College of the Sequoias president gets 33% raise, faculty gets 6%

College of the Sequoias President Stan Carrizosa has been awarded a 33 percent bump in pay, boosting his annual salary from $225,000 to $300,000.

The head of the college’s teachers union, which recently received a 6 percent raise after going a decade without, says the union will press for a comparable raise when it negotiates a new contract.

The college’s board voted unanimously to approve Carrizosa’s pay raise Oct. 10.

Ken Nunes, president of the College of the Sequoias Board of Trustees, said Carrizosa was at the low end of the salary range for his job, achieved several goals set by the board, has been at the college for four years without a pay raise and rescued the college two years ago when it was at risk of losing its accreditation.

“COS has become a model of how to get these things corrected and get on the right path,” Nunes said. He said Carrizosa gets invited to symposia to share his first-hand knowledge of the topic.

But Paul Tidwell, president of the College of the Sequoias Teachers Association, said the contrast between 33 percent for Carrizosa and 6 percent for the faculty is jarring.

“Faculty are certainly disappointed in this decision,” Tidwell said. “Clearly the board was not considering the impact that this raise might have on campus morale.”

The pay raise for Carrizosa makes it clear to everyone on campus that the college can afford to pay all staff better, Tidwell said. He vowed that the faculty will demand parity at the next round of labor negotiations.

“COS’s Board of Trustees have long pled penury in negotiations to avoid giving raises to the instructors who actually teach the community’s students,” Tidwell said. “But in fact, we later discover, the college is cash-flush – so much so that it can award its president a raise that puts many chancellors’ salaries to shame and post a reserve well above state requirements.”

College support staff and adjunct faculty also received raises of 6 percent.

Administrator Brent Calvin, vice president of student services, said his reading of faculty sentiment is that few have a problem with Carrizosa getting a pay increase.

While it’s true the faculty went without a raise for several years, a labor-related legal action against the college by the teachers association dragged on and no salary negotiations took place during that time, Calvin said.

He added that “headhunters” have approached Carrizosa with opportunities for higher-paying jobs elsewhere, but Carrizosa has made it clear he wishes to stay at College of the Sequoias.

Carrizosa is the former superintendent of Visalia Unified and later Burbank Unified schools who returned to Tulare County to take the top job at College of the Sequoias in July 2012. Carrizosa declined to comment on the board’s action regarding his salary.

Nunes said that Carrizosa was hired at $225,000 per year, less than the previous president’s salary, and has not had an increase.

When the board decided this year to write a job description for the position, it surveyed community colleges in the area and concluded that a pay range of $225,000 to $300,000 a year is appropriate, Nunes said.

Nunes said that unlike many community college leaders, Carrizosa wears two hats: superintendent of the community college district and president of the college. By contrast, West Hills Community College District, which has colleges in Coalinga and Lemoore and a center in Firebaugh, has a chancellor for the district and presidents at the colleges, he said.

Carrizosa’s new salary appears to put him in the same league as the chancellor of West Hills Community College District, Francis Gornick, whose 2013 salary was $298,773, according to data collected by Transparent California. West Hills operates three campuses, but had fewer employees in 2015 than College of the Sequoias, according to the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office.

But Carrizosa’s salary may be ahead of those given presidents at other similar-sized colleges. According to Transparent California, the 2014 salary (the latest listed) for the president of San Joaquin Delta College in Stockton was $235,785, while in 2015 the Napa College president’s salary was $234,999, the Solano Community College president’s salary was $237,350, and the Merced College president’s salary was $219,000.

This story was originally published October 28, 2016 at 11:57 AM with the headline "College of the Sequoias president gets 33% raise, faculty gets 6%."