Part-Timers Hope Raise Makes Grade Instructors Average About 40 Percent Of Full-Time Rate

Renee Goffinet jumped when she saw the full-page advertisement in a Spokane community college catalog.

By earning less than $19,000 per year and supporting her two children, Goffinet learned from the ad that she qualified for free college tuition under a welfare assistance program.

Trouble was, Goffinet was the teacher.

While lawmakers pour millions into scholarships and tax breaks to help needy students go to college, they have been slow to invest equal amounts in salaries for Washington’s 10,000 part-time teachers such as Goffinet who educate the students.

That may change this year if part-timers can persuade Olympia lawmakers in the critical days ahead that they need a raise.

“If I had to rely on this job, I’d be eligible for public assistance and my children could get free school lunches,” said Goffinet, a business instructor at Spokane Falls Community College who doubles as a real estate appraiser on weekends and off hours. “I’m up to my neck in bills.”

Part-timers are as close as ever this year to winning a major hike in wages from Olympia.

The Senate and House higher education committees this week approved bills that would set a goal to pay part-timers at least 91 percent of the rate paid to full-time teachers. Currently, part-timers earn about 40 percent of the full-time rate.

However, the proposal’s price tag is about $100 million. That could scare off members of the Legislature’s appropriations committees, whose members have until Monday to advance the bills they believe are most important for the coming two fiscal years: July 1, 1999, to June 30, 2001.

Members of the House Appropriations Committee are threatening to not hear the proposal, while the Senate Ways and Means Committee may seek a compromise to absorb part of the pay hikes now and delay the rest for the future.

“My read of a $98 million plan paid over one biennium is that it’s probably not going to happen,” said John Boesenberg, human resource director for the State Board for Community and Technical Colleges. “There’s other competing priorities and an improvement in salaries means something else would have to go.”

Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles, a Seattle Democrat who chairs the Senate Higher Education Committee and sits on Ways and Means, said she is trying to get as much money as possible for part-timers. Lawmakers have hacked $14 million off Gov. Gary Locke’s proposed Promise Scholarships and are considering other ways to free up money for the teachers, she said.

“It’s a real puzzle,” Kohl-Welles said.

Part-time community college teachers have been waiting years to win so-called “equal pay for equal work.” They’ve marched on the state Capitol, testified in hearings, filed lawsuits and sponsored Valentine’s Day rallies in Spokane to woo legislators.

Their efforts would largely help those who try to make community college teaching a full-time career. These part-timers teach two or three classes per quarter, often accepting duties on evenings, weekends or other times passed over by full-time teachers.

Part-time instructors have no job security and often do not qualify for retirement and medical benefits. They are employed one quarter at a time and can be released at the end of any quarter without explanation.

While they can earn $30 an hour during class time, they are paid nothing for their time to prepare for lectures, to grade papers and to assist students. Taking into account the unpaid hours, part-timers estimate they earn one third the hourly classroom rate.

“As the Legislature has expected community colleges to do more with less money, more and more students are being farmed out to part-time faculty,” said Ron Bell, chancellor of the Community Colleges of Spokane District 17. “The state system has become extremely dependent on them.”

Goffinet taught 12 classes in 1998, an overload for a part-timer, but equivalent to the load of many full-time instructors.

For her efforts, Goffinet earned $14,700 before taxes and deductions, according to a W-2 form she released. A full-time teacher would have earned $36,000 for the same effort, with some additional responsibilities.

“I’m so busy that all I have time to do is put out fires,” said Goffinet, who shuttles between home, campus and real estate sites in a Mazda 626 with no heat, a rusted fender and 200,000 miles. “I’d just like to have a day off, or a weekend off.”