Thank you for alerting me as to the limited time offer of PJC's retirement incentive package being made available to a restricted category of staffers, as well as for pointing out the narrow official time-window for signing up to take advantage of this incredible offer.
I appreciate the opportunity you provided to help me consider the salient concrete details: A) College-provided insurance coverage, as well as B) The 100% cash-equivalent reimbursement for all accrued hours of sick-leave time, which in my case, tops out at some 20 years.
However, when I realized that at 67, I am now no longer eligible for the three years of college-paid insurance premiums (roughly 50% of the incentive package). That left only the c.1,200 hours of sick-leave credits amounting to, I believe your helpful courtesy call to Tammy Henderson calculated roughly a retirement reimbursement of some $57,168.
What if one compared this current package with the DROP Program offered earlier, where one of our teachers, out of a few others, having served c.25 to c.30 years accrued a retirement incentive package during her final five years to pay off in the neighborhood of $250,000.
Adding yet another broad contrast, one could, I think, draw a likely and definitive comparison between two serious business philosophies: On the one hand, the responsibility to administer a vast enterprise like our college; on the other the mission to teach, to educate. How could these two directions possibly be incompatible? And yet, a grave separation seems to characterize their respective emphases.
To achieve some perspective, need we but consider, then choose?
QUESTION: Clearly, the purpose of a junior college is -- ____.
DIRECTIONS: [pick the correct answer].
ANSWERS LIST: A) to educate or B) to administer?
After entering my answer in the blank above, I did some back-of-the-envelope basic arithmetic and compared the two retirement plans -- 1) the DROP incentive and 2) the current "incentive" plan.
Next, I considered the factors listed below, of which some points remain associated in faculty minds for over two decades with long-failed CBA negotiations (to include arbitration). These un-budging, promise-breaking "negotiations" still disturb some minds and continue to stir vitriolic resentment at the essential heart of our institution, the full-time faculty.
Some of the following points remain contentious "hot-button" issues in annual bargaining sessions --
+ What, I asked myself, What if the college were offering $150,000, paid insurance for five years (regardless of age), plus 50% of sick time? Now, that kind of package seems to provide a genuine incentive as defined by Webster.
+ Next, I considered what PJC teachers might have been earning today, had previous administrations honored that oft-touted 20-year-old commitment (promise) to raise PJC faculty salaries to the top 25% of the States 28 community colleges. (Many may still recall when we were ranked number 28 -- and how often our (?) reserved slot in the divine scheme.)
+ Furthermore, I contemplated the administrations repeated failure (as discussed in contract negotiations for decades) to raise salaries just to keep even with the cost-of-living, a modest enough standard met and often generously exceeded, if I am not mistaken, by virtually all of the local elementary schools.
+ A further factor that surfaces in negotiations is the level of salaries paid to PJCs top dozen administrators, to include our President's salary raises year after year over decades, that famous Golden Parachute package discussed over cold coffee in faculty meetings, and the various other added bonuses awarded by the Trustees -- even in those years when the faculty received virtually no annual raise -- not even the bonus of a miniature ribbon-tied can of Christmas Spam.
Throughout the day, as these issues churned and ruminated, I spoke with other faculty members and e-mailed friends and colleagues in education.
The opinions of those others seemed to confirm a growing suspicion that the current incentive package being offered appears rather shrunken, like a withered tool badly in need of an erectile dysfunction potion.
In fact, in my own case mentioned above, all that appears left-over after a closer inspection of the so-called benefits package, is a meager shadow. What remains might be described by some as a sad little pittance, an offering so modest, that a reasonable person not a top financial administrator might decline from labeling it an incentive at all.
The Biblically literate can hardly escape the parallel with Lazarus and the rich man [Unlike Lazarus, we learn from a rapid Internet search that the wealthy man is not named, so in tradition he has been given the name "Dives" (pron. DEE-vays), the Latin word for "rich man"].
Bleak indeed is a poignant little word, one we seldom hear anymore, and yet Charles Dickens so named an entire novel -- Bleak House. After taking a second hard look at the current incentive package, some might,begin to wonder whether that famous novel might not also well describe a certain Florida Panhandle junior college. Of course, to capture the essential tone of Dickens castigating censure of the social system of his day and which invariably includes education, one need only read the novel's opening paragraph.
Sometimes, I can hardly evade wondering whether negotiating the truth might not be bringing us all to an uncertain moral fork in the road.
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