Santa Barbara City College faculty, staff furious over president’s pay raise

Amid massive drops in student enrollment and erratic state funding, Santa Barbara City College has been mired in a contentious dispute over potential layoffs while giving a salary increase to its highest paid employee.

Superintendent-President Erika Endrijonas, who joined SBCC in 2023, negotiated a new contract that bumped her $336,000 starting salary by 7% over three years. With a “longevity bonus” she also was awarded, she now earns $359,868 annually. If she continues to receive positive evaluations, she will earn $377,775 annually starting in July 2027.

Yet faculty and staff have received no raises in the last two years. And based on the district’s current financial proposals, they may get no increases for the next two. SBCC faculty salaries are already below the statewide median for community colleges.

“My mom raised me to know right from wrong and to speak up,” Jamie Campbell, an associate math professor, said at an April SBCC Board of Trustee meeting discussing Endrijonas’ raise.

“For the board to give — or the CEO of an organization to accept — a significant raise of 12.5% during a time of a budget crisis, no cost-of-living increases for anyone else, and threats of layoffs and pay cuts is simply wrong. It is immoral,” Campbell said.

At the same time, the college was pushing to lay off four technology workers.

Parker Shankin-Clarke, a computer science lab teaching assistant and treasurer for the SBCC chapter of the California School Employees Association, the union representing staff, said the CSEA was never brought into any conversations about potential layoffs.

This created “a general perception of the administration as a dictatorship rather than a body based on collaboration and feedback due to the lack of transparency on decision-making,” he told the News-Press.

After public comments grew acrimonious at recent trustees meetings, the SBCC student newspaper, The Channels, took the unusual step of publishing an editorial castigating the board over a lack of transparency and trust.

“The actions presented are extremely questionable and unethical,” The Channels editors wrote in a May 15 editorial. “As students, we feel frustrated, embarrassed and skeptical of the board’s leadership.”

Both Endrijonas and Board of Trustees President Jonathan Abboud said the college’s actions have been aboveboard. And while acknowledging a need for better communication, they maintain that SBCC needs to change in sometimes painful ways. 

The president’s contract

Following years of turnover in the superintendent-president’s office, SBCC hired Endrijonas in August 2023. A former dean at the college, she returned after serving as president at Los Angeles Valley College and Pasadena City College.

Endrijonas was given a two-year contract and a $336,000 annual salary, with a provision that the board “retains the right to increase her salary upon completion of a satisfactory annual evaluation.”

It’s like they are doing all they can to give her a raise and not make it look like they’re giving her a raise.

Jamie Campbell, associate Math Professor

In October 2024, after Endrijonas’ annual evaluation, the board extended her contract and built in a 5% longevity increment.

The language of that contract amendment is at the core of the current salary controversy.

The new contract gave Endrijonas the same longevity eligibility as other employee bargaining groups after she “has served the District for ten (10) years from the beginning of her term … as Superintendent/President.”

Under that language, Endrijonas would have been entitled to a 5% longevity bump in August 2033. 

Instead, her pay raise — an additional $16,800 annually — went into effect that same month.

One year later, in October 2025, the board extended Endrijonas’ contract for three years, adding three step raises totaling 7%: 2% in 2025-26, 2.5% in 2026-27 and 2.5% in 2027-28.

It was the first time step increases have been included in an SBCC president’s contract.

In the latest contract, the timing of Endrijonas’ longevity bonus also changed. Instead of being eligible for the boost after 10 years in the superintendent-president role, she would need only “a total of 10 years with the District” to receive the increase.

That meant Endrijonas’ previous nine years as an SBCC dean — completed a decade earlier — would be counted toward her longevity.

“That’s when we began asking questions,” Cornelia Alsheimer, a professor of accounting, told the News-Press. Alsheimer and Campbell are officers with the Faculty Association, the collective bargaining unit for the college’s instructors and counselors.

“And we never got satisfactory answers to why she got a raise in the first year when her first contract amendment clearly stated she had to be superintendent-president for 10 years.

