Why more than 100 instructors missed a paycheck at Front Range Community College

Clarification: This story was updated July 5 to clarify that only some of the adjunct instructors who had to wait until June 28 for their first summer-school paycheck received $500 emergency grants and that 62% of FRCC's courses are taught by adjunct instructors.

More than 100 Front Range Community College instructors did not receive their paychecks, as scheduled, for the first two weeks of summer school because of “human error.”

About half of those affected received the missing pay four days late, on June 18, with the other half not receiving it until the next scheduled payday, June 28, FRCC communications director Jessica Peterson said.

“As of that date, all of FRCC’s summer instructors were fully paid,” Peterson said, noting that those impacted also received stipends and grants of $500 apiece — with some receiving both — in additional compensation.

But not before many of those adjunct instructors, most of them earning just $3,000 per class for standard 3-credit courses, were late making mortgage, rent, car, student-loan and credit-card payments, said Laura Wally, a chemistry instructor on the Larimer Campus in Fort Collins.

“It was very difficult,” said Wally, who filed an unemployment claim with the state when she didn’t receive her expected paycheck. “Pay of any amount late is wholly unacceptable and makes you late on your payments to creditors. You set things up thinking that paycheck is going to happen.”

A pattern of problematic paychecks at Front Range Community College

If it were the first time this year that FRCC instructors had missed paychecks, it would be a little easier to accept, Wally said.

But Cory Reinking, president of the Faculty Senate for FRCC’s Larimer Campus, and Melinda Myrick, co-president of FRCC’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors on the Westminster Campus, said some adjunct instructors missed paychecks during both the fall and spring semesters as well.

Those incidents, Peterson said, involved far fewer instructors than the one this summer.

Twelve instructors received delayed paychecks in the fall because they had new supervisors and “had difficulty getting the necessary permissions to approve paychecks in the system,” according to Peterson.

Two instructors had paychecks delayed during the spring semester because of issues connected to an upgrade of the computer payroll system used by the Colorado Community College System, Peterson said.

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Low morale among staff, and low confidence issue is resolved

“We brought this issue up in the fall semester, when it first happened,” said Reinking, a history professor. “We brought this issue to administration and faculty were assured that it wouldn’t happen again, and it happened again this spring. And now, in its most dramatic form, it happened again this summer.

“So, there’s very low confidence that this issue is resolved.”

Morale among teaching staff at all three FRCC campuses was already low because of concerns about the college’s efforts to bring the three together into a system that he and others fear will take the “community” out of its community college title, Reinking said,.

Adjunct instructors teach 62% of FRCC’s courses, Peterson said.

How exactly were paychecks missed?

The missed paychecks this summer, which included 33 for instructors on the Larimer Campus, were the result of “human error” involving a manual override that FRCC regularly makes to the Colorado Community College System’s computerized payroll system, according to Peterson.

That override, Peterson said, provides instructors with their first paychecks two weeks after they begin teaching a class rather than the system’s default setting of one month.

“At some point a few years ago, FRCC said that’s too long to make people wait,” Peterson said.

“What happened is this year, the manual change that FRCC has to do to get them that additional paycheck, which would have been June 14, the manual change was not made on some of the entries," Peterson said.

FRCC has about 325 adjunct instructors teaching courses this summer on its three campuses — Larimer, Boulder County and Westminster — and 105 of them did not get their first checks, as scheduled in the college’s published payday calendar, June 14.

About half of them got delayed checks June 18, Peterson said, with the other 50 or so forced to wait until the CCCS default payday of June 28.

Stipends and grants paid to those affected

FRCC provided stipends of $500 apiece to all 105 instructors impacted by the delays, with some of those forced to wait until June 28 also receiving $500 emergency grants through the FRCC Foundation. The stipends and grants were not advances on paychecks and do not have to be paid back, Peterson said.

“FRCC leadership recognizes that the college wouldn’t run without our instructors,” Rebecca Woulfe, FRCC’s vice president of academic affairs and provost, said in a statement issued through Peterson. “Our leadership team acknowledges the error and apologizes to our impacted instructors for the delay. The college deeply regrets the inconvenience and stress this error has caused.

“Instructors are critical to the success of this institution, to our student success, and to the work that we do. The college is taking immediate and comprehensive steps to prevent any such delays in the future.“

Steps being taken to prevent further issues

FRCC is adding two new positions to the team responsible for faculty and instructor contracts and compensation and “conducting a comprehensive review of our payroll processes and systems to identify any vulnerabilities and implement robust safeguards,” Peterson said. The college is also working with CCCS, the statewide system, to discuss possible improvements in the payroll process.

FRCC had 28,805 students on its three campuses and in concurrent enrollment programs with local high schools during the 2022-23 school year, the most recent year of official attendance figures available, she said. Nearly 11,000 of those students were taking classes on or through the Larimer Campus.

Reporter Kelly Lyell covers education, breaking news, some sports and other topics of interest for the Coloradoan. Contact him at kellylyell@coloradoan.com , x.com/KellyLyell and facebook.com/KellyLyell.news .

This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: Why more than 100 instructors missed a paycheck at Front Range Community College