Saddleback College Teachers Approve Contract

By a vote of 123 to 18, Saddleback College’s full-time teachers on Monday approved a new contract that will give them an 8.5% pay raise retroactive to last August.

There are 236 full-time teachers in the community college, which has campuses in Mission Viejo and Irvine. The contract also covers the college’s 600 part-time teachers.

Only the members of the teachers’ union, the Saddleback College Faculty Assn., could vote on the proposal. A union official said the association has 180 members who are full-time teachers and 40 members who are part-time faculty.

“I don’t think it was the greatest contract,” said Robert Kopfstein, political action chairman for the teachers’ union. “There were too many (concessions) on minor things.”

Recall Effort to Continue

Despite the overwhelming approval of the agreement, Kopfstein said the union will continue to seek the recall of three college district trustees. The union has been seeking the recall in an effort to force the ouster of Chancellor Larry Stevens.

The college’s 309 non-teaching employees and 67 administrators and managers had previously accepted 8.5% cost-of-living offers from the Saddleback Community College District.

Chancellor Stevens said that the pay hike keeps Saddleback’s teachers the best paid among California’s 70 community college districts. But Stevens said the pay hikes, including the ones for the administrative staff, will put the college about $1.5 million in the red this year unless additional money is forthcoming from the state.

William Schreiber, executive assistant to Stevens, said that under the new contract, teacher salaries will range from $20,997 to $46,837 a year, depending on teaching experience and academic background.

Average Salary $40,000

With the pay raise, Schreiber said, the average salary will be about $40,000 a year. He said the average is so high because many of Saddleback’s teachers have many years of teaching experience.

Among the items in the new contract is a limit on how much “overload,” or overtime, teaching a faculty member may perform. There has previously been no limit to the extra units a faculty member could teach over the normal 15-unit load. The new contract limits to nine the number of extra units a teacher may assume.

Stevens and the board of trustees had sought a limit on such overtime teaching, saying it diminished the quality of education when a teacher tried to do too much.

But Sharon MacMillan, president of the faculty association, said that in reality the college has pushed overtime on the teachers. “It’s a cheap way of getting more classes since the college hasn’t had to hire teachers and pay extra benefits,” she said.

MacMillan said that while the prolonged contract dispute has been a thorn to the faculty, the essence of their unhappiness is with Stevens. The faculty has twice voted “no confidence” in him, she said.