Our District Board of Trustees at their June meeting approved this year’s operational budget with an amount set aside to allow us to accomplish two things.

As you know I ask every year whether we can afford pay raises for faculty and staff. This year, we were not able to answer that question until we received sufficient information from the compensation study in order to identify the total cost to implement the findings. The good news is that we are able to do both.

As I shared previously, the College has not done a comprehensive classification study for our full-time, regular staff in many years. A lot of things have changed in that time. Over the past few months, we’ve been working with Evergreen Solutions, a company with a proven track record in conducting classification studies for other colleges, to collect data on comparable job descriptions, titles, and wages. We received their full recommendations in August and the College’s leadership has been working ever since to develop what I believe to be a comprehensive plan that will allow us to adjust those employees identified in the study and improve our ability to recruit and retain talent.

We will be recommending an updated salary schedule to the Board in September that identifies all necessary classification revisions to make this a reality. We will also be recommending a cost-of-living adjustment for the entire College. If approved, College leadership will be reaching out to their employees with more specific information.

Additionally, the transition of all Florida College System (FCS) employees to the State Group Health Insurance (SGHI) could potentially increase the take home pay for many here at TSC. Thanks to a lot of hard work by our team, the FCS councils, the Florida Department of Education, and the Florida Department of Management Services, we are on track to implement this transition by our October open enrollment period. Human Resources has begun to share information about the new process. Please stay tuned.

All of these changes are possible thanks to careful budget planning and tremendous enrollment increases that have exceeded all projections this fall. In particular, I want to thank Administrative Services, Student Affairs, Academic Affairs and everyone else who played a role in either of those efforts. I am so incredibly proud of what we have been able to achieve by working hard and keeping our focus on our students and our people.