Cerritos College Law Chair Slams Trustees for Giving Themselves Five Percent Raise, None for Faculty

June 20, 2022~As a faculty member at Cerritos College, I have always placed students first. When in the middle of the semester two years ago, we were required to stop on-campus classes, each of my faculty colleagues and I spent hundreds and hundreds of hours converting in-person classes to remote, distance learning.

We then spent hundreds more hours converting class to hybrid when we were able to partially come back to campus.

This summer, as we are getting ready to hopefully transition back to on-campus, even hundreds more additional hours are being spent in preparation.

Yet, faculty salaries have been unchanged since 2019. Maybe one would think the publicly elected Cerritos College Board of Trustees is unaware of inflation.

But maybe not, because while they have not increased faculty salaries, the Board gave each of themselves a 5% pay raise for each of the last two years.

Further, the Board gave the College’s President a $40,000 bonus based on student success. While the President may be part of student success, the last time I checked, he had not taught one class.

Yet, no pay raise to faculty in similar recognition of student success.

Maybe one would think the Cerritos College Board of Trustees only has enough money for themselves and the President of the College.

However, the Cerritos College District has more than $40 million in accessible reserves and more than $30 million in unspent federal COVID relief funds.

Cerritos College District can provide appropriate compensation for its employees to help with inflation, it just won’t.

In fact, the State of California has given Community Colleges budget increases in the form of Cost-of-Living Adjustments (COLA) of more than 5% annually each of the last several years in recognition of inflation.

Yet, the Cerritos College Board of Trustees feels this money is for themselves and that COLA need not be shared with faculty or other school employees.

Why this commentary?

Because in three separate public comment sessions before the Board, I asked the Board to please advise faculty of their reason for their pay raises, but no pay raises for faculty or other school employees.

The Board refuses to respond.

Maybe because there is no response that makes sense. Or maybe the Board thinks the public is unaware of their actions and they want to keep it that way.

Bruce A. Greenberg, Esq.
CERRITOS COLLEGE
Law Department Chair
Paralegal Program Director