In a split vote the governing board agreed to authorize the college superintendent to seek a consultant to examine the district’s salary schedule, despite opposition by faculty and classified employees. Trustees Tim Nader, Dr. Jean Roesch and Terri Valladolid voted in favor of Superintendent Denise Whittaker’s plan to research the market competitiveness of salaries, particularly related to vice presidents. Board members Norma Hernandez and Humberto Peraza voted against the expenditure.
“With the economic times that we’re in right now this does not seem like something that we need,” said Peraza. “It’s not something that I would feel comfortable moving forward with right now.” Whittaker said in order to fill vacant positions with quality people the salaries must be competitive with other colleges. But because of the plethora of mismatched paystubs, in the spirit of fairness, Whittaker said the entire campus must to be taken into account.
“Until we deal with the inconsistencies that currently exist in the salary schedules overall there was a reluctance to act on one salary schedule without looking at them all,” said Whittaker.
Information detailing competitive salaries, Whittaker said, is an essential part of planning the college’s future.
“Not having the data is going to hamper certain budget planning aspects and then we’re guessing,” she said.
Whittaker said the action will not be a comprehensive classification study which tend to cost tens of thousands of dollars. Smaller in scope, the study would only be to see where salaries fall compared to its neighbors, she said.
Valladolid said the $30,000 estimate was exaggerated.
“We need the information,” said Valladolid. “And with my experience with salary studies I don’t think it’s going to be that much.”
But Peraza said with triggers coming down from Sacramento and school services being pruned back, college salaries should take the back burner to the needs of the students.
“There are programs that were going to be cut that are just about the same price that we’re going to be using for this salary study which I don’t believe is urgently necessary at this point in time,” said Peraza. “I think we should be looking at programs that students need rather than salary studies which can be done further down the road. There’s good reason to do it, I just don’t think now is a good time to do it. It’s not the right time to do it.”
Nader said the campus community wants to have fair compensation and a consultant could help provide an accurate portrayal of what just compensation is on a comprehensive scale.
“I do think that we need to get this information,” said Nader. “I’ve heard from a number of people from the campus community, various faculty, staff and administrators, as the issue of vice presidential salaries were being bandied about, that VPs are not the only ones maybe who are not being paid to measure what might be found elsewhere. And if we’re going to be looking at one group or classification’s compensation, we really should be looking at it in the context of everybody and that seems fair to me and it seems important to have the information before we move forward on any salary adjustments if we can.”