When Laura Wally learned that her paycheck would not be landing in her bank account in mid-June as scheduled, she considered selling plasma and applying for government assistance for food. Since then, she has depleted her emergency fund, borrowed money from family members and picked up a side gig delivering groceries through Instacart.

All while teaching chemistry at Front Range Community College’s Larimer Campus in Fort Collins this summer.

Wally is one of 105 instructors at the community college whose paychecks have shown up late this summer, stretching their already tight budgets. She has since received the amount she was owed, plus a $500 stipend, but some instructors are still waiting to be paid for courses they have taught — after some instructors experienced similar paycheck delays during the fall and spring semesters.

“It really makes me honestly wonder if I want to keep working for Front Range,” said Wally, who has taught at the college since 2015. “I love my students and chemistry is a hard subject and I want to be able to help them with that, but how long do you struggle as a professional teacher with a graduate degree?”

The payroll lag falls as many adjunct instructors across Colorado campuses have in recent years called more attention to their wages — citing chronic struggles of barely scraping by — and urged lawmakers to grant them the right to unionize and negotiate for wages, benefits and working conditions. During the 2022 legislative session, a highly controversial bill that became law, Senate Bill 230, cleared the way for collective bargaining among county employees but did not extend the same organizing powers to higher education employees.

John Kinsey, faculty senate president at Front Range Community College’s Westminster campus, describes the pattern of payroll delays as a string of crises that have frustrated instructors, who he said have “the least stability and the least support.”

“It seems like we’ve picked up speed every time we’ve hit this roadblock, but then the question is, why do we keep hitting this roadblock?” said Kinsey, who has taught philosophy at the Westminster campus but is not currently teaching. “I’d say that the college is in a state of instability, and the fact that we keep hitting this roadblock is the strongest evidence of that instability.”

Front Range Community College administrators say the pay delay stems from a combination of factors, including staff turnover, human error and the race to train new employees on processes such as payroll.

The college — which has campuses in Longmont, Westminster and Fort Collins along with an online program — typically begins the process for paying instructors several weeks before the beginning of each semester, according to Rebecca Woulfe, provost and vice president of academic affairs of the community college.

The electronic system that is the hub for faculty and instructor contracts had a default date set up marking when instructors would be paid. The default pay date for the summer semester, which started May 28, was June 28. The college aimed to pay its instructors sooner, however, and the only way to do that was to manually change the pay date, Woulfe said.

The institution did not update the default pay date for every instructor, which is what led to later paychecks.

Staff turnover — which Woulfe said has recently been at about 15% — has contributed to the challenge to get checks ready for staff, particularly as new employees have had to undergo training.

“It’s difficult to take time to get in depth as much as you’d like to (with training) and practice as much as you’d like to before folks go live,” said Matthew Jamison, the college’s associate vice president for academic success.

The school previously stumbled with paying two instructors on time during the spring semester and 12 in the fall. Part of the spring hiccup stemmed from a major restructuring to consolidate the three campuses instead of each continuing to operate independently, according to Woulfe.

The college doled out $500 stipends to all instructors waiting for their paychecks this summer in hopes of restoring faith in the institution and offered financial assistance through its nonprofit foundation, Woulfe said. The college is also updating its training materials, holding meetings with staff and re-evaluating its processes for contracts to prevent another payment slowdown for instructors.

“We recognize that we couldn’t run this institution without them,” she said. “They are critical to the success of this institution, to our student success, to the work that we do.”

The Front Range Community College Chapter of American Association of University Professors released a statement last week criticizing the college for continuing to fail to pay instructors on time.

“Delaying instructors’ paychecks places an undue burden on employees who are already struggling to make ends meet,” the statement noted, calling the institution’s errors “unacceptable when employees live on an economic razor’s edge.”

Weighing whether to stay for the students or leave for more money

Kinsey, the faculty senate president, said he is confident that the delay is not malicious but is caused by “overlapping bureaucratic miscommunication.” No matter the cause, he added, the delays are further straining instructors and threatening their financial security.

“From an instructor’s perspective, I would feel that my value wasn’t highly prioritized if I had to constantly struggle to even get the poverty wages that I was getting offered,” Kinsey said.

Wally, the chemistry professor, said she has missed payments to creditors and made late payments this summer because of the additional time it took to be fully compensated. Her pay has fluctuated throughout her time at Front Range Community College due to extra jobs she has picked up tutoring and working in the college’s writing center. This summer, she has been earning just over $600 a week while teaching fewer hours than she anticipated.

Wally decided to apply for unemployment benefits at the start of the summer because she was receiving less compensation since she was teaching fewer hours, but she has not received any unemployment funds. Meanwhile, she and her partner took on a roommate in their Longmont home in September after her partner lost his job. 

“If you aren’t making a living wage in northern Colorado, there’s no way you can save any money,” Wally said. “And so you’re living paycheck to paycheck. And if your paychecks, any amount is late, then you’re not buying groceries, you’re not paying rent or making a mortgage payment. You’re in trouble.”

Her students have kept her teaching at the community college year after year and, as she contemplates making a career change, she worries about whether they’ll receive the support they need if they have a revolving door of teachers. Throughout her time in the classroom, she has written letters of recommendation for students — including one for a recent student who secured $25,000 per year to attend a four-year university.

“If we’re truly a transient population of instructors,” Wally said, “that (support) doesn’t exist for those students and then (Front Range) students are disadvantaged.”