NTI salary request OK’d by state panel

The state Department of Education’s request to increase the salary range for the top post at Northwest Technical Institute in Springdale cleared a legislative panel on Tuesday.

The Legislative Council’s personnel subcommittee recommended the full council, which meets Friday, approve the Education Department’s request. The salary is now between $86,887 and $125,986 a year; the proposed change would make it between $108,110 and $147,200 a year.

Institute Director Blake Robertson, who is paid $90,397, is retiring at the end of June, state officials said Tuesday.

The Department of Education

made the request to increase the salary range for the director’s post “in order to provide parity between this position and other comparable community colleges in Arkansas,” the state’s personnel administrator Kay Barnhill said in a letter to the personnel subcommittee’s co-chairmen, Rep. Jim Wooten, R-Beebe, and Sen. David Wallace, R-Leachville.

“You compare it with presidents of community colleges and other organizations up in the Northwest Arkansas area and this is truly a salary issue,” Barnhill told lawmakers on Tuesday .

State Sen. Kim Hammer, R-Benton, asked whether state officials already have somebody in mind to hire for the post.

Nick Fuller, deputy director of the Department of Education’s Division of Higher Education, said “in speaking with the institute and the board, I don’t believe that they have reached out trying to find anyone at the current salary.

“They were trying to make this request and get the higher level before reaching out and going forward on the search,” he said.

State Sen. Linda Chesterfield, D-Little Rock, said the institute director’s salary is at the same level as perhaps an assistant principal at a high school.

“In order to attract someone to the level that they need, they need to have a higher salary because this is a much more demanding position, although being a high school vice principal is demanding enough, I can assure you,” said Chesterfield, who is a retired teacher.

“But we do need to have a salary that will attract individuals to compete with other colleges and universities around the state and to make this a competitive process,” Chesterfield said.

In late November, Robertson announced his plans to retire from the school at the end of June.

Robertson started as the institute’s director in July 2014. He previously served for 10 years as director of adult education at the College of the Ouachitas in Malvern, where he also was an adjunct criminal justice instructor.