March 9, 2009

Dear President Lund,

On February 18, 2009 the AAP Executive council was asked to meet with you, Provost Jaeger and Associate Provost Witte to discuss the financial condition of the university. At that meeting (required by the Collective Bargaining contract) you informed AAP that due to deteriorating state finances EOU may announce a “declaration of financial exigency or of program reduction or elimination.”

In preparing this response, AAP has reviewed the spreadsheet provided to us and has reviewed salary information for the 92 administrative faculty and 11 upper administration positions to determine whether we agree with the administration’s position that EOU needs to prepare to cut faculty positions. Because we found that information provided to us by EOU contradicts with information we have obtained through other channels (for example, there are differences in the fund balances depicted in the EOU spreadsheet and that provided by OUS) and because there is not currently a state budget in place for the next biennium, AAP believes plans for preemptive layoffs are premature.

AAP does understand that if the 2009–2011 state budget requires EOU to layoff faculty, the administration will need to provide for timely notices as required by the CB contract, furthermore we believe it is reasonable for layoff notices to go out before the start of the new contract: September 16, 2009. Therefore AAP believes that any layoff notices should happen on September 15, 2009 and not earlier. AAP does not oppose planning for cuts, however we do object to notices of layoff happening before a final budget is known.

Finally, AAP believes there is absolutely no justification for declaring financial exigency at this time. In the latest OUS report, EOU’s fund balance was not projected to dip below 5% (unlike UO and SOU). We believe that you should formally state that exigency is no longer being considered at this time. AAP does not object to you making any potential announcement on Thursday, March 12, 2009. Making this sort of announcement on Friday the 13th may not be in the best interest of morale.

Sincerely,

Kerry Loewen, AAP President

cc: M. Jaeger, S. Witte, AAP executive council