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         March 22, 2023 Study Session...



         >> MS. THERESA RIEL:  So we call this Governing Board Study

    Session to order.  I think the first thing we're going to do is hear

    from Dr. David Bea, correct?

         >> DR. LEE LAMBERT:  That is correct.  Go ahead, Dave.

         >> DR. DAVID BEA:  Good evening, Chairperson Riel, members of the

    board, Chancellor Lambert, colleagues and guests.  It's my pleasure

    tonight to kick off this evening's festivities by doing an overview

    of the class comp program where the college was, what we did to

    address the different issues that we had in the past, and so it's

    sort of putting some context around what we did and why we did it.

    Then give the board an update of how it played out now that the

    appeals have all processed through.

         Then we will turn it over to members of the AERC to talk about

    some of the things that they experienced during the process and can

    have a discussion related to that.

         So one of the things that I think is really important to

    understand is there is no question this was a really challenging

    project.  It involved redefining more than a thousand regular

    positions at the college, all during the same period that we were

    going through COVID, and that we are experiencing inflationary

    pressures that most of us haven't experienced in our working careers,

    anyway, and then this massive change in work type, work performance,

    and work experiences in terms of where you're working, how you work,





    that sort of thing.

         There were a lot of moving variables coming at the same time that

    we were undertaking what is a major project for any organization.  So

    with that, let me go back a little bit, since most of the board is

    new, to sort of restate a little bit about where we were and some of

    the problems that we had.

         The first thing is is that it's really important, classification

    and compensation, and the compensation philosophy at the college,

    really what's critically important is that it needs to enable us to

    recruit and retain the talent that we need.

         What we were looking to do is, in order to do that, make sure

    that we are paying competitive wages for our employees, is align the

    class comp structure to the market and then provide and value

    experience from working at the college, and then also to create a

    structure that ensures fair and equitable pay.

         That said, the old structure was 22 years old.  The position and

    job duties were out of date, for sure.  Jobs and the schedules hadn't

    been updated for a significant period of time.  They were updated

    incrementally throughout that period of time.  Some of the results of

    that were that (indiscernible), so we had a situation where we might

    hire someone in.  In order to hire the person we need to do the job,

    they might have been hired in at a higher rate than some of the

    incumbent people at the college.

         So that's called inversion.  That's when you hire someone in over

    someone who is already doing that same job at the college and you are





    now paying the newer person more than the old.  So that's inversion.

    That's not a good thing.

         In addition, we went through a period of time where there were

    resource limitations starting with state budgetary reductions and

    then the reductions related to expenditure limitation and the

    challenges that came as a result of that, and then obviously COVID

    impacts, things like that.

         So there had been sort of a history of relatively low salary pool

    increases, the suspension of the step program a number of years back,

    and the results of all of those things was that we had a major

    compression problem.  65% of our nonexempt employees were hired and

    were at step 1, so no matter how many years they had been working at

    the college, they were at the same pay rate that people who were just

    coming to the college.

         45% of exempt people had that same situation, and then 40% of

    faculty were at the step 6, which is the point at which you would

    start if you had certain years of experience.  That's the equivalent

    of sort of the step 1, that you would progress through that up until

    step 6 and then you'd be stuck on that step.

         So we had lots of employees all making the same amount of money

    and sort of regardless of how many years they had been in the

    position.  Then there was limited recognition of how long employees

    had been at the college.

         This slide is a new slide, and what this shows is just how the

    situation was.  So what this is doing is it's showing where employees





    are based on the new class comp structure, so along the bottom you

    see the different bands.  But then what it's doing is it's comparing

    those individuals paid last year, '22, so before we implemented the

    class comp structure, and how they are compared to, how their pay was

    in fiscal year '22 compared to the market base.

         So for each band it shows in comparison to what their market

    comparison is.  And you see if the number is over that blue line,

    it's over 0%, means that on average people in those pay bands were on

    average making more than the market comparison, and then the

    positions that were below, that are below the zero point, are

    positions that were making in some cases significantly below the

    market comparison.

         So you can see, in particular, a number of the bands show that

    they were well below what we determined was the market benchmark that

    we want to compare to.  This was sort of our starting point.  So we

    are starting out low, starting out, and you can see that some of the

    key positions, band 1 for staff particularly, and then 8 and 9, those

    stick out and there is a big reason for it.  One is that our band 1,

    we made a concerted effort to raise the starting wage for regular

    positions up.  They had been at a minimum earnings of $15 an hour.

    But we worked to increase that pretty significantly to address some

    of the issues with the lower wage earners through this class comp

    study.

         The 8s and 9s in particular are positions that a lot of those

    positions were technical positions that were probably undergraded in





    the old structure, positions that require a lot of technical

    computing-type skills, analytical skills, those kinds of jobs, that

    are highly marketable.  That's one of the things that has changed in

    the last 22 years is that particularly IT positions and positions

    that are highly marketable, we were finding ourselves not comparable

    or not competitive in the marketplace for that reason.  That's why

    you see those positions are particularly low.

         To go back a little bit in terms of -- oh, the one other thing

    with this slide that's important is that the fact that the faculty

    are high versus market and the staff are on average low versus

    market, and I will show this a little bit later, is also a function

    of years in the position.  So as a result of the class comp

    structure, the market benchmark comparison is we are trying to tie to

    the market for that position.  The market median is compared to

    having eight years of experience at the college.

         So if you have a band that has people who on average have only

    been at the college for a year or two, they will naturally be lower

    compared to the market.  They are not expected to be at market.

         Yeah?

         >> MS. THERESA RIEL:  Okay.  A quick question.  So the F1 through

    F6, I'm assuming that's faculty, correct?

         >> DR. DAVID BEA:  Yes.

         >> MS. THERESA RIEL:  That's not what we used to call faculty,

    because didn't we have 12 steps for faculty?  So is this the new

    structure?  There is only six steps for faculty now?





         >> DR. DAVID BEA:  Six grades, yes, or bands.  For your

    comparison, that's F, F1, it's more equivalent to those.  They're

    slightly different definitions in those bands but they are more

    equivalent to those bands.  Not the steps, the grades.

         >> MS. THERESA RIEL:  Okay.  So these marks you're showing that

    now -- but the orange little dots, those are the prior salaries, not

    the new salaries with the new pay?

         >> DR. DAVID BEA:  Right.  Right.  They are fiscal year '22

    salaries compared to the new market comparison, yeah.

         >> MS. THERESA RIEL:  Second question.  Always I will want to

    have staff and administrators separated out, because, and I don't

    know what the new one is, but I do remember that the old step 1, and

    I think that some -- I think nonexempt had 16 steps, and in prior

    slides I do remember that they were shown together, staff and

    administrator, and the problem with that is nonexempt was making

    13.15 an hour, and that was step 1, and exempt staff was making, I

    can't really remember, I don't remember the exact, but I'm going to

    say, you know, 38 to 42 in step 1, and the administrators that were

    in step 1 were making 79,000 to $104,000.

         So I have a problem with these dots when it's combined

    staff/administrator pay, because I can understand if we are only

    representing the hourly wage workers, the nonexempt, because

    obviously, you know, they are getting paid minimum wage.  But when we

    combined all three groups -- staff, nonexempt, exempt, and

    administrators -- in these same dots, people on -- and I don't know





    what we are calling them now, but No. 8 and 9, for example, the

    differences between somebody who is a nonexempt on 8 and 9, their

    salary, and the salary of an exempt staff and the salary of an

    administrator, there is no way we can all represent all three of

    those as a group in one dot.

         So this chart doesn't make sense to me mathematically.

         >> DR. DAVID BEA:  Okay.  I think I can explain that relatively

    easily.

         So these are bands, like these are grades, not steps.  So

    regardless of steps, people are on different steps in all of these

    bands, but these are the grades.  And so in this particular case,

    when you're talking about nonexempt folks, those folks would be in

    bands 1, 2, and 3, maybe 4.  The exempt folks would be the 5 through

    9 -- actually 5 through 10.  And then administrators are 10, 11, 12.

         So there is a little bit of overlap, but it's not -- but these

    are basically, if you look at the right-hand side, is generally the

    higher-paid positions.  The 1s, 2s, 3s, are the lower-paid positions

    in terms of staff positions.

         There are some slides later on that I think show that a little

    bit more clearly, because this is sort of showing a couple of

    different things and I think it's confusing.

         But anyway, the point that I'm trying to make is that the

    administrators and highly paid like directors are on the 10, 11, 12

    side of what you're seeing here.

         Okay.  Yep?  Board Member Garcia?





