BY CHERI-ANN INOUYE
Fueled by an early retirement offer from the college, more than two dozen senior faculty and staff will retire at the end of this academic year on June 30. It is one of the larger retirement cohorts in recent years.
Beverly DeLara is the longest-serving of the group at 37 years, followed by Mary Jo Horvath and Margarita Andrade-Robledo with 33 years. Diane Edwards and Julieta Hatz both compiled 30 years of service.
Diana Avila, Sylvia Banda-Ramirez, Adam Cato, George Essex, Michael Gargano and Edmund Guerrero all completed 26 years of service.
Serving 20 years or more are Pila Aleman-Taijeron, Bruce Boman, Carmen Cortez, Josefina Flores, Al Garrett, Nora Guido and Richard Hettich.
Retirees with 11-18 years of service include Dr. Clarence Amaral, Felipe Ballon,Margarita Barrios,Joyce Bayles, Johnny Blankenship, Jose Ibarra, Lillian Leopold and Joel Levine.
Several of the retirees were eligible for a Supplemental Early Retirement Plan (SERP), which pays up to 80 percent of a year’s salary upon retirement. The SERP is paid in installments over a period of eight years. Sometimes a SERP allows an employee to retire a year early by offset early retirement costs and purchases of service time. Southwestern College can save sizable amounts of salary payments if enough of the higher-paid senior employees leave the district and are replaced by younger, lower salaried personnel.
Faculty members and administrators acknowledge that a SERP means tradeoffs. A large retirement group often means sizable losses of experience and institutional memory, as well as a year or more of a retired professor’s classes taught by several part time instructors. On the plus side, the college can save millions in salary over time and has the opportunity to reassess the type of faculty the college requires. Some argue that it also brings a new energy to the faculty and staff.
SERPs are only offered periodically and only pencil out if enough senior employees accept them. Many eligible faculty declined their SERP offers and decided to continue their teaching careers.