College Managers Get 5.1% Pay Hike

Trustees of the county’s three community colleges have approved a rare 5.1% pay increase for managers and their secretaries, matching a raise for instructors that was agreed upon earlier this month.

With the exception of a 1% increase granted to all employees in the 1994-95 academic year, the raise is the first the staffers have seen since 1991-92. “I am elated,” said Irene Pinkard, president of the district’s association of college managers. “We are very pleased that they saw fit to give us this raise.”

Neither employee class--the managers nor a small group that includes mainly secretaries--has its own bargaining unit.

Instead, they rely on the discretion of the Ventura County Community College District Board of Trustees to determine their pay increase each year.

After the teachers union and district officials agreed on a 5.1% increase earlier this month, trustees agreed at Tuesday’s board meeting that college managers deserve the same, said trustee Allan Jacobs.

Increased state funding and an agreement that for the first time linked faculty raises to the district’s financial outlook made the raises possible, officials said.

Representatives of the district’s non-teaching staff--which are still in salary negotiations with the district--are hoping to reap the same benefits.

“We would like to have a fair raise,” Leanne Colvin, president of the service employees union, told the board. “We have been waiting for almost a year . . . and you just gave two other groups raises.”