College District Approves Faculty Retirement Plan : Education: Incentives are aimed at tenured instructors age 55 and over. The purpose is to save money, diversify staff.

In a move aimed at revitalizing academic programs and saving money, trustees of the Los Angeles Community College District voted Monday to offer faculty members an early-retirement package that could produce one of the district’s largest shake-ups in years.

Under the plan adopted by a 5-0 vote, nearly half of the district’s 1,683 tenured faculty members--those 55 or older--would be eligible for early-retirement incentives. District officials said up to 300 teachers, about 18% of the total, might accept the offer.

The nine-campus, 101,000-student district has suffered financially in recent years in part because of declining enrollment. The district also has an usually large proportion of older faculty members because of the growth that occurred in the 1960s and early 1970s.

District officials expect to save money under the plan. The cost of providing the retirement bonus to departing faculty members would be more than offset by the salary savings from replacing veteran, top-pay-scale instructors with younger, lower-paid teachers.

Another goal is to diversify the ethnic makeup of the full-time faculty, which is about 70% white although the district’s students are 75% minority. And district officials hope the new faculty will permit the district to update and reorder its class offerings.

The outcome of the retirement proposal, however, won’t be known for some months. District teachers have one period to apply this fall and another period that will close near the end of the spring semester. The district has set a minimum of 150 retirement applications in order to put the program into practice.

District officials said 43% of the district’s full-time, tenured instructors--719 of 1,683--are 55 or older and thus eligible for the incentive. At present, a top-scale faculty member without a doctorate earns an annual salary of about $50,550.

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Under the plan, faculty members taking early retirement would be paid an extra 7% of their final basic salary annually in a lifetime annuity. For an instructor age 60 with 30 years of experience, that would add about $3,500 a year to an annual pension of about $30,330.

Part of the district’s savings would come from a provision that requires the replacement of only 75% of the retiring full-time faculty within an 18-month period. The other 25% of the positions could remain vacant or be partially or entirely filled with less expensive part-time instructors.

The district could save about $20 million over 10 years, most of that in years five through 10, if 165 teachers retired and the district replaced only about 12.5% with part-timers and left the same percentage of positions vacant, said Robert Standen, vice chancellor for human resources.

Among the campuses, according to district records, Harbor College in Wilmington has the largest share of faculty--49%--that are 55 or older. Close behind are Valley College in Van Nuys (48%) and Pierce College in Woodland Hills (46%).

In terms of absolute numbers, Pierce and Valley colleges, among the district’s largest campuses in enrollment, have the greatest number of faculty eligible for the incentive, 127 of 279 at Pierce and 114 of 236 at Valley, according to district records.

Mission College in Sylmar, the district’s youngest campus, founded in 1975, has the smallest share (33%) of faculty eligible for the early retirement, 28 of 85 instructors. West Los Angeles College also has a younger group, with only 37%, or 49 of its 134 instructors, eligible.