In a brief special meeting Monday afternoon, the Flint Hills Technical College Board of Trustees approved a new contract with the school’s teachers and staff. The measure passed 7-0.
The contract adds $1,000 to the base salary and reworks the salary schedule for the 2007-2008 school year. The board voted 3-1 for the same contract on June 11, but that vote failed because at least four of the seven board members must support a contract.
This time, three of the seven trustees attended by conference call — once the board could get the phone connection working, anyway.
“Isn’t this a technical college?” trustee Jerry Fair joked as the phone kept hitting a busy signal.
The base pay for a brand new teacher with technical experience but no degree will now be $29,250. That represents about a 3.5 percent pay increase. Meanwhile, the new salary schedule adds “steps” for teachers with technical experience, and for teachers with more than 20 years of experience.
Overall, the changes mean that the college will spend 5 percent more on teachers in 2007-2008 than it did this year.
The one “no” vote last time, trustee Lori Scott Dreiling, changed to a “yes” this time without offering an explanation. She was one of the members attending by phone, along with trustees John Schwenn and Brad Kraft.
Kraft asked whether other schools were offering a comparable raise. President Dean Hollenbeck said that some hadn’t started negotiations yet, but that most were looking at an increase between 3 percent and 4.5 percent.
“North Central’s will probably be considerably more,” Hollenbeck added, referring to North Central Kansas Technical College in Beloit. “Their base, if I had to guess, is probably about $4,500 less than our base.”