Community College Leaders Get 3 Percent Raises 125 Deans, Professionals, Administrators Granted Hikes

While several Inland Northwest colleges and universities scramble to replace presidents, Community Colleges of Spokane on Tuesday awarded a pay raise to help retain top employees.

The 3 percent pay hike for 125 administrators, deans and other professionals was authorized earlier this year by the state Legislature. For all but the chief executive officer, it was the first raise since July 1995.

The raises were approved by the five-person board of trustees, which governs Spokane Falls Community College, Spokane Community College and the Institute for Extended Learning.

The salary of chief executive Terrance Brown rose from $109,000 to $112,300 a year. He earned $106,000 in 1995, a salary that trustees raised the following year, for a combined 6 percent hike over two years.

The board boosted the salaries of presidents James Williams of SCC and Vern Loland of Spokane Falls from $96,000 to $98,900.

Brown asked trustees to consider a larger pay increase for the presidents in the future to keep pace with other community colleges in Washington that have hired presidents at salaries exceeding $105,000.

In other action, the board pressed officials to hire more minorities, saying that is one of the most effective ways to lure students of color.

“If you have a reputation for not being friendly to people who are different, you won’t get them to come to our school,” trustee Roberta Greene said, holding up an annual employment hiring report.

Greene and others reacted to a snap-shot of the 922 full-time employees of the district, which showed tiny improvement in the percentage of minority workers during the past 12 months.

A total of 84 minority employees, or 9.1 percent of the work force, were on the payroll June 30, compared with 77, or 8.4 percent of the colleges’ 920 employees on May 1, 1996.

The challenge, Brown said, is finding a way to retain minority faculty members. They are leaving the staff as fast as new instructors of color can be hired.

Brown blamed the difficulty hiring and keeping minority employees on Spokane’s lack of cultural diversity, a chilly attitude toward minorities and North Idaho’s reputation as a refuge for racists.

The number of teaching faculty is significantly below the state average, according to a 1996 document distributed by Geoffrey Eng, district director of affirmative action.

Fewer than 6 percent of the district’s faculty are minorities, compared with 9.3 percent statewide, according to the report.

, DataTimes