OAKLAND – The Peralta Community College District is requiring employees and district trustees to disclose outside sources of income, after the Board of Trustees unanimously approved two updated conflict of interest policies.
Trustees approved an updated Administrative Procedure (AP) during their Dec. 9, 2025 meeting, and an updated Board Policy (BP) at their last regular meeting on March 10.
Board Policies are “statements or intent/guidelines” for Peralta administrators to consider in the “development and implementation of regulations and procedures,” whereas Administrative Procedures are “statements of regulations, rules, and practices” that implement Board Procedures.
The text of the updated AP requires that “all employees must disclose any outside employment” to the district’s human resources department “in order to avoid perceived or actual conflicts of interest that may arise.”
The requirement applies to any district employees in decision-making roles, including faculty and classified workers.
While both items passed without any public discussion at the trustee meetings, the disclosure requirement had previously prompted pushback during a Nov. 21, 2025 meeting of the district’s Planning and Budget Committee.
A controversial proposal
The majority of the committee’s debate revolved around a short paragraph requiring the disclosure of employees’ outside income sources.
During the meeting, Chancellor Tammeil Gilkerson said the requirement followed an “upswell” of feedback “from every constituency group” related to concerns about district employees with outside jobs that potentially conflict with their duties at Peralta.
While some committee members endorsed the change, others believed the requirement was a violation of privacy.
“We’re public employees,” Matt Freeman, a non-voting member of the committee and political science instructor at Berkeley City College, in response to privacy concerns, said. “Nothing we do is private.”
Freeman said that informing the district of outside income sources not only provides Peralta employees with an “element of accountability” to the public, but also shields them from the “accusation” of misconduct, should their interests be questioned in the future.
“It’s no one’s business what I do after hours,” Service Employees International Union 1021 President Richard Thoele, who represents Peralta’s classified employee union, responded later in the meeting.
Thoele called for the committee to remove the new requirement from the updated policy completely.
“What if I’m working on the weekends? […] What if I’m working under the table?” he asked. “I know we’re public employees, but that’s when we’re on-duty.”
The committee struck a compromise, removing language that would have required the district to approve of outside work, and moved the policies forward for trustee review – albeit with a mixed vote.
What are public institutions required to do?
The conflict of interest policies reference state and federal laws that require all public employees to avoid engaging in activities that conflict with their work.
California educational code specifically grants public institutions, like community colleges, the ability to define and prohibit “outside activities.” That includes employment which is “inconsistent with, incompatible to, or in conflict with” a public employee’s job duties.
Just north of Peralta, the Contra Costa Community College District (4CD) has a similar stipulation in its policies. 4CD’s conflict of interest BP outlines the district’s ability to both prohibit outside work, and to compel employees to disclose the details of their outside work, should administrators have “reason to believe the outside employment may be inconsistent, incompatible, or conflicting with, or inimical” to an employee’s duties.
After the March 10 trustee meeting, Peralta Deputy Chancellor and Chief Operating Officer Greg Nelson told The Citizen that the new policy does not prohibit outside work. He said he’s tried to address questions and misconceptions around the disclosure requirement.
“The goal was not to be punitive, but that the people that work here focus on the students,” he said.
Nelson added that the district’s legal team drafted the changes to the policies, which had been “in the pipeline” for over a year. They were last revised in 2017.
Managing Editor Ivan Saravia contributed reporting.
Editor’s note: Eleni Gastis, the faculty advisor for The Citizen, is a member of the Planning and Budget Committee.
