Teacher Action, TV Filming Herald Opening of Schools

Thousands of Orange County students said goodby to summer Tuesday and trooped back to school.

Tuesday was opening day for 16 of the county’s 29 school districts. Two districts started school last week, and the remainder will begin classes later this week or early next week.

Overall, about 2,000 to 3,000 new students are expected in the county’s school districts during the next four weeks, according to the Orange County Department of Education. Total enrollment countywide is projected to be about 348,000 students by mid-October, when the official census is made.

School district officials reported no major problems, although some teachers in the 5,300-student Huntington Beach City Elementary School District handed out flyers to parents who were bringing their children to school.

That district is the only one in the county that has not settled a pay contract with its teachers for last school year. The teachers staged a one-day strike on May 11.

“The flyers explained to the parents why we (in the teachers’ union) will accept the school district’s offer for last year but want to negotiate more before settling on a contract for this school year,” said Carol Autrey, president of the Huntington Beach Elementary Teachers Assn.

According to district figures, teachers’ annual salaries range from $19,213 to $42,009, and the average pay is about $37,190.

The school district has offered the elementary teachers a 3.7% pay raise, retroactive to last July 1, for the 1987-88 school year. For the current school year, the district has offered a 4.1% “total compensation” package. The 4.1% boost would include the increased cost of health insurance and other fringe benefits. Such a settlement was recommended by a state-supervised “fact-finders”’ report issued late in August.

District officials have said they intend to negotiate a two-year contract, not a one-year pact, which was also recommended by the fact-finders.

“We have not totally ruled out accepting the 4.1% offer, but we simply want to learn more about insurance costs and other items before we settle,” Autrey said.

Space was a problem Tuesday in the fast-growing systems in central and southern Orange County.

In Saddleback Valley Unified in the Mission Viejo area, Supt. Peter Hartman said about 1,200 new students flooded into the district’s already-cramped classrooms.

“We’re very close to being so overcrowded that we may have to bring in additional trailers and portable classrooms,” Hartman said.

Santa Ana Unified was another space-cramped, heavy-growth school district that began fall classes on Tuesday. Officials there said they expected about 1,100 additional students by the time all the new arrivals are counted.

Two of the three most severely declining school districts in Orange County also began classes on Tuesday. For those two, Huntington Beach Union High School District and Fullerton Joint Union High School District, the problem was under-enrollment, rather than crowding. The Huntington Beach district expects a drop of 1,285 students this fall, and the Fullerton high school system projects losing 1,191 pupils.

For unusual first-day-of-school events, Huntington Beach took the award.

In addition to the teacher action, Huntington Beach was the subject Tuesday of filming by a crew from the NBC-TV network’s “Today” program. “Today” plans to broadcast a segment about Huntington Beach junior high students on Friday morning.

The film crew began taping segments Tuesday at Ether Dwyer Middle School, 1502 Palm Ave., in the downtown Huntington Beach area for broadcast Friday at 8:05 a.m. The segment is to focus on U.S. teen-agers.

“There’s always a lot of excitement on the first day of school,” Principal Alan Rasmussen said, “but you can imagine the children’s excitement with a network TV crew working around the school.”