         >> MS. MARIA GARCIA:  Okay.  Go back to the previous slide,

    please.  Okay.  I have to agree with Theresa that, the chairperson,

    that these little dots, okay, so first of all, let me ask my question

    and that is that when you're saying that F1 is at a 15% market

    benchmark, favors as benchmark, please explain what that means.

         >> DR. DAVID BEA:  So in that F1 situation, on average, the

    faculty who are in that band, so F1 band, that's mostly bachelor's

    level, associate's and bachelor's level faculty, that those folks on

    average were, in fiscal year '22, making 15% above what the market

    comparison was.  So they are making more than the average.

         >> MS. MARIA GARCIA:  Okay.  But I would still -- I would have to

    agree with the chairperson that for clarity, these should be

    segregated and including the pay scales for each of the --

         >> DR. DAVID BEA:  Okay.  Agreed.  I'm totally with you.

         The whole point of this slide is just a really quick overview to

    show you where people were compared to the market.  So are they high,

    are they low, a lot of our positions were low.  That's really the

    only major takeaway.

         I mean, we can dig in much deeper.  There are slides later on

    that are going to get into more of the detail that you guys are

    asking questions about.  Happy to get into that with you in a little

    bit.  But I think I have some other slides that will show it a little

    more clearly.

         >> MS. MARIA GARCIA:  Okay.  Thank you.

         >> DR. DAVID BEA:  And we talked with the prior board about this





    and some of the ways that the process that was a pretty involved

    process that went over multiple years, but that we also did involve

    feedback from employees in a number of different ways.

         We hired an external consultant, a nationally known firm that

    does class comp for colleges, universities, as well as corporations.

    That we held focus groups with employees to talk about what some of

    their concerns were, what some of the issues were that they were

    experiencing, so again, that sort of gets back to some of the points

    that I said before, what we knew was not working with the old

    structure.

         We then had position description questionnaires that went out to

    all the employees so that they could describe what they do within

    their jobs so we can redefine their jobs and then match those new job

    descriptions and new titles to the market, right.  So we are going to

    try and cite a market, try new survey information to make sure we are

    paying competitively for the kinds of jobs that the employees do

    here.

         We had steering committees that had representatives from faculty

    and staff and used them to find out concerns, issues that were going

    on.  That helped us through the process.

         There were updates that we did, e-mail updates, college-wide

    forums to communicate.  We worked with the governance groups, Staff

    Council, Faculty Senate, gave presentations to them, and worked with

    AERC.  You are going to hear a little bit that we could have always

    done a better job, no question about it.  There was a lot of





    information that was coming in very late in the game.

         This was a difficult enterprise to do.  And there was a lot of

    things that it was a big change for the college, and we did

    everything we could to address the different concerns that were

    coming up from employees and addressed them in various ways.

         That's where this slide talks about some of the things that were

    identified as concerns or issues or fears from employees, as I

    mentioned, like compression and inversion.  That was identified very

    early on.  We knew of that issue.  So folding in and making sure that

    years in position was one of the factors that related to how people

    got placed in the new schedule.

         Honestly, the most frequent concern that came up was people were

    concerned that with the new class comp structure, if their job was

    classified at a lower level than what they were making, if their

    market comparison indicated that they would have a pay reduction,

    were they going to lose pay, and that's where we made a pretty big

    effort to ensure people that no one was going to lose pay as a result

    of the class comp structure.

         So we reassured folks of that, and then again, we got feedback

    about more communication, the desire for more communication.  AERC

    gave us some feedback on improving the communication that went out to

    employees.

         There was a lot of concern about inflation, how were we going to

    do that.  One of the specific comments that was made with the AERC or

    one of the steering -- it may have been the steering committee but it





    may have been AERC -- was that faculty were very clear through this

    person who was communicating this message that what was really

    critically important was to get an increase in July, that if we were

    able to implement the full class comp structure for July, that would

    be great, but anything was critically important for July.  So there

    was a lot of pressure from employees to have pay increases to help

    offset the effects that they were experiencing from inflation.  So we

    folded that in, and that had an effect on really pushing this through

    and trying to make this happen.

         Anyway, so these are the different things, and I want to make

    sure that we have time for the group at the end, so I'm going to go

    through some of the other things to make sure that we get through,

    because I'm sure there are going to be questions.

         Just quick and dirty, the old compensation structure had 25

    different staff pay grades.  As I mentioned, they had been

    incrementally adjusted over time.  Part of that was Meet and Confer

    where the groups had some ability to decide whether step increases

    happened or whether all of the increase for that group moved the

    scales up.

         That resulted in some things where there were inconsistencies

    related to how people got placed and inconsistencies related to how

    those positions were connected to the market.  Again, they weren't

    connected or reconnected to the market.  They were just increased

    over time with the resources the college had available.

         So we had 25 pay grades.  There were seven faculty pay grades and





    then times two for days of accountability.  The new compensation

    structure is much reduced.  That creates a lot of confusion.  A lot

    of people considered their jobs and the salary grade that they were

    in to be somewhat like the same thing, somewhat synonymous.

         Now there are broadband structures so that lots of different

    types of positions that have similar market pay but might be doing

    very different things are now on the same band.  That's one of those

    things that it's a change and will take a little bit of time for

    people to understand that.  I think we are getting there in terms of

    people understanding how that works, but that was definitely a big

    change.

         Yes?

         >> MS. THERESA RIEL:  Real quick, times two for days of

    accountability, that's because most faculty work 159 days, teaching

    accountable days, but there are some faculty that work 10 months and

    some faculty that work year-round.  Is that correct?  Is that what

    that times two means?

         >> DR. DAVID BEA:  Yeah, 169 and 221 are the typicals, yeah.

         >> MS. THERESA RIEL:  Thank you.

         >> DR. DAVID BEA:  When class comp structures are done at

    organizations, there are sort of three things that can happen.  Your

    pay could be identified as being above market, and then that could

    have a potential for a reduction in pay.  Organizations do do that.

         Pay could be at market so there is no change.  Then you have a

    situation where pay is identified as being below market, and so an





    increase is merited, right?  So you want to pay people according to

    market.

         So that problem, the challenge then for that is that does the

    institution or the organization have the resources necessary to

    enable the full increase?  Is the increase phased in?  There were

    conversations with the steering committees related to different ways

    to phase in the program, and that could happen over the course of

    five years where you get slight increases or get somewhat toward

    where you're supposed to be, so you say, hey, based on our market

    comparison, we think you should be at $50,000, you're at $40,000,

    we're going to move you from 40 to 50 over the course of the next

    five years.

         That's something many organizations have done.  Maricopa

    implemented a phase-in approach like that and received a lot of

    negative feedback, as you can imagine, right?  If you're told that

    you're below market, you don't want to wait years before you're

    actually at the point where you want to be or where it's indicated

    you should be.

         So what we did is we invested as much as we possibly could last

    year to meet people as far as we could in the scale.  What that meant

    is that we identified people's target point in the market.  So that

    is based on where they are in fiscal year '22, where the class comp

    study indicated they should be with their years of experience, and

    then we were able to go all the way to implementing it fully up to

    putting a cap at step 12 or 12 years of experience.





         So the cap is well above the market median, so all of our folks

    are on pace or are being paid above market based on their years of

    experience.  So that was a major investment.

         The other thing that we were able to do is again we guaranteed

    that no one was going to have a pay reduction.  Even if the study

    indicated that they were currently making significantly higher than

    what market would indicate, no one received a reduction.  In fact

    what we did do is gave a minimum increase to all employees of at

    least $2,000.

         So their placement became where the schedule indicated they

    should be or the minimum -- whichever was the bigger of $2,000 or the

    placement on the schedule.  So that's where it was at least $2,000

    more than fiscal year '22, but in a lot of cases, and you'll see, is

    considerably higher than that as people were placed up on the

    schedule.

         So this chart shows roughly what we did.  Again, this is what I

    was just saying.  It's just rolled forward rather than talking.  It

    indicates the number of positions -- now, this would be the

    percentage of positions that were filled, so the total number of

    positions.  It doesn't total to 100, because it excludes positions

    that were vacant or people were hired in between the two points,

    because there is no comparison for those positions for fiscal year

    '22.

         What it shows is that more than 50% of the positions received

    increases related to the class comp changes, and you can see the





    average increase for those people when they were placed up on these

    new schedules got large increases.  So the average increases were,

    for faculty, 17%, and for staff, a little bit over 20%.  Then you see

    the people who got minimum increases, you can see a little bit to the

    side there what those increases were.

         So a $2,000 increase for a lower-wage-earning employee is

    obviously a bigger percentage than for somebody who is at the higher

    end of the schedule.  So we implemented this, and it came together

    fast and furious.  Part of that was making sure that we had the

    resources through the budgeting process to be able to do as much as

    we could within this class comp structure.

