Cerritos College hosted a special board of trustee meeting about a correction on full-time faculty salary schedules for 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 and consideration of approval of the Emergency Conditions Recovery Plan on Aug. 31.
The meeting began with the pledge of allegiance and then moved on to the correction of full-time faculty salary schedules for 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 with no public comments so far.
All members of the board of trustee meeting voted for approval to pass the correction.
Vice President, Mercedes Gutierrez, gave further details on why the correction needed to happen.
“The reason for the correction is there was an error in the readout in terms of the longevity. There was a miscalculation in three cells in those two particular salaries schedules,” Gutierrez said.
The meeting then moved on to item 2.02, consideration of approval of the Emergency Conditions Recovery Plan, which concluded for the motion to pass with approval from all of the trustees.
Dr. Jose Fierro, President of Cerritos College, said, “Essentially this is to continue to receive emergency condition allowance for the state over the last couple of years due to COVID.”
Cerritos College has been receiving additional funding through the state based on enrollment before the pandemic. With the approval of the motion, it will ensure that in the next year Cerritos College will continue to receive funding.
In order for Cerritos College to keep the money, there will need to be some changes and conditions.
Vice President of Business Services Felipe Lopez and Vice President of Academic Affairs Wei Zhou gave a quick overview of the commitment that the board of trustees is willing to do.
Lopez presented that Title five section 58146 provides criteria for funding allowances due to emergency conditions.
The Vice President of Business Services said, “Why would someone want to do this? Well, primarily the reason was is because of the sudden drop in enrollment. This allowance allowed districts to hold harmless their FTES.”
“Particularly for the current fiscal year, 22-230, it protects us from potentially losing over 1100 FTES. That would translate into roughly five and million dollars of lost state aid,” Lopez said.
Zhou continued on with the presentation and gave details about the required steps that the board of trustees needed to do such as develop an Emergency Conditions Recovery Plan. There are more requirements listed at the 11:07 minute mark.
Cerritos College already has been working on the change of policy of the five percent over two months and already plans to join the online consortium initiative.
Towards the end of the meeting, there were a couple questions from a couple of the trustees.
Trustee Perez asked, “How long do you think we’ll have this Emergency Conditions Allowance? Is this only for the fiscal 22-23 or de we envision discontinuing?”
This allowance is for this academic year, but there may be expected movement at the CEO level later on in the year depending on whether enrollment increases or not.
This will be the third time the Cerritos College would enter this funding.
