The Santa Barbara Community College Board of Trustees dropped a proposal to give one-time payments to full-time instructors but nothing to part-time faculty following a contentious meeting on Thursday.
“What this offer says to part-time faculty is that our contributions are worth nothing,” physical education instructor Sally Sanger told the board members, drawing prolonged applause.
“Part-timers are a major part of this institution. We teach the same students, prepare the same lessons, grade the same assignments and are equally committed to student success,” she said. “I found this proposal to be discourteous and disrespectful.”
That offer is now off the table, after board members met in closed session right after the public meeting.
The Faculty Association — the union that represents full- and part-time instructors — told its 650 members in a Tuesday email that some trustees told district negotiators they “did not fully appreciate that a component [of one of the proposals] would exclude part-time faculty entirely.”
Two top administrators declined to comment, citing the need for confidentiality until negotiations are completed.
Cornelia Alsheimer, accounting professor and Faculty Association president, told the News-Press the change “removes the blatant unfairness to part-time faculty.”
“But the damage has been done,” she said. “We believe that at least some board members made this change only because of massive pushback. We feel they should apologize.”
The union and district have been negotiating a new contract for almost a year. Employees have been working their old contract since fall 2023.
The confidential talks spilled into public after the board gave Superintendent-President Erika Endrijonas a 12.5% raise over four years, while proposing to freeze employee salaries at the 2023 level.
In the past, administrators have said that a 1% salary increase for all employees would cost about $1 million. The college has a “me too” policy, meaning staff and administrators automatically get the same raises negotiated by faculty.
Same job, less pay
City College relies on part-time faculty to offer a full complement of classes and to reduce expenses. Two of every three instructors are part-time, and they are paid about 70% of what full-time faculty earns to teach the same class.
They also do not get office space, college-provided computers or guaranteed health benefits. Many teach at multiple colleges to support themselves. They are not, however, required to do any of the non-teaching tasks required of full-time instructors.
The Faculty Association is asking for a total 7% raise over two years for all instructors. Of that, 5% would be retroactive to July 2025, and 2% to July 2026.
In August, the district countered with two options:
- The first would give faculty a 1.5% one-time payment this academic year, and one each retroactively for the last two academic years. These bonuses would be given to all faculty.
- The second option would pay $2,700 in one-time payments in each of the three contract years, but to full-time faculty only. Part-time faculty would not be eligible for these bonuses.
Neither option would have carried the bonuses over into employees’ permanent salaries, nor would they count toward pensions.
Instructors this month rejected both offers and threatened to declare an impasse, a regulatory step that would initiate bringing an outside mediator into the talks.
Beginning full-time instructors earn $74,473 for a 10-month contract, according to the college’s published salary schedule. The highest-paid faculty — those with 34 years of experience — earn up to $148,626. Instructors can earn more if they teach extra classes or summer school.
Part-time faculty are paid by the hour, starting at $102.90 for lecturers and capping at $139.04. They are paid slightly less for teaching labs, and slightly more if they have doctorates.
Ranked below the state median
These salaries put City College faculty below the median for California community colleges, except for those at the highest payment levels, according to a benchmark study completed this year by Santa Rosa Community College and widely used by faculty unions across the state.
At the Thursday meeting, instructors also argued board members should recognize the “hidden labor” required for faculty to stay current and to counter outside challenges.
Mentoring students, addressing their mental health or disability issues, updating classes to accommodate artificial intelligence, and helping students catch up post-Covid are among the factors that cause frustration, burnout and low morale, several speakers said.
“I can say without equivocation or hesitation that this work has never been more challenging,” said Barbara Bell, who has taught English composition for 29 years at the college.
“A confluence of factors…have created a perfect storm that has upended our profession and exponentially expanded our workload as we seek to keep our students’ heads above water,” she said.
Prioritizing a balanced budget
At the same meeting, the board approved a budget with a $127.4 million unrestricted general fund that balances spending with expenses. The new budget includes roughly $40 million in reserves, exceeding the $25.4 million in reserves required by the state and college policies.
The budget eliminates the college’s long-standing structural deficit by 2027, which the district in March adopted as its top priority for the current academic year.
Chris Renbarger, vice president of Business Services, said 85.3% of the college’s general fund is dedicated to employee salaries and benefits, slightly exceeding the board-set goal of 85%.
In an Aug. 10 press release, Superintendent-President Erika Endrijonas celebrated ending the 2025-2026 fiscal year in the black and anticipated eliminating the district’s structural deficit in the following academic year. “Since I began in August, 2023, the message was clear from the SBCC Board of Trustees: ‘We need to address the structural deficit of the college,’” she wrote.
“This meant painful, yet decisive and strategic decisions needed to be made — ones that were not always popular with employees — and now, three years later, I have to thank every single employee for their hard work, determination and trust in me and my fellow leaders to get on a trajectory for a healthier financial future for the college.
“I cannot thank our amazing SBCC team enough.”
News-Press editor Joshua Molina is a part-time journalism faculty member at Santa Barbara City College. He was not involved in the reporting or editing of this article.
Patricia Stark is a former tenured faculty member who retired from City College in 2021. She has had no financial relationship with the college since 2022.