         Then when we implemented it, we also recognized that there were a

    lot of things that we were getting input both from the steering

    committees, from AERC, and then what we were hearing from employees

    also that there were various concerns because this was a big change,

    right?

         There was a lot of change was happening, a lot of confusion about

    what the old schedule is versus the new schedule, what does that mean

    for my position, how did you define where my position is in the band?

         So there were a number of things that we did.  We provided

    additional information to employees, had more forums for employees to

    ask questions.  Most importantly, one of the questions that came up

    in AERC was the concern about, well, what if someone is classified

    and they don't agree with the classification?  And we had said that

    we were developing an appeals process.





         As time went by, there was concern voiced that the appeals

    process that employees needed or wanted more time to submit the

    appeal, so we extended that deadline, and then went through a very

    thorough and rigorous appeals process for those employees.

         Now, that's mostly for staff.  There were faculty who submitted

    appeals, and there's some information that I'll be showing about

    that, but mostly it was for staff.  That's because staff placements

    are defined by what the job duties are that they have.  So each job

    might be unique or there might be a handful of jobs and how they are

    related and how they are described, can be something that, oh, I

    don't think you described my job well enough, and I think that that's

    important how it got categorized and placed.  So that's why it was

    really important to have a really rigorous appeals process.

         The other things we will get back to at another point, because a

    number of them are -- I will talk to you specifically in a minute,

    and a couple of them are on the things that we know we haven't

    finished everything we had, this is going to be an ongoing effort for

    a couple more years, where we make adjustments to the way the new

    class comp structure works.  Things like the initial placement cap

    was resource-based, and ultimately we don't want to have a cap on how

    far people can go up into the schedules.

         So we will be talking about, and we are working with the AERC

    groups at this point, to prioritize moving everybody up at least one

    year at this point with things capped by a year, and I talked with

    the board in the tuition conversation and the budget conversation





    about having the resources necessary to move everybody up a year, and

    that would also include, the base budget that I was talking about

    would include moving that cap up a year, as well.

         Let's talk a little bit more specifically about appeals.  So when

    I talked with the board last we were still in the midst of the

    appeals process so we knew how many appeals we had received.  You can

    see that on the left-hand side.  That doesn't translate directly into

    individuals.  It's not necessarily 354 individual people, because

    some of them were group appeals.  They related to more positions than

    one.

         But you can see that the large, almost half of them were based on

    the job description or the job level where it got placed.  The job

    title was something for some positions that is significant and

    relevant to how people feel about it.  That doesn't necessarily mean,

    if my job title changed, that doesn't necessarily translate into a

    pay change, right?  It may or may not, but sometimes it's just the

    title that you used to have is something that is important to you and

    if you think it might be important to you moving to the next job, and

    so what we did is we worked through some of them.

         And Aida tonight who is with us tonight and Carleen have had a

    lot of conversations with groups where the title is really important.

    The band and what the pay level is is appropriate, but what the title

    is is still something that is of concern.

         Years of position is one, so a lot of the appeals were based on

    the fact that we had in the system for a particular individual that





    they had been in the position for three years, and they had

    information that showed that they had actually been doing that work

    for five years, so that's when you make that kind of an adjustment.

         So you can see that in comparison to total number of positions

    that the number of appeals, and the right-hand side pie chart

    indicates the number of appeals or the percentage of appeals that

    resulted in pay increases.  So this is a pay increase that's more

    than just a little rounding-error type of a thing.  It's a pay

    increase as a result of the appeal that was more than $20.

         So you can see that the appeals that resulted from without a band

    change was about 14% of overall, so overall, about a quarter of the

    positions that we are talking about had appeals that resulted in

    increased pay.

         The majority of that 25% was for appeals that resulted in, again,

    these are pay increases but didn't result in a band change.  There

    are two things that are important to understand.  Those would the

    years of experience, so the employee was able to show they had years

    of experience that were different from what we had in the record, so

    that resulted in a pay increase so then they got placed more

    according to how many years they have been actually doing the work.

         The other one is relevant because one of the concerns that popped

    up that was an unexpected thing is that people who had been in

    positions at the college for a long time but had received promotions

    recently.  So someone who had been working in one level job and then

    became the supervisor over that job in the last number of years, what





    happened, and this was an unintended consequence, is that the pay

    they would have made if they had stayed in their old job with their

    old years of experience, so someone who was working in the old job

    for a long time, so they would have had a lot of years of experience,

    then they would have been making more than what they were making in

    the new job.

         And so one of the appeal processes that went through was we went

    back and looked at those individuals, gave them credit for their

    years of experience in the old position, and then moved them up 7.5%

    above that so that they then are making more than what they would

    have been making in the old job, so that's one of the things that

    happened in the course of the appeals process.

         That was a concern that came up, and it was like, okay, that was

    an unintended consequence and it's because we moved people up so far

    that they jumped, that people with the years of experience jumped so

    high that they jumped over people who were in the more supervisory

    role.

         That is something that's a one-time effect because the college

    has a process for if you are promoted at the college, you get at

    least 7.5% or greater, depending on what kind of a promotion you get,

    but it's at least 7.5%.  That's a one-time effect that again we

    remedied through the appeal process.

         Then I will go through the next slides fairly quickly.  This is

    sort of a recap of what I just said.  So this shows the percentage of

    employees who received increases that were, again, whether they





    received the minimum $2,000 increase or whether they had an increase

    that was greater than that, so you can see the large majority of

    employees received more than $2,000 increases, because they got those

    increases that were related to the class comp structure.

         Then here are the average percentage increases for those

    scenarios.  So you can see that, again, and I said this in a slightly

    different way, but it's showing the same information in a slightly

    different way, that those employees who received adjustments based on

    this new class comp structure received big increases.  You can see

    that the staff average increase was over 20%.  The faculty was well

    over 15%.  Again, I mentioned that a few minutes ago.

         These are the last two slides, and then we will shoot it over or

    ask questions and shoot it over to the AERC folks.

         These two slides show where individuals were, so this is

    splitting faculty and staff now.  Now, the staff does include

    administrator positions but it's the staff, and again, these at the

    bottom of this schedule are the bands.  So F1 is associate's or

    bachelor's level faculty.  F2 is bachelor's plus 30 or master's

    degree, et cetera, et cetera.  F6 is doctoral.

         So you can see here where the fiscal year '22 average pay for

    each of those bands was compared to what the market comparison, and

    again, this is consistent with what I said earlier, that because our

    faculty are so senior and experienced and because of where the market

    comparisons come out, that on average, that faculty in the lower band

    range were making above what the market pay is for those positions,





    but nevertheless, there were also big increases, you can see the

    progress that we made for those faculty.

         So you see the orange is last year.  Gray is now, current.  So

    you can see that pay increase, that shows what the pay increase is

    for those people, and shows it compared to market, that market

    benchmark.

         Then for staff, you can see the same information, just showing

    along those bands.  Band 1 is our most entry-level position.  That's

    their big increases there, because again, I mentioned those folks had

    been at a minimum wage of $15, but we moved the minimum wage up

    significantly as part of this class comp structure.  You see there is

    a pretty big increase between the orange and the gray for that band

    1.

         Then you see moving up along the pay structure, so you see the

    bands here would be indicating the increased pay ranges for

    individuals.  That's where the nonexempts are going to be on the

    left-hand side.  Exempts are going to be in the middle to the right.

    And then administrator positions would be on the far right-hand side

    of these positions.

         Then what's important, because these positions show as being in a

    number of the cases below the market benchmark.  So that was, again,

    we were pretty sure that staff were below market before this whole

    study happened.  It confirmed that, and it's still the case, but one

    of the things that's important to understand is that, and that's why

    I put these numbers in, is that the years of experience in those





    positions is quite a bit lower than the faculty.  The faculty had

    been in those positions for a long time.  They are quite senior.

         In this case, it's important to understand that the reason that

    these positions are below market is not because the college is

    deliberately paying them under market.  It's because the positions

    are lower in years of experience.  So again, to hit that market point

    would be at eight years on average.

         That's just by way of explanation to help you understand that and

    why I put those numbers in.

         Yes?

         >> MS. MARIA GARCIA:  So when you're talking about market

    comparisons, are you telling me that for staff, faculty, and

    administrators you use the same benchmark, the same market benchmark,

    or did you go differently?

         >> DR. DAVID BEA:  They are specific to the position that the

    person is in.  So faculty are compared to faculty of a similar type.

    The faculty comparisons have a comparison to two-year institutions

    throughout the country, and we ran that information and did that

    comparison and shared that with the steering committee and also with

    employee groups that they understood where those comparisons are

    coming from.

