SMC faculty walk out on college president
Santa Monica College faculty staged a walkout during a scheduled teachers-only training day in protest of the Board of Trustee’s decision to eliminate more than 70 jobs to address SMC’s budget crisis.
On March 17, as President and Superintendent Kathryn Jeffery approached the podium inside the Corsair Gym to deliver a speech for Departmental Flex Day, almost half of the room stood up and silently left.
“I’m here in support of all our classified staff who have been given notices that they’re being laid off,” said Hannah Nelson, a photography professor at SMC who participated in the protest. “We really cannot operate properly without them.”
“We’re talking about (eliminating) the staff groups that are some of the lowest paid employees at our school to try and fix a huge budget deficit, and these notices were sent out before considering administrative positions for layoffs and reductions,” Nelson said.
According to emails obtained by the Corsair, some SMC employees received notice of their possible release on Jan. 29. The trustees voted to send March 15 layoff notices to the equivalent of 57 classified — or non-academic — jobs on Feb. 3.
In addition to the classified employees, four administrative positions and 13 vacant jobs were listed for elimination. At the Feb. 3 meeting, board chair Dr. Sion Roy amended both items to include all classified managers and academic administrators to the list of people receiving layoff notices.
Roy said that he does not necessarily intend to eliminate all these positions but wants to allow the college to consider it while restructuring in the coming months.
In September 2025, SMC Faculty Association president Peter Morse posted a video with recommendations for addressing the budget crisis, which he said can be accomplished without cuts to student services and instructional hours. Morse suggested downsizing management expenditures by 10% over two years, reducing operating costs at the Malibu Campus by $1 million, and enrolling in a state-funded health plan for part-time faculty.
He also proposed that the district allow faculty to bank their pay for a later date and continue the practice of not replacing full-time employees who retire. These five budgetary actions combined would save the college approximately $24,703,321 over a three-year period, Morse said.
“The Board of Trustees does have options that they can direct the administration to engage over… that do not directly affect students or faculty in providing the direct services to students that we know our students are here for,” Morse said in the video.
Cindy Ordaz, president of the California School Employees Association, which represents classified staff, said that she was unaware that the faculty organized a walkout, but that their actions are “reflections of the forms of communication.”
“People want honesty; they want truth, especially in difficult moments. That’s the time to talk,” Ordaz said. She added that bulletins and emails are inadequate.
Multiple academic administrators and classified managers said they were notified that faculty had organized a walkout in advance. Lea Hald, a psychology professor at SMC and organizer for the event, said some department heads called faculty they thought would participate in the protest on Monday to verify the claim.
The Corsair reached out to Jeffery for an interview, but she said to refer to her speech.
“Walking out is their right to do so; staying here is your right to do so. What I want to say to you is, I respect both positions,” Jeffery said.
“What I want you to know is that what we're dealing with in this moment is getting each and every one of us in different ways. It’s getting each and every one of us in ways that we don’t fully comprehend. But nonetheless, we are here. We are here in this moment, and trying to navigate the space is what we have to try to figure out together.”