Community Colleges May Offer Early Retirement

The Los Angeles Community College District is nearing agreement with union officials on an early-retirement package that could spur one of the district’s largest faculty shake-ups in years, with estimates that up to 20% of its full-time instructors might retire.

If enough of the district’s older full-time teachers opt for the incentive, officials said the result would be an opportunity to reinvigorate academic programs and diversify its faculty through the mass replacement hiring that would occur. At present, about 70% of the full-time faculty is white, even though the district’s college-age population is about 70% minority.

The district also expects to save money through the deal. The theory is that the cost of providing the bonus to retiring faculty members would be more than offset by the salary savings from bringing in new instructors at lower pay scales because of their lesser experience.

“It’s an opportunity for us to do a restructuring and yet also give employees who have spent a long time in this district a better opportunity to retire,” said Chancellor Neil Yoneji, who oversees the district’s nine campuses and nearly 104,000 students.

Under the proposal being discussed, the incentive would be offered to about 700 of the district’s more than 1,500 full-time instructors--all those age 55 and older. Faculty union President Leon Marzillier estimated that 200 to 300 of those teachers might accept the offer.

The district has an unusually large share of older faculty because of the boom in local hiring that occurred in the 1960s and early 1970s. Two-thirds of the district’s full-time faculty are age 50 or older, and more than one-quarter are age 60 or older, according to statistics provided by Marzillier.

One of those considering the deal is Richard Wright. At age 82, Wright is the district’s oldest full-time instructor, according to the teachers union.

“Most of my friends are retired, and I’m thinking about joining them,” said Wright, who’s taught business administration for 31 years at Valley College in Van Nuys.

“It’s a momentous decision to be made,” added Sid Elman, a 33-year political science instructor at Pierce College in Woodland Hills, who said he’s still mulling the proposal. “When people used to ask why I didn’t retire, I’d say teaching is therapy. It keeps me going,” Elman said.

Originally, district officials had been aiming to offer the retirement package immediately, with the retirements to take effect at the end of the fall semester. But now, officials said the time frame has been delayed so that any retirements would take effect at the end of the school year.

Under the proposal, faculty members would get an extra 7% of their final basic salary in an annual lifetime annuity in addition to their regular pension benefit. An earlier proposal was 4%. But for the program to proceed, at least 125 faculty members must participate.

At present, a top-scale faculty member in the district without a doctorate earns a salary of about $50,550, union officials said. Normally, such a person retiring with 30 years experience would get a 60% pension, or about $30,330 a year. The incentive would add more than $3,500 a year to that amount.

District officials and the district’s faculty union, the American Federation of Teachers College Guild, have been negotiating the package in recent weeks. Some officials said they expect a deal to be brought to the district’s Board of Trustees in the near future.

Yoneji agreed a deal appears likely, but was reluctant to say when it might be presented to the board. If enacted, the proposal then would be formally offered to eligible faculty members. And if enough agreed to participate, then the package would proceed.

District officials, who have been struggling with declining enrollments and battered finances in recent years, also reportedly are considering offering a similar package to senior administrators and staff members. But it likely would come after the faculty package.

The district has offered several retirement incentives over the past decade, most recently a small one several years ago and a larger one about five years ago, officials said. The latest offer could produce the largest number of retirements if it attracts as many participants as expected.

Under the latest proposal, the district is promising to replace at least three-quarters of the retiring full-time instructors with new full-time teachers within an 18-month period. The open slots could be left vacant or filled with part-time instructors.

The new hiring also would provide an opportunity to restructure outdated academic programs and shift faculty resources to meet current areas of student demand such as English as a second language classes. Absent retirements, that is difficult because tenured faculty cannot easily be shifted to other disciplines.