Deans’ Morale Plummets as Contract Talks Continue

The fate of the Los Angeles Community College District decentralization plan rests largely on the backs 55 of the most demoralized and downtrodden employees in the system--the campus deans--many of whom are threatening to return to teaching jobs that pay more for less work.

Such an action could cripple a reform plan based on the premise that granting more authority to individual colleges will rejuvenate the troubled nine-campus district. Three of the colleges--Mission, Pierce and Valley--are in the San Fernando Valley.

It’s the deans themselves who need a shot in the arm, they say. Their complaints, which led them to join the Teamsters Union a few years ago, are based on too little money and respect and too heavy workloads.

The Board of Trustees of the college district meets today. Negotiation of the administrators’ contract is a regular item on the trustees’ closed-session agenda, but there has been no apparent progress on the issue.

At the public part of the meetings, deans have repeatedly beseeched the board for a raise so they would again earn more than the faculty members who work under them. They are especially rankled by the better deal for faculty members who do administrative work on special assignment.

The deans’ Teamsters local has filed a grievance over the special assignments, which could put them into a showdown with the powerful instructors’ union--the American Federation of Teachers Faculty Guild.

The faculty have the opportunity to work on such special assignments, the deans say, because the number of jobs for the deans has been systematically cut for more than a decade, but the work has grown. An expensive “shadow administration” has evolved, employing faculty members as replacements, said Charles Bossler, the deans’ union president.

“The faculty was very happy to rush into that gap,” said Bossler, associate dean at Harbor College. “They work six hours a day and make about $10,000 to $12,000 more [per year] than we do.”

David Fisher, a dean at East Los Angeles College, is one example. He said he would earn about $15,000 more annually if he gave up his job as dean of academic affairs and went back to being a faculty department head.

“I can’t afford to stay here anymore,” Fisher said. “There’s an inequity.”

Faculty union leader John McDowell defended the practice of using faculty members in special administrative assignments, mostly to run such programs as welfare-to-work. He said teachers are closer to students and thus better suited for the jobs than permanent administrators.

“Talk about plum jobs,” McDowell said. “Sitting in offices are where administrators are.”

The board’s response to their complaints has ranged from stony to insulting, say the deans, who are in essence the middle managers of the district.

“They are what makes the machinery go,” said Valley College President Tyree Wieder.

Although the rest of the 5,900 district employees won raises--some hefty--in the last few years, the board has offered the administrators not a cent.

Some suggest the board’s apparent reluctance stems from a fear of adverse publicity if the fiscally imperiled district raised wages--even those of the 55 people who could make or break its reform plan.

But the administrators suffered from a diminution of clout long before the current fiscal crisis. Systematic cuts have been made in their ranks and the teachers union routinely blames bureaucrats for the district’s malaise.

Under board orders, the number of administrators on each campus was cut to between eight and 12, depending on the size of the school. The administrators’ group says the district has one of the lowest ratios of administrators per student in the state--and morale to match.

A report provided by the district last year identified 100 “pseudo administrators,” who run special programs at a cost of $300,000 a year over their regular teaching pay, Bossler said. The salary increase sought by the deans’ union is estimated to cost $380,000 the first year.

Mindful of new campus responsibilities that go with the coming decentralization, the college presidents are among those speaking up for the administrators’ raises.

Wieder said it is clear that the specially assigned teachers are doing administrators’ work at higher pay. She and others say the system has resulted in an inability to attract good faculty members to administrative jobs.

During a recent search for an academic dean, Wieder recalled inviting faculty members with good leadership potential to apply. “They said, ‘Why would I want to do that? Why would I want to work more hours and make less money?’ ”

Board Vice President Gloria Romero says the district’s administrators are “shabbily paid. . . . I would understand if someone would file a suit for comparable worth.”

Romero said the rigid board rules about the number of administrators per campus should be changed and is inconsistent with the decentralization policy, which would leave that decision to the college presidents--as long as they can pay for those they hire.

A majority of the board disagrees, Romero said.

Faculty union President Carl Friedlander said he is sympathetic to the deans’ salary requests because they are underpaid compared with those in other districts.

But Bossler said the faculty union is working against the deans behind the scenes. He said two high-ranking faculty union officials, whom he would not identify, informed him the deans won’t get a raise unless they drop their grievance about special assignments for teachers.

“They said, ‘Drop the grievance and we’ll get you a good raise,’ ” Bossler said.

McDowell and Friedlander said they didn’t make the comment and, in any case, have no authority over the matter.

“If anybody said that, it was strictly facetious or off the cuff,” McDowell said.