Board Approves Budget with $8.9 million increase in unrestricted General Fund revenues! BUT...Budget includes no raise for faculty! We have a better idea

The Budget approved by the Trustees in September shows a huge increase in revenues,and, according to the notes (p. 47 of "Board Agenda), anticipates "increased revenues pending State approval." This would seem to be good news, but the District doesn't want to spend the money on faculty.

Where is the money going? You can see (below) where it is budgeted. But does the District really intend to hire 90-100 more classified people? Do they really intend to give us 38% more supplies? Or have they just padded areas to keep money out of the salary budget?

If the whole increase ($8,997,974 in the unrestricted general fund) were spent on faculty salaries (at a $350,000 cost per percentage point), we'd be asking for a 25.7% raise!

But we're NOT asking for it all to be spent on salaries. We've determined a fair share portion for faculty, based on the more conservative combined general fund budget. We've also allowed for costs of important priorities-part-time office hours, domestic partner health benefits, department chair and coordinator improvements, selected load improvements, increased FA reassigned time, and fairness fixes to include intersession work for part-time step movement and health plan qualification.

What's left of the fair share portion, we've rounded down to calculate our request: a 6% across-the-board salary increase. [Note: the 6% you see under "faculty" below is NOT this 6%. The District budget increase is the cost of all the new faculty, plus all the step and group movement increases. Even if the percentage is doubled it won't come close to the increases in the other personnel areas].

Just so you know--our original request was also fairness based: a formula, patterned on salary formulas approved by fact-finding arbitrators: COLA plus 50% of growth money, with adjustments. We still think this is a good idea for years 2 and 3 of the contract.

Even though Dr. Robertson's last raise was 11%, the managers are being job-shifted into bigger salaries, the classified staff are getting a 4.5% increase in January, and we've fallen from 5th place in the state to 19th place in the last 8 years, the District budgeted nothing for us, and has offered only 3% for this year, with no money allocated to any other requests.

Take a look for yourself at this year's budget. I have calculated the amounts by which each of these categories have been increased for 98-99, over last year's actual expenditure, and have shown those amounts in a change column.

--Teri Bernstein