Trustees Accept Faculty Pay Plan

Moving to shore up an anticipated budget shortfall that has grown to nearly $14 million, trustees of the Ventura County Community College District this week accepted a package of faculty concessions that could save the district more than $5.88 million.

“When you have the teachers union join in, it gives us a big boost in overcoming our deficit,” board President Art Hernandez said Thursday. “We didn’t really know where or how far to go until we had negotiated with the largest bargaining unit. Now we have what we need to work out how we’re going to balance our budget.”

The proposal by the Ventura County Federation of College Teachers avoids layoffs of the union’s 400 full-time members next fiscal year and protects its 1,200 part-timers until the spring 2004 semester.

Members are set to vote Wednesday on the plan, which includes one-year salary rollbacks, reductions in travel and stipends, and a $25,000 incentive for veteran instructors who retire by Aug. 11.

“I was thrilled to see that they came to the table with such a well thought-out” plan, board Vice President Cheryl Heitmann said.

“They are trying to make a very serious contribution,” she said.

Union President Larry Miller said that response from members has been overwhelmingly favorable to the plan and that informational meetings will be held at Moorpark, Oxnard and Ventura colleges Monday and Tuesday to review details.

Salary reductions, now estimated at 4.3%, will be calculated after the number of teachers planning to retire is known and once the state decides how much it will withhold from community colleges. The rollback would decrease if more than 30 take the incentive leave or if Sacramento is more generous than expected when it announces new funding estimates May 14.

The union agreed to cover its proportionate share of the final budget gap, so pay could drop further if the shortfall from Sacramento is greater than the nearly $8 million now expected. Gov. Gray Davis had earlier threatened to cut community college funds by 28% and about 4% for the University of California and California State University systems.

“We came up and said, ‘Here’s what’s fair,’ ” Miller said, stressing that a key element in the agreement calls for the district to extract proportionate cost savings from management to close the budget gap.

Work hours were reduced for an estimated 100 part-time teachers by such means as eliminating a four-week, supplemental summer school schedule, Miller said.