“Then, a year after she gets the 5%, they change the language in her contract to try to make legal what they did a year ago,” Campbell said. “It’s like they are doing all they can to give her a raise and not make it look like they’re giving her a raise.”

Both the faculty and staff  unions argued that the employee groups referenced in Endrijonas’ contract are not entitled to the benefits she was given. The faculty contract does not include longevity bonuses at all. And while the staff contract does include 10-year longevity rewards, anyone who leaves the college must return within 39 months to keep their eligibility. Endrijonas’ time between SBCC jobs was 10 years. The managers’ contract does not address a break in service.

The faculty union raised these arguments first in collective bargaining in the fall, then went public before the board on March 12. The next day the Santa Barbara Community College District returned a proposal that offered employees no raises for the next two years. 

A series of letters written by the unions’ attorneys to the Board of Trustees followed. The semester ended with contentious board meetings in April and May.

Their message was clear: Endrijonas’ salary increases were demoralizing to faculty and staff.

“I can’t do this if we are not all pulling together,” Alsheimer said. “If I see a superintendent-president getting raises — and getting raises in a shady way — what am I supposed to say to my faculty when we ask them to do more?”

In the past two years, she said, teachers have added students beyond class limits, reduced class offerings, cut part-time faculty workloads and pay, and made other sacrifices to help the college’s bottom line.

In separate interviews, Endrijonas and Abboud dismissed the seemingly contradictory contract language and offered separate explanations for the president’s pay raises, which they said were justified.

Because of unprecedented turnover among top administrators, Abboud said, the board placed a premium on Endrijonas’ previous experience at SBCC.

“We wanted to incentivize her longevity,” he said.

“I can’t tell you how much we’ve lost because of the (presidential) turnover, how much money has been lost, how many opportunities missed, challenges unmet. There’s been so much not done because of our turnover that it’s very important for us to have stability in that position.”

Abboud attributed the wording of the longevity bonus to “human error.”

“When we came back to look at the contract in 2025 to make further amendments, I read it, and I said, ‘Oh, this is not what we wanted it to be,’ ” Abboud said. “So it’s a human error. These things happen. It’s unfortunate it happened in this specific contract … but our intent was clear.” 

Endrijonas acknowledged the conflicting language was “problematic.” 

“But you know what? I am not a lawyer, so it’s not my problem to solve,” she said. 

Endrijonas said she proposed her own longevity bonus because the precedent already existed at SBCC among other employees. And she agreed to the step raises because those types of salary increases were part of her contracts at her last two jobs. 

“People are upset because they say this has never been done before,” she said. “But the fact is, it’s never been done here.”

Regardless of how the raises came about, the unions’ complaint was that they were provided at all. SBCC employees have not received pay increases since 2023. At that time, Abboud said, all employees got a 7.4% raise; the year before, everyone got an 8% increase.

The community college district has indicated no increases are expected again this year, or even next.

However, Endrijonas and Abboud pointed out that negotiations are ongoing and decisions about future raises have not been finalized.

A decade of change 

Every year, at the end of the commencement ceremony, faculty members stand in full academic regalia and form an aisle through which the graduates stride. Instructors then reach out to students with hugs, handshakes and words of congratulations.

It’s a time-honored tradition at a college that has been rocked by seismic changes over the last decade.

Five superintendent-presidents have come and gone since 2016, two of them interims to replace leaders who left quickly after short and combative tenures. During those years, the campus was also roiled by racial and equity issues and the COVID-19 shutdown.

During this span, the number of students enrolled at SBCC has plunged 34.7%, dropping from 18,915 in fall 2015 to 12,344 in fall 2025. The number of class offerings has also dropped 37% in the past decade, according to data from the state Chancellor’s Office.

And because the state bases college funding on enrollment, SBCC has repeatedly dealt with reduced income and a “structural deficit” in its $100 million-plus budget.

In an effort to keep costs down, the college offered two early-retirement packages, in 2017 and 2021. 

Some positions have since been replaced, but the number of full-time faculty is down nearly 15% since fall 2015. Part-time faculty is down 14.2%, and support staff 13.3%.

