Dr. Robert Agrella, president and superintendent, will retire in June, and 21 faculty requested retirement as of Oct. 1. With a new president, new faculty, budget cuts and re-engineering, SRJC is taking on a new shape.

Agrella’s retirement came as a bit of a surprise, but after 20 years, Agrella is the second longest running president in the history of SRJC. “He surprised all of us,” said Dr. Mary Kay Rudolph, vice president of academic affairs and assistant superintendant. “He’s been here so long, it is hard to imagine the college without him at the helm.”

According to Agrella it is a good time to retire. He thinks the college could use some fresh eyes and ideas. Although Agrella is confident it will be a good change for SRJC, “June 30 is a long way off,” he said. He plans to continue his re-engineering project until the day he leaves. “It is my intent to just run as hard as I can before I leave.”

Agrella struggled with whether now was the right time for him to retire, but he feels it is time to step down. “I wasn’t really sure what I was going to do until I decided to tell the board,” he said. “At one point in time, I thought I should wait out the budget crisis. I don’t think the budget crisis is going away. It’s not going to disappear overnight; that’s where fresh eyes come in.”

His retirement is in addition to 21 faculty retirement requests, meaning several faculty positions could now be available to people in higher education: people whose colleges were not lucky enough to avoid layoffs among regular employees.

According to a study SRJC conducted five years ago, 75 percent of regular SRJC employees are eligible to retire. SRJC will gradually have to replace that eligible group over the next 15 years, and due to the drop in SRJC’s ability to provide competitive salaries, SRJC may not be able to attract the same caliber of employees as in the past.

“There are a lot of people who are going to be worried,” Rudolph said. Agrella has helped keep SRJC from being dramatically affected by the economy, something his re-engineering project is meant to aid, Rudolph said. SRJC hasn’t panicked or incurred crippling debts, but right now California has no budget, and until a budget is agreed upon SRJC will not receive any state funding.

“Agrella has done a really good job making sure we are secure,” Rudolph said. According to Rudolph, SRJC has been able to retain all of its regular employees throughout the economic meltdown and budget cuts. Although there have been no layoffs of regular employees, all short term (STNC) employees were laid off, and their positions were filled through re-engineering. “We have to use employees to find ways to save money,” Rudolph said.

Although SRJC has been able to maintain financial stability, employees still feel the effects of a decreasing budget. Employees were not prepared for the budget problems to last for so long, Rudolph said. When SRJC started having problems in 2008-2009, employees expected the problems to blow over. “People really assumed they would get a raise,” Rudolph said.

Now, 2014-2015 is the year that finances are predicted to improve. “I think the reality has hit all of us that this is going to be a long time,” Rudolph said. “People aren’t thinking if I stick around for a bit, I’ll get back to where I was. It is very tempting, I would think, to go out now.” Last year, when there was still hope of recovering from the budget crisis, SRJC only had seven retirements. This year, 21 faculty and management employees submitted requests to retire.

All faculty and management retirements are based on either the salaries of their last three years or their three highest years. For long-term employees, their last year of employment is usually when their salaries are highest. Most employees will not see a higher salary in the near future.

“The college has been through several cycles, deep cycles, of financial difficulties. This is the worst because we can’t see a way out of this,” Agrella said.

Since it does not look like SRJC’s financial difficulties will improve in the near future, those eligible to retire now on a comfortable income have little incentive to stay longer.

This means SRJC will go through a hiring boom unlike any since the 1980s, the last time there were large numbers of employees retiring. This is the start of a cycle where new employees will be filling into every part of the college.

“I don’t think this will be unusual for us from now on, at least in the next five years,” said Sara Hopkins, human resources recruitment coordinator. “Everybody’s that age,” said Warren Ruud, All Faculty Association president and SRJC instructor. “A lot of them who are just kind of thinking about it…they are not going to be able to improve their benefit structure by hanging around.”

This is the second year SRJC does not offer rank 10 salaries, and for the first time, full-time salaries fell below the state average. Adjunct faculty salaries are still at rank nine, though they are not at parity pay with adjuncts.

California mandates colleges must have a certain number in correspondence with the number of full-time equivalent students (FTES). Should the FTES increase, SRJC has to maintain the proper ratio of full-time faculty to FTES. However, there is an exception to this rule. If the California Board of Governors declares community colleges are under-funded for a particular year, they can opt to meet the same number of full-time faculty required as the last year they were properly funded.

SRJC is currently maintaining its full-time ratio even though the California Board of Governors declared under-funding both last year and this year. Since SRJC had to cut sections last year, it cut only adjunct sections, totaling a loss of about 60 adjuncts. This allowed SRJC the ability to lose some full-time faculty and replace them with adjuncts.

Some retired faculty will come back to teach as adjunct faculty, Ruud said.

Doug Roberts, vice president of business services, hopes that since all employees will not retire at the same time, there will be plenty of “long-timers” to mentor new employees and pass on SRJC’s traditions before they leave.

A special retirement program, which increases the amount of retirement pay for all employees who have been at SRJC for more than 30 years expires this year. According to Roberts, eligible employees would have to retire this year take advantage of the program.

“I am concerned, but I am certainly happy for those who’ve reached that point in their life,” Roberts said. “We all get there at some point.”