th, migration of the data, web application, & scripts will occur on the new server following by testing to ensure the data integrity.
  4. Dues reimbursement for a former member at Fitchburg who transferred to another agency. Request for three pay periods of dues to be reimbursed totaling $102.09

Website – Julie Dunlap LePoer

  1. Normal Housekeeping update.
  2. Posted Minutes
  3. Pantheon still needing a Certificate or Letter of Determination (according to the IRS) – refers to being approved as a Non-Profit Organization

Health and Welfare Fund Report – Susan McNeil

  1. Continue working on possible Merger with MPS.

Committee Reports

  1. Budget Committee – Rosa Taormina & Seth Bean
    Motion 2024.03.15-02
    Motion to direct the Budget Committee to investigate the feasibility of establishing a state-wide administration position for the APA. (Includes J. Decatur & E.Vacha for this action of the Budget Committee)
    by: S. Bean 2nd by: B. Cahillane
    Vote: 8-0-2 Action: Motion Carries
  2. Employee Relations Working Group – Currently Inactive
  3. Professional Development – Edward Vacha
  4. Special Committees:
    • Committee on Legislative Action – Susan McNeil, Seth Bean
    • Committee on Health & Safety – Susan McNeil
    • Negotiations – Contract Committee
    • Employee Relations Committee (ERC) – Brian Cahillane, Jane Decatur, & Rosa Taormina

Old/New Business

  1. FAQ of the Month for the Website for April – Silent Bargaining Representatives
  2. Proposed E-Board Meeting Calendar Dates/Times for Academic Year 2023-2024 (Powers) (see below)
  3. Does your institution have “blackout dates” during which employees are not allowed to take time off? (Taormina)
  4. Deducted Dues Issues and APA/MTA/NEA (Bean)
    A member at MCLA that returned to their prior AFSCME position on 10.31.2022 has had both APA/MTA/NEA and AFSCME dues deducted from their pay until recently.
    The member wants to be reimbursed for the funds.
    With MTA Membership and they will only reimburse for 23-24 membership year at this point, so only dues since 7.1.2023.
    I would like to make the former member whole, but at the same time I don’t want the APA to take a bath on dues we don’t have.
    The former member is looking for reimbursement of $966.61.
    We can handle the APA portion of this without issue, but the majority of these funds we sent on to the MTA & NEA.
    Should we:
    • Reimburse the former member for the full funds and take whatever funds we can get from the MTA?
    • Reimburse the former member for the APA dues and the portion of dues that the MTA will reimburse?
    • Push back on the MCLA HR that they should refund the dues they deducted in error?
    • Other ideas?
      Motion 2024.03.15-03
      Motion to reimburse the former APA members the dues collected in error by the Human Resources Office at the respective campus – Fitchburg & MCLA.
      by: S. Bean 2nd by: S. McNeil
      Vote: 9-0-1 Action: Motion Carries

APA Meeting Schedule 2024-2025 (see #2 above)

EventTimeDateFormatLocation
APA Executive Board10:00amFriday, September 20, 2024RemoteZoom
APA Executive Board10:00amFriday, October 18, 2024RemoteZoom
APA Executive Board10:00amFriday, November 15, 2024HybridZoom/TBD
Annual State-wide Membership12:00pmFriday, November 15, 2024HybridZoom/TBD
APA Executive Board10:00amFriday, December 20, 2024HybridZoom
APA Executive Board10:00amFriday, January 17, 2025RemoteZoom
APA Executive Board10:00amFriday, February 21, 2025RemoteZoom
APA Executive Board10:00amFriday, March 21, 2025RemoteZoom
APA Executive Board10:00amFriday, April 18, 2025In-personZoom
APA Executive Board10:00amFriday, June 20, 2025TBD
APA Meeting Schedule 2024-2025

Institutional Issues

Information has been redacted.

Announcements

  • None

Adjournment

  1. Motion to Adjourn made at 1:39pm
    • by: S. McNeil 2nd by: E. Vacha
    • Vote: Unanimous Action: Motion Carries

Next APA Meetings

EventTimeDateFormatLocation
APA Executive Board10:00amFriday, April 19, 2024HybridWorcester/Zoom
APA Executive Board10:00amFriday, June 21, 2024In-PersonTBD
APA Meeting Schedule 2023-2024

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