After almost two years of pushing for higher wages, Santa Rosa Junior College student employees will finally get a raise, making their hourly rate comparable to Santa Rosa City’s minimum wage.
The SRJC Board of Trustees approved the increase at Tuesday’s monthly meeting, effective Nov. 10. Students will see the increase in their next paycheck.
“This is amazing. It’s going to benefit a lot of student employees,” said Kelly Zamudio, a former SRJC student who spent over a year advocating for raising student’s wages to better align with rising costs of living.
“That makes me super happy,” said Alonso Rodriguez Villalobos, another former SRJC student who fought for higher wages along with Zamudio. As a student employee, low pay prompted Rodriguez Villalobos to leave a campus job he loved because it wasn’t enough to pay his bills.
Members of SRJC student organization M.E.Ch.A. began pushing the administration to raise student wages in early 2023. In April 2023, Zamudio and Alonso Rodríguez-Villalobos drafted a petition, which they submitted to then-SRJC President Dr. Frank Chong and the Board of Trustees. They continued to advocate throughout the fall and spring of 2024.
But, when the school year ended with no change to student-employee pay rates, Zamudio and Rodríguez-Villalobos felt defeated. They would transfer to four-year colleges in the fall and worried that the issue might be forgotten in their absence.
Zamudio, who transferred to UC Davis, wished she could have been present for the announcement. “I’m really happy that (our advocacy) left a long-lasting impact, and it was really worth the fight,” she said.
While noting the value of students raising their voices for change, Zamudio acknowledged the costs to students just trying to get their degrees and embark on their path to higher education. “But if we don’t have enough money to survive, then it’s really hard for us to do that,” she said.
The new starting pay for student employees is $17.50, up from $16.50. Students earn incremental pay steps. Once a student has completed 200 hours of employment and a performance evaluation from their supervisor, they will earn Step 2 pay of $18 per hour. Step 3, which pays $18.50 hourly, requires 600 hours of work, a performance evaluation recommending advancement and completing a for-credit work experience class.
More than two-thirds of California students experience food insecurity and over half experience housing insecurity, according to a California Student Aid Commission 2023 basic needs survey. Low student pay exacerbates these insecurities.
One of student activists’ biggest concerns was that student wages adjust annually to inflation, according to Zamudio.
While the new pay now matches the minimum wages of the cities of Petaluma and Santa Rosa, it is still lower than $19.80, where it should have been if it had risen in accordance with inflation. Santa Rosa stipulates that the city’s minimum wage will continue to rise in accordance with the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners (CPI-W). However, the district did not make the same stipulation for student wages, according to Kate Jolley, vice president of finance and administrative services.
District funding does not automatically adjust for cost-of-living changes and is allocated on a year-to-year basis, Jolley explained via email. “Since our funding levels are subject to change, we focus on making sustainable decisions that balance fairness for our employees with the financial stability needed to support the entire District,” she wrote.
“That’s unfortunate,” Zamudio said, “because we’re going to have to continue to fight every single time this happens.” The wage raise without policies to adjust for inflation is a temporary fix, according to her. “It’s a band-aid on a really big wound.”
Former student trustee Logan Warren said the news about the wage raise “made my day.” He added, “It was a long time coming. A long, long time coming, but I’m glad they were able to make the space in the budget for it.” As a student trustee, his main concern was that pay rates keep up with inflation. “It’s really important that we offer fair wages to our students,” he said.
Ultimately, the value of advocacy lingers for Zamudio. “It might be scary at first, but if you’re one of the few people that speak out, you’ll be able to get another group of people that were probably really afraid to speak out, and you’ll be able to create change,” she said. “So I believe that the student voices are stronger than the institution.”
