Letter To The Editor: JCC Board Supports Salary Increase For Faculty And Staff

By: Johnston Community College Board of Trustees

As North Carolina faces an economic crisis amidst a pandemic, our community colleges will be key to recovery efforts.

North Carolina will undoubtedly turn to our 58 community colleges to train and retrain our state’s workforce to meet the increasing demands of a recovering economy and changing business world. To do that, our colleges need to be able to retain and recruit the best faculty and staff who can provide the training our students and businesses need to be successful.

Many businesses, such as Grifols, Novo Nordisk, and Amazon, face the challenge of recruiting qualified, in-demand employees and then keeping those employees from leaving to go to another employer. At Johnston Community College, we work with our local leaders and businesses to help them train and retain that workforce.

Likewise, it is difficult for North Carolina’s community colleges to attract and keep highly qualified professionals to prepare this future workforce. This continues to be a significant challenge – especially in high-demand, high-skilled areas such as nursing, bio-technology, engineering, and other trades. Although North Carolina has the third largest community college system in the nation, community college faculty salaries, as a whole, consistently rank near the bottom in national comparisons.

As lawmakers consider many important issues to our state during this legislative session, our North Carolina Community Colleges are supporting legislation asking for a 7 percent salary increase for faculty and staff. If community college faculty and staff were to receive this salary increase, it would be a significant step toward ensuring that North Carolina has the professionals in place to train the 700,000 students who enroll in the state’s community colleges annually and to help business and industry emerge from the pandemic and rebuild the economy.

Lyn Austin
Johnston Community College Board Chair
Clayton, NC

3 COMMENTS

  1. Hey Johnston Commissioners can you spare a few of those dump trucks loaded with that free Johnston County Tax Payers dollars your dumping at the School Board and come across I-95 to the College they need some too.

    You regular Johnston County Employees that are not getting a decent cost living raise in that Court House, you guys need to transfer to the Education sector here. These Johnston County Commissioner’s seem unable to tell them no.

  2. I hope the faculty get any money allocated for raises and it does not in the pockets of the president and his administration.

    • I agree. Anyone can compare the public salary reports and see that the President got a $30K increase along with his appointing brand new Vice Presidents that received $23-26K increases. He and his cabinet are well taken care of but I’m sure they will still get more money due to their own agenda. Rumor is staff was never fully taken care of either and a lot of promotions took place outside of following their own policy/hiring process during hiring/budget freezes. They need to take care of staff that actually work and all faculty. Again, I’m sure the only way they attempt to do that is by taking care of themselves, too. Hope the Board of Trustees sees how crooked most of JCC’s Administration is and makes good needed changes for the entire college, most importantly the students. Otherwise, we are watching a downward spiral.

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