By Brittany Williams
Staff Writer
EL DORADO — The South Arkansas Community College Board of Trustees approved employee bonuses at its meeting Tuesday.
“The Budget & Finance Committee recommends a … bonus lump sum payment for full-time employees at SouthArk,” board co-chair Veronica Creer said. “Payments will be two percent of the annual salary for faculty exceeding standards and staff with excellent ratings; 1.5 percent of salary for staff rated above average and one percent of the annual salary for faculty meeting requirements and staff with a satisfactory rating.”
To be eligible for a bonus, a full-time employee must be on the payroll between July 1, 2016 and June 30, 2017. The bonus would go in effect during the 2017-2018 academic year, Creer said. The recommendation was unanimously approved, though trustee Dr. Kermit Parks recused himself from that vote.
According to a report written by certified public accountant David Henry, excess year-to-date revenue over expenditures are $1,487,663 as of May 31.
“We’re not meeting our projected revenues … Expenditures are much lower than expected, so we’re actually doing well,” vice president for finance and administration Carey Tucker said. “In honor of our 25th anniversary, the bookstore is offering a $25 gift certificate for those that have registered for the second (summer) term.”
Tucker said that contingency funds were moved to pay adjunct faculty and help fund the Phi Beta Lambda (PBL) chapter’s travel to Anaheim, California for a national competition. PBL has held fundraisers to send 24 students and four sponsors to the competition.
College president Dr. Barbara Jones said the U.S. Department of Education is reimplementing year-round Pell grants. The grants will be available for students beginning July 1 and will allow a student to receive up to 150 percent of the student’s scheduled award.
She noted that during previous years, that year-round Pell wasn’t implemented, completion of year-round programs were negatively affected. Students in programs like nursing stall their studies, drop out or take out loans to fund their education during the summer.
“For us, we are, as (financial aid director Veronda Tatum) put it, a trailing institution … My understanding of that is it can carry for the summer at the end of the year, but that’s still good,” Jones said. “We’re very excited. When we went to Washington, that was one of our advocacy pieces … We’re glad that they heard us.”
Interim academic and student affairs vice president Dr. Jim Bullock was also pleased to announced that four other grants were renewed in the student services division.
“We have one more pending that we’ll hear (about) any day now and that is the Carl Perkins Grant Program. A number of these have been around for a number of years, but it’s always good to find out for sure that they’ve been renewed,” Bullock said. “Upward Board has been renewed for another five years. That’s a big program. It helps secondary students, preparing them for college, and we have reached our goals. I want to highlight the fact that we received a perfect score on the application by all reviewers and I’ve never encountered that before. I want to commend Barbara Howell and her crew that worked on that.”
Other grants that were renewed are the Arkansas Works Career Coach Grant in Bradley and Chicot counties, Career Pathways Initiative and National Emergency Grant/Arkansas Sector Partnership.
“The National Emergency Grant/Arkansas Sector Partnership, to refresh your memory, is the one that reaches out to … displaced workers, particularly veterans, minorities and disabled folk, but anyone who’s been displaced. They were scheduling for that grant to end the last day of this month, but they received word that it was going to be renewed for another year.”
The SouthArk Board of Trustees’ next meeting is scheduled at 3:45 p.m. Tuesday, August 15 in the administration building board room, located on the west campus.
Brittany Williams may be contacted by email at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter and like her on Facebook @BWilliamsEDNT for updates on Union County school news.