Dear TT Faculty members,

The parties last met for a negotiation session on August 19, 2026 and are not scheduled to meet again until September 11th. When the administration only had counter proposals on Article XX: Intellectual Property and Article XXI: Distance Education (the lowest of low hanging fruit at this stage in negotiations), KSUFA’s team read a strongly worded Statement for the Record. Statements such as this, which are recorded in the official transcripts of the bargaining session, are the only means we have of communicating with the President and his cabinet—the individuals we believe to be responsible both for the specific proposals put on the table by the administration and for the administration’s overall approach to these negotiations.

In this Statement, we made clear that KSUFA will no longer tolerate the administration’s go-slow approach to collective bargaining. These negotiations officially began on June 15, 2025. We have been negotiating for over 15 months, during which time the administration has refused to devote more than four hours a month to meeting us at the table. The administration waited for over a year to make initial proposals on salary and medical benefits. Those initial proposals, made on June 17, 2026, are the only move that the administration has made on salary and medical benefits to date. KSUFA made its initial proposal on Article XXIV: Duration and Negotiations Procedure on September 24, 2025. The administration has yet to make an initial proposal on Article XXIV.

In the August 19th Statement, we quoted from previous Statements for the Record designed to send a clear signal that KSUFA’s bargaining team was losing confidence in the ability of the President and his cabinet to conduct these negotiations in a manner that showed respect for the Faculty and that would timely result in an Agreement to the mutual benefit of the University and its Faculty. We noted for the record that the President and his cabinet either weren’t listening to these Statements or simply didn’t care. We opined that we had little hope that they would listen to or care about the August 19 Statement for the Record either.

Even so, we made as clear as we could that KSUFA expects the University to make an initial proposal on Article XXIV: Duration and Negotiation Procedure at the next bargaining session (currently scheduled for September 11, 2026). If the University fails to do so—having had well over a year in which to do so—we will assume that the University is proposing existing language for that Article. We also made clear that, if we haven’t reached a tentative agreement on a complete contract by the end of September, KSUFA will declare impasse. (Declaring impasse will trigger the parties’ mutually agreed upon dispute resolution process involving Federal mediation followed by Fact Finding overseen by the State Employee Relations Board.)

In an inauspicious move, the administration responded to our clearly stated position by making itself available for a mere four hours of bargaining in September.  

While it is possible that the administration will use these four hours (spread out over sessions on September 11th and 25th) to: 

i) make an initial proposal on Article XXIV, 

ii) make reasonable proposals for salary and medical benefits, and

iii) retract the union and Faculty Senate busting provisions it has proposed over several Articles, 

KSUFA is not optimistic that the administration has either the inclination or the ability to do so.

If we are forced to declare impasse at the end of September, KSUFA will begin circulating a petition calling on Faculty Senate to conduct a vote by all full-time faculty of No Confidence in the President and his cabinet. The circulation of such a petition at a time deemed appropriate by our bargaining team was authorized by the Executive Committee and Council of the TT-unit on August 21st. Although the FTNTT-unit is only at the beginning stages of their negotiations, the Executive Committee and Council of the FTNTT-unit endorsed the circulation of the petition at their meetings on August 28th.

Although the MOU extending the CBA expired on December 31, 2025, the provisions of the CBA will remain in full force and effect until a successor contract is ratified.

If you have any questions or concerns about negotiations, please don’t hesitate to contact me (dsmith@ksufa.org).

Sincerely,

Deborah Smith

President, KSUFA

Chief Negotiator, TT-Unit