         Staff positions are compared to like positions.  So it depends.

    If you're an IT analyst, it's compared to IT analyst positions.  It

    could be both, we used both college and university information but

    also private sector information.  When it's relevant, right?





         >> MS. MARIA GARCIA:  So the analysis was done, you said,

    marketwise.  Was that nationwide or was it for specific skill or

    specialty?  Or was it within a region?  Because definitely you would

    pay somebody different in New York than you would in Tucson, Arizona.

         >> DR. DAVID BEA:  Right.  So it depends on the position.  The

    positions that are more local would be more compared to local norms

    and the positions that are regional or national would be compared

    more to national.  So, for example, the faculty comparison was a

    national sample.

         >> MS. MARIA GARCIA:  Okay.  Thank you.

         >> DR. DAVID BEA:  That gets me through all of the where we are.

    As you can see, it's a difficult proposition to define or redefine

    more than a thousand positions to really change the structure that

    people are used to in a pretty substantive way, but I think the data

    is pretty clear that they made really good progress toward these

    market comparisons, toward ensuring that our employees are paid in a

    competitive way.

         That isn't to say that there isn't progress.  We know there is

    progress.  There are additional things we need to work on and we are

    in conversations with the AERC folks about that, and also with

    Faculty Senate and Staff Council, giving them some updates in terms

    of some of the priorities and how we are going to go forward.

         Yes?

         >> MS. THERESA RIEL:  Thank you, Dr. Bea.  I just have a couple

    of questions.





         It seems like compression and inversion could be solved at the

    college without hiring somebody to do that, and so I just want to

    point out a couple of things.  Everybody is still below these market

    averages.  So when you say market average, what do you mean by that?

    There is a lot of different mathematical meanings for average.  Are

    we talking mean, mode, median?  What value are we talking here?

         And if these -- so this is not, these bands are -- it's sort of

    like it's not years of experience, correct?

         >> DR. DAVID BEA:  No.  The bands are based on -- so it's median

    for the type of position that you're doing.  So it's tied.  And then

    the salary survey information indicates, okay, this is the pay band

    that that should be on.  So the average -- the median earnings for

    that position should be X.

         And I'll show you another chart in a minute.  I'm going to scroll

    through to some of the additional information that we had.

         >> MS. THERESA RIEL:  Okay.  Sorry, before we do that, so I just

    want to point out that once again, median is the middle of the road,

    that means 50% of people that are like our folks in band 6, 50% of

    the people that you compared this to are actually making more than

    that benchmark, and of course on the other side of the story, too,

    50% of the people are also making less than that median.

         So when all of those -- every one of those I think except for the

    highest bar, the 12 or 16, whatever it was, everybody was below the

    benchmark.  So if -- on the prior slide.  So everybody on the left

    looks like they are below it up to maybe bar 12, right?





         So I just want to point out that if this is a median value,

    median means the middle of the road, 50% of the people surveyed are

    above it, 50% of the people are below it.  That means that still Pima

    College, we are paying these staff employees, so whatever they are,

    you know, nonexempt, exempt, or administrators, we are paying them

    below the average, the median, in the people that you compared, the

    schools that you compared them to.

         I just think that Pima should be doing better.  If we want to

    attract good people, I think we should be in the top half.  You know,

    we used to be, we wanted to be, what, the third payer by two bucks or

    whatever it was way back in my day, I think that we can be better

    than this for our employees.

         >> DR. DAVID BEA:  So just, again, to reinforce a particular

    point, so the target point is that after eight years of experience in

    the job, so that's someone who really knows the job, that's the thing

    that we compare to the market median.  Because remember when you're

    talking the market median, that would be people who, on average, are

    experienced in their job, right?

         So the idea is that we are tying -- and for staff, that's what

    the midpoint is.  So the idea is that after eight years of being at

    the college, you will be at the median.  You will be making market

    wages and on-average market wages, right, with these comparisons.

         This is a huge improvement over where we have been, because

    people will now be marching up and making their way toward a tangible

    point that is tied to the market.  Again, it's making sure that





    people are being paid competitively for the skills they are providing

    the college.

         And the reason that these are all lower, again, to reinforce my

    point, if you look at the average of number of years of doing the

    job, they are all under eight years, right?  If the number was over

    eight years, then you would find the way we are doing the class comp

    study is they would have gotten even bigger increases or we would

    have had a challenge because we wouldn't have had the resources to do

    it.

         But the way this structure is, resources notwithstanding, the way

    the structure is set up is that they would be moving up, if the

    average number was 8 for some of these positions, that you would see

    that gray line would be at that blue spot.  That's how this thing is

    set up to work.

         >> MS. THERESA RIEL:  So I don't see, in this chart, where

    average years in the position.  I thought that the numbers on the

    bottom, 1, 2, 3, I thought that that was the bands.

         >> DR. DAVID BEA:  The number that's in the middle.  The 7.1,

    5.3, 4.5, so that indicates for the people in those bands how long

    they've been doing, what their years in that position is.  So you can

    see they are under 8, on average, right, significantly, for some

    positions.  That is why there is a difference between the blue dot

    and the gray bar.

         Conversely, with the faculty one, the years of -- I didn't put

    the years of experience in there, but faculty years of experience is





    significantly higher, on average.  That is why they are well above

    the market median.

         >> MR. GREG TAYLOR:  Dave, just so I understand -- thank you,

    Theresa, for those questions, because I was misunderstanding until

    you asked those questions.

         So in theory, let's take No. 7, for example, average years of

    position there is 3.3.  So if that average was 8, we would expect

    that gray bar to be at the blue diamond at that point?

         >> DR. DAVID BEA:  It would be very close, yeah.

         >> MS. THERESA RIEL:  I just have one more math question.

    Average, once again, you know, I could tell you some whoppers using

    that word "average," so these numbers, the No. 7, 3.3 years of

    experience, which average are we using?  Is that mean, median, or

    mode?

         >> DR. DAVID BEA:  That's mean.

         >> MS. THERESA RIEL:  Mean.  Okay.  Hmm.  Thank you.

         >> DR. DAVID BEA:  Any other questions before I turn it over to

    the --

         >> MS. MARIA GARCIA:  Yeah, I do.

         >> MR. GREG TAYLOR:  You're muted, Maria.

         >> MS. MARIA GARCIA:  So No. 12, is that administrators?

         >> DR. DAVID BEA:  12 is administrators, yeah.

         >> MS. MARIA GARCIA:  12 is administrators.  So on the average,

    our administrators have been there on a medium of five years; is that

    correct?





         >> DR. DAVID BEA:  If that is what it says, yes.  On average.

         >> MS. MARIA GARCIA:  And they are making more than, right?  That

    little blue dot there shows --

         >> DR. DAVID BEA:  Right.  Yes.  In the band 12, on average, the

    people in band 12 are slightly above the market average, the market

    median.

         >> MS. MARIA GARCIA:  And why is that?

         >> DR. DAVID BEA:  The administrators in terms of market

    comparisons, I think it's a bit more obvious when you're hiring for

    administrators that what the level of pay is that you need to pay in

    order to attract people.

         So I think that there is sort of a natural mechanism that the

    college didn't have with a lot of the other positions.

         >> MS. MARIA GARCIA:  So in other words, you value the faculty

    differently than you value the administrators; is that correct?

         >> DR. DAVID BEA:  I wouldn't say that.

         >> MS. MARIA GARCIA:  Well, that's the way I see it.  Thank you.

         >> MS. THERESA RIEL:  I think maybe that I'm going to second

    Maria's -- from just the point that, you know, the original market

    comparison that we did was for faculty, staff, and administrators,

    and that was the pay raise people got in July.  There were some

    administrator positions that did not use that same market comparison.

    They got a different market comparison.

         What we were told is that the reason they went out for a new

    market comparison for those administrators was because no one was





    making the market median or the market average or whatever.

         You know, I think that part of me, I'm going to second what Maria

    said, because I'm pretty sure that if we went out on that new, if we

    use that new market, you know -- I mean, I know you only did it for

    administrators, so we wouldn't have had the numbers for faculty or

    for nonexempt or exempt, but my guess is if we used that same group

    of people that we used for the administrator pay raise, which they

    didn't get back in July, that wasn't part of the compensation package

    back then, I'm pretty sure if we used those schools for all of our

    employees, maybe it would have shown that we even had, these little

    blue dots on this slide would have been way higher than they

    currently are if they were, you know, high enough that we were paying

    our administrators.

         I'm sorry, it's late, that might not have made any sense.  But I

    am going to say that, you know, the fact that we have treated our

    higher administrators with a different comparison group than we

    treated everybody else, I think that is not an equity thing.