As a result, the college has experienced a dramatic drop in “productivity,” a formula the state Chancellor’s Office uses, in part, to determine whether a college has the right faculty-to-student ratio for stable funding.

That, Endrijonas said, was the situation she faced when taking over the college in 2023.

“It was like a perfect storm,” she said. “There wasn’t a lot of attention being paid, with the turnover in my position.”

Since then, the college has implemented significant internal reforms to generate more income: improving fill rates for classes, controlling costs and fixing inaccurate and inappropriate accounting.

“Those are all really hard changes, and as a college, we’re making great progress,” Endrijonas said. But, she acknowledged, those changes have led to “very uncivil” disagreements along the way.

One example, she said: rancor over decisions to downsize staff, which played out over proposed layoffs among Institutional Technology employees.

“We would have had a really great IT program if it were 2003,” Endrijonas said. “That’s how different things are now.” 

A no-layoff culture

Despite the fiscal challenges of the past decade, the college has not laid off a single full-time employee. Instead, retirements, job shifts and reorganizations have been used to scale departments while keeping permanent staff. 

But in February, administrators notified union leadership that four IT positions were slated for layoffs. 

Citing comparative statistics from colleges with larger enrollments but smaller IT staffing, Endrijonas announced the proposed layoffs at public meetings in early March, and then took the recommendation to the board March 12. 

She insists her administrators fulfilled every legal requirement in notifying the college of the proposed layoffs. She said she relied on union leadership to share that information with its members.

“Looking back, I should have paid more attention to the fact that it didn’t seem like everybody in CSEA knew,” Endrijonas said. “I’ll own that because I really underestimated how much staff knew what was going on.”

Shankin-Clarke said union members should have been notified much earlier about the proposed layoffs. Then they could have worked with the administration, instead of being forced to play defense, he said. And they could have independently validated what they considered to be the district’s flawed IT numbers.

“By the time CSEA received notice, the recommended layoffs had already been formulated,” he said. “The District had both the ability and the contractual obligation to notify CSEA earlier, while the matter was still meaningfully open to discussion.” 

Ultimately, the measure failed in a 3-3 tie, with board President Abboud one of the three votes to save the positions. A seventh member of the board, Trustee David Morris, was absent during the vote.

“Our board policy is that layoffs should be a last resort,” he said. “I felt that it would be good to have more conversation with the union to get clear on the facts before making any decisions.” 

Signs of optimism

In their May 15 editorial, Channels student editors Hilary Litton and Michael Lopez, wrote: “The simplest and most fundamental change that has to be made is more consistent communication between the Board of Trustees and employees, especially in the way that the budget they want to alter continues to affect students’ learning experience.”

Abboud said he agrees that more should be done to improve employee-board relations. Informal study sessions between the board, the Academic Senate — the representative organization for faculty at SBCC — and the unions, have not been scheduled since before the COVID-19 shutdown.

He said he’s already begun organizing a session for the fall, when all instructors return to campus.

“I know that’s been delayed, and … I’ll take responsibility that this hasn’t happened yet,” he said.

Still, Abboud said he is optimistic the campus is stabilizing after the challenges of the last decade. 

He cited the community’s 2024 support for Measure P, which provided $198 million in construction bonds for rebuilding an athletic complex the state had deemed unsafe. Other campus projects will follow, he said, including paving parking lots and the entrance to campus. 

“I know everybody wants that, and I think people feel more optimistic when they see physical improvements to the campus,” Abboud said. 

Equally important is the fact that faculty, staff, administrators and the board have worked together and “protected the core functions of the college,” he said.

And after years of multimillion-dollar deficits, the college has whittled its 2026-27 shortfall to $900,000. “And I know we can solve that out of a $126 million budget,” he added.

Such progress can be credited to  Endrijonas, Abboud said. That’s why he believes the raises the board awarded the president-superintendent were justified. In fact, he said, he is “100% proud” of the board’s direction.

“I am confident it’s because of a stable administrator who’s experienced, and that’s what Erica brought to the college,” he said. “You spend a little bit more on an administrator’s salary, who then gets you to save millions of dollars, without problems.”