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The Community College of Philadelphia ia the largest public higher education institution in the city of Philadelphia. Founded in 1965, it serves more than 20,000 students each year in its undergraduate, continuing education and career development programs.

One union — the Faculty and Staff Federation of the Community College of Philadelphia (American Federation of Teachers Local 2026) — bargains on behalf of all who are employed at the College through its three bargaining units (one representing full-time faculty, another part-time faculty and visiting lecturers, and the third representing the administrative and support staff). Since the old contracts expired last August, the union has been bargaining in good faith with the College administration, but it has come to the conclusion that a strike will be needed to obtain fair contracts for each unit.

A Brookings Institution report in 2010 called community colleges "America's forgotten institutions of higher education." I — a former partner of a full-time CCP faculty member — call them "the workhorses and the Rodney Dangerfields of American higher education." On Wednesday, February 26th, representatives of AFT 2026 will join us to explain the role community colleges play in educating America and Philadelphia, the issues at stake in the contract negotiations, and why they now feel a strike — the first since 2007 if it proceeds — is necessary.

—Sandy Smith, Board of Governors