         >> DR. DAVID BEA:  I will just clarify one point.

         >> MS. THERESA RIEL:  Sure.

         >> DR. DAVID BEA:  I generally understand what you're saying, and

    I think that the idea with doing the market comparison is that if it

    comes back showing that we are paying appropriately for the

    administrators, then that's good.  That tells us that we are paying

    appropriately for our higher-level administrators.

         Just to clarify a couple of points.  There are only six positions





    that were not part of this study.  So they are the very highest

    positions at the college.  It's not all administrators or a majority

    of the administrators.

         The idea though with doing the secondary study is looking at it

    and making sure, are we paying appropriately for our higher-level

    administrators?  Just to clarify a little bit, though most of the

    administrators are on this structure that you're seeing here.

         >> MR. GREG TAYLOR:  Dave, I think I heard you say this before,

    but just help me reiterate it, I know we are talking about the 12th

    band, but you said there were administrators in 10, 11, and 12,

    right?  Not just in column 12?

         >> DR. DAVID BEA:  Yes, correct.  And there are some director

    positions that are in 10, as well.  So remember that it's now tying

    positions and what the position is responsible for doing to the

    market and so you have positions that might be a director of

    information technology of some sort that the pay that you need of

    director of information security.

         That's a really good one, and I think everybody would understand

    that, that the pay that you need to provide in the market to be

    competitive in the market for a director, somebody who is responsible

    for being a director of information security, is a highly

    sought-after in a highly competitive market.  So the pay for that

    position would vary.  It ends up being higher as a result of that.

         That's a little bit of a change.  So there are director positions

    that are now at or above what used to be administrator positions.





         >> MR. LUIS GONZALES:  Dr. Bea?

         >> DR. DAVID BEA:  Yes.

         >> MR. LUIS GONZALES:  (Indiscernible) that were not in the

    study.  Can you share that with the board?

         >> DR. DAVID BEA:  I will guess what I think the question is, can

    I share what the six positions are that were not classified as part

    of the study?

         Pretty sure that I have shared that, but I'm happy to.  I mean,

    it's the executive vice chancellors, the chancellor, and general

    counsel.

         >> MS. THERESA RIEL:  We all got information.  So we are just

    going to have to look at that a little bit differently.  The

    information that I got, at least for the people you just mentioned,

    it said they only had a $2,000 raise.  So I don't know --

         >> DR. DAVID BEA:  Right.  Yeah, there is something that you're

    hearing that isn't anything that I have ever said.  I will say it

    again:  That if people -- there were two approaches to what people

    got in terms of salary increases.  You got the larger of either

    $2,000, so that's the minimum increase, or you got placed on the

    class comp scale.

         So if someone wasn't placed on the class comp scale, these

    higher-level positions that I'm talking about weren't placed

    anywhere, so therefore they got the minimum increase.

         No one got zero increase and there wasn't another schedule of

    some other type, just to be clear about that.





         >> MS. THERESA RIEL:  Okay.

         >> DR. DAVID BEA:  Yes?

         >> MS. MARIA GARCIA:  So I apologize if I'm misstating it, but

    our CEO's contract is a percentage of the increase.  So does that

    mean that they got more or less?  I'm trying to go around it.

         >> DR. DAVID BEA:  Right.  I have to actually look at what

    specifically happened.  The way that I'm thinking about it is the

    $2,000 increase.

         >> MS. MARIA GARCIA:  Okay.

         >> DR. DAVID BEA:  Yeah, and Jeff is nodding.  That's how we

    implemented it.

         >> MS. THERESA RIEL:  Okay.  Thank you.

         >> DR. DAVID BEA:  And then, Makyla, just tell me, if you take

    the lead or whatever, just tell me to scroll.  I will do my best to

    keep up with you.

         >> MAKYLA HAYS:  Thanks.  Hi.  Makyla Hays.  You most often hear

    me speak in public comment for PCCEA, but I am the PCCEA faculty

    representative to AERC and was elected co-chair of AERC by the AERC

    at some point in the last year and a half to two years.

         So I am here kind of speaking on my experience, and also, I have

    Ricky here from the nonexempt staff.  And I had Jamie.  I think I

    just lost her.  She had until 6:30, so she just had to pop out, but

    she was here for the exempt staff.  So her and Jason Brown may be

    getting together after this, watching this, and then sending you

    anything I forget to include from the comments that they shared with





    me, because I want to make sure you hear from the exempt staff as

    well.  But I do have some notes to share with you from them, so I'm

    kind of doing this from dual roles here.

         So we got together and decided to try to give you three main kind

    of concerns that we had, what were the details of those concerns,

    what impact did those have, and what are the solutions that we could

    see moving forward from those concerns so that it wasn't just time

    for us to complain about things that happen, but like these were the

    problems, here's how that affected us, and what we'd like to see

    going forward.

         So the first one was the AERC's involvement in the process.  So

    we have AP 1.25.01 that detailed out what the AERC does as a whole,

    how we create policy, we work together in resolution teams, we

    identify who is involved, and we come together as an agreement and

    send that forward.  There is also a compensation-based Meet and

    Confer that's outlined in that AP.

         So the issue was that employees on the AERC felt that in reading

    that, that that was one of our resolution teams and we were the group

    that we expected these things to go through, because it is really

    significantly working conditions and compensation.

         We were not the group that it went through.  There was a steering

    committee instead that was put together by HR prior to our current HR

    director joining in.  This group was put together, and I know that I

    was on the steering committee for faculty and Ricky was actually on

    the steering committee for the staff, but we were chosen and put on





    that because of our roles within our respective representative

    groups.

         I kind of put my hands up and said, hey, we have to be involved

    in this, but I wasn't really put on as a representative from the AERC

    to that, and that wasn't clear to me or to Ricky.  In fact, we both

    felt that we, along with the other group, people that were chosen to

    be on that group in the employee class, we were kind of asked not to

    share things out, that everything was kind of in draft form, so

    sharing things out soon would cause confusion and frustration.

         So faculty pushed back a bit.  We did share some things out.  We

    did try to talk about it and tried to get a representative view.

    Staff didn't have as much opportunity to do so, from what I hear.

         We did call for AERC to be involved in the process several times,

    and we were told pretty much every time we brought it up that AERC

    would definitely be involved, because policy was going to have to

    change so it was going to come through AERC and we would have

    significant input before it was implemented.

         But the timing did not work that way, and it actually -- there

    were some presentations, there were some questions that AERC asked.

    We talked about some of these things a bit, but a lot of it was very

    high level and without specifics of what those schedules were so that

    people on AERC other than Ricky and myself had not even seen the

    schedules while we were asking these questions, if that makes sense.

         So it was hard to get really detailed on the questions when you

    don't actually know exactly where you're at with that.  It was very





    general and philosophical in nature.

         We had a presentation the Friday before the board got it to the

    AERC where those schedules were actually shown, and an entire list of

    questions put together by the AERC and sent out that weren't answered

    until probably closer to or mid-July.

         So it was voted on before the AERC really had any input, and

    still we haven't actually implemented policy, and there hasn't been a

    21-day comment on any policies for this, because we are still trying

    to really get at the heart of what these things are and make sure

    it's finalized before we put this through.  We were kind of making

    sure everybody was paid right, that we understood it and putting

    language to it, but nothing has actually gone into policy just yet.

         That board meeting, I don't know exactly what happened, but the

    board voted before public comment, so I didn't even get a chance to

    say, please, we're not ready, we can't do this, until after the vote

    had already gone through.  So that was kind of a rough one.  That's

    all the kind of detail, like the icky stuff behind it.

         The impact of that was that the AERC employees did file a

    grievance through ODR.  There was a whole history with that and how

    it was dismissed.  I have all the documents if you ever want to see

    it.

         That resulted, the way that that all went down, in an HLC

    complaint from the AERC faculty that was endorsed by the Faculty

    Senate, because the concern was really with the fact the AERC wasn't

    the group involved.





         One of the solutions -- I'm going to come back to the survey

    part -- but the solution to that was we did put together a resolution

    team this past fall, and we worked with Jeff Silvyn and really tried

    to hammer out what were the language differences, how did you read

    this differently than us?  Let's make sure that we are on the same

    page going forward so this doesn't happen again.

         So that should be out for 21-day comment or coming out for 21-day

    comment in the next month or so as it goes through the AP process,

    but we really kind of established that the Meet and Confer

    compensation-based thing is a resolution team, it will be ran through

    the AERC, and these are the voices that are going to be part of that

    process.

