Faculty pay exemption sought
Times-Standard 1/12/07
Last year, the college was in violation of what is called “the 50 percent rule,” said acting President Jeff Bobbitt. The law requires community colleges to spend 50 percent of their budgets on instruction. This includes faculty, instructional aides and lab assistants, he said.
Violating the law means getting financially penalized by the state. But College of the Redwoods has asked for an exemption from that penalty. Bobbitt said the college expects to hear in March whether it gets the exemption.
The Academic Senate adopted a resolution in November stating it was in support of the application for the exemption, “with reservation.”
”In the absence of significant evidence that a concrete plan by the (Redwoods Community College) District has been undertaken to make substantial changes to insure that the 50 percent obligation will be met in the future, the Academic Senate will object to an additional application for exemption for 2006-2007,” the resolution states.
Academic Senate Co-President Carol Mathews, in a brief phone interview Thursday, said College of the Redwoods should apply for the exemption to avoid financial penalties, but that the language of the resolution is “an acknowledgment that we have to fix the problem.”
”They need to make the changes so that we meet the 50 percent requirement,” Mathews said. “And we're working on that.”
Bobbitt said College of the Redwoods spent around 48.5 percent of its budget on instruction in the 2005-2006 school year, a shortfall of about $450,000. That means the state can deduct $450,000 from future funding if the exemption isn't granted, he said.
Bobbitt said two main factors were responsible for the failure to comply with the law.
First, shrinking enrollment means College of the Redwoods has reduced its part-time faculty, he said. Second, over the last few years College of the Redwoods has assigned more faculty than in the past to a “fairly substantial number of new special projects.” Faculty hours “reassigned” to grant-funded projects or as department heads aren't counted as instructional time, he said.
”Over the last three years we had not paid as close attention to that as we should have,” Bobbitt said.
At Tuesday's Board of Trustees meeting, several trustees asked Bobbitt for more information on what's known as “reassigned time.” He said more and more faculty over the last few years have been assigned to non-teaching projects.