The Shadow Schedule

In two back-to-back public meetings, the Faculty Senate on Friday, September 15 and the TMCC Planning Council on September 18, President Karin Hilgersom has referred to “shadow schedules” in her remarks about salary schedules. From what we can glean from her comments, TMCC maintains salary placement documents that are subsets of the official salary schedules published in Chapter 3 of the NSHE Procedures and Guidelines Manual (P&GM). 

Here is the official NSHE salary schedule for community college faculty:

Each grade is associated with a faculty member’s level of education, and in isolated cases, professional experience. Grade 1 is for employees with less than a bachelor degree, while Grade 5 is for an earned doctorate.

While the salary schedules themselves appear in the P&GM, policies governing initial placement of new employees on the schedule are in the Board of Regents Handbook; Title 4, Chapter 3, Section 27 to be exact. The Board of Regents gives the institutions some flexibility about where new employees can be placed on the schedule based on experience, which is a good thing in the case of the Community College Academic Faculty Schedule which hasn’t been adjusted for equity or inflation in over 10 years. Still, BOR policy sets the Q2/median point as the highest point for placement of new hires without approval of the President. This means that the vast majority of our new hires are probably being placed at or near the same salary starting points as new hires with equivalent credentials in 2013.

Now back to the President’s references to the “shadow schedule.” I asked the HR Department to provide us with copies of the documents, and received a Proposed Shadow Schedules document dated September 23, 2023. The title implies that the "shadow schedules" have not be implemented yet, but HR confirmed the new minimums are based on recommendations from the consultant who conducted last year's equity study. Individuals who were hired into faculty positions over the summer should see salary adjustments based on these new minimum levels.

It's encouraging that the “shadow schedule” will help the College adapt starting salaries for new academic faculty to account for inflation and remain competitive. It is a small step in the right direction, but Title 4 of the Handbook restricts placement of new hires above the median of the official salary schedule unless the President approves otherwise. That creates a real ceiling for placement. And, unfortunately, in the case of the Community College salary schedule, that ceiling hasn’t moved in a decade.

In July 2022, then-Officer in Charge Crystal Abba, submitted a memo citing the results of a salary study commissioned by NSHE in compliance with Title 2 Chapter 5 Section 5.5 of the Handbook, which requires salary schedules to be adjusted every four years based on the recommendation of an independent compensation expert. With the exception of the university professor classification, the community college faculty salary schedule was the only other schedule that was not adjusted. Worse yet, the schedules are published in the Procedures & Guidelines Manual, meaning that modifications do not require a vote in public by the Regents. The Chancellor’s cabinet and the Council of Presidents made the recommendations to modify the schedules and are only required to notify the Regents. There is no record of any of the community college presidents objecting to the omission of the community college faculty schedule from the adjustments. 

The Board will consider revisions to the policies that govern salary schedules at a special meeting on September 28. We must encourage the Board to add language that requires revisions of salary schedules to be debated and voted upon in the public forum of the Board of Regents’ meetings. Please take a moment to email or call Regents to ask them to make this change. A complete list of Regents is found below.

So, if the community colleges did not benefit from the salary adjustments that were adopted in that July 22 memo, who did? Good question. To learn more, read The Compensation Gap pt. 1.

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2023-24 Nevada Board of Regents

Title	Name	District	email	Phone
Chair	Byron Brooks	3	bbrooks@nshe.nevada.edu	702-501-1646
Vice Chair	Joseph Arrascada	10	jarrascada@nshe.nevada.edu	775-544-4548
Regent	Patrick Boylan	5	pboylan@nshe.nevada.edu	702-501-1444
Regent	Susan Brager	7	sbrager@nshe.nevada.edu	702-375-3237
Regent	Heather Brown	6	hbrown@nshe.nevada.edu	702-497-7714
Regent	Amy Carvalho	12	acarvalho@nshe.nevada.edu	702-506-1039
Regent	Dr. Michelee Cruz-Crawford	8	mcrawford@nshe.nevada.edu	702-506-6794
Regent	Carol DelCarlo	9	cdelcarlo@nshe.nevada.edu	775-846-9909
Regent	Jeffrey Downs	11	jdowns@nshe.nevada.edu	775-710-8897
Regent	Stephanie Goodman	13	sgoodman@nshe.nevada.edu	702-889-8426
Regent	Donald McMichael	4	dmcmichael@nshe.nevada.edu	702-501-2126
Regent	Laura Perkins	1	lperkins@nshe.nevada.edu	702-513-3380
Regent	Dr. Lois Tarkanian	2	ltarkanian@nshe.nevada.edu	702-280-3131