         We linked a survey in one of these slides that hopefully you can

    get to later, but we surveyed -- I sent it out to faculty, Ricky to

    nonexempt and Jason to exempt, and we sent it to all of our people,

    all of our employees, and we got about 345 responses throughout the

    college.  70% of employees felt their opinion was not solicited as

    part of the class and comp study.  Those info sessions that were ran,

    and I'm going to get to those later, they really didn't feel like

    that was a way for them to give input or their opinion.

         Of those same people that responded, 85.5% of them said they

    didn't feel like their opinion or input was valued or incorporated.

    Even some of those that did feel that they had their opinion

    solicited didn't feel they were listened to, because that is a higher

    value.  And I really think this is kind of just a big part was things





    being kept confidential, and I'm going to get that in the next slide

    or one of the next two slides, things being kept confidential that I

    don't know that really should have been.  I will get to that.

         If you want to go to the next one, Dr. Bea.  Actually, Ricky, did

    you have anything to add to that one before I move on?  Okay.  I see

    a no.

         >> RICKY:  No, that's fine.

         >> MAKYLA HAYS:  So the next one was the big thing we had was

    communication issues and how things were communicated out.  There was

    some communication.  I think the problem wasn't with the number of

    times things were communicated but more about the content of the

    communication.  So the big thing was the lack of transparency in the

    process.  It felt very closed.  I'm sure Ricky could attest to that,

    as well.

         We also, as steering committee members, sometimes felt like we

    were not getting enough information.  We weren't getting things sent

    to us ahead of time so that we could prepare comments to bring an

    informed decision or a representative view to those steering

    committee meetings.  A lot of times it was here's the information,

    what do you think?  We're like, we haven't even really had a time to

    process this.  I don't know what this all meant.

         So when we did get some of those things ahead of time, it wasn't

    very long ahead of time, and if we sent back questions, at least I

    noticed that if we sent back questions, a lot of times our meetings

    were delayed.  It was pushed back a week or canceled for that month,





    and then they'd come back and answer what they thought we asked, but

    really that wasn't what we were asking and it wasn't a satisfactory

    answer and still didn't give the info we needed.

         Staff actually had, what was it, Ricky, eight or nine months or

    eight or nine canceled meetings?

         >> RICKY:  Yes.

         >> MAKYLA HAYS:  They were only scheduled once a month to begin

    with, and the staff had multiple meetings canceled while things were

    going on behind the scenes, but they weren't told what those were.

    They weren't told what was going on during that time.

         So the communication as to why those were being canceled, what

    was going on without them, that was unclear to the steering committee

    much less to the rest of staff.

         I was very persistent in our communications, possibly borderline

    annoying.  I'm going to admit that.  But if we got the thing that

    said we're canceled, my response was why?  What are you working on

    and what should we be having input on?  I want to meet anyway.  I

    want to hear an update.  I want to do these things.

         I didn't love that I had to be put in the position to be pushing

    back that hard to try to get a voice in what I was selected to be a

    voice to, and our staff didn't have that opportunity.  So that was a

    bit of a structure problem, I think.

         There were e-mails from HR to the college, but a lot of times it

    was we're working on things or we're putting things together, the

    steering committee is talking, we're researching data, but nothing





    included no data, no examples, no charts, no suggestions of what was

    going on, no detail.

         So people would -- routinely that would get sent out and I would

    get 10 to 20 e-mails from faculty going, what does this even mean?

    Why are they sending it to me?  I don't know what this means.  What's

    going on, what are you doing, I know you're on that team.  I'm sure

    Ricky and others felt the same way.  They weren't sufficient

    information being sent out and shared.

         The input sessions were -- again, it was over COVID so we

    couldn't do it in person, but the structure that it was sent on I

    think was -- it was not conducive to actually getting feedback, and

    the planning wasn't there to get that feedback back from people.

         It was usually a Zoom or Q&A session or webinar, so people might

    have the ability to put something in Chat or put something in a

    question, but they couldn't ask their question.  Really, not really.

         They were, at the end of those meetings, there wasn't like a form

    sent out or something that said here was what I did, give me your

    feedback.

         So I sent out a couple of things after those meetings with a link

    in a form that said, here, give me your feedback, I'll bring it for

    you.  But again, that was a personal representative choice, and I

    don't think staff had that opportunity or they didn't feel they

    could.

         So I'm hoping in the future that any type of large-scale change

    like that there would be a much bigger look onto how to actually get





    people to give real feedback that could be incorporated for that

    team.  Otherwise I think the big idea there was presentations to a

    group is not actually consultation with that group and it's not input

    gathering.  It's a presentation to, you might be sharing some info,

    but if they don't have a chance to actually change the direction of

    where you're going, it's not an input session.  There needs to be a

    give-and-take into that.  The survey results are linked there that

    Jason compiled for us.

         I'm going to let Ricky talk a little bit about the appeals

    process, because really most of the appeals were on the staff side.

    I think there were some faculty appeals, but it was mainly due to

    communication about how their steps were determined, but staff had

    some bigger appeals.

         >> RICKY:  Yes.  My name is Ricky Gonzalez.  I'm Pima Community

    College's chairperson for AFSCME, and I work out of the M&S

    warehouse.

         For the staff, and Makyla spoke on these points, because there

    was not an equity analysis performed on the previous system, it was

    hard to understand how these pay gaps that relate to race, age,

    gender, job description, seniority played in that system then so that

    we can glean instances where there were these disparities and how we

    can work with Segal in the new system to prevent these occurrences

    from and assess correctly the history of the current population in

    terms of their skill sets, their education, their years of service,

    so that they can be equitably placed in these pay scales as well as





    these job descriptions so that there was transparency and equity so

    that, you know, these appeals would not have been necessary, as many

    as they had been processed.

         Because, for example, there were individuals who were senior

    people in their positions, and they had been working with the college

    for 10, 15, 20 years, and they were placed in support 1 or support 2

    with a title that didn't even correspond to their responsibilities in

    performing their tasks and their job.

         So it was that frustration, and that caused a lot of, as you

    know, turmoil in the sense of having any type of meaningful chance of

    change in being compensated.  So in that regard, it was...

         >> MAKYLA HAYS:  Yeah.  Sorry, if I could add to that a little

    bit, Ricky, I think what we noticed and part of what Dr. Bea had

    referenced about putting things on the Intranet, people wanted to

    appeal but they weren't sure what they were appealing because they

    didn't understand the rules of the game.  I kept comparing it to a

    game like Monopoly or something and we had the game board but we

    needed the rules to know how to move on the game board and to know if

    I was placed fairly or to know if those rules applied to me.

         >> RICKY:  Right.

         >> MAKYLA HAYS:  There were some things posted that we asked for.

    I heard recently from some staff that their job descriptions still

    aren't updated, and they are being asked to do things that they

    aren't sure is actually in that job description anymore, so there are

    still some things that need to be updated and posted.





         But it is such a big change for staff that knowing the rules of

    that transfer and the rules of this new game is crucial, and having

    that policy set is going to be important going forward.  So that is

    definitely something we need to get on the board.

         For faculty, we are working on trying -- we had a pretty decent

    schedule that we feel like was fair within faculty for the most part,

    although we did lose our master's plus 60 column, so all of the

    people that were almost a Ph.D. and didn't finish, they kind of fell

    back a column, but then when the staff schedules came out, we

    realized that we now had 20 years from bottom to top of the scale and

    staff had 16.

         Our yearly step increases was around 2.25%, whereas staff's were

    looking to be closer to 3.  Staff had this 7.5 increase when you go

    up in responsibility when you kind of get a promotion, if you will,

    but the salary bands for faculty were kind of all over the place,

    between 6 and 12.

         So faculty, we kind of reworked our schedule to have a little bit

    more internal equity with the staff, and we're looking to see if we

    can make that one work for next year.  And there is a cost associated

    with moving to that, because of course there is, right, but it's a

    16-step schedule with closer to 2.9%, it adds back in that

    educational column of master's plus 60, and it has more of an 8%

    increase as we go across.

         So we are trying to respect that internal equity within faculty

    and the market rate but also between staff.  So those are things





    going forward.

         I did want to say, just because I kind of harped on the AERC not

    being a part of it and the transparency and the communication, we

    have really worked hard on redoing a lot of our AERC processes.  So

    things that are within the AERC have ran pretty smoothly, and we have

    had a couple really good examples of how to involve AERC at the

    beginning of an issue and work quickly if necessary and really

    involve the areas that need to be and how to communicate that out.

         I'm hoping that those can become a model for future

    compensation-based discussions and how to get input and move these

    things along in larger discussions like this.

         So if we can go to the next one, because I know we are behind on

    time.  I'm trying to kind of -- board members, stop me if you have

    questions on anything.  I know I can talk pretty quickly and a lot.

