By Shelly Williams/editor-in-chief

At $365,000 a year, Chancellor Erma Johnson Hadley is the highest-paid community college employee in the state of Texas.

The college’s salary guideline book shows the range to set for every salary in the district, but it was TCC’s board of trustees that set her permanent salary when she was given the permanent job a year ago.

“That’s what the deans and presidents are supposed to follow, and then we would have the ability to double-check them,” trustee and former board president Louise Appleman said. “But the only salary that we ourselves, the board of trustees, set is the chancellor’s.”

While other community college chancellors or presidents receive benefits like housing, vehicles and insurance, Appleman and Hadley both said everything is simply paid in salary. Hadley also receives a monthly $600 for travel around the district.

Appleman said when hiring a chancellor, the board looks at what he or she has been paid in the past year, what previous increases were, what the salary was before the person was made chancellor, what it is now and how it compares to other chancellors around the state. Compared to former chancellor Leonardo de la Garza, there’s about a $40,000 difference.

The board talked with Hadley and compared her current salary to de la Garza’s and the rest of the state.

They looked at what the difference meant between hiring Hadley and hiring someone from outside the district — experience.

Experience and comparisons with other salaries around the state are a couple of factors both Appleman and vice chancellor of administration Bill Lace said TCC looks at carefully when it comes to setting the range of any salaried position. This process is what Hadley and other TCC employees have in common.

TCC’s salary guidebook says that all new employees will be placed at an entry level, except in unusual circumstances. Lace said this was most prevalent in the district’s support staff, where many people share the same job title.

“It’s a bit different with administrators since most of them are one of a kind,” he said. “In instances where we do have several people with the same title — divisional dean, for example — we will look at the number of years of experience and the extent of educational qualifications, and then make the salaries of newcomers in line with the others.”

He said the ranges for administrator salaries is much the same as with other areas and colleges. TCC looks at people with similar or identical job titles, duties and qualifications and compares those details with others from private industries and other colleges and universities.

“The various ranges of salaries — administrative-professional-technical, faculty and support staff — are determined through a continuous process of gauging ‘the market,’” he said. “We did a very broad-based study last summer that resulted in numerous adjustments. Each year, though, we do surveys on some of the salaries to ensure that we remain competitive.  We don’t want to underpay or — on the other hand — we don’t want to pay far more for the same job than others are.”

Appleman said it was Hadley’s experience on TCC’s home front that made the board decide a year ago what direction to go when the college was looking for a new chancellor.

“We probably gave some recognition or some credit for the fact that she was very familiar with our district and knew everybody and knew everything about it and could hit the ground running,” she said. “And she did.”