    Just let me know.

         All right.  Our last point is vendor concerns.  This is really

    kind of focused with how the relationship works between Segal and

    mostly, honestly, this was mostly me, but I know Ricky had some

    concerns as well, but the vendor and how they interacted with the

    steering committees.

         So the first one was because AERC wasn't really part of the

    steering committee process, putting that together, we also weren't

    involved in choosing a vendor or deciding whether or not we needed to

    get one for all of the groups or how we were going to choose

    representatives to that committee.





         So the AERC employees should have been probably involved from the

    beginning, because they are a group of elected representatives of the

    people in those groups, not hand-picked by, you know, other groups.

         There was a really long delay in the process of deciding the peer

    institutions, because I haven't stopped asking questions, and I'm

    going to fully admit that was mostly on me and some of the other

    faculty in my group with me.  I just didn't do it on my own.

         But, you know, we needed all of the groups to have the same peer

    group institutions, so we had the staff kind of having their

    conversation of peer groups and the faculty having ours, and we had

    this kind of funnel of decision.  Maria, to kind of get to your point

    about New York, Arkansas, like who are we including, who are these

    institutions, how are we deciding?  And we had this kind of like if

    their student population is that, if their employee population is

    this, if their budget works this way, we can include them.

         And then when we were finished, there was basically the Arizona

    community colleges were also thrown into the mix, which

    geographically makes sense, but we were trying to figure out why,

    because they didn't fit our funnel of decision.

         So those conversations lasted a very long time.  I want to say

    three, four months, before we were finally, yes, okay, we're fine

    with this group, we understand, go ahead and move forward, but it was

    tedious to get answers back from the vendor when we had them.  So

    knowing that the peer institution is determining our market rate and

    that the market rate was going to determine everything else, that was





    crucial for us.  But it did cause a delay, because the vendor didn't

    expect to have that pushback.

         It felt very much like they were largely responsive only when

    administration would ask the questions.  So we would ask questions,

    and they would just kind of look at us.  Sometimes they would answer

    kind of surface level, but then we would get more of an answer if

    administration was, like, yeah, we need to look into that, then they

    would look on it and work on it.

         It felt frustrating.  As an employee sometimes, I'm like, it's a

    legit question, why are we not just answering it?  And they would

    bring things to us and present them to us and we'd ask questions

    about it, and they would have to bring us an answer at a following

    meeting.

         I didn't feel like they were answers that should have been

    delayed.  If they were presenting it to us, they should have known a

    lot of the time.

         So until they could answer the questions we had about the

    schedule, we weren't willing to agree on a schedule, because I didn't

    understand what they were saying.  We didn't understand the schedule

    when we're not going to choose it.  So that was a big delay in the

    process, as well.

         As Ricky mentioned, they had asked for a pay equity analysis to

    figure out, like, do we have gaps in gender, race, age, job

    descriptions?  What are the gaps that we have?  Are there some

    significant issues?  Where are they?  How can we help use this





    large-scale change to help address some of those gaps?  They did not

    receive that.

         Let's see.  I'm sorry.  I'm trying to make sure where I was at.

         So I mentioned that when we asked questions that the vendor kind

    of would delay sometimes meeting with us afterwards.  There were

    times I know that I held back asking a question over e-mail ahead of

    time, because I had this feeling that if I asked that question, we

    would not be meeting that next month, and I needed to meet with them

    to hear what was going on.

         Around March I started to really kind of push for some extra

    information from them, like they're getting paid the big bucks, I

    wanted them to answer the questions.  I wanted to know what were the

    national norms for paying people in different areas or for paying

    people for things beyond graduate credit hours and things like that,

    and I had asked them that, and I think they were offended, honestly,

    I think they were a little offended at my questions, and they kind of

    stopped participating in our meetings.

         So they would come and cameras would be off, and most of our

    answers came from the college, which was great, because I do feel

    like Dave Bea gave us really good input.  When he was there, we got

    things done and we got input.  Our voices were heard on the faculty

    side when Dr. Bea was working with us, and we were able to get some

    movement on things.  But the consultant wasn't really responsive to

    that, if that makes sense.

         So solutions, basically we have so many highly paid -- not highly





    paid, highly educated is where I was going with that, highly

    educated, passionate people who have these massive strengths in our

    areas, and I just wonder sometimes if we could use our money a little

    bit better to tap into our employees' talents a little bit more and

    have them do some of that research, even almost to like a

    sabbatical-level funding type thing and could we reinfuse that money

    back into Tucson's economy and bring in that talent.

         I do understand the idea of having a national company coming and

    presenting these things to us.  I felt like what we got was a very,

    almost a cookie-cutter presentation in a lot of ways.  So there was a

    lot of money put into that that I feel like we could have probably

    put more into paying employees more, and there is some value in it

    because we hadn't done it before, and it was an interesting look.  I

    don't know if it was the wrong vendor or if it was that's just how

    things go and I just have high standards that were not met.  So I

    will say that as well.

         But in the future, I would like to make sure that the charge of

    those steering committees are super clear on what is the input level

    so that all of the people on the committee, including those that are

    serving on the committee, know exactly what level of input they are

    going to give so that that energy isn't there trying to figure that

    out as you go.

         I think that's a huge amount from me, so...

         >> MS. THERESA RIEL:  Well, thank you, Makyla and Ricky, and we

    always like hearing from everybody's point of view, even though these





    meetings might run a little long, just because it's important to know

    what the impact is on everybody.

         One of the first things I did is I did ask permission from Aubrey

    Conover to attend the AERC meeting, and I was so impressed with every

    single one of those people on that committee.  You know, that was one

    of the first committees that there was a part-time temp working on

    the AERC.  She was even contributing amazing thoughts and ideas.

         So to me, it seems like if Makyla says that the steering

    committee, you're putting energy and effort in but you're not being

    able to participate fully because of the way it was set up, that is

    something that we want to look into.

         I think that maybe we, as a board, we should also look into do we

    want to spend our monies this way, too, if it could have been done

    with our own people.  So that is a bonus.

         Makyla, I don't know how this is going to affect the AP 1.25 that

    you had talked about, but I am also going to bring up a board policy

    1.25 in our meeting in April to talk in our regular Governing Board

    meeting to talk about how, you know, if we can have this, all of our

    employee groups, administrators, staff, nonexempt staff, exempt

    staff, and faculty all work together and bring consensus to these

    agreements, maybe we could do that without having to hire an outside

    firm.

         So I hope that me bringing this board policy forward in April is

    not going to make problems for the AP that you guys have been working

    so hard on.  So I apologize if it does.





         >> MAKYLA HAYS:  It shouldn't.  If there are any changes we need

    to address in it, we'll pull it together.  That's what we do.

         But you're the board, you set the policy for the board policy,

    and you set what you want to see, and the AP will reflect and not

    contradict it.  I don't see how it's going to change it too much.  I

    think it will be fine.

         I think we're on -- I'm happy to work on that a little harder if

    we can make things smoother and a good structure.

         >> MS. THERESA RIEL:  Okay.  Board members, are there any other

    questions for Makyla or Ricky?

         >> DR. WADE McLEAN:  I have a question.

         At the top of the slide it says employee group feedback, and at

    the bottom, you have solutions.  Can you identify the problem that

    you are recommending these solutions to solve?

         >> MAKYLA HAYS:  Yeah, so for each slide there were three kind of

    main concerns that we had.  The first slide, I don't know if you want

    to go back a couple, Dr. Bea, to the first slide I had, so the first

    one was about AERC involvement, and so we were thinking in terms of

    AERC being involved in that process of the steering committees.

         Our solution was to work with the college and work on AP 1.25 to

    ensure that the voices are clearly defined and the roles are clearly

    defined.

         >> DR. WADE McLEAN:  What would that look like?

         >> MAKYLA HAYS:  So essentially, as the representative group, we

    would want to form those steering committees.  We would want to put





    the faculty forward that would be the representative voices for

    faculty, put the staff forward that would be the representative

    voices for staff, and that we would have the kind of the ability to

    say we're going to send out a survey and figure out what people like

    out of these things.

         We are going to represent our voices by actually going back out

    and getting that input and bringing it back through our voices and do

    on a large scale what we do on a small scale at AERC through our

    resolution teams.

         >> DR. WADE McLEAN:  Then when those voices speak, what do you

    want to see happen with the input that the voices have?

         >> MAKYLA HAYS:  So when we ask questions, we'd like to see

    answers, if we are looking for data or trying to help determine kind

    of what should the percentage look like?  Should it be 16 steps or 20

    steps?  Just have a legitimate voice in that process and have it be

    more of a consensus-building event instead of performative.

         Not that this one was for faculty necessarily.  We actually got a

    lot of the things that we asked for, and if you look at what we put

    in place, it was very different than anything Segal actually

    proposed.  So faculty did have that voice.  I don't know if staff

    feel that they did as much.

         >> DR. WADE McLEAN:  So are you asking that the implementation be

    put on hold until this occurs?

         >> MAKYLA HAYS:  It's a little late, because we have already been

    paid on it since last July, so I did ask for that in my public





    comment last June, but I'm more looking for a commitment from the

    college in the future to involve the AERC as the legitimate voice for

    employees in working conditions and compensation.

         >> DR. WADE McLEAN:  Thank you.

         >> MS. THERESA RIEL:  If I may just ask a question real quick,

    Makyla, what Dr. McLean is asking, I believe, is it is in board

    policy that we believe, it already is in board policy, that we

    believe in shared governance, and it seems as if all of these details

    and impacts that you're talking about on these three slides show

    where shared governance did not happen either through not having your

    questions answered, not being in meetings because they were canceled

    because of different things, and then it sounds like Segal and

    somebody even other than the steering committee decided the final

    product.

         So it sounds like what you're saying is that you just want to

    make sure that shared governance is respected and uplifted at the

    college, because when we do shared governance, we know that the

    product is better.

         >> MAKYLA HAYS:  Yes.  Absolutely.  But even more specifically

    that the -- so the AERC is new, and it used to be that PCCEA was the

    faculty representative group and would negotiate our policies

    separately with administration.  There was a very structured and

    clear process for how policy was built and it was published once a

    year.

         When AERC was built, the structure, it's coming together, so I'm





    liking the direction it's going, but I do feel like the employees

    lost a little bit of that voice and that standing to say policy goes

    through this group, policy changes go through this group, employees

    have a voice in this process this way, and so I think this was just a

    very large and impactful example of there being employee voices

    involved.

         There was faculty on the steering committee, there were staff on

    the steering committee, but they weren't from the elected

    representative group in AERC as AERC representatives.

         So it should be the AERC group that's the respected voice of the

    employees within those conversations in the future, is what I'm

    asking for, mainly because hopefully, and we are starting to really

    build it, there should be a mechanism for us to be able to get

    feedback and to bring our employee voices to the college

    administration and say this is what employees are saying, this is

    what we need, this is where consensus can be built, not just with

    this group of five people but with the employees as a whole so you

    don't get 400 appeals, and hopefully you get much less.

         And I think that was what was really missing from this process,

    is it's not about necessarily what people are sitting in the room but

    what people represent who are sitting in that room and how are they

    actually bringing the voices of others to those conversations, if

    that makes sense, to really solidify that shared governance model.

         >> MS. THERESA RIEL:  Okay.  Thank you.

         >> MAKYLA HAYS:  I'm a little bit passionate about it (smiling).





    So I appreciate it.

         I really appreciate the board having a moment to listen to the

    employee voice of how this went.  I also want to kind of clarify it's

    not necessarily about what we got.  We're not saying we should have

    got more money or something along those lines.

         It was really more of there were some process issues here that we

    want to make sure that we iron out, because future processes should

    be able to go smoother.  Let's learn from this and really make sure

    that things go well in the future.

         I think there are things that we can improve still with the

    implementation, with the current pay structures, but it's not about

    what we're being paid.  I think you'll see that on all of this.  We

    didn't put in here that we didn't get enough money.  There is people

    that think that, but that's not what I'm here to present to you.

         >> MS. THERESA RIEL:  Okay, great.  Thank you.

         Any other comments or questions?  Maria?

         >> MS. MARIA GARCIA:  Makyla, I want to thank you for your input.

    The board is here to support and listen to everything you guys have

    to say.  Because, you know, we're here to ensure that the college is

    successful and that the students are.

         Then the other part that I want to say is that you guys are the

    forefront of making this college successful.  You guys are the most

    important thing in this place, and the students respect you guys and

    we do too.  Thank you.

         >> MAKYLA HAYS:  I really appreciate that, and I will take that





    back to the AERC group and to the other employees and let them know.

    I will send that to them.

         >> RICKY:  Thank you for that, board.

         >> MS. THERESA RIEL:  Thank you, both.  I know that what you do,

    not only Ricky and Makyla in your everyday jobs at the college, but

    also all the energy and effort that you're expending on behalf of

    your fellow employees is really impressive, and that is also a thing

    that makes the college very, very strong.

         Thank you.

         Chancellor Lambert?

         >> DR. LEE LAMBERT:  I just want to say thank you all for your

    feedback on the process, and I'm committed to, you know, working

    together to keep improving on what we have been doing.

         I think, as you pointed out, Makyla, this is a fairly new

    process.  And remember, some of this was impacted by decisions in

    Phoenix, not necessarily decisions that were made here locally, and

    so I want us not to lose sight of that.

         But the other thing is I want us to also thank Dave and

    especially Aida in HR, just the time and amount of effort she put in

    to go through all of these appeals was just, you know, a phenomenal

    amount of effort on her part.  I don't want that to get lost, and to

    thank Carleen and the folks from that side as well.

         >> MS. THERESA RIEL:  Thank you for bringing that up.  That is

    true.  Everybody at the college is doing their part.  We're glad of

    that.





         Okay.  I think this brings is to our last item on our agenda for

    tonight, which doesn't have anything to do anything with the class

    and comp, but it's about our board self-evaluation.  I notice that

    Andrea sent an e-mail, a link, Google Forms link out to all of the

    five board members.

         And so sometime between now and 25 minutes from now (smiling),

    will you take a minute and look at that if you have the energy

    tonight?  Otherwise do it soon.  I didn't have a chance to read it,

    because I noticed it was in my e-mail after we started up in a

    different meeting.

         But I know that it's going to be sent to somebody else, but I

    would ask if you feel comfortable, board members, will you also send

    me a copy of your results just so, as the board chair, I can

    understand what everybody is thinking, and then we can talk about it

    more as a board?

         >> MR. LUIS GONZALES:  Yes.

         >> MS. THERESA RIEL:  Okay, great.

         >> MR. GREG TAYLOR:  Theresa, is this the right one?  Maybe I'm

    misremembering, but I thought the one we wanted to do had both

    evaluate ourself and evaluate the board, like there were two.  And

    this just doesn't have that.

         Maybe I'm misremembering what we decided

         >> MS. THERESA RIEL:  Oh, I didn't look at the -- it was 10

    questions, and it was one for us to evaluate ourselves individually

    as board members and then the board member as a whole, yes.





         Let me just look and see.  Maybe it's the wrong one up here.

         >> DR. LEE LAMBERT:  Madam Chair, we can make sure we send out

    the right instrument.  I will have Andrea work with you to make sure

    we have the right instrument, and then we will send it out to

    everybody.

         >> MS. THERESA RIEL:  Okay.  That sounds great.

         Okay.  Anything else?

         Well, thank you, everybody.  It was wonderful to --

         >> MS. MARIA GARCIA:  Luis wants to talk.

         >> MS. THERESA RIEL:  Sure.  Luis, thank you.

         >> MR. LUIS GONZALES:  I just want to -- it was a good

    presentation, very informative.  One of the things that came out

    maybe strongly, and I do agree with it when Ms. Makyla Hays mentioned

    to be super clear in reference to transparency but also full

    disclosure as well, too.

         I like the information (audio issues) -- the thing is...

         >> MS. THERESA RIEL:  Hey, Luis?

         >> MR. LUIS GONZALES:  Yes.

         >> MS. THERESA RIEL:  I'm sorry, for some reason your audio is

    not coming through clearly.  We can only hear like every third or

    fourth word you're saying.  I'm sorry.

         >> MR. LUIS GONZALES:  Okay.  Let me just say this -- can you

    hear me?

         >> MS. THERESA RIEL:  Right now it's working fine, yes.

         >> MR. LUIS GONZALES:  Let me just say this.  It was mentioned





    earlier that we need to have it super clear and be transparent, but

    more important, listen to the staff and faculty reference to any

    issues and concerns, because the presentation is significant, and the

    voice of them, but also in reference to what us as board members

    really need to do and address and ultimately find the solutions that

    we need to.

         Thank you.

         >> MS. THERESA RIEL:  Thank you, Mr. Gonzales.

         With that, thank you, everybody.  Have a wonderful evening.  We

    will see you in under two weeks, I think, for our next board meeting.

         Have a wonderful first couple of days of spring and thank you.

         >> MR. LUIS GONZALES:  Thank you.

         >> MS. THERESA RIEL:  Good night.

         (Adjournment.)





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